“This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening right now.”

Weston sat in the driver’s seat of his car, speaking to a well air-conditioned interior and nobody else. It was four o’clock in the morning, and he should have been in bed but instead, here he was, sitting in a car and having a debate about what in the hell he was doing. Or not doing, he wasn’t sure yet. He wasn’t sure of anything at this point aside from the fact that he was very, very tired. He was supposed to be at the precinct at eight o’clock the next morning, and yet, here he was, eyes burning with lack of sleep and head spinning with a decision he’d already made but didn’t want to admit. Not that he should have been surprised. That was exactly how things had gone ever since he’d met Clara. His mind would tell him one thing, and then his heart would tell him the exact opposite. That was something he’d learned to ignore over the years of doing his grizzly job, that heart of his. In his experience, a man couldn’t have a heart leading him and make it through the day in and day out of being a police detective. He’d learned to ignore it so well that he’d honestly believed it didn’t have a voice anymore, so imagine his surprise to find it speaking up so loudly now. His head was telling him that this girl was nuts, or at the very least, far more trouble than she was worth, but his heart was telling him that he had to go and help her, four o’clock in the morning or not.

“Damnit. Damnit!”

He backed his car out of his spot in his garage so that anyone watching would have thought that the car itself was full of anger and then turned it onto the road, tires squealing as he headed towards his damsel in distress. And whoever the hell had perpetuated the myth—that being the knight in shining armor was a good thing—was out of their minds, that was something he had no doubt of whatsoever at this point. He’d been accused by more than one person, at more than one time in his life, of having some sort of a savior complex, and he supposed there might be a little something to that. But come on! This was starting to get a little bit ridiculous. As he drove, he started making bargains with himself, promises that if he could just get out of this latest jam without too much of a windfall he would stop. He would follow the rules, do what his captain told him to do and go by the book. He would do whatever the hell he was told to do if he could just pull this thing off without any more trouble than absolutely necessary.

Those were the thoughts running through his head as he drove the long drive back to the old neighborhood. Beneath those thoughts was the uncomfortable feeling of deja vu that came with having been the one to drive into the face of disaster too many times to count. There were all of the times he’d approached the scene of a crime, sure, but there was a hell of a lot more than that, too. There was the death of his mother, and then his father. There was the death of Brianna and the child he hadn’t ever even gotten to meet, as well, and that was the one that haunted him the most. Driving towards Clara now, a woman he hardly even knew but who was almost certainly acting out of a sincere love for the dramatic, that was the thing he couldn’t get out of his head. The idea of another beautiful young woman cut down and destroyed was just more than he could stand, so much so that he was willing to risk the whole thing being nothing more than a ploy for attention on the off chance that her cry for help had been legitimate.

“Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

And thank God he’d followed that instinct, the one he’d been so ready to write off. Later, when he finally had a moment to himself in which to think about everything that had gone down, he would feel an almost paralyzing fear over the fact that he’d almost left her on her own. If he’d done that, what exactly would have happened to her? Would she have made it back to her little apartment? And if so, how safe would that have actually been? Would her assailant have come back for her, too impatient to allow her the time to comply to whatever his demands had been?  

“Clara! Clara, don’t move, okay? Just sit right there.”

She’d begun to scramble backwards at the sight of his car pulling up, a look of terror on her beautiful face. His first reaction when he saw that was a surge of anger that she could look at him that way after getting him out of bed in the middle of the night for the second time in the short amount of time he’d held her acquaintance. A beat later, though, and he realized that she had no idea who he was. She was completely terrified, and besides, how the hell was she supposed to know what his car looked like? It wasn’t like she’d ever seen it before, and the windows were tinted. She couldn’t have known who he was, only that there was a car stopping in front of the stoop she currently occupied in the early, early hours of the morning. What woman wouldn’t be frightened by that? What woman wouldn’t do everything in her power to escape? Feeling like the biggest jackass in all of the world, he scrambled out of the car, almost tripping over his own feet in the process. It didn’t take a genius to see that she still didn’t know who he was. Whatever part of the brain that saw reason and recognized the familiar had been shut off inside of her. She was squarely in the middle of her fight-or-flight reaction, and it was up to him to calm her down enough to keep her safe. Again, he called out to her, hoping very much that he could make her see him for who he was, and that he could pull it off without drawing too much attention from any possible lookers on. In a typical city that would probably not be something he’d even have to consider, but in New York, there was always somebody around to meddle. In his experience, and his line of work had provided him with a hell of a lot of it, people in New York never got involved at all unless you didn’t want them to, at which point they were all over it. He needed to handle this delicately, or else the cops were going to get called and the last thing he wanted was to have the captain made aware that he was still not exactly following orders.

“Clara, please,” he said in a low, forcibly calm voice. “It’s me, okay? It’s Weston. You called me, remember?”

“Weston?”

Another surge of annoyance moved through him then, and he began chewing on the inside of his cheek in order to keep from losing his shit. Listening to her now, he could tell that she was not only sort of buzzed but seriously intoxicated, and it crossed his mind that she’d made the whole thing up. Another step forward, however, and he hated himself for having had the thought at all. Of course, it hadn’t been anything like that. All it took was one really good look at her to see that she’d been roughed up. There was blood smeared all over the bottom half of her face and her lip had swollen to roughly twice it’s normal size. Her summer dress had been ripped up so badly that one of the straps had come detached completely, almost exposing one breast for the whole world to see. He sprinted forward then, taking off his shirt without giving it a second thought and lowering himself to the ground beside her. Without even touching her, he could tell that she was shaking all over. Her entire body, quaking as if she’d seen something so terrible she wasn’t able to overcome it. Again, when she looked at him, he was struck by the idea that she didn’t know who he was, not really. She was looking at him, but she was actually looking through him, looking through him at something only she could see.

“Clara. Clara, I need you to look at me if you can. I know you’re very upset. I can see that, but I need you to try and concentrate on the sound of my voice. Can you do that?”

“I...I think so. I don’t know. I don’t know, don’t know anything. I don’t know.”

He took her by the shoulders and turned her body towards his, forcing her glazed eyes to at least point themselves in his direction. It was a delicate thing to do, and he knew it, despite also knowing it was the only thing left to do, at least at the moment. If ever he’d seen a woman on the urge of a complete panic attack, a complete unraveling, it was her, and if that happened things were only going to get worse. When he turned her towards him, he locked his eyes on hers, willing them to clear, willing her to see him and only him. For a moment, he was sure it wasn’t going to work and that he’d hear a scream begin in the bottom of the throat and then go on and on until it drove them both insane. When her eyes finally did clear, he felt one of the most immense waves of relief he’d ever had in his life. She could not only see him, but she also recognized him, and at the moment, that was the only thing he could ask for. Even the sight of those wide, frightened eyes filling with tears couldn’t make him wish for any other turn out. He hated it when women cried. He had always hated how helpless it made him feel, but in this case it was something he would gladly take. At least it was a normal reaction. At least it meant that she was really there with him instead of inside of the nightmare playing inside of her head.

“Clara,” he spoke softly, cautiously removing his hands from her shoulders and doing it slowly enough that he could return them in a flash if she proved that such a thing was needed. “Clara, can you hear me? Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Weston. And yes, I can hear you.”

“Good,” he answered with more relief than he would have expected. “Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Weston?”

“Hm?”

“How come you’re not wearing a shirt?”

“What? Oh! Shit, because you needed to put it on. Here, take it, please.”

“Why would I put on your shirt?”

“Because,” he answered awkwardly, clearing his throat compulsively as if he wasn’t quite sure how to tell her. “Your dress. It’s ripped, Clara. You need something to cover up.”

Clara just looked at him for a minute, a minute during which he thought he would actually have to go through a longer explanation of just how much of herself she was currently allowing to be exposed, but then she looked down and let out an exclamation of horror combined with acute embarrassment. She wrapped both of her arms around the top of herself and began to cry in earnest, her chin tucked into her chest and her entire body shaking with the force of her sorrow. Looking at her then, he would have killed the man who’d done this to her. He would have killed the person who broke her heart this way, and who, even worse, fully intended to keep on hurting it until he either got his way or broke her completely. Never in his life had he seen a person so defeated, and seeing it, removed whatever weak reservations he still held about helping her. Was it his best decision? No, probably not. At least not when it came to the good of his own job. Did it matter? That was, surprisingly, another no. It might matter to him again at some point, maybe as soon as tomorrow, but—at the moment—he couldn’t have cared less. All he cared about was getting her somewhere safe and making sure that she never had to cry with such a broken heart again.

“Please, put the shirt on, okay? That’ll be the first step.”

“The first step?” She scoffed in a voice that sounded so unlike what he’d come to think of as hers…even in the brief amount of time he’d known her. It made his insides ache. “The first step in what? I’ll still be a mess, whether I’ve got your shirt on or not. I don’t think it’s going to make all that much of a difference.”

“See, that’s where the two of us disagree, you and me. I think it’ll make one hell of a difference.”

“How do you figure?”

Weston smiled at her then, smiled at her and felt his heart begin to sing a little when she smiled at him in return. In that moment, for him, that smile might as well have been everything. It was the thing that told him that what he was doing might actually be worth it, even if it might also be the thing that got him into heaps and heaps of trouble with the captain at some point. It was the thing that told him that maybe his heart was still worth half a damn, after all, despite all of the work he’d done to ensure that it was too destroyed to speak. Even sitting of a curb in the wee hours of the morning with a tear-stained girl smelling of booze, that smile of hers told him that her story wasn’t complete bullshit, after all. This chick really needed his help, and what’s more, he really wanted to give it to her. There were plenty of times that he’d failed in his life, that was something he couldn’t have denied if he’d wanted to, but this wasn’t going to be one of them. This wasn’t going to be one of those things he could add to his list of situations he could wish he’d handled differently until his dying day. Because this was right. Him being here, him giving her his shirt, him taking a chance of believing her, this was right, and there was no amount of bureaucracy that was going to make that fact untrue.

“Put your arms up, alright?”

“Put my arms—? Hey, I’m not a little girl, okay? I can put the shirt on all on my own.”

“Sure,” Weston laughed, more exhausted than he could remember being in a long, long time, but also feeling better than he could remember feeling in a hell of a while either. “You’re not a little girl. Nobody’s arguing that. What you are, is a young lady who’s been through a hell of a lot and had more than a few cocktails to boot. And before you try and deny it, don’t bother. I’m a cop, remember? Being able to smell this kind of thing is part of what I do. That, and I can see it in your face.”

“Excellent deduction, Sherlock. Any other brilliant observations for me? Anything else rattling around that big ole brain of yours?”

“Sure, but I’m not gonna tell you if you’re gonna be mean. And I’m not gonna tell you if you don’t put your arms up, either. You can’t keep sitting here this way. You’d be half naked if it weren’t for the way you’ve got your hands situated, and if I’m being honest, those hands don’t cover as much as you’d like them to.”

“Shut up!” she cried, half laughing and half serious. When she looked down at herself, though, her face blanched, and she lifted her arms up into the air like he’d told her to without any further argument. He positioned his body so that his torso was blocking any chance a passerby might have had of getting a good look at what she had to offer, and he lifted his shirt into the air. He did this in a methodical manner; he did it with the express order to himself to not looking down, not taking the liberty of looking at the parts of her he was trying so hard to keep anyone else from seeing. It should have been easy enough to do, given his profession and the number of outrageous situations it had put him in, but for a second, he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep himself in check. He’d been around plenty of women who’d been interested in him. He had plenty of them downright hit on him without seeming to have any shame over it at all, and he had never been tempted in the slightest. So then how come it was that now, here with Clara on a street curb with blood and tears and mascara all over her face, he felt such an overwhelming urge to just say fuck it all and kiss her? It was the last thing on the planet he’d expected, and therefore, it was something he had no idea of how to handle, which meant he chose not to handle it at all. Instead he looked only at her delicate hands, raised up in the air simply because he’d told her to raise them, and concentrated on the act of tugging his shirt over them. He pulled the shirt down the length of her soft, creamy white arms, trying not to feel how soft they were or the way they trembled ever so slightly at his touch. He looked at the church behind her and tried not to feel the slight swell of her breast as it grazed his hand, the breast he’d seen just a little bit too much of before getting the shirt in a place where it could cover her up the way she should have been all along. When that was done, and it couldn’t have been done fast enough for his level of comfort, he stood quickly, wiping his palms on the front of his jeans and clearing his throat compulsively for reasons he couldn’t understand at all.

“Good,” he said quickly, his voice cracking and making him sound so much like a teenager that Clara couldn’t help but utter a small, tired laugh. “I mean, yeah. It’s good that we’ve got that done. It’s important, you know. In a city like New York, it’s important to make sure you’re as safe as you can be.”

“Ha! I mean, sure. You’re absolutely right. It’s just, you know, a kind of a funny thing to say to a girl in my position. I think that ship might have already sailed for me.”

“No, don’t think like that. You can’t do that, okay? It’s only going to make things more dangerous for you.”

“I don’t mean to be difficult, especially not after calling you here in the first place, but I’m not sure that things could get much more dangerous for me than they are now. There’s no safe place for me. I’m not safe at home; I’m not safe next to a freaking church. I’m just not safe and having myself exposed won’t make it worse. I know you weren’t here to see it, but believe me when I tell you that this guy wasn’t interested in anything other than hurting me. I could have been completely naked and he wouldn’t have even noticed.”

“My fault.”

Clara, who had taken the hand Weston had offered to pull herself up to a standing position, stopped still in her place and cocked her head to one side. He thought for a second that she might laugh again, and if that had happened, he honestly wouldn’t have been able to take it. There was something about that laugh in combination with those searching eyes that made him feel like he wasn’t completely in control of himself, and being out here in the middle of the night had him feeling enough like that already.

“What?” he asked abruptly, his voice sounding a whole lot more defensive than he’d intended it to sound. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What did you say?”

“I asked you why you were looking at me like that.”

“Duh, I got that part. I mean before that. What did you say before that?”

“Oh. I said it was my fault.”

And God help him if he didn’t feel like he was going to be the one to start crying then. He’d said it was his fault without really stopping to think about whether or not he meant the words, but looking at her now, he knew that it was true. He honestly did feel like it was his fault, like all of it was his fault, and if he’d only been a different kind of man she would never have been in this position in the first place. He turned away from her then, turned and surveyed the city he both hated and loved and prayed to whoever it was that might be listening that he wouldn’t just lose his shit completely. He might have just walked to his car without saying another word and hoped she’d follow his lead and get herself into the passenger seat if it hadn’t been for the hand on his shoulder. His whole body seized up then, and he had half a mind to shrug her off, but there was another part of him that was thankful for the gesture. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt somebody touch him with any kind of affection, and it wasn’t something to throw away so lightly.

“Weston.”

“Don’t make a big deal of it, alright? Believe me, you aren’t the first one I’ve felt responsible for, and you sure as shit aren’t the first person I fucked it up with. Just sort of comes with the territory.”

“Weston.”

“What is it? What do you want?”

“I want you to turn around and look at me. I don’t know if anyone ever told you, but it’s sort of considered impolite to have your back turned to a woman while she’s talking to you.”

“Fine then,” he sighed, hearing the petulance in his voice and feeling powerless to stop it as he turned around and tried not to look directly into her eyes. “Is this better?”

“It’s a start. Now I want you to listen to me.”

“Look, Clara, it’s so fucking late. We need to get to the car, and we need to get out of here. I think we’ve both been through enough shit for one night, and we need to get you cleaned up.”

“Fine. You’re right, and we’ll do that. But I need you to hear me on this.”

“Fine. Say what you need to say.”

“This isn’t your fault. I mean, the part where you walked out on me in the bar wasn’t too hot, but the rest of it? Totally not you. You just walked into the wrong apartment, you know? That and you were too nice. Too willing to offer to help me, I guess.”

Again, he thought he might cry, and so instead of answering her, he nodded his head, swallowing hard and hoping she wouldn’t push it any further. He was beyond exhausted now and too confused about what he felt, about what he was supposed to feel, about this clusterfuck of a situation he’d gotten himself into with Clara to handle much of anything else. He nodded his head again, once more for good measure, and then really did turn his back and walk to the car. He opened the passenger door and then turned back to look at her, rolling his eyes a little when he saw she hadn’t even taken a step.

“Come on, Clara, okay? I’m too tired to do this on the street. We both need to get some rest, and you can’t go home. I’m going to take you to my place, alright? It’s the only safe thing I can think of at the moment, and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t fight me on it.”

“Who said I was going to fight you?”

“Seems like the kind of thing you might do. But here’s the thing, Clara. You’re the one who called me. I’m not supposed to be here, but here I am, and if you want to know the truth, you’re in a sticky fucking situation. What I’m trying to say is that you can’t go home. If you want to have a shot in hell of being safe tonight, you can’t go home.”

She nodded at him then, and he felt the relief as a real and physical thing; he felt it so completely that he wished he could just go to sleep right there in the fucking car and be done with it. Instead he waited and helped her into his car, shut the door, and got himself behind the wheel. It was insane to think that he was even thinking about taking her home with him, but it was exactly what he was doing. God help him, he was going to take her to his home and the rest of it was something he would just have to figure out for himself later on.

***

“Um, I’m really sorry for the language, but holy shit.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No,” she laughed tiredly, her voice having at some point taken on an almost manic tone he didn’t care for at all. “No, I’m sorry. That’s not exactly a ladylike thing to say, but it’s the only thing I can really think of. Holy shit just seems like the best way to describe it.”

“To describe what? I don’t think I’m following you.”

“Um, are you kidding? This! This, Weston, all of this! Have you not realized that this isn’t the kind of place most people live in? Because if you haven’t, I’m here to tell you that this isn’t how most people live. Like, not even close.”

This was something he should have accounted for, but in his hurry to get her off of the street and even marginally safe, he hadn’t thought about it at all. This was the part he didn’t ever have to worry about because he never brought people home, not even his partner or any of his other work buddies (not that he really had any work buddies). Being reclusive could be kind of a bitch, but it had the one benefit of meaning he didn’t have to field any questions about how it was that he had come to live in a loft like his on the salary of a civil servant. Now that he was looking at Clara’s face, however, it occurred to him that at some point he would probably have to give her some kind of explanation, at which point things would only get even more entangled between the two of them than they already were.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, running his hand through his hair and hoping she was still drunk enough that she would just let it go. “I guess it’s not the everyday apartment.”

“Are you kidding?! It’s not even close!”

“I know. Believe me, I get it, but now isn’t the time for that conversation. If you don’t mind, right now I’d kind of like to get you cleaned up some. If that’s alright.”

Her face fell when he, said that and he wished immediately that he’d just kept his mouth shut. There she was, still standing in the foyer of his loft with her half top swallowed up by the first ratty shirt he’d thrown on before going to get her while her bottom half was coated in a film of dirt from the garden she’d been accosted in. To put it far more bluntly than he would ever have said out loud, she looked like a complete wreck, and seeing her that way made him want to put a fist through a wall. Even so, even after everything that had happened to her, she had it within her to feel giddy over the fact that he lived in such fancy digs. It was too sweet to take, and it made him feel the same anger he’d had when he’d seen her cowering on the curb all over again. The bastard that had done this to her, he was the reason Weston had gotten into law enforcement in the first place. He hadn’t known he needed a reminder of those reasons, but now that he had one, there was no way he was going to forget it. For better or worse, it was emblazoned on his mind, there to dictate what his future actions may or may not be.

“Here, come with me, okay?”

“Come where? We just got here. Are you taking me back to my apartment? Is it because I’m annoying you? I’ll be quiet, honest. It’s just something I do, okay? It’s something I do when I’m nervous or upset. And I guess that’s what I am now. Go figure, right? Not any different from every other time I’ve seen you.”

Weston walked towards her then, not aware of what he was going to do even as he moved, only knowing that he needed her to stop. He couldn’t listen to her apologize for being beat on; he couldn’t listen to her trying to take responsibility for something she hadn’t done wrong. When he got close to her, he saw her flinch, and that only made him feel worse. It just fueled his need to just punch the shit out of something until he was too tired to feel so shitty. What he did instead, was take her by the hand and without saying a word, he led her into the closest bathroom. If she had any questions about just what in the hell he was doing, she didn’t voice them. She only followed after him with the docility of a child. He sat her down on the edge of the tub and hardly even noticed when she began to cry again. There was something different about these tears, something that made them almost worse. They were tears of resignation, the tears of a girl who was finally beginning to understand the gravity of what had happened to her. It was something he knew would only continue to get worse for her, just as he knew that there wasn’t a whole lot he was going to be able to do for her. With this in mind, he got a washcloth from the linen closet and brought it back to where she waited, dampening it and then kneeling before her to clean the blood off of her face. He worked hard not to look at her as he did this. He tried not to see whatever terrible expression might be there for him, but when he felt one of her hands on his face, he couldn’t help but look at her. The tears were there to be sure, but her eyes were shining with something else, too. It was something he didn’t understand at first, but when she spoke, he was almost blown back by the force of her gracefulness.

“Weston,” her voice cracked, and he knelt there stupidly, feeling every bit as clumsy as most men would before a girl like this, and with the bloody washrag still in his hand. “I just want to say thank you. Thank you so, so much. I shouldn’t have called you. I know that, and I want to make sure that you know that I know that.”

“No, please. You did the right thing. I was acting like a jackass.”

“I don’t think so, actually, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. I just want you to know how much it means to me. That you’re taking care of me, I guess. I don’t know, it sounds stupid coming out of my mouth, and I’m not sure how else to say it, but I thought I should try and say it anyhow. So that’s all.”

Weston stood and half expected her to flinch again when he did, so but she didn’t move a muscle, only continued to look at him with those large, tear-washed eyes. Again, he was struck by the quiet reserve of strength in this woman, a strength he hadn’t given her nearly enough credit for having. He bent suddenly and kissed her on the forehead, wrapping one hand around the back of her neck and pulling her towards him to do so. He could smell the sweet scent of her hair when he did so, and he felt something inside of him begin to stir. She smelled just like fresh lavender, even through the musk of fear and dirt and drink. She smelled like lavender, and he knew then that there was nothing in the world that was going to keep him from taking care of her. Even if cost him everything else to do it, he was going to take care of her to the best of his ability. His life was at a crossroads, and he knew it, but the more time he spent around Clara the more sure he was that there was only one road he could really choose.