My pulse slowed, and my breaths deepened. The vigilance I'd maintained for months—the constant readiness that had kept me alive—began to dissolve under his touch. My body was betraying years of training, surrendering to safety when every lesson I'd learned screamed that safety was an illusion.
"Whoever did this..." Matthew's voice dropped lower. "Precise."
I opened my eyes and watched him studying the older scars scattered across my torso—an old knife wound near mycollarbone, burn marks along my side, and thin white lines where other stitches had been.
Matthew looked into my eyes. I'd been assessed countless times—by doctors checking damage, handlers calculating usefulness, and enemies measuring weakness. He wasn't like any of those. He saw only me.
No one had looked at me like that in years. Maybe ever.
He returned to the task at hand, carefully wrapping fresh gauze just below my ribs. His knuckles grazed my chest as he secured the end of the bandage. The accidental contact sent a spreading electrical charge across my skin.
Our eyes met briefly, and then Matthew shifted his attention, clearing his throat.
"Better?"
I nodded.
Finished with the bandaging, he didn't immediately move away. "You don't have to tell me what happened, but I should know if someone will come looking for you."
It was a reasonable question. The truth was something I couldn't yet share, even with someone who'd saved my life twice now.
I offered a cautious answer. "Not immediately. They think I'm gone."
"Gone as in left town, or gone as in dead?"
"The second one," I smirked slightly. "Works better that way."
Matthew absorbed the information without a visible reaction. His eyes didn't widen. He merely nodded to indicate he'd heard me.
"Alright." That was it—no demand for more, and no threat to call the authorities.
I couldn't quite process his quiet comfort with the situation. No one gave shelter without demanding compensation. No one bandaged wounds without requiring something in return. Theworld ran on trade—shelter for secrets, kindness for leverage. Genuine altruism was just a bedtime story for the lucky.
Still, there he was, staring at me. Matthew McCabe, a combat veteran and first responder, treated my injuries without requiring explanation. I could practically smell danger. His actions disrupted all of my defensive calculations.
A question overwhelmed my thoughts. "Why are you helping me?"
He rubbed the side of his jaw. "You needed it."
"That's not how this works. People don't just—"
"Help?" He raised an eyebrow. "Some do."
I didn't believe that. Not really.
"What do you want?"
"Not everything has a price tag, Dorian." That line—so simple, so sure—rattled in my brain like loose change in a jar.
I didn't answer. But in my head, the math still didn't work. I kept looking for the hidden variable—the part where this turned on me.
Matthew stood. He spoke quietly. "Think what you need to, but you're safe here for now."
He reached for the mug of tea on the coffee table. Steam no longer rose from the surface, but when he wrapped his palm around it, his nod confirmed warmth remained.
"It's still good." He held it out for me.
I hesitated only briefly before accepting it. My hands cupped the mug without checking for poison, testing the rim for residue, or checking my escape routes in case it contained a sedative.
