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Chapter 005
publish date:
2026-01-20 18:25:11TAMSIN
"James..." My voice came out weak. Shaking. "Please. Help me. My baby..." "Tammy, please." His voice was strained. "After everything today, I can't... I need you to stop." "My baby..." Tears streamed down my face. I was bent over the bed, and I could feel the wetness spreading. I knew what it meant. "Don't let me lose my baby. Please. Take me to the hospital." My vision started to blur at the edges. Everything going soft and distant. I turned my head slightly. James stood near the door, his face a mask of conflict. Pain and doubt warring in his eyes. He took a step toward me. Then Isla made a sound. A horrible, choking gasp. I couldn't see her from my position, but I heard the thud as she hit the floor. "Isla!" James's voice went sharp with panic. Through my darkening vision, I saw him drop to his knees beside her. Saw her body jerking. Convulsing. A seizure. His face went white. "Oh God. Isla. Isla, stay with me." He scooped her into his arms. Her head lolled back, body still twitching. He looked back at me, and for one second, our eyes met. I saw the torment there. "I'll come back for you," he said, voice breaking. "I promise. I have to get her to the hospital. I'll come back." While he was running with Isla's limp body in his arms, her head turned and for a brief second, she opened her eyes and stared at me, as her lips curved into a smile. Then he was gone. I tried to call after him, tried to tell him about the blood, but my voice wouldn't work anymore. I was alone. The cramping got worse. A sharp, tearing pain that made breathing impossible. I looked down. Blood pooled on the floor beneath me. Dark. Too much. My baby. I tried to move. Tried to reach for something, anything. But my body wouldn't respond. The room tilted and my legs gave out. I slid to the floor in slow motion. The blood warm beneath me. Then everything went black. - I opened my eyes and gasped. I was on the floor. Blood everywhere. My blood. Soaking through my dress, pooled beneath me, dark and thick. How long had I been unconscious? I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn't hold me. I collapsed back down. My baby. I had to get to the hospital. I had to try. I started crawling, my knees scraping against the floor, but I didn't care. If there was even the smallest chance my baby was still alive, I'd crawl through broken glass to reach it. My phone. I needed my phone. I found it in the living room, shattered. James had destroyed it. I had no way to call for help. Tears streamed down my face. Pain radiated from my abdomen, my knees, but worst of all, from somewhere deep in my chest that had nothing to do with physical injury. I kept crawling. I had to get to my car. Had to drive myself to the road, flag down a cab and get to the hospital. It took forever to find my keys. I grabbed them with shaking hands. Getting into the car was agony. Every movement sent fresh waves of pain through me. My dress was soaked through. More blood on the seat. I didn't care. I started the engine, my hands trembling so badly I could barely grip the wheel. Just get to the main road. Just get help. My vision kept blurring. I blinked hard, trying to clear it. My mouth was dry as sand, lips cracked, throat burning with thirst. The driveway seemed endless. Finally, the main road. I could see it. Just a little further. My vision dimmed at the edges and everything was going dark. No. Not yet. Please. I didn't see the post until I hit it. The airbag exploded into my face. There was pain, and then darkness. - I became aware of white lights, chemical smell, and beeping machines. I opened my eyes slowly. Everything hurt. My forehead throbbed. My arms felt heavy. Someone was holding my hand. I turned my head. James sat beside the bed, gripping my fingers like they were the only thing keeping him anchored. His eyes were red and wet. "You're awake." His voice cracked with relief. "Thank God, you're awake." I looked to my right. Patience stood there. One of the nurses I'd worked with for years. Her eyes were red too. "My baby." The words scraped out of my throat. "How is my baby?" Patience's face crumpled. She took my other hand, squeezed it gently. "I'm so sorry, Tamsin." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Your baby didn't make it." The words landed. I felt them hit. Then I felt nothing. "The crash?" I asked. My voice sounded flat. "I lost it in the crash?" "The pregnancy was already compromised from the bleeding." Patience's professional mask was slipping. I could see her grief underneath. "If you'd gotten to the hospital sooner, we might have been able to save it. But the accident..." She trailed off. I nodded. "I see." "But you can try again," She added too quickly. Like she needed to fill the silence with something hopeful. "Your womb is intact. There's no reason you can't conceive again when you're..." "Thank you, Patience." I cut her off gently. "I appreciate it." I closed my eyes. Heard her moving around the room, checking monitors, and adjusting things I couldn't see. Then the door clicked shut. I opened my eyes again and looked at James. He was still holding my hand like he had the right to. He wiped his face with his free hand. "I'm so sorry, Tammy. I was coming back for you when..." "James." He stopped. Looked at me with those red, desperate eyes. "It's enough," I said quietly. "Let's get a divorce."
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Too Late To Beg EPILOGUE
TAMSIN Six months after my own wedding, I stood at the back of an exquisite garden terrace and watched my sister marry the man who had loved her quietly for most of his adult life, and I cried so hard that Leo had to produce three consecutive handkerchiefs from his jacket pocket. He had come prepared. He had, in fact, spent the morning preparing. I had watched him fold four handkerchiefs and distribute them across the inside pockets of his suit with the methodical foresight of a man who had been married to me for six months and had learned certain things about my relationship with significant occasions. I had told him four was excessive. He had said nothing, only raised an eyebrow, and tucked the fourth one in anyway. He had been right. I was enormous. There was no other word for it. I was more than eight months pregnant with a boy who seemed to have decided, somewhere around the sixth month, that he required significantly more space than the average human infant. My st
Too Late To Beg Chapter 114
LEO I had been standing at the altar for eleven minutes. Colby had informed me of this fact with the quiet, precise satisfaction of a man who had decided that his primary duty as best man was to provide a running commentary on everything I was doing wrong. "Eleven minutes," he said, from just behind my right shoulder. "You keep shifting your weight. The guests can see you shifting your weight." "I am not shifting my weight." "You have shifted your weight four times in the past two minutes. He counted." "Colby." "I am simply saying that for a man who has been waiting so many years for this day, you are remarkably bad at standing still." I turned my head and looked at him. He was immaculate in his charcoal suit, his pocket square precisely folded, his expression carrying the mild, amused composure of a man who was thoroughly enjoying himself at my expense. He had been doing this for approximately three hours, beginning from the moment I had appeared in the hotel suite w
Too Late To Beg Chapter 113
TAMSIN I had been pacing the hospital corridor for forty minutes. Poppy had told me, twice, to sit down. I had sat down both times, held it for approximately ninety seconds, and then risen and resumed pacing. The corridor was long enough that I could cover a decent distance before I had to turn around, and the turning around gave me something to do with my body while my mind refused to settle. Whitney was sitting in one of the corridor chairs with her legs crossed and her hands folded neatly in her lap, watching me with the expression of a woman who had decided that intervention was futile and observation was more interesting. "You are going to wear a groove in the floor," she said. "Let her," Poppy said, from the chair beside her. "It is keeping her from doing something worse." "What could be worse than this?" "The last time she got news in a hospital, she nearly had a surgical procedure she was going to regret for the rest of her life." Whitney conceded this with a small no
Too Late To Beg Chapter 112
JAMES Mary's voice on the phone was careful and quiet, the way her voice always was when she was trying not to cause trouble. "Mr. Whitmore. I am sorry to bother you. I only wanted to let you know because I did not want you to hear it from someone else. Your wife came to my house today. She came to warn me to stay away from you." I stopped what I was doing. "My wife." "Yes, sir." "Mary. I am not married." A pause. "But, sir. She said she was Tamsin. She said she was Mrs. Whitmore." I was already reaching for my coat. "I am coming to you now." I left the office without explanation and drove to her house. I drove with my jaw tight and my mind working through the possibilities, and the more I worked through them, the more certain I became. Tamsin would never do this. The Tamsin I knew, the Tamsin I had loved for years, the woman who had stood in a courtroom and dismantled our marriage with her chin lifted and her voice steady, would never lower herself to driving
Too Late To Beg Chapter 111
BRIDGET Two weeks. Two weeks without a single word from James Whitmore. I had made myself at home in his villa. I had slept in his bed. I had used his kitchen and his staff and his swimming pool. I had sat at the head of his dining table every evening and eaten meals that his cook had prepared, and I had told myself that this was only the beginning. That when he came back, he would come back to me. That the anger he had expressed the morning after the divorce would soften, the way men's anger always softened. But two weeks was a very long time to wait. On the fourteenth day, I paid someone to find out where he was. The photograph that came back to me two days later stopped me cold. A girl. A young girl in what appeared to be a private hospital room. James was sitting on the edge of her bed. His hand was over hers. He was looking at her face with an expression I had seen on him exactly once before. He had looked at Tamsin that way. I sat at James's dining table with the photo
Too Late To Beg Chapter 110
WHITNEY Colby was avoiding me. It had begun the moment the words had left his mouth in that hotel room. The moment he had told me he was head over heels in love with me and then walked out of the door without waiting for a response. Ever since then, he had behaved like a man who deeply regretted having spoken at all. He would not meet my eyes. He would not stay in a room with me longer than necessary. On the flight home, he had buried himself in his phone and answered every attempt I made at conversation with single words. That night, back in my own bed in my parents' house, I could not sleep. I lay awake and stared at the ceiling and thought about what he had said. The funny thing, the thing I had not told a single living soul, was that when I had been a teenager, I had nursed an enormous, hopeless crush on Colby. He had been everything. Clever. Handsome. Steady. Kind in the particular way that made you feel safe rather than smothered. He had fit, point for point, the des
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