Chapter 10

Blake’s POV

I saw then what I hadn’t let myself look at before. The deep grooves bracketing his mouth. The way his shoulders sagged when I had first entered the room. Guilt, yes. But not just about me. About every decision he’d made on this ward for three decades.

“No,” I said after a beat. “What I want is simple. I want you to admit you don’t know what’s going on in there.” I jerked my chin in the general direction of Cassie’s room. “I want you to stop talking about her like she’s a chapter in a textbook. Start looking at what went wrong.”

He exhaled slowly. “We are not pretending to have all the answers, Mr. Huntington. We’ll… review our processes,” he said. “I can promise you that.”

“You’d better,” I said. “Because if you ever tell another family there’s no hope when there is, and I find out you haven’t changed a damn thing, I will bring every lawyer I own down on this place so hard they’ll feel it in the basement.”

That, at least, was familiar ground. Consequences. The language of my world.

Clayman nodded once, like he believed me. He should.

I stepped back, rolling my shoulders as if I could shake off the last ten minutes.

The younger doctor opened the door for me like he was half-terrified I’d turn on him next.

I stood there for a second, breathing.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Matt: Downstairs. Coffee and food.

I turned back toward her room.

Fawn’s POV

Blake came back faster than I expected, which in my eyes was magical because I really was starving. Blame the body that had been in a coma for six months, not the mind that had just gone through its own death.

The door swung open and he stepped in with a cardboard tray with takeaway cups balanced in one hand and a paper bag in the other, like some grim-faced, ridiculously hot delivery driver not looking for a tip.

Behind him, the nice nurse from earlier, Angela, tried to keep up, flapping a little.

“Mr Huntington, patients are on a controlled diet—”

“Yes,” he said calmly, not slowing, “and I controlled this one.”

He ignored her disapproving clucking and set everything down on the rolling table near my bed. The smell hit first, real coffee, strong and dark, and actual food. Bacon, something buttery, something sweet. My stomach pretty much tried to climb out of my body to get to it.

“If that’s another bowl of dead eggs for me,” I said, “I’m checking myself out ASAP.”

He gave me a look, rolling his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”

Thinking of the body I was using. “Six months in bed getting fed by a tube and then a government-issue breakfast. I think I’ve earned a little dramatic.”

The nurse hovered at the foot of the bed. “Mrs Huntington, you really shouldn’t—”

“It’s fine, Angela,” Blake said, then glanced at her properly. “It is Angela, isn’t it?”

She blinked, startled that he knew her name. “Yes, sir.”

There was just something about Blake, and it wasn’t just me that felt it.

“Her blood pressure is normal. Labs from this morning were clean. She’s underweight for her pre-accident baseline. I doubt one croissant will kill her.”

Angela’s mouth flattened. She clearly wanted to argue, but she was outgunned and she knew it. Her gaze slid to me, bracing for attitude.

Old Cassie probably would’ve delivered.

“Hey,” I said, softer than I’d planned. “You’ve been running around after me all day. Thank you. I promise I won’t choke to death on the pastry. If I do, you can say ‘I told you so’ at the funeral. Please let me eat something that doesn’t taste like sandpaper.”

Her lips twitched. “Just take it slow,” she sighed. “I’ll… pretend I didn’t see anything.”

“Deal. Thank you.”

She left, shaking her head, but there was a tiny smile there, the kind that said she might actually be rooting for me not to die on her watch.

I felt Blake’s eyes on me.

“What?” I asked, reaching for the coffee first because I was not an animal.

“You said please,” he said. “And thank you.”

“I’ve had a big day.” I blew on the coffee and took a cautious sip. It was hot and strong and so good I almost moaned. “Near-death or resurrection, a personality upgrade is understandable. Maybe I knocked my manners back into place.”

He didn’t smile, but something eased around his mouth. “You never said please,” he said quietly. “You demanded. Like it was your right.”

“Well, don’t worry,” I said. “I still know how to demand. I’m just… rationing it.” I nudged the paper bag with my knuckles. “What’s in there? Tell me it’s not kale, or I get some of the bacon I can smell.”

He opened it and took out two pastries. "Croissants. With bacon and egg.”

“You are forgiven for everything,” I said automatically.

His brow rose. “Everything? I have been a saint.”

“Don’t push it,” I muttered, but I tore off a piece of the bacon-and-egg croissant and nearly blacked out from bliss. Grease and salt and soft bread. My new body practically purred. “God, yes. This is obscene. I’m pretty sure this is better than sex.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth as I licked a crumb from my lower lip. Heat prickled all the way down my neck.

“I sincerely hope that’s the brain injury talking,” he said.

“Why?” I shot back. “Was it that bad before?” I wanted to know… what had their sex life been like.

Something flickered over his face, there and gone. “You’re saying you don’t remember our sex life?” he said, more to himself than to me.

I didn’t, because it hadn’t been me, and the strangest thing was… there was a slice of relief tucked inside that. Whatever history these two had in bed, it belonged to them. Not me. I was starting from scratch, which was either a blessing or a time bomb. What had he been like? I was guessing here, but I would say… intense.

“I mean, it’s been a while… was I any good?”

He tilted his head and eyed me. “I’m not talking about this now or ever, Cassie, and I gave up stroking your ego a long time ago.”

He grabbed his own croissant and sat down to eat it. We ate in a silence that wasn’t entirely comfortable.

Every few minutes a staff member walked past the narrow window in the door, trying and failing not to stare. The miracle wife, alive and eating a bacon-and-egg croissant like it was foreplay. Just wonderful.

At least this time when Angela came back to check my vitals, I smiled at her, asked how long her shift had left, told her I hoped she got to sit down at some point.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said automatically.

“Someone should,” I said. “I feel like you’ve been here as long as I have.” Since I was moved into this room, at least.

She laughed. A real one. Colour came back into her face. She checked my blood pressure, made a note, then gave Blake a wary look. Powerful men with Blake’s sex appeal could do that to every woman in their vicinity, no matter how old or how married.

He didn’t even glance at her. He was watching me.

The second she left, I frowned at him. “What?”

“You never bothered with staff before,” he said. “You barely looked at them unless you needed something.”

I picked up a hunk of bacon that was lying on the paper bag my meal had come out of. “Well, clearly I was a delightful person.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Do you know you talk like you don’t know yourself… like the Cassie before the accident was a different person.”

That shut me up for a minute.

“I don’t need a padded cell. It’s just a near-death experience. Not that I got the white light and tunnel.” I was still pissed about that. Made you wonder if the experience so many talked about was real. The only thing I’d felt was my life flashing before my eyes and the tugging.

When the food was gone and the coffee cups were empty, fatigue descended so fast it was almost funny. My bones felt heavy, like someone had swapped them for lead. My vision blurred at the edges. My soul may have just arrived in this body, but Cassie had been in a coma for six months. It was going to take time to build myself up.

“Lie down,” Blake said. “You’re falling asleep sitting up.”

“You’re very bossy,” I muttered, but I did what he said, letting the bed take my weight. My eyes fluttered shut for a second, then snapped open again.

He’d taken his phone out, reading something on the screen, thumb moving slowly as he scrolled. Work, probably. Deals and numbers and empires rising and falling. He was a CEO like Richard and her husband’s biggest rival. I had a feeling the hate was only one-sided, because Blake didn’t seem like a man who was concerned about someone like Richard.

"Thank you." I said softly

He looked up, his eyebrow lifted questioning.

"For being here and the coffee and the food."

He gave me another one of those looks, the ones I was getting so sick of, before saying. "You're welcome." then he turned back to his phone.

I watched him from under my lashes. The set of his jaw, the line of his throat visible at the open collar. There was a shadow of dark stubble along his jaw this afternoon that hadn’t been there this morning; Cassie’s body reacted to that too, the traitor.

You’re dead, Fawn, I reminded myself. Dead to everyone who ever knew you. This… this is survival and revenge. That’s all. Not lusting after this body’s soon-to-be ex-husband.

My eyelids drifted. At some point, the room went softer around the edges. The beeping blended into a background hum.