The sliding doors of Haven Crest Center exhale a breath of sterile air against my face as I step inside, a cold reminder that whatever fragile peace I’ve been pretending to have is about to crack. Again.
Two days. It’s been only three days since Caden agreed to the fake engagement—three days of waking up in his penthouse guest room while pretending the memories of four years ago weren’t wrapping around my throat like ivy. Three days of telling myself that this is all for Anna. Only for Anna.
And yet… each night I’d lain awake in that impossibly soft bed just down the hall from him, listening to the faint sound of him pacing or talking on the phone or undressing on the other side of the wall—my resolve had eroded grain by grain.
Three days, and I already feel dangerously close to falling again.
Which is why I’m here, at the one place that still reminds me why I can’t.
My boots tap against the hospital tile, each step echoing between my ears. The scent hits me immediately—antiseptic, faint lemon, something metallic beneath it all. Memories rise like ghosts: long nights sitting curled in vinyl chairs, the steadybeep of monitors, the quiet agony of waiting for news that never came.
Anna.
My throat thickens. I fasten my grip on the paper bag in my hand—a new book and the lotion her nurses like to use on her hands. It’s ridiculous, but it makes me feel like I’m doing something, anything. Keeping some piece of her alive while she sleeps in her endless twilight.
As I walk deeper into the wing, the voices of nurses drift around me, calm and gentle, but my heart pounds harder with each step. Because coming here means facing the truth I’ve been running from in Caden’s apartment:
I’m not over him.
I never was.
And sharing a roof with him again, even temporarily, is like reopening a wound I spent four years pretending had healed.
I hit the elevator button and let my eyes slide shut.
It was supposed to be simple, I remind myself. Get his help. Give him the one thing he couldn’t refuse. Save Anna. Leave.
Leave him.
Again.
But even the thought of walking away once I have my freedom and Anna is safe sends a fresh wave of nausea rolling through me. Back then I’d told myself he’d be better off. That disappearing was mercy—mercy for him, mercy for Anna.
Now? The decision feels like taking a blade to my own chest.
The elevator dings. I open my eyes, step inside, and press the button for the third floor.
My reflection in the elevator doors looks tired. Older. Not by much, but enough. Enough to see the toll of sacrifice etched around my eyes, the cracks from stretching myself too thin to cover both duty and grief.
And beneath it all… a flicker of something I’m scared to name.
Hope. Longing. A desperate, foolish ache.
I swallow hard.
Caden agreed because I manipulated his grief, I reminded myself harshly. Not because he wants you. Not the way you want him. He’s doing this for the child you promised. The child he’s always wanted.
But those words don’t soothe. They only bruise deeper.
The elevator slows, doors opening to the familiar hallway leading to long-term care. I step out, each motion purposeful, mechanical. Because if I let myself feel too much now, I won’t make it to Anna’s room before falling apart.
I pass the nurses’ station, nodding to a few familiar faces. Most of them remember me—I practically lived here before my aunt started sending me across the country and the world on her personal campaign to improve our family’s reputation. Before she forced me to abandon everything that mattered.
Including Caden.
Even now, the memory burns. The day she discovered Caden, and I were getting close—her face sharp as broken glass, her voice dripping venom as she reminded me exactly who held Anna’s lifeline. “Your priorities are confused,” she’d said coldly. “Sentimentality will get your sister killed. You will go where I send you, or I’ll see to it you never see Anna again.”
I still remember the way the room spun. How I’d had to sit down because my knees couldn’t hold me.
