Too Late, Mr. Sterling—I’m Marrying Your Rival Chapter 07

I stepped into the supply closet and called her back.

“Ava.” Sienna’s voice was honey over a blade. “You look good in those hospital photos. A little tired.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to stay gone.” Polite, almost friendly. “Damien’s a mess right now. Guilt. It’ll pass. Men like him need a woman who can stand beside him, not one who crawls.”

My grip tightened.

“You know what’s funny?” she went on. “The night you called him, my fever wasn’t really 103. The nurse I paid read the thermometer wrong. I just wanted him to stay.” A soft laugh. “And he did. He chose to stay, Ava. Remember that.”

The old me would have cried. Begged. Broken.

I leaned against the shelves and laughed instead.

“Sienna, you can keep him. I mean that. But you should know something.”

Silence.

“I record every call on this phone. Hospital policy.” It wasn’t, but she didn’t know that. “Paying a nurse to falsify a chart is fraud. Using it to keep a husband away from his hemorrhaging wife? I wonder what your board will think.”

I heard her breath catch.

“Lose my number,” I said, and hung up.

My hands were shaking. But not from fear.

When I walked back into Rhys’s room, he was watching the door. His eyes went straight to my face.

“Who made you that angry?”

“Nobody important.”

“Ava.”

I hesitated. Then I sat on the edge of his bed and told him everything. The stage. The baby. The call. The blood on the floor. Room 412. Sienna’s medal. Sienna’s thermometer.

He didn’t interrupt once.

When I finished, his jaw was carved from stone. His good hand found mine on the blanket and held it, like a promise.

“He walked right past you,” Rhys said quietly.

“He didn’t even see me.”

“I would’ve seen you.” His thumb brushed my knuckles. “Across a stadium. In the dark. With my eyes closed. I’d have known it was you.”

My chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with grief.

That night, I forwarded a copy of Sienna’s call-I really had recorded it, the moment I saw her name-to Sterling Global’s legal department. Anonymous. No message.

Then I went back to my life.

The next week, Rhys was walking the halls with a cane, charming every nurse on the floor. He brought me coffee exactly how I liked it before I’d ever told him. He listened when I talked about medicine like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Damien used to check his phone when I talked about medicine.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Rhys asked one afternoon.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re scared of something.”

I was, I was terrified of how easy this felt.

On Friday morning, I walked into his room with the medication cup. He was sitting up, grinning, teasing me about my messy bun. He leaned in to drink from the cup in my hand again, slow and deliberate.

His lips brushed my fingertips.

My breath caught.

“What the hell are you doing with him?”

The voice from the doorway turned my blood to ice.

I knew that voice. I’d heard it say I love you. I’d heard it say handle it yourself.

I turned.

Damien Sterling stood in the doorway.