LILY'S POV
Her phone was vibrating.
Lily jerked awake to the sound, her heart already racing for reasons her brain hadn't caught up to yet. The darkness of her apartment pressed in around her. The alarm clock on her nightstand glowed 2:13 AM in angry red numbers.
Who calls at 2 AM?
She grabbed her phone with trembling hands. The screen was too bright, burning her half-asleep eyes. Daniel's name flashed across it. Daniel Blackwell. Ethan's best friend. The only person from that world who hadn't completely written her out of existence after the divorce.
Her stomach dropped before she even answered.
"Daniel?" Her voice came out hoarse from sleep. "What's wrong?"
The silence on the other end lasted maybe two seconds, but it felt like forever. Then she heard him breathing, and something about that breath told her everything was about to change.
"Lily, don't panic." He sounded shaken. Scared. Daniel never sounded scared. "There's been an accident."
Time stopped.
"Ethan's been in an accident."
The words didn't make sense. They were English words in the right order but they weren't connecting properly in her brain. Accident. Ethan. Two things that shouldn't go together because Ethan was always in control. Ethan was the guy who never made mistakes, who drove expensive cars too fast but with absolute confidence.
"He's alive," Daniel said quickly, like he could hear her spiraling through the phone. "Lily, listen to me. He's alive. But he's hurt pretty bad and you need to come to the hospital right now."
"I..." Her mouth was dry. "Daniel, I can't. We're divorced. I'm not... I'm not his emergency contact anymore. You should call his mother or Rebecca or..."
"I don't care if you're his emergency contact or not. He's been asking for you since he woke up. Asking for Lily. Over and over. Please. Just come."
Asking for her.
The two of them were divorced. Officially. Legally. She'd signed papers that made her a stranger to him six months ago. He'd made it very clear during those months that she was nothing to him anymore. Just a mistake he'd corrected.
But he'd asked for her while he was hurt.
"Which hospital?" Her hands were already moving, reaching for her jacket before her brain had finished processing. The old jacket, the one she wore to work at the gallery. Worn denim that smelled like paint and coffee.
Daniel rattled off the name. City General. The same hospital where she'd had her appendix removed when she was nineteen. The same hospital where Ethan had sat beside her bed for sixteen hours straight, refusing to leave even when visiting hours ended.
She was out the door in thirty seconds.
The stairwell of her apartment building was cold and dark. Lily's breath came out in panicked clouds. Her car was parked on the street, an old Honda that had seen better days. Nothing like Ethan's sleek German sports car that he loved more than he'd ever loved her. She fumbled with the keys, dropped them once, picked them up with shaking hands.
The drive to City General Hospital normally took thirty-five minutes. Lily did it in twenty-two.
She ran red lights. Didn't even notice. Her mind was spinning through possibilities, each one worse than the last. What kind of accident? How bad was he hurt? Why was he asking for her when he hated her? Unless he didn't know yet. Unless his brain had somehow blocked out the last six months of cruelty and divorce papers and cold words that still echoed in her nightmares.
The hospital loomed up in front of her, all harsh fluorescent lights and emergency room chaos even at this ungodly hour. She parked badly, taking up too many spaces, didn't care. Her legs felt weird as she ran toward the entrance, like they didn't quite belong to her body.
Daniel found her in the waiting room before she could ask anyone where to go. He looked like he'd thrown clothes on in the dark. His hair was messed up. His eyes were red-rimmed.
"Thank God," he said, pulling her into a hug. She was too shocked to hug back at first, then her arms came around him because she needed someone to hold her up. "Thank God you came."
"How bad?" She pulled away to look at his face. "Tell me the truth, Daniel."
"Bad. But alive. That's the main thing." He steered her toward the ICU, one hand on her back like he was afraid she'd collapse. Maybe she would. Her legs felt unreliable. "He was hit by a truck. On the highway. Another driver said his car looked like it had been through a crusher."
Lily made a small sound. She didn't mean to. It just came out.
"The doctors are surprised he survived at all," Daniel continued, his voice low. "He has two broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, a compound fracture in his left arm, and some pretty serious head trauma. But nothing that should have killed him."
Head trauma.
The words landed differently than the others.
"He's conscious?" she asked.
"Off and on. When he is, he's asking for you. Doesn't ask about his company. Doesn't ask about his mother. Just keeps saying your name like..."
Daniel stopped talking. They'd reached a set of double doors that said ICU AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
"Like what?" Lily whispered.
"Like you're the only thing real to him," Daniel finished quietly. "Like he's scared you're not going to be there when he wakes up."
A nurse spotted them and came over with a clipboard. She was tall, professional, had the kind of tired face that came from working night shifts for too long. She asked if Lily was family. Daniel answered before Lily could. Said she was Ethan's wife. Lily wanted to correct him. She wasn't his wife anymore. But the nurse was already gesturing for them to follow.
The hallway seemed impossibly long. Lily's heart was beating so hard she thought it might break through her ribs. She could hear machines beeping from various rooms. The smell of antiseptic and something else she didn't want to identify made her stomach churn.
Then they stopped in front of a room.
She could see him through the glass window before they even went in.
Ethan was connected to machines that beeped and monitored and kept him alive. His left arm was immobilized in a cast. His face was bruised, almost unrecognizable. There was a bandage wrapped around his head. But his chest was rising and falling, which meant he was breathing, which meant he was still here.
He was still here.
The nurse opened the door and Lily stepped into the room and everything changed.
Ethan's eyes were closed. He looked like he was sleeping, except sleeping people didn't have all these tubes and wires attached to them. He looked broken. Shattered. Like someone had taken the powerful, confident man she'd married and destroyed him from the inside out.
Daniel touched her shoulder. "I'll give you a minute. I need to find Dr. Mitchell anyway. She wanted to talk to you about his condition as soon as you got here."
Lily barely heard him leave. Her whole world had narrowed down to Ethan's face and the machines keeping him alive.
She pulled a chair close to his bed and sat down. Her hand reached out before she could stop it, hovering over his good arm. She couldn't touch him. That would make this real. That would mean she was here and he was hurt and she was already falling into him all over again.
She touched him anyway.
His skin was warm. That surprised her. She'd expected him to feel cold and distant, even unconscious. But he was warm and alive and when her fingers brushed his arm, something shifted in his sleeping face. Like some part of him recognized her even through the pain medication and concussion.
"Don't leave." His voice was barely a whisper. Hoarse from the breathing tube. "Please don't leave me again."
Lily's chest tightened. She was about to answer when the door opened and a woman in a white coat stepped in.
Dr. Mitchell. Early forties, calm face, but her eyes held something Lily couldn't quite read. Something that looked like pity mixed with concern.
"You must be Lily," the doctor said. Not a question. More like she already knew exactly who Lily was and why that mattered.
"Yes," Lily managed. "Is he going to be okay?"
Dr. Mitchell closed the door behind her. The soft click of the latch seemed louder than it should be.
"That depends," she said quietly, "on whether you're prepared for what's about to happen. When Ethan wakes up, he won't remember the last two years. And he certainly won't remember that you two are divorced."
The room tilted.
"What are you saying?" Lily whispered, even though she already knew. Even though she could feel the trap opening beneath her feet.
Dr. Mitchell walked closer, her expression grave. "He thinks you're still married to him. And when he wakes up, he's going to believe you're his wife. The question is whether you're going to tell him the truth or let him believe it."
Behind the doctor, Ethan's monitor beeped steadily. Alive. Still fighting. Still here.
And completely helpless to remember why being here with her was the worst thing that could happen.