Page 40 of Zorro

The silence cracked open again into applause.

Everly stared down at her own hands. Trembling.

That applause…was for her.

She didn’t know if her legs would carry her to the podium or buckle beneath her before she ever stepped into the light.

The chandelier cast fractured light onto the polished floor, splintering into shards that danced around her feet like judgment. Her heels clicked too loudly. Her skin felt too exposed. The weight of what she had discovered built behind her sternum like a pressure valve refusing to release.

That beam of light struck Rob’s black-and-white photo behind her, a perfect halo framing his face. Unmoving. Unyielding. Then it shifted, skimming across the room until it caught on someone else. Zorro.

He sat in silence in the front row, just as unyielding, but not unmoving. Energy pulsed the moment their eyes met, and now her skin felt bare, hot, and unbearably alive. The light burnished his skin, casting highlights through his dark hair, catching on the chain at his throat and turning it gold against the sharp line of his jaw. Zorro illuminated in color and motion, and complicated decisions.

She stood between them. One in her past, still holding sway. The other in her present, so vividly present it ached. Suddenly she didn’t know which man she was facing…or which one she was still hiding from.

“Everyone. Your White Line Keynote, Dr. Everly Quinn.”

The applause ramped up as Everly swallowed, adjusted the folded notes in her hand, though she had long since memorized every word, and made her way through the parted curtain toward the low hum of conversation and the restless creak of chairs shifting in anticipation.

Her body knew exactly where he was. She could feel his eyes on her, thick, dark molasses with flecks of amber.

Before her eyes scanned the first row, before her gaze ticked past the surgical coordinators and the EU trauma reps, her nerve endings betrayed her. Some deep, buried sense, ancient, primal, traitorous, had locked on. Heat bloomed low and shameful as her pulse fluttered under her skin like something trying to escape.

He was there. Of course, he was there. He promised to attend.

Dressed like he hadn’t even tried, sprawled in his seat as if the row had been built around him, one boot was anchored on the leg of the chair in front, arms folded in a posture that pretended casual but could snap to alert in half a second. All that readiness was just a part of him. She had hated it once. Feared it. Revered it. She wasn’t sure which feeling this was. Not anymore.

He looked the same. No. Worse. He looked like the dream. The one she couldn’t forget.

The one where he had murmured her name, hand sliding over her hip, breath hot and wicked in the hollow of her throat. The one that had lingered so long afterward that she had stripped the sheets at 2 a.m. and stood under a freezing shower just to scrub the ache out of her skin. But nothing had helped. Not the water. Not the lectures. Not the prayer.

She had already kissed him once. When he had been barely conscious. When he had no way to stop her. When he would never know.

Unless he did know because she had kissed him again in her room, after the collision, after her shower. Before meeting his wonderful family.

Applause continued, heated, embarrassing, uplifting. She stepped forward.

Behind her, the screen came to life. Rob

That half-smile. That conference polo with the lanyard twisted like always. The surgical team gathered around him, wide-eyed and admiring. He had never missed a photo op. Never missed a spotlight. Madeline, who had arranged all of this, the one who had stood a little too close in every staff meeting, had done her job well. The lighting was soft. The framing was reverent.

Hero of the White Line.

Everly’s body locked.

She did not falter. Did not hesitate. She walked to the mic as if her heart weren’t clawing its way up her ribs and cleared her throat.

"Good morning."

Her voice was steady. Her soul was not.

She made it through the opening with surgical precision, each word delivered like a suture, tight, controlled, meant to hold. She spoke of innovation, of collaboration, of honoring those who had paid the highest price. She did not name Rob. She did not need to. He was there. Behind her. Oversized and immortal, while Zorro watched.

She could feel it.

A phantom pressure expanded in her cells, in her skin, bones, and soul. This wasn’t the time, but her heart made it time. Buried under an avalanche of jumbled-up emotions, she worked hard to keep her focus. Zorro was always potent, now everything about him was tied up in her unfair treatment of him, and that crystal clear moment with that child in Niger. Her perception had fractured there, just like the light. She needed time, space, to breathe without holding this now impotent grief for a man she didn't truly know, for a man she wanted to know down to his very breath, but in this public forum, unraveling just wasn't possible.

When she finished speaking, hands went up, and she was caught off guard. She glanced at Madeline. This was just the opening. She didn’t realize she’d be fielding questions.