POV: Jasmine
Emergency rooms are designed to make you feel like time has stopped. They succeed.
Finn was already standing in the lobby when we pushed through the doors. He had not sat down. He looked at Liam and then at me, and the exchange lasted one long moment and contained everything that needed to be said before anyone said anything.
"They won't let us in yet," he said. "They're stabilizing him."
"How long?" Liam asked.
"They didn't say." Finn's jaw worked. "Which means they don't know yet."
We found plastic chairs and sat. The corridor beyond the intake desk moved with its own indifferent rhythm, personnel crossing without urgency. I had learned that meant nothing. Urgency in this building was distributed according to systems we had no access to.
‘He had been fine a few hours ago. He had sat at that table and looked at us and he had been entirely fine.’
I stood after a while and stepped into the corridor with my phone. Leo answered before the second ring.
"Jas." His voice was already alert. "Talk to me."
"I need you," I said, keeping my voice low. "Asher collapsed. We're at the hospital."
"I'm already getting in the car," He said. "Should I come to the hospital?"
I leaned against the corridor wall. "No, go home. There is Nora with Aurora sleeping, she would need help. I can stay in the spare room," I said. "I don't want you making that drive and then going back to the ranch alone."
"Done," he said. "I'll bring what I need."
"Leo." I stopped. There was more I wanted to say — about how much I had needed to hear his voice, about how that single word done had settled something in my chest that Finn's call had unmoored. I did not say any of it. "Drive safe."
After the phone call I returned to Liam and Finn. They looked up at the same time.
"Nora is on her way to the apartment," I said. "Leo is driving down. He'll be with us before morning."
Liam nodded. "We need to work out who carries what."
"Yes," I said, and sat.
We worked through it without raised voices, without hesitation.
"I take the hospital," I said. "Days, the medical side of it."
"I'll take nights here," Liam said. "And the company during the day. Priya Mehta needs a Blackwood name available — it should be mine."
"I'll go into the office full-time," Finn said. "Hold Cadence with you until this settles."
"Nora and Leo take the apartment," I said. "Aurora's routine doesn't change."
Finn looked at me and then at Liam. "Agreed."
Liam was quiet for a moment. He was receiving it — the fact of being surrounded by people who had already calculated what was needed and moved toward it without waiting to be asked.
I watched that reach him. He was not a man who asked for help easily, and he was not performing acceptance of it now. He was actually inside it, which was different. But finally he accepted the situation.
We stayed until they let us see Asher, briefly, one at a time. I stood in the doorway when it was my turn. He was tired and not yet stable, and what I wanted to say was not for a hospital room, so I said less than I felt and held his hand and told him we were handling everything.
"I know you are," he said. "That's the only reason I'm lying here instead of arguing."
Liam and I drove home in the dark. Nora had left a note on the counter. Leo was still on the road. Aurora was asleep and the apartment held the quiet of a place that had been tended to and left in good order.
We stumbled into the bathroom together. Liam reached in and turned on the shower, the room filling with steam and the scent of hot water on tile.
He undressed me, his fingers tracing the line of my shoulders, the curve of my back, and I mirrored his movements, his clothes falling to join mine on the floor. We stepped under the spray.
He started with my hair, fingers working shampoo into lather, moving from root to tip with a slow, firm pressure that made my scalp tingle. I stood there, eyes closed, letting the sensation wash over me.
His hands moved lower, slick with soap, tracing the line of my collarbone, the curve of my breasts, circling my nipples until they hardened under his touch.
I returned the favor, running my hands over the broad plane of his back, the hard muscle of his shoulders. He rested his forehead against my temple as we touched each other. The air was thick with heat and want. His hands slid between my thighs and I could feel how much I wanted him back.
What happened next wasn’t rushed or frantic—it was slow and deep and searching. It was lips and tongues exploring, tasting; it was hands grasping, holding tight; it was bodies pressed close, closer still.
It was him sliding into me as I gasped against his mouth. It was us moving together like waves crashing against a shore until we finally reached a place where we were completely entwined—no more him or me but only us—and then we were still.It was him sliding into me, slow and full, as I gasped against his mouth and gripped his shoulders.
It was the rhythm we found together, unhurried, his hips meeting mine with a deep and steady pressure that built like a tide. It was my leg hooking over his, pulling him closer, and the low sound he made against my throat.
It was that long, suspended moment when the wave finally broke—his breath ragged, my fingers pressed into his back—and then the stillness after, both of us spent and tangled and quiet.
I fell asleep with his arm across my chest.
I woke in the early dark and dressed without waking him.
The drive to the hospital was quiet. I sat in the corridor outside Asher's room with a cup of coffee going cold between my hands. I had not called ahead. I had simply gotten in the car because staying in bed and waiting for the phone to ring had become something I could not do.
The doctor came out and stopped in front of me. Her face was composed, arranged carefully before what she was about to cross into.
"Ms. Harlow." She met my eyes steadily. "We would like to speak with the family before we begin the conversation."