The Test at Breakfast

Lily’s POV

I didn’t sleep at all that night.

I sat on the bed with my knees pulled up to my chest and went over every word Ethan had said. He was going to look into me. He was going to find out that Vanessa had been in Paris all month, shopping and posting pictures, while her fiancé lay in a coma. And when he found out, Noah and I would lose everything.

At six in the morning, I called Mrs. Sinclair. She answered in a sleepy, angry voice.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“He’s having me checked,” I whispered. “I heard him tell his assistant to find out everything about me. He asked if you have any other children.”

The line went quiet. When she spoke again, she was wide awake.

“Then you’ll have to be very careful,” she said. “Vanessa will stay out of sight. I’ll make sure her social media is cleaned up today. Just be her, Lily. Be her better than she is.”

“How am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know what she told him?”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said, and she hung up on me.

At eight o’clock, a maid knocked on my door. Her name was Rosa, and she was the first person in that house who smiled at me like she meant it.

“Mrs. Blackwood,” she said, and it took me a second to understand she was talking to me. “Mr. Ethan is asking for his breakfast. He wants you to bring it to him.”

My stomach turned over. “Me?”

“Yes, ma’am. He said, and I’m sorry, these are his words, ‘Tell my wife to bring it herself.’”

The tray was waiting in the kitchen. There was oatmeal, toast, orange juice, and a small bowl of fresh strawberries. I carried it upstairs with shaking hands and knocked on his door.

“Come in.”

Ethan was sitting up in bed now, with pillows behind his back. He looked pale and thin, but his eyes were just as sharp as the night before. A big golden dog lay on the floor beside the bed. When I walked in, the dog lifted its head and looked at me.

“Good morning,” I said, and set the tray across his lap.

“Is it?” He looked at the food, then at me. “Sit down. Eat with me.”

I sat in the chair beside the bed. He pushed the bowl of strawberries toward me.

“Have some,” he said. “They’re your favorite.”

I reached for one. Then I stopped, because something was wrong. Mrs. Sinclair had made me memorize everything Vanessa liked and hated. She had never once said strawberries.

Ethan was watching my hand.

I picked up a piece of toast instead. “You’re thinking of someone else,” I said, as lightly as I could. “I can’t eat strawberries. They make me break out in a rash.”

It was a guess. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. But Vanessa was the kind of girl who would have a hundred little problems, and an allergy seemed like one of them.

Ethan didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he took the bowl back. “My mistake,” he said.

I let out my breath very slowly so he wouldn’t notice.

The golden dog stood up, stretched, and walked over to me. He sniffed my hand, then pushed his big head into my lap and wagged his tail. I smiled before I could stop myself and scratched behind his ears.

“Hi, sweet boy,” I said. “What’s your name?”

The room went quiet. Too quiet. I looked up and saw Ethan staring at me with a strange look on his face.

“His name is Duke,” he said slowly. “He’s been my dog for six years. And the first time you met him, you screamed and made me lock him in the garage. You said you hated dogs. You said they were dirty.”

My hand froze on Duke’s head.

Stupid, I thought. So stupid. Vanessa would never let a dog touch her dress, and here I was, rubbing his ears like we were best friends.

“I was scared of dogs,” I said, and my voice came out small. “When I was little, one bit me. But after your accident, I spent a lot of time in this house, and Duke was always lying outside your door, waiting for you. It’s hard to stay scared of something that loves you that much.”

Duke licked my wrist, as if he wanted to help me.

Ethan’s eyes moved from the dog to my face. I couldn’t tell if he believed me. I couldn’t tell anything at all. He was the hardest person to read I had ever met.

“Interesting,” was all he said.

A nurse came in then, carrying a small paper cup of pills. She was young, with her hair in a tight bun, and she didn’t look at either of us.

“Your morning medicine, Mr. Blackwood.”

She held out the cup. Ethan took it. And without thinking, I looked inside.

For three years, I had sorted Noah’s pills every single morning. I knew what most heart and pain medicines looked like. I knew colors and shapes and sizes the way other girls knew lipstick shades. In Ethan’s cup, there were two white pills, one yellow one, and one small blue pill I had seen before.

Noah’s doctor had warned me about that blue pill once. It was a strong sleeping drug. He had said it should never be given to someone with a head injury, because it could slow down their breathing and keep them from waking up.

Ethan lifted the cup toward his mouth.

“Wait,” I said, and grabbed his wrist.

The nurse turned pale. Ethan looked down at my hand on his arm, then up at me, his eyebrows rising.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I didn’t know how to explain it without telling him who I really was. A rich girl like Vanessa would never know what a sleeping pill looked like. But I couldn’t let him swallow it either.

“That blue one,” I said quietly, and turned to the nurse. “What is it?”

The nurse’s eyes darted toward the door. “It’s what the doctor ordered, ma’am.”

“Which doctor?” Ethan asked.

She didn’t answer. She just stood there with her hands twisting together, and that told me everything I needed to know.

Ethan slowly lowered the cup. He took out the blue pill and held it up between two fingers, studying it in the morning light. Then he looked at me, and for the first time since he woke up, there was no suspicion in his eyes. There was something else, something sharper and colder, and it wasn’t meant for me.

“Rosa,” he called toward the hallway, his voice suddenly hard. “Get Marcus. Now.”

Then he turned back to me.

“You and I,” he said, “are going to have a long talk.”