All Chapters of When Forbidden Feels This Good: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

94 Chapters

CHAPTER 60: The Attitude For The Job

Scarlett’s POV"Okay," I said."Okay?""Don't look so surprised. You said something that made sense. I'm acknowledging it."The corner of his mouth moved, barely."High praise," he said.We sat together in the afternoon light, the red dress lying between us on the white coverlet like a punctuation mark, and neither of us spoke for a while, and the silence was the kind that sits between two people who have said a great deal and still have more to say but have agreed without discussing it to let the afternoon hold it for them.Then Lee knocked on the open door.She was dressed practically, in dark trousers and a fitted top, her hair pulled back from her face with the no-nonsense efficiency she reserved for working hours. She had a leather case over one shoulder and a tablet in her hand, and the expression of someone who had left sentiment in a different room."Preparation starts now," she said. "Scarlett, I need an hour."Cade stood immediately. "I'll be in my office."He looked at me o

CHAPTER 61: Blood Everywhere!

Scarlett’s POV "You're right," she said. "I'm sorry. That was clinical." She held my gaze. "Do you need to stop for today?"I considered it. Really considered it, because she was asking genuinely, and I knew, without any particular certainty about much else, that the answer had to be honest."No," I said. "Keep going."She nodded. Picked up the pen.We kept going.By the time the afternoon began to shade toward evening, my head was full of choreography and contingencies, and the specific timbre of Blake Morrison's ego, and my body had begun registering, somewhere underneath the concentration, a discomfort I'd been ignoring since mid-afternoon.Not nausea, which I'd become accustomed to navigating. Something different. Something lower and more diffuse, a dull pressure that pulled at my attention without quite demanding it, the kind of physical sensation that exists in the background of awareness rather than at the front.I shifted in the chair.Lee noticed."Are you alright?""Fine. J

CHAPTER 62: Shocking Revelation

Scarlett’s POV My mother was not a woman who panicked easily. She had raised me alone for years and had managed grief and loneliness and every ordinary crisis of motherhood with the kind of steady practicality that made her formidable. But the sight of blood did something to her that nothing else did, some ancient maternal alarm tripping over everything else, and the sound that came out of her was not a scream but something worse than a scream, a high, caught, desperate intake of breath that filled the room."Scarlett. Oh God. Scarlett, what is happening?" She was across the room before the sentence was finished, her hands on my arms, her eyes moving over me with the frantic assessment of someone trying to locate the wound. "You're bleeding. Why are you bleeding? Cade, why is she bleeding?""Mom." I tried to keep my voice steady. "Mom, it's okay. We've called a doctor.""It is not okay; you're bleeding. That is the opposite of okay. Who did they call? How far away are they? We should

CHAPTER 63: I Have To Leave

Scarlett's POV"Why didn't you tell me?!"My mother's voice cut through the fog of pain and medication, sharp enough to make me flinch even though I knew the anger wasn't directed at me. I could hear her from the other side of the room, could feel the fury and betrayal radiating off her in waves that made the air itself feel heavy."Honey, I am so sorry." James's voice was placating, almost pleading. "I would have told you if it was easy for me to say. I thought I was going to handle this by myself, protect everyone without worrying you."His defense was weak. Even through my haze, I could tell that. And my mother knew him better than anyone. That excuse wasn't going to be enough.She scoffed, the sound bitter and broken. "So when exactly were you going to tell me? Hmm? When she's in labor? When the baby drops? When were you planning to mention that my daughter is pregnant and has been hiding it from me?"The words made my stomach clench. My eyes were still closed, my body too heavy t

CHAPTER 64: Mission Postponed

Scarlett’s POV " I have work in New York for two weeks. A new project for a military general. It's massive, and I have to be there in person."The world tilted sideways."What?" I tried to sit up, but the IV pulled, and Cade gently pushed me back down. "Why didn't you tell me before now? Why are you telling me like this?""Because I just got the email this morning. He approved my design this morning, but he needs me there immediately to oversee the construction." Cade's jaw was tight, his words coming faster. "It's a government contract, Scarlett. Millions of dollars. I can't turn it down.""When do you leave?" But I already knew. Could see it in his eyes."Sunrise tomorrow."My heart sank. Dropped straight through the hospital bed, through the floor, into some dark place where hope went to die.Two weeks. He'd be gone for two weeks.I didn't know if I was even breathing anymore. The monitor beside my bed started beeping faster, matching my accelerating pulse."How do I survive this

CHAPTER 65: No Goodbye!

Scarlett’s POVHe was gone before I was fully awake.That was the worst part, I think. Not the leaving itself, because I had known it was coming, had spent the whole night pressed against his side, counting his heartbeats precisely because I knew the morning would take them away. The worst part was that I had drifted into sleep somewhere in the small hours, exhausted and medicated and finally, briefly, at peace, and when I opened my eyes, the space beside me was cold, and the house was making the particular quality of silence that meant something significant had been removed from it.I lay still for a moment, listening.Nothing. No footsteps. No shower running in the west wing. No distant sound of his voice on a phone call, that low, authoritative murmur that had become, without my permission, one of the sounds I associated with safety.I got up and went to the window.His truck was gone from the driveway. The gravel where it had sat was slightly disturbed, two shallow parallel lines

CHAPTER 66: The Note!

Scarlett’s POVHis handwriting was exactly as I remembered it from the construction site blueprints I had glimpsed and from the note he had left that first morning after the truck – large and direct and not trying to be anything it wasn't.Don't send her away. Allow her to take care of you.I couldn't bear to see your wet eyes; that was why I left without a kiss.I left my platinum card under your pillow. The PIN is your date of birth. I know you have more than enough, but let me spoil you while I am away.XOXO, my angel.I read it twice.Then I read it a third time, standing in the middle of my bedroom in yesterday's clothes with a drip mark still fading on my right hand and my heart doing something so complicated I didn't have a word for it, this specific combination of grief and warmth and the particular ache of loving someone who is not present, who has chosen to be absent for reasons that are real and valid and do not make the absence any easier to inhabit.My angel.Something li

CHAPTER 67: The Big Reveal

Scarlett’s POV"Good morning, Mum," I said. "It's nothing. It's just a stupid note I wrote to myself in Italy."She looked at me for a moment with the expression that meant she did not believe a single word of what I had just said but had decided, for reasons of her own, to allow it to pass."Ok, baby," she said.And then she stood and crossed the room and pulled me into her arms.She held me the way she had held me when I was seven years old and had fallen off my bicycle, the way she had held me at my father's funeral when I was thirteen and didn't know how to cry in public, the way she had held me every time the world had been too large and I had been too small for it. With her whole body, both arms, nothing held back, her chin resting on the top of my head.I stood inside the embrace and felt, despite everything, despite the note in my pocket and the empty driveway and the IV mark on my arm and all the enormous complicated things living inside this house, the specific irreplaceable

CHAPTER 68: What I Wasn’t Prepared For

Scarlett’s POVThe clinic was private and quiet, the kind with warm lighting, real art on the walls, and receptionists who spoke in measured, reassuring tones, the kind that cost a great deal of money and was designed to make you forget that. My mother had chosen it with the focused intentionality she brought to everything she decided to do properly, which meant it was almost certainly the best facility within a twenty-mile radius.She sat beside me in the waiting room and held my hand without commentary, which was exactly the right thing to do. I was grateful for the silence. I had been doing a great deal of talking in the last twenty-four hours, a great deal of confessing and explaining and managing other people's responses to the things I confessed and explained, and the silence of the waiting room felt like water after a long time without it."Do you want me to come in with you?" she asked when the sonographer appeared at the door with my name. "I could hold your hand while they c

CHAPTER 69: Welcome To New York

Cade’s POVThe phone had been in my hand for most of the flight.Not doing anything useful with it. Not making calls or sending messages or reviewing the project files I had loaded onto it specifically so I would have something constructive to occupy the four hours between Texas and New York. Just holding it, screen dark, the weight of it in my palm a kind of anchor, a physical point of contact with the life I had left behind at sunrise.She hadn't messaged.No debit alert from the platinum card, which meant she hadn't found it yet, or had found it and was ignoring it out of stubborn principle, which would be entirely consistent with who she was. No voicemail. No missed call. Nothing on any platform, not even the brief, functional kind of message that just said I am alive and the house has not burned down, which was genuinely all I needed.I checked the phone again at cruising altitude.Nothing.Again, over whatever state we were passing over,t the captain announced, and I didn't regi

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