Chapter 2

　　Cole's POV

　　The emergency ward doors closed around Sabrina, cutting her off from me, and the silence they left behind was worse than the sirens.

　　I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Her blood had dried on my cuff in a dark smear I kept returning to without meaning to. I rubbed at it with my thumb without thinking, but it wouldn't come off. It clung to the fabric as stubbornly as the memory of carrying her into the emergency room only minutes ago.

　　I had seen Sabrina in hospital corridors before. More times than I could justify to myself. Every losses had ended the same way. White walls. The smell of antiseptic. Doctors speaking too gently because there was nothing kind left to say. Leon always started beside her, but somehow there was always somewhere else he needed to be before the day was over. A meeting. A business call. An emergency that never seemed as urgent as the woman lying in the hospital bed.

　　I had stood in the gap every single time. The friend who fetched water. The friend who drove her home when she was too numb to hold the steering wheel. The friend who listened while she convinced herself Leon was grieving in his own way. I had let her believe it because it wasn't my place to destroy the version of her husband she kept fighting to believe in.

　　The safe option. The one who showed up. The one who was never the person she actually needed.

　　I called Leon. He declined. I called again. He declined that one too.

　　His text came thirty seconds later: In a meeting. Stop calling. Come to the office if it's business.

　　Business.

　　His wife had just been rushed to the emergency ward and he was protecting a meeting.

　　I told the nurse to call me the moment anything changed, and I walked out of the hospital.

　　His office was eight minutes away. I did it in five.

　　His assistant read my expression and stepped aside without a word. I pushed Leon's door open hard enough that it hit the wall.

　　He was behind his desk with a glass of Scotch and a document in front of him and the easy posture of a man who had arranged his afternoon exactly as he wanted it. He looked up at me with the polite blankness he used when he needed to manage a situation.

　　"You came," he said.

　　"She collapsed," I said, moving into the room. "She is in the emergency ward right now. The doctors are worried about the baby."

　　Leon took a sip from the glass. Set it down carefully. "I know," he said. "The butler told me."

　　He told me.

　　"I'm done, Cole," he continued, his voice carrying the flatness of someone who had made this speech before. "I filed the papers yesterday. I'm checking out of this cycle."

　　"She is fighting for her life," I said, and I heard my own voice shaking. "You can't wait until she's stable before you burn her world down?"

　　He shrugged. He actually shrugged. "I've already moved on. I'm with someone else. We're getting married."

　　The private bathroom door opened.

　　Zara walked in.

　　I recognized her immediately. Leon had talked about her in college the way some men talked about things they had lost that they hadn't deserved to keep. She had laughed at his worn shoes once, at a party, while he was still in the room. She had left him the week after a man with a better watch asked for her number. He had mourned her for two years while Sabrina sat across from him in a library at two in the morning, quietly re-teaching him accounting, quietly putting back pieces that Zara had knocked loose.

　　She walked into the room like she had already won it, one hand resting over her stomach.

　　"Hey, baby," she said to Leon.

　　He was on his feet before I had processed the movement. He pulled a chair out for her and kissed her forehead with a tenderness I had not seen from him once in all the years I had watched Sabrina need it.

　　"She's four months pregnant," Leon said, looking at me. "We're getting married."

　　I did the arithmetic without wanting to. Four months ago, Sabrina had been in a clinic parking lot for forty-five minutes because she couldn't make herself go back inside and be told again. I had sat with her on the phone that day for an hour.

　　"You were with her while Sabrina was in the hospital the last time," I said.

　　"Sabrina is the past," Leon said. Cold. Certain. It hadn't cost him anything to say. "Zara is the future. Sabrina knows. I told her."

　　"She is alone in a hospital bed barely holding on," I said, stepping toward his desk, "and you are in here planning a nursery."

　　His eyes went flat and hard. "Don't lecture me, Cole. I've been watching her break for seven years. I'm done. If she doesn't make it through this one, then maybe it's mercy. Better than her being my burden for the rest of my life."

　　Seven years. Gone in one sentence.

　　I didn't think.

　　My fist connected with his jaw.

　　The sound was loud and clean and final. Leon went back into his bookshelf and took half of it down with him. Books and awards hit the carpet. Zara screamed.

　　"You're a monster," I said, standing over him while he bled onto his rug. "When this perfect life you've bought for yourself falls apart, you'll remember that you threw away the only woman who ever chose you when you were worth nothing."

　　I walked out.

　　I made it to my car before the shaking started. I put both hands on the steering wheel and held them there.

　　I had always known who Leon was. I had just chosen not to let it matter as long as it wasn't costing anyone I loved anything.

　　Sabrina had been paying that bill for years.

　　My phone rang. City General.

　　"Mr. Cole?" The nurse's voice had something in it that cut through everything else. "Mrs. Sabrina's vitals are unstable. We need a donor immediately. Do you have the husband's number?"

　　"Forget him," I said, turning the key. "He's not coming."

　　"Sir, we need to know the blood type—"

　　"I'm O-Negative," I said, reversing out. "Universal donor. I'm five minutes out."

　　"Hurry," she said.

　　I dropped the phone onto the seat and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

　　Leon called her a burden.

　　Fine.

　　I'll be the one who bleeds for her.