Chapter 1

Blake’s POV

Tuesday 9:24 AM

The machine near the bed beeped too loudly for a room that was supposed to be quiet. Because she was so still and quiet.

I sat in the hard plastic chair by the bed, elbows on my knees, my suit jacket off and folded over the back of the chair. I had only planned to stay long enough to sign the paperwork and leave. That had been my plan, but I still hadn’t signed the paperwork.

It was like most days that I visited her. I hated having to come, but then I couldn’t make myself leave. But today was different… today was the last day. I would never have to come here again and sit by her bed in this room while she lay motionless.

I could hear the hum of the air-conditioning. Monitors blinked and beeped. But Cassie lay in the bed like a wax version of herself, all sharp cheekbones and glossy black hair that didn’t match the emptiness behind her closed eyes. I paid for someone to come in and clean her hair, give her a facial, and do her nails every week. Knowing she would hate letting it go or leaving it to the nurses. Hospital care wasn’t the same as being pampered, and Cassie had loved the pampering that only a beauty professional could give.

She didn’t make a sound and hadn’t since the car accident six months ago. I will never get the image of her crashing her car into that tree out of my head as long as I live. The sound of crashing metal and the birds scattering out of the tree in shock. It played over and over again in my mind. She had healed during the last six months—the bruises and broken bones had healed—just not her brain. That hadn’t changed. So here we were, my gorgeous wife looking her best even while in a coma.

She’d always liked being looked at. Worshipped and adored. Now the only ones looking at her were doctors assessing brain function and nurses. The current nurse in the room kept glancing at the clock, probably wondering when I was going to sign the damn papers so she could move on to her next patient. But I needed to be sure.

I turned away and stared at the clipboard in my hands. It was heavily stapled, heavily worded paperwork. But with all the wording, it all boiled down to one simple instruction: turn off the machines. Let my wife die. Cassie would be gone forever.

“And you’re sure there’s no… chance? No hope?” I asked, for the fourth time in twenty minutes. No, it was a lot more times than that, but it was four times since I had been here today.

The older doctor, grey hair and a face carved out of fatigue, shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Huntington has shown no neurological improvement. The scans confirm everything we expected. She’s been clinically brain-dead for six months, since the day of the accident. The only thing keeping her alive is the ventilator and supportive care. Without them, she would pass away. She can’t breathe on her own.”

Alive.

I almost laughed. Cassie would’ve hated the idea of being called “supportive care.” She liked being essential. Center of gravity and unavoidable. Everyone had strong feelings about Cassie; they either loved her or hated her. I thought I had loved her once. I knew now she had represented a challenge. She had been the woman every guy had wanted. I had been the one to win her over. Cassie wasn’t honest with anyone.

My jaw clenched. I’d spent the year before that fateful night gearing up to divorce her. I’d told her three weeks before. She had refused to sign the divorce paperwork. The car accident had done that part for me but also trapped me in this limbo. But that limbo was about to come to an end. All I had to do was sign. It should be easy. There was no love between us; she had told me she hated me just before the accident. If I was honest, I hated her too—had then and still did.

Cassie had been hell to live with. She’d lied, cheated, manipulated, stolen, and could be mean and nasty to everyone around her… and somehow it still felt wrong that I was the one to end it. Like I was finishing what fate had started, and that made me complicit. This was so Cassie. It was like she was having the last laugh. She was stopping me from moving on with my life while she still clung to hers.

The younger doctor shifted, clearly uncomfortable. The nurse kept her gaze politely fixed near the foot of the bed now.

“If you’re not ready—” the younger doctor began.

“I didn’t say that.” I cut in. My voice sounded flat, even to my own ears. “I just… want to be clear.”

Clear that I did everything right. Clear that I didn’t kill her. Clear that when I walk out of here, this doesn’t follow me into every minute, every hour of every day, and even every fucking night for the rest of my life. There was no one else; only I had the power to do this. As her legal husband, this fell on my shoulders.

I didn’t want to dream about this like I did about the crash.

I looked at Cassie. At the once-glossed lips that weren’t glossed anymore, just dry. At the long dark lashes that had once fluttered over crocodile tears. At the woman who had done her best to bleed me emotionally dry and almost succeeded. Cassie had been an energy vampire and sucked everyone around her dry and destroyed them. She loved no one, and I wasn’t even sure if she liked herself. It was like she had hit the self-destruct button on her life and wanted to create as much chaos as possible along the way. Not caring who got hurt.

“I hated you,” I thought, and the honesty of it tasted bitter. “But I didn’t want this for you.” I would have been happier if she lived—just not in my life.

I looked at the monitor by the bed as it beeped in slow, even intervals. Her chest rose and fell mechanically, the ventilator doing all the work. Once the machine was switched off, Cassie would stop breathing forever.

The older doctor held out a pen. “We can give you more time if you—”

“No.” I took it. My hand didn’t shake, but my throat felt tight. I lowered my gaze to the line where my name needed to go. “Let’s just… do this.” The longer I sat here, the harder it was going to be.

The pen hit the paper as I signed my name and dated it in the appointed location. I’d signed mergers, acquisitions, deals worth billions with less weight than this one signature. But this signature scarred my soul. If I was having this much trouble with a woman I didn’t love or even like anymore, how did people do it for people they did love?

“There,” I said, trying not to hear how rough the word came out. “You have what you need.” Handing the paperwork over.

The nurse stepped forward, hands gentle as she removed Cassie’s IV. The older doctor nodded to the younger doctor, some silent medical conversation passing between them. I wasn’t listening or watching them they were just there. It meant nothing to me now. She wasn’t coming back.

I stood. I couldn’t watch them disconnect her, but they had already started to remove the tube from her throat. I’d done my part; the rest I didn’t need to—

Once the tube was gone, Cassie’s body jerked.

I froze in place near the door. My eyes glued on Cassie.

At first, I thought it was nothing. Maybe a reflex. Surely. It must have been nerves firing. Bodies did strange things at the end; I’d seen enough death to know that. I’d lost both my grandparents to cancer. I’d been in the room as they had taken their last breath.

Then her chest heaved—not the machine forcing air, because that machine was no longer working, the tube already gone—but a raw, dragging inhale like someone breaking the surface of deep water.

I knew something was wrong when the nurse yelped, stumbling back. The younger doctor grabbed the rail. The heart monitor screamed to life, the flat, steady rhythm crashing into a chaotic spike as lights flashed.

Cassie sat bolt upright.

Her eyes flew open, not dull and empty as they had been for the last six months, but blazing and wild. The icy blue glare locked onto my face. I felt frozen in place by that look.

“Jesus Christ,” the younger doctor breathed.

My heart slammed hard enough to hurt. What had I done?

I had signed papers to have her machines turned off when she wasn’t… gone.

Because my dead wife had just come back to life.

And the way she was staring at me…

You’d think I had been the one to put her in this hospital in the first place.