All Chapters of The Accident Was No Mistake: My CEO Husband Wants Me Back : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ROMAN“Valerie.” I kept my voice steady, even though something in my chest had already gone tight and cold at the look on her face. “What happened?”“I—” She stopped, started again, the phone still clutched in her hand. “It’s my mom. She’s at the hospital. She fell, and I need to—”“I’ll take you.”“I’ll get a cab.” She was already moving, grabbing her keys off the counter, hands visibly unsteady. “Don’t worry about it.”“It’s almost eight on a Thursday, Valerie. Getting a cab outside your building right now could take twenty minutes you clearly don’t have.” I was already reaching for my own keys, done arguing before she had the chance to. “You said it’s urgent. Let’s go.”She looked at me for half a second, something warring behind her eyes… pride, stubbornness, the leftover sting of everything she’d just said to me in that hallway and then, apparently, the urgency won.“Fine.” She brushed past me, already moving toward the stairs. “Fine. Let’s go.”The ride was quiet. She sat rigid

VALERIESound came back before anything else did… a steady, rhythmic beeping somewhere to my left, low voices drifting past outside a door I couldn’t quite place yet, the distant hum of something mechanical that took me a moment to recognize as an air vent.My head ached in a way that made even blinking feel like an effort, a dull, heavy pressure sitting right behind my eyes, radiating outward in slow, uneven pulses.I became aware, gradually, of the stiff pillow beneath my head, the thin blanket pulled up over me, the particular antiseptic smell that could only mean one place.I forced my eyes open.The ceiling swam into focus first, fluorescent light softened by a dimmer switch somewhere. I turned my head slightly, and the movement made my vision blur before sharpening again, and that was when I saw him.Roman shot up out of the chair beside my bed the instant he noticed my eyes were open, moving fast enough that the chair legs scraped loudly against the floor.“Hey — hey.” He was a

ROMANValerie looked at the bag of food like it might explode.Then she looked at Miles.Then at me.Then back at the bag.“Thank you,” she said, to no one in particular, which felt deliberate.Miles recovered first. He unzipped his jacket halfway and glanced around the room with the practical urgency of a man determined not to be outusefulled in a hospital. “Do you need water? The air in these places dries you out.”“I can get it,” I said.He was already moving to the side counter. “I’ve got it.”There was a disposable cup stack near the sink. He took one, filled it, and brought it to her. Valerie accepted it with both hands and drank, mostly, I suspected, to end the exchange.I sat back in the chair I had claimed earlier and watched him hover.He was good at hovering. The concerned kind. The kind that made nurses assume you belonged there. I hated that it was effective.“Slow,” he told her gently. “Small sips.”“She’s had water before,” I said.Miles looked at me. “I’m aware.”Valer

VALERIEZoey showed up a little after four, a paper bag of fruit balanced against one hip, letting herself in with the spare key I’d given her weeks ago without even bothering to knock first.“I come bearing vitamins,” she announced, setting the bag down on my counter with a flourish. “Figured you’d forgotten to eat anything that wasn’t hospital food, so I took it upon myself to introduce some actual fruit into your diet.”“I appreciate the concern for my diet specifically, of all things.”“Someone has to.” She started unpacking the bag… strawberries, a pineapple already cut and containered, grapes still on the stem glancing up at me properly for the first time since she’d walked in. “How are you feeling? You look better than I expected, honestly. I was picturing something closer to a horror movie extra after you told me what happened.”“Better,” I said, settling onto one of my kitchen stools. “I’m fine. Headache’s basically gone. Just tired.”Zoey studied me a moment longer than the

RomanThe problem with the transporter, if you actually thought about it for more than five seconds, was continuity of self.People liked the clean version. Step onto a pad, dissolve into light, reappear somewhere else in a uniform that never wrinkled. Very elegant. Very convenient. But if the machine disassembled you molecule by molecule and rebuilt a copy at the destination, then what arrived on the other side was not you in any way that should have comforted anyone. It was a very confident replica with your memories and your rank and your unfortunate haircut. The original was gone. Ended. Converted into energy and optimism.Which meant every successful transport was, arguably, a polite murder-suicide with better branding.And if that was true, then every main character in Starfleet had died hundreds of times and just kept reporting for duty out of institutional momentum. No one ever discussed this properly. They discussed warp cores and diplomatic incidents and whether Klingons had