Chapter 7

Fawn's POV

“I think,” I said slowly, choosing each word carefully, Blake was too sharp, “that I’m allowed to be a little confused. Maybe the nurses’ station had a late-night thriller playing, and my coma brain remembered it and slotted it in where it didn’t belong.”

He didn’t answer. He just sat there, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely laced together, watching me like I was a chessboard, and he was trying to work out which pieces were actually on the board and how best to proceed.

“You know, I have never known you to have a sense of humour.”

Fawn had needed it. Not surprising, being married to Richard. But almost being killed had made her tongue loose. Normally she would have thought it not said it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I kept shocking him in the weeks to come, because I was even surprising myself.

It was kind of weird. I didn’t see myself as Fawn anymore. I thought about her like she was another person. But I wasn’t Cassie either. I sort of sat somewhere in between.

Before I could respond, a nurse came in with a tray, breaking the strange tension hanging between us. Scrambled eggs that looked like they’d given up on life, dry toast, a tiny tub of yoghurt that screamed diet food.

“Lunch, Mrs Huntington,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “You need your strength.”

I stared at the plate, then looked at her name tag like I needed to know the name of the person trying to feed me this crap. “Angela, is this an attempt to put me back into a coma? Because if so, ten out of ten for strategy.”

Angela tried not to smile and failed. “I’ll see if I can find something better later,” she whispered, then retreated.

I picked up the fork anyway. My stomach didn’t care what it looked like; it just knew I’d spent six months not eating real food. The first mouthful was bland, but my body leapt on it like it was a gourmet meal.

When I glanced up, Blake was still watching.

“Are you planning on staring at me until I finish my eggs?” I asked. “Because I can make this incredibly awkward if you want and start sucking the fork.”

“I was trying to figure out why you are so different,” he said.

Because I wasn’t Cassie.

“People change,” I said, trying to be as casual as possible. “Near-death experiences will do that. Maybe I’m having a personality grow-up. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

His mouth pressed into a thin line. “Most people wouldn’t joke about it and act so different.”

“Most people don’t wake up in a body that feels like a rental and feel like they could be evicted at any point,” I shot back without thinking. “Trust me, I’m doing better with this than I thought I would.”

He didn’t argue. That, more than anything, unsettled me.

The afternoon blurred into more checks, but at least Blake’s little display earlier meant they were spaced out. One set of vitals, one physio session where they made me walk up the corridor and back while holding my elbow as if I might crumble into dust, a memory test that I barely listened to because half my brain was busy collecting any new detail I could pick up. Every new detail I filed away like I was studying for a test.

Every time someone called me Cassandra or Cassie, I gave the smallest inward flinch, then let it slide. The pain behind my eyes when I tried to say Fawn had eased, but the warning was still there, lingering. The universe, or whatever ran this mess, had made itself clear. I’d been given this body, this life. That didn’t mean I got to scream my old one in everyone’s faces.

By late afternoon, even my new body was starting to drag. My muscles ached. By the time the last nurse left, promising “no more interruptions until dinner,” I felt wrung out.

Blake was still there.

He’d loosened his tie at some point, the top button of his shirt undone, jacket off and draped over the back of the chair. He looked less like a CEO and more like a man who’d sat through a very long, very pointless meeting and hadn’t stabbed anyone yet purely out of willpower.

“You know you could go home,” I said, resting my head back against the pillows and turning to look at him. “You do have a home, right? You don’t just live in that chair and feed on the souls of nurses and residence?”

“I’m fine here,” he answered.

Of course he was. Men like Blake Huntington were always fine. Calm in a crisis, ice in their veins, steel in their spine, all that merry bullshit. Meanwhile, I felt like a badly wired lamp someone had plugged back in just to see if it would still spark.

“You’ve said that three times today,” I pointed out. “I’m starting to think you’re lying to the both of us.”

He leaned back a little, stretching his legs out again, wrist resting over one knee, fingers loose. It looked casual. It wasn’t. Nothing about him was ever really casual.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “That I’d rather be in the office or at home? I would. But I’m here. Enjoy it while it lasts, Cassie, because I’m again dancing to your tune.”

There was a lot of resentment there. It made me wonder about Blake and Cassie’s marriage again.

“So, this is the part where I’m supposed to be grateful?” I let my head roll to the side so I could look at him properly. “My almost-ex-husband sat vigil while I was a decorative vegetable. Very noble. Ten out of ten for effort. Or is all this for some sort of PR checklist?”

His eyes cooled. “I’m not going to try and rewrite history, Cassie. I wasn’t here much before today. I came a lot in the beginning but that changed over time. I stayed at most fifteen to thirty minutes.”

“I can understand the coma patient wasn’t great at conversation,” I said, keeping my tone light. “I picked up that you were not here all that much from the way the nurses greet you. Not friendly enough to say your first name. So I already knew you haven’t been here a lot.”

He didn’t deny it. “There wasn’t any point,” he said after a moment. “You weren’t here… well at least no one thought you were."

“Newsflash,” I muttered, “I’m still not entirely convinced I am.”

Because Cassie wasn’t here, and I didn’t know if I was here to stay, or if this body was just a loaner. Once I got my revenge, would I leave this earth for good? It was a question I was sure no one would have an answer for.

His gaze swept over my face, slow, assessing. “You look like her,” he said quietly. “Your voice sounds like her, mostly. But you don’t feel like her, and you sure as hell don’t talk like you used to.”

Something in my chest tightened. Cassie’s chest. Whatever. “Then maybe you should take the win,” I said. “Isn’t this what you wanted? The woman who made you want a divorce isn’t here right now. No one but you seemed surprised by the fact that I’ve come back to life a little different.”

“That’s what worries me,” he said. “You were never this… not you. Normally you’d be screaming at people, not cracking jokes.”

“You say that like I’m house-trained now,” I shot back. “Don’t get excited. I still bite.” To demonstrate I snapped my teeth together.