The door to Aiden's hospital room opened with barely a whisper, but it was enough to drag him from the fog of boredom that had settled over him. He looked up, expecting a nurse or Steve returning with another lecture about moving too quickly after an accident.
Instead, it was her.
Rosalie Hale stood in the doorway like the world had carved her from moonlight and precision. Beautiful in that forbidding way she mastered, every inch of her was collected, restrained, controlled. She didn't move until her eyes found him lying there in the hospital bed, softened by bruises and exhaustion, and something flickered across her face. Something small. Something almost human.
Aiden couldn't name it, but he felt it.
Steve shifted in his chair. "Rosalie."
"Deputy Steve," she answered simply, respectfully, but with the distance of someone who didn't allow anyone to get close unless necessary.
The silence between them, Rosalie and Aiden, unspooled into the room, thick and impossible to ignore. Steve felt it like a gust of wind pushing him toward the door.
"Uh… I'm gonna grab that coffee," he muttered, standing. "Aiden, don't mess with your IV."
Aiden's lips twitched. "Tell your secret girlfriend at the diner I said hello."
Steve threw him a look over his shoulder. "She's not my— You're impossible. I'll be back."
The door clicked softly behind him.
And then it was just the two of them.
Rosalie didn't move. She stayed near the door for a breath too long, her gaze fixed on Aiden as though taking inventory: how he breathed, how he held himself, how his injuries sat on his skin. Her eyes were distant, unfocused, not because she wasn't seeing him, but because she was seeing too much. Remembering too vividly.
Maybe the screech of the van's tires. The sickening sound of metal meeting bone. The fear. The choice she thought she might've had to make.
Aiden coughed lightly. "So… I should feel honored. The Ice Queen herself visiting me. Should I bow? I would, but moving hurts like hell."
Her eyes snapped to him, sharp, focused. "How are they treating you?"
"Like a fragile little prince," he teased.
"Do you need anything?" she barreled on instead, ignoring the joke. "More blankets? Water? Are you in pain?"
He smiled faintly. She didn't realize how transparent her concern became when she didn't have time to compose herself.
"You're not here to tuck me in, Rosalie."
Her jaw tightened. A delicate shift, almost invisible. "I'm here because you were injured."
"Mhm."
"You nearly died," she added stubbornly.
"And you saved me," Aiden reminded her, softer than he intended.
That earned a reaction, not in her face, but in the way her shoulders drew slightly inward, as though she didn't want him to say it out loud. As though gratitude made her uncomfortable.
Or worse… vulnerable.
She finally moved toward the bed. Slow steps. Controlled. Like approaching something delicate. Or dangerous.
"Aiden," she said, voice steady. "I need to understand what happened. After you hit the pole. After you fell."
He watched her watch him, every shift in his body, every breath, every twitch of hesitation. She studied him like she was trying to solve him, piece by piece.
He swallowed. "I told the doctors. I told Steve. I told my family."
"And now tell me,"She pressed gently but firmly.
He hesitated. Not because he didn't know what to say, but because he did. He remembered Edward moving with impossible speed. He remembered the blur of motion that didn't make sense. He remembered the inhuman strength.
And he remembered Rosalie glancing at him afterward with the bone-deep panic of someone terrified he had seen too much.
He didn't want to be the reason her world cracked open.
So he lied.
"Honestly?" he said. "The van hit me. I went flying. I landed. It went black. That's all."
Rosalie stared at him.
He felt the full intensity of her scrutiny, like she was peeling away layers of skin with her eyes alone. She saw the lie. Saw where his breathing changed. Saw the stiffness in his shoulders. Saw the truth he was holding behind his teeth.
She stepped closer to the bed, so close he could smell the faint, impossible sweetness of her. Feel the coolness radiating from her skin like moonlit marble.
"Aiden…" Her voice was low. Controlled. A warning and a plea. "Are you sure that's all?"
He held her gaze.
"Yes."
A lie. Again.
Something in her expression changed—softened, but only slightly. As if she were both frustrated and relieved. As if his lie protected something she desperately needed protected.
But the distance between them was barely the width of a heartbeat now. She was close enough that the light caught in her hair in a way that made him feel dizzy. Close enough that he felt her presence like a hand hovering over his chest.
And for all her distance, she wasn't stepping back.
He broke the tension with a soft laugh. "Since you saved me, by the way, I owe you a thank-you gift. I don't like being in anyone's debt."
"Aiden, I don't need—"
"How about food?" he offered. "Coffee? A smoothie?"
Her reaction was immediate. "No. I can't. I'm on a strict diet."
He raised an eyebrow. "Right. The mysterious perfect diet. Figures."
She didn't smile, but she did look away for a moment, like she was embarrassed, which somehow made her even more fragile. More real. More reachable.
He wasn't letting the moment go. "Okay, new idea. A bet."
Her eyes snapped back to him warily. "A bet."
"If I can't find something, one thing, you like by the end of the month, I'll be your personal butler for a week."
Her breath paused. He couldn't tell if she was shocked or amused, but her lips parted ever so slightly.
"A butler?" she echoed.
"Yep. Fully dedicated. I'll bring things, hold doors, look intimidating behind you when you glare at people."
"You think I glare at people?"
"I think you terrify them," he said honestly.
For the first time since entering the room, something warm slipped through her eyes. A flicker. A crack in the ice.
"And if you do manage to find something I like?" she asked.
"Then you have to admit you're not as scary as you pretend to be."
She stared at him for a long moment. The kind of stare that felt like a pressure against his skin. He felt her weighing him, measuring him, calculating him, as if he were a puzzle she didn't decide to solve but couldn't help but try.
Finally, softly, she said:
"Fine. I accept."
He grinned.
She didn't.
But her eyes warmed again. Briefly. Beautifully.
And the distance between them, literal and otherwise, shifted. Not gone. Not by a long shot.
But altered.
Rosalie stepped closer to the side of his bed, her voice quieter when she finally spoke again. "You could have died."
"I didn't," he replied, equally soft.
"You might have remembered more," she said carefully.
"I didn't."
"You might still."
"I won't tell," he whispered before he could stop himself.
Her eyes snapped to his.
A moment.
A breath.
A silence that carried too much meaning.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she murmured, but her voice wasn't cold anymore, it trembled at the edges, barely, like something inside her was loosening.
"Maybe not," he admitted. "But I know you're here."
That hit her. Harder than he expected. Her eyes softened, not with sweetness, but with conflict. With the fear of caring. With the fear of being seen.
It wasn't romantic.
It wasn't sexual.
It was intimate.
Dangerously so.
Her gaze dropped to the blanket near his hand. She didn't touch him. But her fingers hovered an inch above where his rested, like she wasn't sure if the contact would break her defenses or his.
"Aiden," she whispered, "you don't understand what you're getting close to."
He swallowed. He didn't step back. "Maybe I want to."
She inhaled softly, sharply, like his words hit somewhere she didn't allow anyone near.
"You shouldn't."
"But you're still here," he murmured.
Her eyes closed for half a heartbeat.
When they opened, there was something fragile and fierce inside them. A woman who wanted to run but also stay. A woman with secrets sharp enough to cut him, and feelings she refused to look at directly.
She finally stepped back, but only barely. Only enough to breathe. Only enough to keep from reaching for him when she shouldn't.
"You have no idea," she whispered, "how much you don't know."
Aiden smiled gently. "Then teach me."
Her jaw tightened. Her eyes softened. Her chest stilled.
"You're impossible," she breathed.
"But you're still here," he said again, as if the words were a tether between them.
She didn't deny it.