Enforcer's Bargain

Chapter Fifteen: Six Weeks

Delaney

She went back into the hospital room that night, eyes still swollen, and found Roman awake, watching the door like he'd been counting the minutes since she'd left.

"I'm still here," she said, before he could ask. "I needed air. I didn't need to leave."

"I wasn't sure which one it was going to be."

"Neither was I, if I'm honest." She sat back down in the chair beside his bed, taking his hand again, careful this time of the numbness she'd caused earlier. "My father apologized. In the parking lot. Actually apologized, for the first time since we got engaged, which I think means more to me than I know how to fully explain right now."

"That's good."

"It is. But it doesn't answer the actual question you asked me in here, before I left." She looked at him, honest, the same rawness from the parking lot still sitting close to the surface. "I don't know if I'm ready to carry this fear for the rest of my life, Roman. I know I love you. I know I ran toward this hospital instead of away from it tonight, and my father says that told him something about my readiness. But I need to actually sit with it properly, not perform readiness because the running toward you felt instinctive. Instinct isn't the same as being sure."

"I know." He said it without hurt, just plain acceptance, which somehow made it land harder than if he'd argued. "I'd rather you take the time and arrive at something true than rush into a vow you're not sure you can keep. I've watched what happens to people who promise things they can't actually carry. I don't want that for us."

"What does that mean, practically? For the wedding?"

He was quiet for a moment, thinking, careful with the answer the way he'd learned to be careful with all the things that actually mattered to him. "It means we pause. Not end. Pause. I'll do my six weeks of recovery, you take whatever time you need to sit with the real fear instead of the fictional one, and we talk again when you know, actually know, instead of hoping you know because the alternative feels too painful to consider."

"You're not upset."

"I'm terrified," Roman admitted, echoing the word he'd used the night of the Portland game, the tunnel kiss, the night everything had started becoming real instead of performed. "But being terrified and giving you room aren't opposites, same as before. I love you enough to want the real yes, whenever it comes, more than I want a rushed one right now just because a hospital room made both of us scared enough to grab for certainty we haven't actually earned yet."

Roman

The six weeks of recovery passed slower than any six weeks of his career, ribs healing, concussion protocol clearing him in careful stages, and Delaney visiting most days, warm, present, but with a new carefulness between them that hadn't existed before the hit, a held breath neither of them had fully released yet.

His grandmother noticed it immediately, the first time Delaney brought him over for dinner during his recovery, sling briefly still visible under his shirt from the initial injury.

"You two are quiet with each other now," she said, in Korean, watching them across the table with the same assessing look she'd given Delaney the very first time they'd met. "Not fighting. Just quiet. Careful. What happened?"

Roman explained it as best he could, his grandmother listening with the particular patience she'd always extended him, even as a serious little boy who'd forgotten how to be anything else.

"She's not wrong to need the time," his grandmother said finally, switching to English for Delaney's benefit, warm despite the gravity of what she was saying. "I watched your grandfather play through injuries too, different sport, same fear. It took me two years after we married before I stopped flinching every time he limped in from work. Nobody warns you that loving someone in a dangerous job is its own kind of training. You don't arrive at readiness all at once. You build it, slowly, the way you build any muscle, through repetition and small proofs that the person keeps coming home."

"How did you build it?" Delaney asked, quiet, genuinely wanting to know.

"By watching him choose to come home, again and again, until the choosing became the thing I trusted more than the danger itself." His grandmother patted Delaney's hand, the same gesture from their first dinner together, months ago now. "You don't need to arrive at fearlessness, child. Nobody does. You just need to trust the pattern of him choosing you back, every single time, until the fear gets quieter than the trust. That takes time. Take the time. He'll still be here when you're ready, if he's the man I think he is."

Delaney

She spent the six weeks doing the work her father's parking lot honesty and Roman's grandmother's patient wisdom had both, in their own ways, pointed her toward, sitting with the fear properly instead of managing it from a safe intellectual distance.

She went to therapy for the first time since the Beckett breakup, a decision that felt overdue by at least two years, and found herself, in the third session, finally saying out loud the thing she'd never fully admitted to anyone, not Priya, not her mother, not even Roman.

"I think I fell in love with Roman partly because loving him from the page felt safe," she told the therapist, a calm, unhurried woman named Dr. Osei who'd been recommended by, of all people, Sadie Chen. "I could control the outcome in the fic. I could decide he always got back up. Loving the real version means I don't get to control anything, and some part of me has been quietly furious about that ever since the Portland hit, even though I know that's not fair to him."

"Is the fear about Roman specifically," Dr. Osei asked, "or about control in general? Those often get tangled together, especially after a loss like the one you experienced with your ex."

Delaney sat with that question longer than any other in the session, and found, slowly, an answer that surprised her with how much relief it carried. "I think it's about control. I think I've spent two years since Beckett trying to manage every risk in advance, including in fiction, because managing risk felt like the only power I had left after watching someone I loved get hurt in a way I couldn't prevent or fix. Loving Roman for real means giving that control up completely, and I don't think I've actually practiced that particular kind of trust before. Not properly. Not without a safety net of fiction to fall back on."

"That's a very honest thing to notice about yourself."

"It's terrifying to notice about myself." Delaney managed a small, unsteady laugh. "But I think it's also the actual answer to the question Roman asked me in that hospital room. I don't think I need to stop being afraid before I marry him. I think I need to trust that loving him is worth carrying the fear anyway, the way his grandmother described. The fear doesn't have to disappear. It just has to get quieter than the trust."

Five weeks and four days into Roman's recovery, she showed up at his apartment unannounced, letting herself in with the key he'd given her months ago, and found him at the kitchen table, ribs mostly healed, working through a stack of physical therapy exercises with the same disciplined focus he brought to everything.

"I know now," she said, before he'd even fully looked up. "What I needed to know. I'm not less scared, Roman. I don't think I'll ever be less scared, not fully, not with a job like yours. But I trust the pattern of you choosing me back, every single time, the way your grandmother described. I trust that more than I trust the fear. That's the actual answer. Not fearlessness. Just trust, bigger than the fear."

He was up and across the kitchen before she'd finished the sentence, careful of the healing ribs but not careful at all with the way he pulled her close, and the six weeks of quiet, careful distance between them finally, fully broke.

"Marry me properly," he said, into her hair, voice rough. "Whenever you're ready. No countdown, no pause anymore. Just tell me when, and I'll be there."

"Soon," Delaney said, certain in a way she hadn't managed to be in the hospital room six weeks ago. "Properly soon. I just needed to know the yes was real before I gave it to you again."

"And now?"

"Now it's the realest thing I've ever said." She kissed him, careful of the ribs, unguarded in every other way, and felt the last of the held breath between them finally, completely release.