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I straighten on the couch, my attention shifting from the girls to the conversation in my hand. “Of course. Is everything alright?”
“I’d rather tell you in person.”
Concern pushes harder against my patience. “Emma, what happened?”
She takes a breath before answering. “I’m okay. I promise. I just need you here.”
I know that tone. She’s asking me to trust her enough to stop looking for answers she isn’t ready to give. “I’ll leave now.”
“Thank you.”
I lower the phone and push away from the couch under Mom’s watchful eye, from the stove and the girls abandon their fallen block tower long enough to follow my movement across the room.
“Emma needs me,” I tell them as I reach for my keys.
Mom rests the spoon against the side of the pot and studies me long enough to see the concern I haven’t managed to hide.
“Then go. Dinner will keep, and I’m reasonably certain I can prevent your children from dismantling the penthouse before you get back.”
Babs looks around the living room as though considering whether that sounds like a challenge. Sprout trots over with his tennis ball and drops it against my shoe.
I bend to scratch behind his ears, then point toward the girls when he peers up at me with more confidence than obedience.
“Stay here and keep an eye on them.”
Mom gives a dry laugh as I straighten. “Excellent. You’ve put the least reliable creature in the apartment in charge.”
The girls begin protesting Sprout’s promotion. I cross to the elevator, but their argument follows me only until the doors close.
After that, Emma’s strained greeting fills the space she left behind, and every reassuring word she gave me starts sounding less convincing.
Traffic crawls south through Manhattan, leaving me with one hand fixed around the steering wheel and far too much time to resist calling her again.
Pressing her for answers over the phone won’t help when she already asked me to trust her, though patience becomes harder to hold each time another light turns red.
By the time her building comes into view, I’ve considered every explanation the doctors could have given her and rejected each one because none of them accounts for the fear I heard beneath her words.
She buzzes me inside before I reach the entrance, and I take the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator. Her door opens as I reach the landing, revealing Emma in an oversized sweatshirt with her hair pulled into a loose knot and exhaustion darkening the skin beneath her eyes.
Relief cuts through me so quickly that I close the distance without asking permission and pull her against my chest.
She wraps both arms around me, pressing her face into my shirt, a shaky breath rushing out against my chest. “I scared you.”
The apology already forming in her tone irritates me more than the fear did, and I tighten my hold before easing back enough to look at her. “You asked me to come because you needed me, so you don’t apologize for that.”
My hands move over her arms. I check what I can see, searching for bruises, bandages, or any sign that she’s minimizing what happened.
She allows the inspection with tired patience, then catches one of my wrists before I can ask another question. “I’m alright, Bane. The doctor cleared me, and I wouldn’t have left the hospital if they were worried.”
The answer should reassure me, though it does little to explain why she looks as though she’s been carrying the entire day alone. I brush a strand of hair away from her cheek and let my fingers remain there until some of the tension leaves her face.
“Then bring me inside and tell me what they found.”
She steps back without releasing my hand and leads me into the apartment. Two mugs wait on the coffee table beside a kettle that has already gone cold, and the untouched tea tells me she’s spent more time preparing for this conversation than drinking anything.
Emma notices where I’m looking and gives the mugs a weary glance. “I made those when I got home, but I kept forgetting they were there.”
I close the door behind us and follow her toward the couch. “Sit down before you forget that too.”
