By the time I leave the office, the illicit party is well under way. Homicide and Obsidian are wrestling on the mats. I take a seat on the bleachers, and Rampage hands me a cup filled with warm beer.

“I used to think I didn’t have any fight in me.” I sip the beer, and the warm, bitter liquid slides down my throat. “I thought I had no fire. I drifted through life never knowing where I was going or what I wanted. Then I met Torment. He made my life exciting. He opened my eyes. He made me see I had fight.”

“You’re a fighter to the bone,” Rampage says. “The way you climbed into the ring on the first day you were here…not a hint of fear…hell, that’s when I knew you belonged here. Torment saw it. We saw it. I’m glad you finally see it too.”

I rest my palm on his massive shoulder. “I want to learn how to fight. Really fight. I don’t want to be afraid. I want to know I can hold my own against anyone. I want to be able to watch Torment fight and know when he pulls a punch and when he lets go.”

Rampage grins. “You want a lot of things.”

“I’m just getting started.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” he chuckles. “Follow me.”

My heart thuds as I hurry after him down to the practice mats. He is alarmingly determined, moving faster than his size would suggest possible.

“Yo,” he booms. “Makayla wants to learn how to fight. We’re gonna teach her. Everyone has a specialty. You teach her that. Anyone hurts her, you answer to me.”

“If she wants to fight, she needs a ring name,” Obsidian interjects.

They all stare at me in silence. I shift from foot to foot, sensing the importance of this moment and yet wanting to get it over with so I can get down to training.

“Doc.” Homicide says with a grin.

“I’m not really a doctor.”

Blade Saw gives me a warm smile. “You are to us.”

“Everyone agreed?” Rampage asks to a sea of nodding heads. “Right. You are hereby christened Doc.” He dumps his beer over my head. Everyone cheers. I laugh until my stomach hurts. The only thing missing from this perfect moment is Max.

***

On Wednesday, just after lunch, the ICU nurse calls to tell me Max is awake. I grind it out at work until my shift is done. The second the clock strikes five, I race through the hospital and burst into his room. Max is sitting up in bed. He looks tired, thinner, but still impossibly handsome.

“Max! You’re awake!” I throw my arms around his neck and sob into his shoulder.

“It’s so good to see you, baby.” He strokes my hair. I cry harder.

Max chuckles. “It would be good to see you if I could actually see your face.”

Turning away, I fish through my purse for a tissue. “Not now it won’t.”

“Turn around,” he says softly. “Your tears are beautiful to me. They tell me you care.”

I turn around and look at my Max. My lips quiver again. More tears. More tissues.

“Shhh. It’s okay. I’m okay.” He cups my cheeks in his palms and wipes my tears away. “I guess you care after all.”

“I love you, Max.”

Max’s eyes soften. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.”

I sniff and wipe away the last of my tears. “Can I kiss you?”

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear that too.”

Our lips brush together. Soft. Tender. He curls his hand behind my neck and pulls me closer. “Say it again.”

“I love you.”

He captures my lips and kisses me long and sweet, and then he buries his face in my neck and whispers, “Makayla.”

“Ahem.”

Cheeks burning, I pull away when Nancy, the shift nurse, breezes into the room to check the monitors.

“Heart rate up.” She peers over her glasses and gives me a wink. “You’re not going to be a very good paramedic if you make the patient’s heart rate go up instead of down.”

“You decided to enter the paramedic program?” Max’s eyes warm.

“I could have done so much more for you, but I didn’t have the training. It almost killed me. And since you paid off my loan, I thought you might be accommodating of a long-term payment plan. I’ll be making a lot more money as a paramedic.”

“I’m proud of you, baby, for following your dream.” He cups my cheek and I lean into his warmth.

“Took me a while to figure out what that dream was.”

Nancy finishes her checks and discreetly disappears. Max trails his fingers along the line of my jaw.

“Rampage stopped by this afternoon. He told me what happened. He said if you hadn’t stabilized me, it could have been much worse. As with Frank, you made a difference.” He pulls me down to sit on the bed beside him, nuzzles my neck, and nibbles at my earlobe. “You smell so good. Like flowers in the sunshine.”

“Max. Stop. What if someone comes in?”

“They’ll wish they could nibble your earlobe too,” he chortles.

I huff through my nose. “I was telling you something important.”

“I was listening, baby.”

Mollified, I allow him to nuzzle my neck while I talk. “You made me realize the reason med school didn’t interest me was because I need excitement. And I need it now. Not in ten years. You made me feel alive. I want that from my career, but I still want to heal people. I called Ray and we worked out a deal. I volunteer with his crew and his company will pay for my paramedic training.”