Page 119 of Zorro

Everly ran beside the gurney, her hand locked around his, yelling orders through the chaos. She wasn’t a doctor now, she was a woman possessed, and he was hers to save. His blood was everywhere, but his eyes…his eyes never left her.

Tears streaked her face, fury and terror choking her voice.

“Don’t you fucking leave me, Mateo.”

His lips twitched, pain dragging at the corners, but still, still, he managed the echo of a smile. “Your hands are all I need now.” He squeezed her fingers. “You have me. You always have.”

Everly kept up, her bare feet slapping tile. She’d kicked off her heels when they hit the emergency room. She still gripped his hand. The hallway blurred as white coats and trauma staff parted around her voice, sharp, commanding, relentless.

“I need a Type and Cross, two units O-neg, full trauma panel, and someone call radiology now!” she barked. “His abdomen’s hot. Get a FAST scan ready. I want him in OR One. Now.”

Everything in her body screamed fear, but it didn’t get to win. She knew fear. Had operated under fire in Syria, in Afghanistan, in the Philippines, with mortar shells shaking the walls. Fear had tried to crawl inside her then, too.

But she’d learned from the toughest men on the planet. You don’t freeze. You fight.

No one, no one, was taking Mateo Martinez from her tonight.

Her gaze dropped to him, bare chest soaked in blood, skin pale, jaw clenched. But his eyes? God, his eyes hadn’t left her. Even now. Even like this.

“Stay with me, babe,” she demanded, her voice cracking. “Who’s going to make me laugh and shoot whatever I’m drinking out of my nose?”

“I never quit, querida.” His voice was broken silk. “Never.”

Her breath hitched. That was what he’d said the first time she touched him like she meant it. When they were tangled in sweat and heat and truth.

Now he was saying it again, but it had nothing to do with body seduction. This was all about the heart.

He owned hers.

His lips lifted in that faint, impossibly cocky smile, the one he’d given her in bed, in the jungle, in the worst and most beautiful moments of her life.

“We have something to build, querida.” His voice was barely audible, but it slid straight into her soul.

She nearly lost it.

But she didn’t.

Inside these sterile white walls, this was her domain. Her battlefield. She was a goddamned master of the universe in scrubs.

“BP?” she snapped at the nurse.

“Eighty over fifty, dropping.”

Shit. She could feel it, his pressure slipping through her fingertips like time. Like love.

“Start a wide-bore line and squeeze the bag. Warm fluids. Now. We’re not losing him.”

The wound was likely a through-and-through, but she’d stopped the bleeding. If there was active arterial bleed, she’d clamp and resect. If it was liver…she'd need to pack fast, stabilize.

But she could do this. This was why she’d spent years letting war zones mold her hands into instruments of precision. This was why she’d held pressure under gunfire in Syria. Why she’d whispered vitals through quake dust in Haiti. Why she’d bled with Marines in Kandahar. Why she was here now with him.

This man. This heart. This moment.

They turned into the OR suite. The doors burst open.

“I want double gloves and a trauma tray now. Prep the field. Full sedation. Get him under yesterday.”

She looked down at him, Mateo, her Zorro, the man who had let her hurt him, heal him, and love him all in one breathless blur.