“I’m his fiancée,” she said.
The air left my lungs.
Not dramatically.
Not in a gasp anyone would notice.
It simply vanished.
Her left hand shifted on the coffee cup.
That was when I saw it.
The ring.
A diamond catching fluorescent hospital light.
Not huge.
Not flashy.
Beautiful in a normal, warm, chosen kind of way.
The kind of ring a man bought when he wanted a life without ghosts.
The kind of ring a woman wore when she believed she had been picked.
Fiancée.
Dylan’s fiancée.
For the second time that night, the world dropped out from under me.
The first time had been when they said Dylan Degan.
This was worse.
Because blood I knew how to fight.
This?
There was no pressure to apply. No transfusion to start. No surgeon to call. No protocol for learning the man whose name had lived under your skin for years had placed a ring on another woman’s hand.
Georgia looked at me with wet eyes. “Did he say anything? Before surgery?”
My body went still.
Beautiful.
Is that you?
Destiny.
Stay with me.
The words were mine.
Not because I had any claim to them.
