Chapter 11: A Tender Kiss

The corridor outside was quiet in the way hospitals always were: sterile, softly humming, as though nothing catastrophic had ever happened within these walls.

Alexander stopped beside the glass overlooking the atrium, hands folding behind his back. The posture was instinctive. Courtroom-ready. As if he were about to address a judge instead of a woman who knew exactly how he dismantled people when he was calm.

Roxana closed the door behind them with deliberate care.

Silence settled between them. Not awkward, but loaded silence.

“Well,” she said finally, slipping off her glasses and tucking them into her pocket. “You still choose dramatic venues.”

“You still choose proximity when you’re nervous,” Alexander replied without turning. “You always did.”

Her jaw tightened, just barely.

“I’m not nervous.”

“No,” he agreed mildly. “You’re calculating.”

He turned then. Slowly. Giving her his full attention.

Roxana Hollister met his gaze head-on, chin lifted, spine straight, still the same woman who used to dismantle opposing counsel sentence by sentence and then smile like she’d done them a kindness.

“You shouldn’t have come personally,” Alexander said. “This could’ve been handled by an associate.”

“And miss this?” she countered softly. “Your sister tried to stab someone in this hospital, and you’d go full Ned Stark for Lyanna and Samwise Gamgee for Frodo.” Her lips curved. “You’d have eaten them alive.”

“I will,” he said calmly. “Whether you’re here or not. She is my sister.”

A beat.

Roxana exhaled through her nose. “You always did enjoy certainty.”

“And you always pretended you didn’t.”

Their eyes locked again. Too close. Too familiar.

“I’m jealous,” Roxana said at last, a wry smile lingering at the corner of her lips. “I wish you were my brother.”

Then, perhaps, she would have had someone who would move mountains for her without question.

“Brother?” Alexander scoffed. As if!

He stepped closer, unhurried, his long finger trailing along the edge of the wooden desk as though he had all the time in the world. “Really?”

Roxana’s gaze betrayed her. It followed that finger… the careless confidence of the motion, the precision she remembered far too well. Memory rose unbidden, vivid and unwelcome: those same fingers once mapping every inch of her skin, slow and deliberate, as if committing the shape of her to memory.

Heat rose in her lower abdomen. She swallowed and turned her face away.

Alexander caught the gentle blush on her cheeks. Of course, he did.

His smirk softened into something playful, dangerous in its quiet certainty. So… you do remember.

“For the record,” Roxana said, quieter now, forcing herself to meet his eyes again, “I didn’t know it was your sister when I took this case. Management sent me because the other party, the one she stabbed, is a Whitmore, from that Whitmore family.”

That name landed like a blade.

“Then I saw ’Preston,’” she continued. “And I hoped it wasn’t her. But…”

“Here we are,” Alexander finished with a sigh.

Whitmore.

The Whitmores of Meridon—old money, older power. A family that once ruled the city outright, its influence stretching all the way to Capitol Hill. One President. Two Vice Presidents. Countless senators and congressmen. Generations of political figures carved into the nation’s spine.

They would not tolerate one of their own being harmed by a girl, no matter the circumstances. And the hospital? The hospital had every reason to panic. It had happened on their turf.

“Here we are,” Roxana echoed.

She knew Alexander would move heaven and earth for his sister. She also knew the Whitmores weren’t accustomed to losing.

Her gaze lingered on him, equal parts curiosity and something dangerously close to admiration.

It would be… interesting to see how he handled this. It always was.

And just as she predicted, his eyes lit up: sharp, focused, already several steps ahead. The Alexander she remembered had always loved problems like this. Powerful ones. Impossible ones.

“Isn’t your family close to the Whitmores?” Alexander asked, already certain of the answer. “Help me arrange a meeting.”

The Whitmores were a political dynasty. The Hollisters were different.

They were the military family.

For generations, every Hollister child had been bound by the patriarch’s rule: ten years of service, no exceptions. Their bloodline ran through every branch of the armed forces, names etched into command rooms and classified files alike. Even now, the highest ranks still bore the Hollister name.

Politics ruled the nation. The Hollisters defended it. And Alexander Hunter Preston intended to use that balance of power precisely.

Roxana’s lips trembled.

He remembered what her family was…but not what it had done to her. Not what it had cost her. As always, his mind moved in straight lines toward solutions, never pausing to account for collateral damage. Only one person ever truly existed at the center of his world.

His sister.

She lowered her gaze, heart sinking with an ache she had learned to hide well.

Alexander noticed.

Something was off. He took a step closer, instinct overriding reason, and before she could retreat, he caught her hand… her left one.

The absence of a ring hit him harder than he expected. Relief loosened something tight around his chest, something he hadn’t known was there until it eased.

“I thought you’d be married by now,” he said quietly. “A major. Maybe an admiral.”

His voice had softened, dipped into that familiar husk, the same tone that once unraveled her spine and stole her breath. His thumb brushed over her bare ring finger, slow and unthinking, warmth spreading where it traced.

Before he realized what he was doing, he lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips.

Roxana’s heart stuttered.

For one treacherous moment, it felt like he was hers again. As if his attention… his sharp, devastating focus, belonged only to her.

But she knew better.

You don’t expect a direwolf to purr, she reminded herself. He only howls. And only for the moon.

His sister was his moon.

She inhaled sharply and pulled her hand free.

Alexander gasped, as though waking from a trance. He stepped back at once, distance snapping into place, his expression rearranging itself into something professional and unreadable.

“I work in a hospital,” Roxana said, quietly but firmly. A reminder. A line drawn.

He frowned, something flickering behind his eyes. He had known that once. That her family despised her choice. That she had walked away from uniforms and expectations to build her own life.

Did he forget? Or did he simply never listen?

“Hmm,” he murmured.

She saw his gaze flick briefly down the corridor and followed it.

There he was…His assistant. Hiding badly behind a pillar. Watching. Spying.

Of course. The sister.

Roxana exhaled a humorless breath, then suddenly grabbed Alexander by the tie and pulled him down. His eyes widened. His breath brushed her cheek.

“How long are you in Meridon?” she asked.

He blinked, caught off guard.

“There’s a military gala on Capitol Hill next weekend,” she continued, her voice steady despite the chaos tightening in her chest. “Want to be my date?”

There. She laid it bare between them. Pride be damned.

She was finally on the verge of healing, and here he was. Standing in front of her. Solid. Real. Close enough for her fingers to curl into his tie inside a glass-walled office where the world could see and yet see nothing at all.

She could afford to lose her pride.

For him.

Alexander’s lips curved into a slow, amused smirk. “A gala?” he echoed. “You attend galas now?”

She used to avoid them like a cat avoids water. Sharp heels, shallow smiles, and men who mistook uniforms for personality irked her. How much had she changed… or been forced to?

“My father mandated my presence,” Roxana said quietly. “And I might be mandated into a marriage he approves of next.” Her voice tightened despite herself. “I’m thirty-three, Alexander. They won’t let me be any longer.”

Her eyes betrayed her then—glossed, hopeful, reckless—as they drifted to his mouth. She wet her lips without realizing it, her grip tightening around his tie.

She was not asking. She was pleading.

Alexander caught her wrist gently, fingers warm, familiar. He chuckled, low and genuine, the sound slipping out of him unguarded. “As if anyone could force you to do anything.”

For one fragile second, hope bloomed in Roxana’s heart.

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