Chapter 6
Celia's POV
The room went quiet for two seconds after Ivy said it.
She pressed back into Vanna's side and twisted her fingers into the hem of the cashmere cardigan.
Vanna looked up first.
Her eyes landed on me, and for just a second — less than that, really — something moved through them. Fast. Like a shutter closing. By the time I'd registered it, her face had already gone smooth and unreadable, the kind of stillness that doesn't come naturally to anyone.
Then she turned and looked at Kent without saying a word.
Kent's eyes moved to me. He held them there for a second, steady and flat, doing the thing he always did when he was deciding whether something was real or performance.
I looked back at him. I didn't ask him for anything with my eyes. I didn't accuse him of anything either.
"You're in a hospital," Kent said. His voice was even, almost reasonable. He paused a beat, like he was giving the sentence room to land. "There are medical staff here. You'll be fine."
It was a complete sentence. His tone wasn't cruel. Technically, nothing about it was wrong.
But I heard what it actually was — the same voice he used to close a meeting that had run over, the same cadence he used to end a conversation he'd already decided wasn't worth continuing. Polite. Final.
I didn't say anything.
Ivy tilted her head back and looked up at him, then across at me. "Her face is getting more red," she said. Flat, factual, the way a four-year-old reports something that simply is.
Vanna reached down and took Ivy's hand. "Ivy." Her voice was soft, unhurried. "Don't say things like that."
Kent and Vanna looked at each other. Brief. Mutual.
"I have a call I need to take." Kent was already reaching for his jacket, folding it over one arm, the motion smooth and practiced. "I'll check in later."
Vanna stood. She kept her eyes down, her expression settled into something warm and regretful, the exact look of a person who genuinely wishes the circumstances were different. "Get some rest, Celia," she said. "We'll get out of your way."
She collected Ivy with one hand, and the three of them moved toward the door. Ivy glanced back once — just once, over her shoulder, eyes wide — before Vanna steered her into the corridor.
Kent was last. He paused in the doorway for less than a second.
He didn't look back.
The door swung shut behind him, and the latch caught with a quiet, definitive click.
The lisianthus was still on the floor — white petals and pale purple ones scattered across the linoleum, stems at odd angles where the kraft paper had split. Someone had knocked one bloom under the edge of the bed rail when they stood up to leave, and it was just sitting there, face-up, perfectly intact.
I looked at that flower for a long moment.
Then my chest did it again — tighter this time, a real squeeze, the kind that meant the pollen was still in the air and my body had moved past the warning stage into something more serious. My next inhale came up short. I felt the resistance low in my sternum, familiar and specific, and I knew exactly what it was and exactly how fast it could escalate.
I stopped thinking about Kent and Vanna and four years and all of it, because I needed to breathe.
That was the only thing that mattered right now.
My hand moved to the side rail. I felt along it without looking, fingers tracking the cold metal until they found the call button — small, hard-edged, slightly recessed. I pressed it.
The click was real and solid under my thumb.
I let my head fall back against the pillow and fixed my eyes on the ceiling.
Breathe. Just breathe. Someone was coming.
I held onto that and waited.
The door opened less than two minutes later.
The first nurse came in fast, already reading my face before she'd cleared the doorway. The second one was right behind her, pushing a cart. They moved like people who'd done this before, which they had, and which was exactly what I needed.
"Can you tell me what you're feeling right now?"
"Chest tightness," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "Trouble getting a full breath. I'm allergic to lisianthus — someone brought a bouquet in about fifteen minutes ago. The flowers are still on the floor."
"Okay. I hear you." She was already at my wrist, two fingers pressing in. "Stay with me, nice and easy."
They were efficient and quiet and they didn't make me repeat myself. Epinephrine, antihistamine, oxygen mask fitted over my nose and mouth, blood pressure cuff tightening and releasing on my arm. I cooperated with all of it — turned my head when they asked, kept still when they needed me to, answered the questions they put to me in short, accurate sentences.
The constriction in my chest began to ease by degrees. Not all at once — it unwound the way it had wound, slowly, in increments, each breath a little fuller than the last until I could feel my lungs actually expanding again. The tightness that had been sitting behind my sternum for the last ten minutes softened and then released, and I exhaled through the mask and felt my shoulders drop with it.
"Better," I said, when she checked on me again.
"Don't move around yet. Give it a few more minutes." She was writing something on a clipboard, pen moving quickly. "Has the allergen been removed from the room?"
I looked at the floor.
The lisianthus was still there. White and pale purple against pale linoleum, going nowhere on their own.
"Not yet," I said.
"Can you put those in the trash for me?"
She followed my gaze, bent down, and gathered the scattered stems and petals with both hands. One pass, then a second for the bloom that had rolled under the rail. She gathered everything in one pass, walked to the door, and dropped it all into the hallway trash, letting the lid fall shut behind her.
"All done," she said. "Anything else bothering you?"
"No," I said. "I'm good. Thank you."
She ran through the follow-up instructions — stay calm, don't exert yourself, call again immediately if the tightness came back — and then she and the second nurse gathered their things and left.
The door eased shut behind them.
The room was quiet again. Different quiet than before.
I looked at the ceiling and I breathed. In, and out. Even and slow.
The tension I'd been holding across my shoulders finally began to loosen, degree by degree, until my whole body felt heavy against the mattress in a way that was almost merciful.
That was when Rachel called. She told me she'd already reached out to the lawyer, but the attorney had been upfront about it — getting Kent to walk away with nothing wasn't going to be easy. Even if it went to litigation, making sure he didn't see a single dime would be damn near impossible.
"So what's your plan?" she asked.
"I'm going to give Kent a gift," I said. "At exactly the right moment."
"He's been keeping a whole wife and kid behind your back, and you're sitting around waiting for the right moment?" Rachel's voice shot up so fast I could practically feel the spit through the phone.
She wasn't wrong.
But I was waiting for a moment — one that would leave Kent not just broke, but ruined. The kind of ruined you don't come back from.
"Kent's been worried sick about whether the new company can actually make it to IPO," I said.
There was a beat of silence on the other end. When Rachel spoke again, her voice had shifted entirely.
