Too Late, Mr. Sterling—I’m Marrying Your Rival Chapter 06

“You know me?” My voice came out thin.

Rhys’s mouth curved, weak but unmistakably amused. “I do. For a very long time.”

“I’ve never met you. I’d remember.” I would. A man like this, you’d remember.

He closed his eyes, like he’d just come home after a long trip. “You were eight. You went into Gull Cove after a seal pup you thought was drowning.”

The world tilted.

“It wasn’t a seal pup,” he went on softly. “It was a black trash bag. You couldn’t swim back. I pulled you

out.”

The memory crashed over me like that freezing water.

I’d fought with Mom that day. Stormed down to the cove alone. Saw something dark bobbing in the waves and thought, it’s alive, it needs me. I jumped.

The cold had stolen my breath. I’d gone under, again and again, screaming.

Then a boy-older, skinny, soaked-dragged me to the rocks. He wiped my tears with his sleeve.

“Don’t cry,” he’d said. “I’ll carry you home.”

He carried me up the cliff path on his back. I sobbed into his neck the whole way and fell asleep before I

got his name.

His eyes had been amber.

A week later, Mom took me away from Harbor Point. I never came back.

Until now.

“It was you,” I breathed.

“It was me.” He opened his eyes. “My grandmother had a house here. I spent summers. After you left, I came back every year and looked for you.” A faint, self-mocking laugh. “Then I grew up. Then I read in the Times that Dr. Ava Hale had married Damien Sterling.”

His fingers curled against the sheet.

“I heard he didn’t treat you well.”

It wasn’t a question.

My throat closed.

Three years. Not one person had ever said that out loud. The magazines called me lucky. His mother called me grateful. Damien called me weak.

And this man, who’d known me for one afternoon twenty years ago, saw straight through me.

“I’m fine now,” I said, turning to adjust his IV so he wouldn’t see my eyes. “I’m good here.”

“Good.” Pure relief in his voice. “Stay, then.”

Over the next weeks, Rhys stayed at Harbor Point Regional. He refused transfer to a private hospital in

Boston.

“My doctor’s here,” he told his frantic board on speakerphone, and hung up on them.

He was a ridiculously good patient. When I changed his burn dressings, he only hissed once, then flashed me a crooked grin. “Keep going, Doc. I’m tough.”

Under those bandages, he was all lean, hard muscle. As the bruises faded, I caught myself blushing more

than once.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“Dr. Hale,” he drawled one morning, “want to check if my abs healed properly too? For medical reasons.”

I said nothing. My ears burned.

By week three, he was sitting up, reviewing contracts with his good hand. Sunlight caught in his dark hair. I stared longer than a professional should.

He looked up and smiled, “Morning. Thought you’d never get here.”

“You’re supposed to rest,” I said, holding out his medication cup.

“Then you’ll have to make me.” He didn’t take it. He leaned in and drank from the cup while I held it, his

eyes locked on mine.

His breath brushed my fingers, warm and slow.

Heat shot through my whole body. I pulled my hand back too fast.

My new phone buzzed in my pocket, Unknown number.

I almost ignored it.

Then I saw the text.

Hi Ava. It’s Sienna. Damien doesn’t know I have this number. We need to talk. About the night you lost the baby.