Page 73 of Charged By the Razorbacks

The thought didn’t sit well.

“She gets time,” Jamal said after a moment. “We don’t push. We don’t take. We give her space to choose.”

Malik nodded once. “And we stay.”

Jamal’s mouth curved faintly. “We don’t leave.”

They stood there, working through it without needing to lay out every step, both of them thinking ahead in the same direction. They would guard her, earn her trust, show her what they were without forcing her to accept it before she was ready.

They would court her. The word was old, but it fit. It meant patience. It meant intention. It meant she had a say in how this played out.

Jamal was prepared to give her that.

He was not prepared for what came next.

The alarm cut through the corridor without warning, sharp and violent, shattering the quiet in an instant. It wasn’t the distant hum of hospital machinery or the low murmur of conversation—it was immediate, urgent, demanding action.

Jamal was already moving before the second tone hit.

Nurses rushed past them, voices rising, controlled urgency threading through every step as one of them called it out.

“Seizure in twelve—move!”

Her room.

Jamal didn’t think. He pushed the door open, Malik right behind him, and the moment he stepped inside, everything in him locked onto her.

Naomi lay on the bed, her body arched, muscles rigid as the seizure took hold. Her hands were clenched tight, her entire frame shaking in a way that was too violent, too wrong, her system misfiring in a way that set something dark and dangerous loose in his chest.

He crossed the room in two strides. “Naomi—”

“Out of the way.” The command snapped sharp, a nurse cutting in front of him without hesitation, her focus already on Naomi as she reached for her, another nurse moving in on the other side.

Jamal stopped.

Malik’s hand came down hard on his arm, holding him there, anchoring him in place when every instinct he had screamed at him to move, to do something, to stop it.

Naomi’s body jerked again, the motion violent, uncontrolled as the medical team worked fast, one nurse stabilizing her head, another checking her airway while a third reached for medication.

“Diazepam, now.” A syringe appeared. A line was cleared. The drug pushed through. Still, her body fought.

Jamal’s hands curled into fists at his sides, his entire body vibrating with the need to act, to tear through whatever was hurting her and end it with his bare hands.

“Hold,” Malik said under his breath.

Time stretched, warped by the intensity of the moment, each second dragging under its weight. Her body fought against something they couldn’t see, something buried deep inside her that the medication was only just beginning to touch.

Then, slowly, it started to ease. The tension left her in increments, her muscles loosening, her body collapsing back into the mattress as the seizure finally broke.

Silence followed, heavy and charged. Her chest rose. Fell. Rose again.

She was alive.

Jamal exhaled, the breath leaving him rough and unsteady in a way he didn’t recognize.

“Ten minutes,” someone said quietly.

It had felt like years.