Dangerous curiosity
1255 Words
Selene couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Which was irritating, because she was a practical person. She believed in sleep, evidence, and not developing feelings about men who showed up bleeding and refused to answer basic questions. By noon she’d convinced herself the whole thing would dissolve on its own a strange night, a strange man, nothing more.
It hadn’t dissolved.
Roman Voss lingered somewhere behind her thoughts like smoke she couldn’t air out the particular stillness of him, the way the entire emergency floor had rearranged itself around his presence without him asking it to. The way he’d held her wrist in the dark and made it feel like a question.
And the fact that she hadn’t been afraid.
That was the part she kept coming back to.
She was standing at the nurses’ station working through discharge papers when Maya materialized beside her with a bag of chips and too much energy for a Wednesday.
“You’ve been staring at the same chart for five minutes,” Maya said.
Selene looked down. Same page. She’d read the first line three times.
“I’m tired.”
“You’re distracted.” Maya’s eyes narrowed slowly. “Wait. Is this about last night?”
“No.”
“The man—”
“No.”
“Oh my God.” Maya pointed a chip at her. “You’re thinking about him right now.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re thinking about him while pretending to work, which is worse.” She leaned on the counter. “Selene. He looked like he owned weapons. Multiple weapons. And a boat.”
“He was a patient.”
“He was a situation.”
Selene picked up another chart purely to have somewhere to look. But her mind went there anyway — his voice in the dark, low and briefly unguarded. His hand releasing her wrist too slowly. The way he’d looked at her outside in the rain like he was trying to decide something.
It wasn’t attraction exactly. Attraction felt lighter than this, easier to set down. This was something else. The feeling of standing at the edge of something steep and being curious about it anyway.
“Selene.”
She looked up.
Maya was smiling with the quiet devastation of someone watching a slow motion disaster. “You’re in trouble.”
Before Selene could argue, something changed in the hallway.
She felt it before she saw it that subtle shift, the way a room adjusts without knowing why. A nurse straightened. An intern fumbled his coffee cup. The general noise of the floor softened by a degree.
Selene looked up.
Roman Voss walked through the corridor like a man who had somewhere more important to be and was tolerating this one out of necessity darkn coat, black gloves, expression giving nothing away. Two of his men trailed behind him at a respectful distance.
His gaze found hers the moment she looked up.
It always did, she was realizing. Like he’d already located her before she’d noticed him.
Beside her, Maya went very still. Oh,she said quietly this is bad.
Selene said nothing, mostly because she’d temporarily forgotten how.
Roman stopped at the nurses’ station. Up close he looked exactly as he had the night before like someone who had no business being that composed while also being that she stopped the thought before it finished.
“You left before I could finish your discharge paperwork,” she said.
“I wasn’t aware I needed permission to leave.
You needed antibiotics something moved at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll survive.
That’s optimistic given last night Maya quietly evacuated the station selene didn’t blame her.
“So,”Selene said Why are you here
Roman reached into his coat and set something on the counter between them.
Her pen. The cheap black one she’d been using when she stitched his arm.
Selene looked at it then at him.
You came back to return a pen.
You left it.”
You could have thrown it away.
His eyes held hers steadily I don’t throw away things that belong to me.
The words landed somewhere they shouldn’t have she felt them settle, low and warm, before she could decide not to.
“That pen belongs to the hospital,she said.
“Does it
Not a question.
Before she could respond, footsteps came down the hallway.
“Vale.”
Dr. Nathaniel Reed, blond and unhurried, tablet tucked under one arm. He had the easy confidence of someone who’d never once doubted he was welcome in a room, which Selene had always found either charming or exhausting depending on her mood.
“Your patient in twelve is asking for you again,” he said, then noticed Roman and paused. “Sorry didn’t mean to interrupt he extended a hand Dr. Reed
Roman looked at the hand.
Then at Nathaniel.
The pause lasted just long enough to become something then he shook it once Brief cold enough to be a statement.
Selene pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.
Nathaniel recovered with the practiced grace of someone used to reading rooms. “Friend of yours he asked her pleasantly.
Roman answered before she could
No clean Immediate and somehow more loaded than a longer answer would have been.
Nathaniel glanced between them right. I’ll let you get back to it.He left with the particular speed of a man who had correctly assessed the situation.
Selene turned back to Roman. You didn’t have to do that.
“I didn’t do anything.
“You froze him out without saying a word.
He recovered.”
She studied him for a moment beneath the calm, something had shifted when Nathaniel walked over a tightening, barely visible, gone as quickly as it came she filed it away.
“You two seem close,Roman said.
He’s a colleague Roman said nothing but the look he gave her said he’d noted the answer and hadn’t fully accepted it, which was none of his business in a way she found both aggravating and she stopped that thought too.
She should have stepped back then. Changed the subject, excused herself, returned to the work she was supposed to be doing.
Instead she leaned slightly forward, close enough to catch a faint trace of cedarwood and rain still caught in the fabric of his coat.
“Are you always like this,she asked, or am I getting the special version
Roman went still.
Genuinely still like the question had found a gap in the control and slipped through before he could stop it.
Then he stepped closer. Not enough to touch enough to make her aware of exactly how much space there wasn’t between them.
“You ask questions,he said quietly, “like you’re not concerned about the answers.”
Her pulse did something embarrassing.
Down the hall a monitor beeped insistently, and the moment cracked open enough for her to breathe. She stepped back. Roman watched her do it watched her recalibrate, she thought, with the focus of someone cataloguing information.
He reached into his coat again and placed a folded piece of paper on the counter.
“What’s this My number Selene looked at it then at him you assume I want it no his gaze dropped to her mouth for a fraction of a second, then returned to her eyes I know you’ll use it.
It should have annoyed her.
The certainty of it the complete absence of doubt.
Instead something moved through her that felt dangerously close to being right.
- Writer
