I don't know whether to laugh or cry right now... maybe both.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes. Of course.”
I start to follow him, brain still spinning.
“Wait,” Julian calls out.
Before I can stop him, he reaches up and lifts Graham’s jacket; the air feels colder instantly, and then Julian drapes his own over me instead.
It’s heavier. Warmer. It smells faintly of him, clean, expensive, unmistakable.
I don’t have the energy to argue.
I don’t even look at him as I follow Dr. Teller toward the nurses’ station, heart racing, caught between anger and hope,
Because right now, my mother is more important than everything.
Chapter 24 - Julian
Hospitals strip people down to their truth.
No velvet or silk. No opulence or people vying to show their worth with a donation.
No champagne or curated lighting or flattering shadows.
Just fluorescent glare and the low, relentless hum of machines that don’t care how much money you have.
Rowan’s text directs me to the ICU waiting area. I follow it through corridors that smell stale and yet somehow sharp, past families huddled together with coffee cups clutched like talismans, past nurses moving with the kind of efficiency that comes from seeing too much of this.
Every step feels wrong.
Not physically, but... emotionally.
Like I’ve walked out of my own world and into someone else’s.
And then I see him, and my whole body goes tense.
Graham Whitaker is pacing in the waiting area, jacket off, sleeves rolled to his forearms, phone pressed to his ear. He doesn’t look like a billionaire right now. He looks like a man who is worried. A man who is worried about someone he cares about.
And he is here for Lucy.
He ends his call and turns, sensing me.
We stare at each other, and I have the sudden urge to hit something or ... someone.
“What are you doing here, North?” he asks, tone clipped.
I step closer. “I could ask you the same thing. Or are you so desperate now you’re poaching dates?”
A corner of his mouth lifts. Not amused. Not offended. Just… aware.
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he says. “But you made it very easy for me to be here for her.”
A low, unfamiliar heat rolls through me. I clench and unclench my fists to try and ease this unfamiliar need to punch something or... someone.
Then Lucy steps out of the ICU hallway, and everything in me shifts.
The first thing I notice is not her beauty.
