Chapter 31
T he sky was just beginning to lighten when we finally turned onto my street.
Pale lavender bled into a canvas of charcoal gray, the soft hum of morning stillness settling over the quiet row of townhouses like a prayer not yet answered. My body felt like it had been wrung out and hung to dry—limp, cold, and stretched too thin.
Trevor slowed the car as we approached my place, his gaze flicking toward the sidewalk. “You sure you want to go in alone?”
I didn’t answer right away. My eyes had already found the figure standing in the shadows near my front steps.
Ronan.
He was leaning against the wrought-iron railing, arms crossed, his posture deceptively relaxed. But even from a distance, I could feel the tension radiating off him. His shoulders were too still. His gaze too focused.
And the moment he saw Trevor’s car—his entire body changed .
He straightened, stepped off the stoop, and stalked toward the curb like a loaded weapon.
Trevor hit the brake. Hard.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s him.”
I didn’t confirm it. I was already pushing open the passenger door.
“Zara—wait?—”
But I was out, the morning air slapping my face. I stepped in front of Trevor’s car, putting my body between the two men, even as Ronan closed the distance with silent, lethal strides.
His eyes burned into mine. Not just with fury. With betrayal.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” he asked, voice low and dangerous. “With you?”
“He’s my friend,” I said. “He was helping me.”
“Helping you,” Ronan repeated, like the words tasted wrong.
He shifted his gaze to Trevor, who had now stepped out of the car.
“You can leave,” Ronan said flatly.
Trevor raised his hands, staying behind the open door. “I’m not looking for a fight, man.”
“You’ll get one anyway,” Ronan growled.
“Ronan—stop.” I stepped closer, reaching out instinctively. “Please.”
His eyes snapped to me again. There was something almost feral in them—something I hadn’t seen before. Not with me. Not like this.
“I looked for you,” he said. “You disappeared. You wouldn’t answer. And then I find you in his fucking car?”
“You don’t get to be angry,” I snapped. “You’re the one who has secrets.”
He flinched. Just barely. But I saw it .
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“You didn’t tell me the truth,” I said. “You kept me in the dark. You made me feel safe—and then you made me feel like a fool.”
Trevor stepped around the car then, moving slowly, but still inserting himself into the moment.
“She asked me to come get her,” he said calmly. “That’s all.”
Ronan’s hands curled into fists.
“She doesn’t need you,” he said. “Not anymore.”
“You don’t know what she needs,” Trevor said, voice quiet. “Maybe you never did.”
“That’s enough,” I cut in, my voice sharper than I intended. “Both of you.”
I turned to Ronan. “I didn’t go to Trevor because I wanted to hurt you. I went because I didn’t know what else to do. I was drowning.”
His jaw flexed. His hands trembled, just once.
“Let’s go inside,” I said softly. “We’re not doing this out here.”
Trevor didn’t move.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “You should go.”
He hesitated.
“She’s not safe with you,” he said to Ronan.
Ronan took a step forward, his full height eclipsing the soft glow of the porch light behind him. “Say that again,” he said, voice low and lethal.
Trevor’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t back down. “You heard me. She’s not safe with someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” Ronan’s laugh was bitter, humorless. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about me.”
“I know enough,” Trevor shot back. “I warned her. I told her men like you don’t change. That they drag good women into their shadows and call it love.”
“Trevor—stop,” I said, stepping between them again.
But it was too late. The air had shifted. Ronan’s control was slipping. His hands twitched like he was restraining himself with every fiber of his being.
“I’ve killed men for less,” he said quietly, and the words weren’t a threat. They were a truth. Cold. Final.
Trevor flinched.
“Is that supposed to scare me?” he asked, but his voice wasn’t as steady this time.
“No,” Ronan said. “It’s supposed to remind you that Zara’s not the one who needs warning.”
I turned sharply to Ronan. “Enough.”
My voice cracked through the tension like a whip, and for a second, both of them froze.
Trevor looked at me, the concern in his expression giving way to something more resigned. Like he already knew the outcome, and it hurt.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said softly. “You don’t have to go back to him.”
I looked at him—and for a breath, I almost believed that version. The version where he brought me coffee and called my mom on her birthday and never made me bleed with silence.
But then I looked at Ronan.
His body, corded with tension. His jaw locked, his hands shaking. Not from rage, I realized—but from restraint. From holding himself back. For me.
I couldn’t breathe.
Trevor stepped toward the car. “I meant what I said,” he told me. “You deserve better.”
Before I could respond—before I could tell Trevor thank you or goodbye or don’t do this —my phone rang in my pocket.
I flinched at the sound, the shrill tone slicing through the moment like a blade. I yanked it out, glanced at the screen, and felt the world tip.
Mom.
She never called at this hour.
“Hello?” My voice wobbled, breathless.
“Zara,” she gasped. “It’s your dad. He—he collapsed in the greenhouse. The EMTs think it’s his heart. They’re taking him to MUSC.”
I couldn’t speak. The ground didn’t just shift—it cracked.
One second, everything had felt heavy—complicated, yes, but survivable. Ronan’s secrets. Trevor’s presence. The nursery, the flash drive, the aching mess of my heart. But now?
None of it mattered.
Not if my dad wasn’t okay. Not if the man who used to lift me onto his shoulders and call me “Zee” like it was a magic word could be taken down in an instant by something as silent and brutal as a failing heart. Everything else fell away.
It was like time had rewound and fast-forwarded all at once, skipping over the part where I got to prepare. One minute I was drowning in my own mistakes, and the next I was standing on the edge of a loss so big it swallowed everything else whole.
“I’m following the ambulance now,” Mom rushed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t?—”
“I’m coming,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up, the blood pounding in my ears so loud I barely heard my own voice. “It’s my dad. He’s on his way to the hospital. They think it’s his heart. ”
Both men stiffened.
Trevor’s face crumpled. “Jesus.”
Ronan was already moving. “Get in the car.”
“I’m going with her,” Trevor said firmly.
“Like hell you are.”
“I’m not letting her go through this alone.”
“You’re not needed.”
“Guys,” I snapped, my voice breaking. “I don’t care. I’m going. You can both come, or neither of you. But I’m not doing this here.”
Ronan looked at me, jaw clenched. “I’m driving.”
Trevor didn’t argue. He just followed us both to Ronan’s car, silent but burning with protective energy that made my head throb.
The drive to MUSC was suffocating. I sat in the front passenger seat, my hands clenched in my lap, my body trembling so hard I could barely keep my teeth from chattering. Ronan gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled control. Trevor sat behind me, silent but present.
We were a triangle of tension. Anger. Grief. Fear.
“Call your mom,” Ronan said, voice low.
I did, hands shaking as I held the phone to my ear.
“We’re almost there,” I told her. “How is he?”
“They’ve got him back in a room. I don’t know anything else yet. They won’t let me back with him. He’s been under so much stress lately. I just worry?—”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stay calm. “Did he say anything before the ambulance picked him up?”
“No. Not really. He tried to, but …” Her voice broke. “He was so pale, Zara.”
“We’re pulling up now.” I hesitated, then added softly, “You’re right. He’s been under so much pressure, Mom. With the nursery. With trying to hold everything together. I should’ve seen this coming.”
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered, but her words sounded fragile, like she didn’t believe them either.
The moment we parked, I was out of the car, sprinting toward the entrance like the ground behind me was on fire. Both men followed.
Inside, the emergency department buzzed with fluorescent light and sterile chaos. I spotted my mother immediately, a wilted figure in a beige cardigan, clutching her purse like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.
“Mom,” I breathed, wrapping her in my arms.
She held on like she was drowning. “They won’t tell me anything yet. He was conscious when they loaded him in the ambulance, but barely. He couldn’t talk.”
I pulled back and cupped her face. “We’re here. I’m here.”
Her eyes flicked to Ronan, then to Trevor behind me.
“They both came,” I said quickly. “It’s okay.”
She nodded, too upset to question.
We sat. And waited.
The men hovered nearby, both refusing to leave.
Ronan paced. Trevor fetched water. Ronan spoke to the nurse at the desk, demanding updates.
Trevor texted my mom’s neighbor to feed her cat.
They were opposites—one coiled and dangerous, the other gentle and composed—but both, in their own ways, were trying to be there for me.
I didn’t know how to process it.
Didn’t know what to feel.
I just sat between them, a woman divided.
Ronan finally returned from the nurses’ station and crouched beside me. “They’re stabilizing him. They’ll let family back soon.”
I nodded, tears welling again.
He touched my knee—gentle, grounding. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Trevor watched from his seat, arms crossed over his chest.
My mom looked between them, eyes clouded with confusion. “Zara … are you seeing both of them?”
The question was a blade straight through my chest.
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s … complicated.”
My mom didn’t press. She just reached for my hand.
It was another twenty minutes before the nurse finally returned.
“You can come back now,” she said.
My mother stood.
“I’ll go with her,” I said.
Trevor stood, too.
Ronan didn’t hesitate. “I’m coming.”
The nurse looked skeptical, but I nodded. “It’s okay. Please.”
She led us down a hall lined with beeping machines and closed doors. The fluorescent lights made everything feel surreal—like we were walking into a dream we couldn’t wake from.
My father lay in the bed, pale and still, an oxygen cannula beneath his nose. His eyes were closed, but the heart monitor beside him beeped steady.
“Dad,” I whispered.
He stirred slightly.
“Oh, my God,” my mom said, clinging to his hand.
I stepped closer and took his other one. “I’m here. We’re all here. ”
Ronan hovered behind me, watchful. Trevor stayed near the door, respectful but close.
It was too much.
Seeing Dad like that. Still and small and so terribly human beneath all the wires and monitors.
He had always been strong—the kind of man who lifted bags of soil like they were nothing, who worked twelve-hour days in the sun and still came home smiling.
He’d carried me on his shoulders through half my childhood, and somehow, in my mind, he’d always seemed invincible.
I knew he wasn’t, of course. Rationally, I understood that everyone breaks eventually. But the reality of it? Of seeing the man who raised me laid out and pale in a hospital bed—it shook something loose inside me. Something that didn’t have a name yet, but felt a lot like the beginning of grief.
And my mom—God, the way she looked at him. Like she was already losing him by the second. They’d been married for over thirty years. High school sweethearts who turned a patch of dirt into a life. I wasn’t sure one could survive without the other. And I wasn’t ready to find out.
There were too many emotions, too much noise in my head.
“I need a minute,” I whispered, stepping out into the hallway.
Ronan followed.
“You okay?”
“No,” I said, shaking. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
He stepped in closer. “I know you’re upset with me. But I’m not letting go. Not now. Not ever.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Ronan,” I whispered. “Everything’s broken.”
“Then we fix it. ”
“How?” I asked. “When everything’s built on lies?”
He didn’t flinch. “We start again. We burn down whatever needs burning and we rebuild.”
I wanted to believe him.
But inside the room, my father was fighting for his life.
And two men stood waiting—one who wanted my past, and one who held my future like it was a weapon only he could wield.
I honestly didn’t know who I was anymore.
Not really.