LITMIR.BIZ

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your charity outfit?” He’d clearly learned pretty adept surgical skills there.

      “We all do whatever we have to, to keep things going. They’re even worse off for personnel than we are here.”

      He tied off the last suture and she clipped it, then took over swabbing the incision site and applying a good dressing. That was the next step. The anesthesia was out, and she grabbed a stethoscope to listen to the baby’s heart and then the mother’s.

      “And I’m good at what I set my mind to,” he added.

      Hearts were steady—both of them. Jacinda’s rate was a little higher than she’d like, but that happened with infection.

      “Do we have a recovery room? I’m guessing not...?” Erianthe asked, pulling the earbuds out.

      He’d removed his mask and gloves but stood watching her in that same way he had in the patient’s room, looking too long, too intently. It made the back of her neck prickle, and she felt that tension return. What did it even mean? She had no way to know what he was thinking and never had—even when she’d thought she couldn’t know anyone better than she knew him.

      “She’s coming up,” the anesthesiologist interrupted.

      Erianthe removed her mask to stand over her patient’s head. “Jacinda? Open your eyes for me.”

      When she complied, Erianthe delivered the good news and Ares backed her up.

      “We’re going to take you back to a room and look after you there.”

      His voice changed when he spoke to Jacinda, becoming imbued with a gentleness that made her own throat thicken. It reminded her of the way he’d held and comforted her after the pregnancy test that had changed everything. When she’d been terrified of the way Dimitri and Hera would react to it, wondering if they could run away to be safe.

      “Where are you going?” he asked her now, the voice change denoting the shift from comforting his patient to addressing Erianthe.

      “Nowhere...” she croaked, then cleared her throat.

      “You’re backing up.”

      He did seem farther away.

      A shake of her head and she gestured to the door. “I’ll go with her to monitor vitals.”

      “Was the baby’s heart rate still good?”

      “Yes,” she confirmed, still wanting to talk about the patient as it kept her from thinking about the way he was looking at her. “Can we bring the ultrasound to her room?”

      Ares pulled his surgical cap off and tossed it into the bin, tired all the way to his bones suddenly. Too tired for gentleness, or for this weird circling around one another that they were doing.

      “You take her up and I’ll bring it in a moment,” he said.

      She had always bristled when told what to do, but who knew if she still had something to prove? It was a long time ago, and they’d both had to grow up in that time.

      All he knew was that he needed air at this precise second, so he might as well go home. If he stayed, as was his usual custom, he’d only be stuck in a room with her and nothing to do. Judging by her actions and words so far, there was no way she’d leave a pregnant mother and child in possible jeopardy.

      Besides, his own island was very close to Mythelios proper, and his boat was fast. He’d rather stagger out of bed in the middle of the night and rush here without pants on than stay in a room with Erianthe for hours, when every time she looked at him her expression seemed stuck somewhere between someone just vomited on me and why is that spider carrying a machete?

      “Who is going to show me where that is and help get her settled?”

      The fact that even now, when they weren’t focused on their patient, she still didn’t want to look at him said enough about her state of mind on the matter. She probably still hated him—and Ares couldn’t blame her. There was no undoing what had happened. He’d keep paying for that mistake, just as she would. But he didn’t want that heartache to spread.

      He’d known it would be hard to see her again. What he hadn’t expected was the tightness in his chest that just kept on increasing. Every look at her had him cataloging the changes over the last decade. The small line between her brows said she frowned a lot. There were no faint matching brackets at the corners of her mouth to evidence smiles and laughter.

      He couldn’t change that. He still didn’t know what he was supposed to have done back then—what might have made it work out for all three of them. If he hadn’t come up with the answer in ten years, he wasn’t going to now. All he knew was that she’d borne the brunt of that mistake alone—without him, without anyone.

      His suffering paled in comparison to hers.

      He didn’t expect her to forgive him and wouldn’t ask her to. Couldn’t even picture what kind of heart could even offer him that kind of absolution.

      “I’ll get Petra to organize everyone,” he said, then pulled off his gown to fish a pen and notepad out of his pocket.

      A quick scribble of his number and he laid the sheet of paper on one of the machines, waiting for her to stop counting beats for the baby’s heart and remove the buds she’d replaced in her ears before he carried on speaking.

      “If you need me to run the labs, or if she shows signs that there’s a leak or that we missed something, call me first. Don’t go through someone else—call me. I can be here in ten minutes.”

      She lifted one hand but didn’t immediately reach for the paper. The way her fingers curled, then stretched too hard, was like watching someone warm up before arduous exercise. Like picking up this single sheet of paper was heavy lifting and she didn’t want to sprain her thumb.

      In that second he regretted his decision to leave. The way she looked at him right now, would she call him for any reason?

      “What time did you get up this morning? It was a travel day for you...” Ares said, ignoring the irritated sigh he got in answer.

      She could sleep there. He didn’t care. But it would be stupid, and she would probably remain at the bedside of their patient all night long rather than count on the night nurse to wake her if something did go wrong.

      He wouldn’t let any of his colleagues do that in her situation, he told himself; this wasn’t specifically about her.

      “Erianthe.”

      “Huh?”

      The sound came out like a space filler—a tone loosed purely to give her time to think of what the right thing to say would be. A liar’s sound, a way to avoid conflict, a monotone prayer that the speaker would give up on the question.

      “You traveled today. You must be tired. I’ll stay. You go home with Theo.”

      “I’m not...” She started to say something but then looked past him toward the door. “I’m not going to stay with Theo. I need to tell him that.”

      He knew enough to know that her staying with Theo was the plan. Even if Theo hadn’t already told him that, he knew neither of the Nikolaideses would want to stay with their parents. Hell, none of them would want to stay with their parents. He’d bunked down at Deakin’s upon first arriving on Mythelios, until he’d found out his own father currently lived in another country.

      “Why aren’t you staying with Theo?”

      “He and Cailey should have some privacy. Chris arrived a couple of days ago, so I’ll see if I can stay with him.”

      “They can keep it down, I’m sure,” he muttered, his friend’s cozy domestic bliss suddenly irritating him. “Whatever. Chris’s, then. But Theo’s is closer, should I need to call you in.”

      “I’m going to Chris’s.”

      His

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