Chapter 7: Watching You Bleed for Me

His heart was racing under my palm.

For me. Not from surgery.

Roman had just told me his father was alive. That he buried the man who killed my dad and faked his death to protect me.

And now he was standing in ICU Room 7, bleeding through his gown, asking Singh to run prints on a burner phone that could prove it.

Singh was already on her radio. “I need CSU at Westbridge now. And get me Judge Harmon. We have a hearing in twenty minutes and new evidence.”

She looked at Roman. “You stay in that bed or I will cuff you to it.”

“I am not staying,” he said. His voice was steady despite the blood on his arm. “If my father sent that text, he knows Isla has the ring. He knows she remembered. He will not wait for court.”

He was right.

Julian wanted a medical proxy. Roman’s father wanted us dead.

Two Kade men, two wars. And I was the wife caught between them.

“Get back in bed,” I told Roman. My nurse's voice was back. It was the only thing keeping me from shaking. “You tore your incision. You need pressure, not a fight.”

He looked at me like I was in a fight worth having. “I need you safe.”

“You need to live,” I said.

“That is the same thing.”

My throat closed.

I do not trust that you will live for me. I had said that ten minutes ago. He was already proving me wrong.

Singh stepped between us. “You two can have your reunion later. Right now, Monroe, you need to decide. The hearing starts in twenty minutes. Julian is using your amnesia and your mom’s testimony to void the marriage. If he wins, he gets Roman. And you get a psych hold.”

My mom. She would do it. She would tell the judge I was too broken to choose.

She had hidden the crash from me for ten years because she thought love was protection.

She was wrong. Love without honesty was another form of control.

“I am going to that hearing,” I said.

“You are not stable,” Singh said.

“I am his wife.”

The words came out before I could stop them. Not like a lie this time. Like a claim.

Roman’s eyes flicked to mine. Something hot and devastated moved through them.

“Isla,” he said quietly. “Do not do this for me. Do it for you.”

I pressed a clean gauze to his arm. His skin was cold.

“I am doing it because I am done letting Kade men decide who I get to be.”

His hand covered mine. Blood soaked through the gauze and onto both of us.

“Then let me decide something too.”

“What?”

“Let me love you out loud. No more secret Vegas weddings. No more protecting you by pretending you do not matter. If I go down, I want the world to know you were my choice.”

The room went silent. Even Singh stopped talking.

My heart betrayed me again. It beat once, hard, against my ribs.

You were the only good thing I never got to keep. He had said that at the lake. Now he was saying it in front of a cop with his blood on my hands.

“I cannot promise I will not hate you,” I whispered.

“Promise you will not lie to me,” he said. “I can survive your hate. I cannot survive your silence.”

That was the problem. I had spent ten years silent. It kept me small. It kept me safe. It let his father kill mine.

“Okay,” I said.

Okay to what, I did not know. Okay to trust him. Okay to fight. Okay to love him even if it ruined me.

Singh sighed. “Get him stitched. I will delay the judge. But Monroe, if you walk into that courtroom as his wife, you are a target. Julian’s lawyers will tear you apart. And if his father is alive, he will come for you first.”

“Let him,” Roman said. “She will not be alone.”

He meant it. I saw it in the way he stood despite the pain. In the way he had ripped his IV out to keep my mom from calling me broken.

That was the attraction. Not the kiss. The bleeding for me. They refuse to let me be small.

Dr. Patel came in with a suture kit. She took one look at us, blood and all, and shook her head.

“You two are going to be the death of me.”

“Just him,” I said. “I plan on living.”

Roman’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. Almost.

“Good.”

Patel stitched him while he held my hand. He did not look at the needle. He looked at me. Every wince, every breath, he anchored to me.

“You should have told me about the crash,” I said quietly. “All of it.”

“I know.”

“Do you regret it? The bullying. Vegas. All of it.”

He was quiet for so long I thought he would not answer.

“I regret that it worked,” he said. “I regret that you looked at me in the hall at seventeen like I was a stranger. Because for a second, I was not the bully. I was just a boy who lost the only person who ever looked at me like I was good.”

My eyes burned.

Years of bullying taught me to stay small and silent. He had made the wound. Now he was naming it.

“I do not know how to do this,” I said. “Be your wife. Be angry. Be safe.”

“You do not have to be safe,” he said. “You just have to be with me.”

That was the tension. He wanted proximity. I wanted control. He wanted honesty. I wanted armor.

Patel tied off the last stitch. “He can walk to court if he collapses trying. I am not liable.”

“We will walk together,” I said.

Singh handed me a blazer from her car. It smelled like coffee and gunpowder.

“Cover the blood. And Monroe, do not mention his father in court. Not yet. If he is alive, saying it on record makes you a witness. He will come faster.”

The stakes went up again. Tell the truth and die. Lie and lose Roman.

Roman stood. He swayed. I caught him. His mouth was in my ear.

“Whatever happens in there,” he said, “you were never unlovable. You were unloved by the wrong people. Including me.”

I closed my eyes.

I hate you. I hate that I do not. The line was still true. But it was changing.

“Come on,” I said. “Let us lose a court case.”

We made it to the elevator. Singh hit the button for the ground floor. The doors started to close.

A hand shot between them.

Julian.

He was alone. No lawyers. No smile. His face was cut from the vest shot at the quarry.

“Going somewhere?” he said.

Singh went for her weapon. Julian was faster. He had a syringe. Not like the fake orderly. This one was labeled.

He looked at me. “Your mother sends her regards. She said you always listened to her.”

He looked at Roman. “And you. You should have stayed dead.”

He pressed the syringe to Roman’s neck. The elevator doors opened in the lobby. Full of people. Witnesses.

Julian smiled. “Now, Mrs. Kade. You get to choose. Sign the proxy over to me, right here. Or I put him back in a coma. Permanently.”

Roman did not move. He looked at me. Calm. Trusting.

Do you trust me?

The elevator dinged.

And the doors started to close on us, with Julian, the syringe, and twenty witnesses watching.