Alle Kapitel von 37 Times You Called My Name : Kapitel 111 – Kapitel 120

MIA POV The hospital felt different in the morning light. Extra security stood at the private elevator and again at the door to Mom’s new room. Two men in plain dark suits who nodded once at Ryder and then looked straight through me. Inside, the machines still hummed, but the numbers on the monitors looked steadier than the day before. Mom was sitting up against the pillows, a little more color in her face, a half-finished cup of tea on the tray. She smiled when we walked in. “There’s my two favorite people. You both look like you fought a war overnight.” I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Just a long night. How are you feeling?” “Stronger. The doctors keep using the word ‘promising.’ I like that word.” Her eyes flicked to Ryder, who had stayed near the foot of the bed. “Thank you again. For all of this.” He inclined his head. “Focus on getting better. Everything else is handled.”

MIA POV The confession followed me into sleep like a second heartbeat. *I don’t know how to stop wanting you.* I woke to the memory of those words sitting on my tongue, heavy and irreversible. Morning light cut across the apartment in thin gold lines. For a long time I lay still, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide whether I regretted saying them aloud. The answer refused to settle into anything simple. My phone lit up at 7:02. *Lang’s last accessible accounts are gone. Two more distributors folded overnight. The noise is dying. Hospital residence remains locked down. Car at 8.* No mention of what I had said in the garage. No pressure. Just the continuing machinery of his protection, steady and relentless. I dressed slowly, chose the most ordinary clothes I owned, and met him downstairs. He looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with a single night. When I slid into the car he glanced at me once, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, then started the en

MIA POV The decision not to press the button followed me into the next day like a stone in my pocket. I woke restless, the memory of standing in the dark hallway still vivid—the motion lights clicking off, the number 0337 burning behind my eyes, the quiet certainty that he was awake one floor above, keeping his word and waiting. I had turned around. I had locked the door. And for the first time the choice felt less like fear and more like a line I was drawing for myself. My phone lit up at 7:14. *No new contact. Residence at 9. Office after. Your move still stands.* Four words that somehow carried the entire weight of the night before. *Your move still stands.* He was still giving me the space he had promised. The restraint was almost harder to bear than pressure would have been. I met him in the garage. He looked me over once, quietly assessing, then opened the passenger door without comment.

MIA POV I woke to the low, steady sound of his breathing and the pale gray light of early morning spilling across the penthouse floor. For a long moment I didn’t move. My head was still on Ryder’s shoulder, his arm heavy around me, the warmth of his body seeping into mine through the thin fabric of my shirt. The city beyond the glass was just beginning to wake—distant traffic, the first thin lines of sun catching on steel and glass. Everything felt suspended, as if the night had not yet decided whether to release us. I should have pulled away the second consciousness returned. I didn’t. I lay there cataloguing the details I had spent years trying to forget and the new ones I had never allowed myself to notice: the faint scent of his skin, the controlled rise and fall of his chest, the way his hand rested against my side like it had a right to be there. The same hand that had once held my diary up for an entire arena to hear. The same hand that had pinned my wrists to his de

MIA POV I woke to the soft gray light of another morning in his penthouse and the quiet realization that I had stopped counting how many nights I had chosen to stay. My head was on Ryder’s shoulder again. His arm rested around me with the same careful weight as the nights before—present, steady, asking for nothing I hadn’t already given. For a long moment I didn’t move. I simply listened to him breathe and let the new reality settle deeper into my bones. I had used the code. I had come upstairs. I had fallen asleep against him more than once. And I was no longer pretending any of it was an accident. Ryder woke the instant I shifted. His eyes opened clear and immediate, the same way they always had. “Still here,” he said. Not a question. A quiet acknowledgment. “Still here,” I answered. Something eased in his expression—small, almost invisible, but real. He didn’t reach for me. He simply waited while I sat up and put a careful foot of space between us on the wide