Chapter: Chapter 110AlexI set her down on the cot carefully, more carefully than I needed to, and reached for the first-aid kit without looking at her face right away.The moment my hands closed around her ankle, the past surfaced without permission.A different night. A different woman. Younger. Less guarded. She had twisted her ankle then too... I had carried her inside in much the same way, irritation and concern tangled together, and she had glared at me the entire time while I checked the swelling. The memory was sharp enough that for a second the years between then and now felt thinner than they should have.I kept my expression neutral and focused on the present.Her ankle was already starting to swell. It was a solid sprain. I stabilized it with my hands, applying light pressure, checking the range carefully. She tensed when I first touched the tender spot, then forced herself still.I didn’t speak. Neither did she.The silence inside the small cabin felt denser than it should have. Outside, the
Last Updated: 2026-08-12
Chapter: Chapter 109GwenBy the third day after Emris was discharged.I told myself I would handle it properly. If Alexander Thorne wanted a meeting, I would grant him one, formal, controlled, and on my terms. I would thank him for what he had done for my son, hear whatever business proposal he still wanted to make, and then put clear distance back between us.The only problem was that he never reached out.No message. No request through my office. Nothing.The silence should have been a relief. Instead it sat under my skin like an unfinished sentence. I checked my phone more often than I cared to admit, then hated myself for it. If he wasn’t going to ask, I certainly wasn’t going to chase him. Pride, self-preservation, and years of hard-won composure all agreed on that much.So I did what I always did when my thoughts became too loud.I kept moving.Saturday morning was the children’s charity event I had committed to months earlier, a community fair hosted in the open grounds near the riverside, complet
Last Updated: 2026-08-11
Chapter: Chapter 108I called Elias the moment the worst of the panic had passed, my hands still shaking as I explained what had happened, my voice cracking despite every effort to keep it steady."I'm coming back," he said instantly, no hesitation at all. "Today. I'll get the first flight out.""You don't have to cut your trip short," I started, though the relief flooding through me at the offer betrayed how much I actually wanted him to."Gwen." His voice was firm, cutting through my half-hearted protest. "He's practically my son too at this point. I'm coming back."He made it in by early evening, walking into the hospital room still in his travel clothes, exhaustion written plainly across his face despite the urgency that had clearly pushed him through every connecting flight without rest. He went straight to Emris, who was awake by then, groggy but stable, delighted enough by the attention that he immediately launched into his own dramatic retelling of the entire ordeal.I watched them together, some
Last Updated: 2026-08-10
Chapter: Chapter 107AlexI had never been so afraid for someone in my entire life.I couldn't fully explain it, even hours later, sitting in the quiet of the recovery room while Emris slept off the last of the epinephrine's effects.The moment I'd seen him go limp, seen his lips swell and his eyes roll back, something in my chest had torn open with a violence that made no sense given the circumstances. He wasn't mine. Wasn't Theo, wasn't family, wasn't anyone I had any real claim to beyond an accidental dinner shared over a canceled meeting. And yet watching him collapse had felt like being stabbed straight through the sternum, every instinct I possessed snapping instantly into motion before my conscious mind had caught up with any of it.Maybe it was simply the training. A decade of pediatric residency didn't fully disappear just because I'd traded scrubs for boardrooms, some part of me had clearly stayed permanently wired for exactly this kind of emergency, muscle memory taking over before conscious th
Last Updated: 2026-08-09
Chapter: Chapter 106GwenI turned to Elias the moment Alex was out of earshot, my composure already fraying at the edges. "I need to use the bathroom," I said, and walked away before he could stop me.He caught up anyway, falling into step beside me for the few feet before I reached the corridor. "Did I cross a line?" he asked, and to his credit, he actually sounded uncertain about it."Yes," I said, not slowing down. "Next time, tell me before you decide to announce an engagement I know nothing about. I don't want to send the wrong idea. To him, or to you."Something flickered across his face, hurt, quick and genuine, gone almost as fast as it appeared, tucked back behind the easy charm he wore like armor. "Understood," he said, quieter now.I softened, just slightly, because I did care about him, even if not in the way he wanted. "Elias, I value what we have. I don't want anything to complicate it. That's all I'm asking."He nodded, accepting it with more grace than I probably deserved, and let me go w
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
Chapter: Chapter 105GwenI hadn't always been this woman.The thought crossed my mind more often than I let myself admit, usually in quiet moments like this one, standing backstage before a press conference, waiting for my cue while I ran through talking points I could recite in my sleep. Sometimes it felt like Janessa Cooley had been built from scratch, piece by careful piece, over the wreckage of a woman who'd once fainted in the back of a car outside a press conference gone catastrophically wrong.I'd left the city with nothing but a duffel bag, a dying marriage's worth of debt, and a pregnancy no one but me knew about. I hadn't planned much beyond simply getting away. I certainly hadn't planned on the truck that ran the red light three months later, the one that had crumpled the side of my rental car and sent me through a windshield in a small town I'd only stopped in for gas.I still didn't remember most of the accident itself. What I remembered was waking up in a private hospital room I couldn't af
Last Updated: 2026-08-07
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