Chapter 245: Jake
The corner turns into a choke point of bodies and noise.
Reid has Liam pinned with one hand splayed hard across his chest, the other arm banded around Charlie’s waist. She’s airborne—kicking, clawing, hair wild—trying to launch herself at the figure by the elevators.
Sloane.
She looks like the floor just vanished under her. Pale. Eyes blown. Hands up but not in surrender, more like she doesn’t know where to put them.
Liam’s fighting like a trapped bull, and Finn beside me goes tight as a cable. I can read two things on his face in the same heartbeat: he’s about to do something stupid, and he cannot believe Reid is holding two full-grown adults without breaking a sweat.
I put an arm across Finn’s path. “Don’t,” I say.
Charlie’s screaming so loud it makes the fluorescents hum. “You fucking bitch! All my girl-boss speeches and for what? For THIS? FUCK ALL OF IT. I swear to God I will rip your head off—” She thrashes like a cat; Reid’s voice comes low in her ear—“Charlie. Breathe.”—but I know that tone; there’s a curl of satisfaction under it. He likes the way Sloane flinches.
A tray of paper cups spins in a wet halo across the tile. Nurses pop up behind the station like prairie dogs. A security guard is already hustling down the corridor saying, “What’s going on here?” and another keys his shoulder mic.
“Charlie.” I step in close. “Look at me.”
She doesn’t. “No, she knew—she knew—and she did it anyway—”
“Charlie.” I point to the floor. “Feet.”
Somehow the word lands. Her boots touch down. Reid lowers her, slow, hands ready in case she goes for Sloane’s throat anyway. Liam jerks once more against Reid’s palm like he wants to test physics; Reid lets him go and Liam takes two murderous steps, then stops because I angle my body between them and the elevator.
Security arrives—hands up, calm voices, the rehearsed cadence of people who’ve done this dance in too many waiting rooms. “Let’s take it down,” one says. “Hospital policy, folks.”
I lift a hand toward Charlie—enough—and she gives me a trembly, feral nod. Finn is a live wire at my shoulder. Liam’s chest heaves. Reid… looks like winter.
We turn to Sloane.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, voice stripped.
Her chin wobbles; it makes something in me want to snarl. She looks at the floor, at us, at the elevator like it might save her if it dings. “I—” a breath hitch “—I made a mistake.” Tears start fast. “Nick lied to me about her. He used me to— to find her. I didn’t know it would—” She shakes her head, mascara already bleeding. “I swear I didn’t know.”
Charlie surges with a hiss and I flick a hand back—don’t. Reid steps forward instead, crowding Sloane until her back kisses the elevator seam. He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t have to.
“This,” he says, voice low and merciless, “is your fault.”
Her gaze snaps up, wet and hopeful and terrified all at once. “Reid, I—”
“Madeline came to Northhaven to feel safe.” He doesn’t blink. “You took that safety. You handed her to him. He almost killed her.” Each sentence lands like a door shutting. “Yes, we’re pressing charges on behalf of SWMRI. Yes, you’re fired—if that wasn’t already clear in your fucking head.”
She folds in on herself, crying for real now, and looks past us to Finn like he’s a lifeline. “Finn?”
Finn steps forward until he’s next to me. His voice is quiet and it’s worse than a shout. “I never want to breathe the same air as you again.” He tips his chin toward Madeline's door. “It should be you in there fighting for your life. Not her.”
Even I feel that line hit. It’s harsh. It’s also the only language left in him.
Sloane flinches like he slapped her. Liam mutters something dark under his breath; Charlie is shaking so hard she rattles, eyes bright and mean.
I move up beside Reid. “You’ll get a formal letter terminating your employment,” I say, even. “And paperwork from our attorneys for your role in this. If it isn’t already clear: you are not welcome in Northhaven. You do not come near her.”
She looks between us—me, Reid, Finn, Liam, Charlie—and whatever she came here to salvage burns out behind her eyes. Her mouth opens, closes. She turns and thumbs the elevator button with a shaking finger. It dings. The doors open. She steps inside without looking back.
The doors whisper shut.
Silence breathes for a beat, full of antiseptic and old coffee. Security lowers their hands and drifts, watching us like you watch a storm slide past.
We all look at Charlie. She’s still vibrating, fists balled, little body a metronome of fury. “What,” she snaps, chin up. “WHAT.”
Something breaks loose in my chest. A sound that wants to be a laugh and manages to be one, ragged and real. Reid huffs his own ghost of one. Liam’s mouth twitches despite himself. Finn scrubs his face and coughs out a single, disbelieving ha.
“You’re feisty when you want to be,” I tell her.
“Understatement of the century,” Liam adds, voice rough.
Charlie bares her teeth in a grin that’s half-wildcat, half-girl. It fades into a breath. “I have to go see my best friend.” She shoulders past us, and her anger turns into purpose with each step toward Madeline's room.
We let her go. Then I look at Reid. He looks back at me. For a second we’re kids again—two halves of the same heartbeat—matching the same thought: later. We’ll finish the paperwork, deal with the damage, stack the consequences. Right now, we keep the corridor clear and the world quiet so the girl in the room at the end of it can keep doing the bravest thing anyone’s asked of her—breathe.