All Chapters of THE COST OF SAVING HIM : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Nadia's POV --- "Yuck!" I muttered it under my breath, kicking a pebble off the narrow path as I walked. The shortcut through Delvin Road smelled like wet concrete and bad decisions — which was exactly why I never used it. Except tonight my brain decided to betray me. *Take the short route, Nadia. You might meet your soulmate.* I don't know what part of my subconscious thought that was helpful information at 10:47 PM after a twelve-hour shift at the teaching hospital, but here I was. Tired, hungry, and walking down a road that hadn't seen proper streetlights since probably 2009. "Yuck," I said again, louder this time, because the ground was damp and my sneakers were not built for damp. I don't need a soulmate. I need a shower, a full plate of rice, and eight hours of sleep that nobody interrupts. I am twenty-three years old, one semester from my medical degree, and I have a plan. The plan does not include soulmates. The plan includes graduating, passing my licensing exams, and

Nadia's POV --- He was not a good patient. Not in the dramatic, thrashing way — Kane didn't move an inch he hadn't calculated first. But there was a stillness to him that wasn't cooperation. It was tolerance. Like he was enduring me rather than accepting help, which was a distinction I felt every time my hands moved and his jaw tightened and he said absolutely nothing about it. "Breathe," I said. "I am breathing." "Deeper. You're holding it every time I touch the wound and that's making your muscles tense and that's making this harder than it needs to be." A pause. He breathed deeper. I worked quickly, cleaning the wound thoroughly, irrigating it with saline until I was satisfied, then packing it carefully with gauze. The bullet was seated deeper than I wanted — too deep for what I had — but I could stabilize him enough to buy time. That was the goal. Stabilize, close the surface, manage bleeding, prevent infection. "You've done this before," he said. "Treated a gunshot wou

Nadia's POV I don't know how long we sat like that. Him in the chair, me on the couch with my face in my hands, the apartment sitting in a silence that had too many things moving underneath it. I was running calculations I didn't want to be running — exits, options, how fast I could get to my phone if I needed to, whether any of this was actually as serious as he was making it sound. Then my window exploded inward. I was on my feet before I understood what had happened — glass across the floor, curtain rod swinging, cold air rushing in where the window used to be. My brain caught up a half second later. Gunshot. "Down." Kane was already moving, already across the room, one hand grabbing my arm and dropping us both below the window line in a single motion. The pain from his wound didn't slow him. It didn't even register on his face. Another shot. The wall above us cracked. "My apartment—" I started. "Is replaceable." His hand was firm on my shoulder, keeping me low. "You're no