Chapter 63
EVA
The letters sat on my bedside table, pristine white paper turned grey in the fluorescent hospital lighting. I’d read them so many times I could recite their noble, self-sacrificing bullshit by heart.
Be happy, kitten. Be free.
This is for the best.
You deserve better than me.
Fucking cowards. All their apologies for blackmailing me, for leaving me, for controlling me, and what had they done? Decided for me fucking again.
The rage that burned through me had nothing to do with my failing heart and everything to do with three men who claimed to love me but didn’t fucking trust me to make my own decisions.
With each passing day, my strength grew—and with it, my certainty. They were wrong, so fucking wrong.
Nurse Santos showed me how to silence the heart monitor’s alarms when I pulled myself up to sitting.
First, it was just for thirty seconds, sweat beading on my forehead, muscles trembling as if I’d run a marathon instead of just sitting upright in a hospital bed.
The second day, I managed a full minute before the room started spinning.
“Easy there,” Nurse Santos cautioned, her firm hand on my shoulder. “Recovery isn’t a race.”
But it was. Every second I spent in this hospital bed was another second they believed their decision was right.
By day three, I could sit up long enough to feed myself. My fingers fumbled with the plastic cutlery, but I refused help—a small victory, but I counted each one.
Dr. Kouassi frowned at my progress notes but couldn’t argue with my improving numbers. “Your cardiac output has improved twelve percent since admission,” he said, his accent thickening with concern. “Don’t trigger another episode in your hurry to get out of here.”
Even my dad noticed my determination, accompanying me on longer and longer walks around the cardiac unit, my fingers white-knuckled on the IV pole. The first lap around the nurses’ station left me gasping, legs quivering like a newborn foal’s.
“Maybe we should head back,” Dad suggested, worry etching deeper lines around his eyes.
“One more,” I insisted, each step burning through my thighs, my heart pounding, but not setting off the alarms.
By the end of the week, I could make two full circuits before needing to rest.
Massi brought coffee—the exact ridiculously sweet concoction Cole knew I loved. The first sip burned my throat, but the familiar taste flooded me with memories.
“He didn’t send it,” Massi insisted when I raised an eyebrow. “Just said you liked it.”
Liar.
I wanted to scream. If Cole cared enough to remember my coffee order, surely he cared enough to show up. But noble self-sacrifice was easier than facing me, wasn’t it?
Haruto left novels that could only have come from Alek, who cared enough to pay attention to my reading preferences but not enough to fucking come and say hello.
A stuffed kitten appeared while I slept, which couldn’t be from anyone but Tristan. It had a hockey jersey with his number, for fuck’s sake. I wanted to set it on fire.
Each gift that everyone around me swore had nothing to do with my men made my heart race in ways that had nothing to do with my condition. The machine beside me would betray me, beeping frantically.
They cared, it was so fucking clear they cared, but they were too cowardly to face what they’d done and ask me what I actually wanted. Just like always—controlling and manipulating me while pretending they were giving me a choice.
The group chat brought my finals to my hospital room. I worked through equations and essays as an IV dripped medication into my veins. My professors had been surprisingly accommodating, though I suspected Cole’s influence there. Even after the death of his father, his name carried weight.
I pushed through the brain fog, forcing myself to focus when words swam before my eyes.
Physical therapy was a special kind of torture. Not because of the pain—I’d learned to work through pain long ago—but because every movement reminded me of them.
“Squeeze the ball,” the therapist instructed, placing a stress ball in my palm.
I remembered Tristan’s praise as he wrapped my hands around Cole’s cock. That’s it, kitten, so fucking perfect, tighten your grip a little bit, see how he likes it?
The therapist nodded approvingly as the monitor showed my grip strength improving. “Good. Again.”
“Try to raise your arms over your head.”
I remembered kneeling for Alek in his office on the upper floor of the hockey arena, offering him coffee, feeling safe, my mind quiet for the first time in years.
“Deep breaths. Focus on your core.”
Cole’s utter confidence I could do anything. You can do this, sparrow, he’d whisper, whether it was acing a quiz or taking his cock.
I engaged muscles I hadn’t known existed then pulled myself up from the therapy mat while sweat plastered my hospital gown to my skin.
My men had never made me weak. They made me strong.
“Your recovery is remarkable,” Dr. Kouassi said one day as he flipped through my chart, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
Of course it was. I’d always been disciplined—I’d never had another fucking option.
Week two brought the new challenge of stairs. The physical therapist wanted me to use them. “Just one flight,” she said, hovering beside me like I might collapse at any moment.
I did two, legs trembling, but satisfaction burning brighter than the pain. Each step was a silent message to the men who’d abandoned me. See what I can do? I’m stronger than you think.
I returned to my room to find my father talking to a cardiac specialist in hushed tones.
“She’s pushing too hard,” the doctor said. “The heart is a muscle that needs rest to heal.”
What the doctors didn’t understand was that my heart wouldn’t heal until I got my men back and convinced them to stop making decisions for me and let me make my own.
“Your heart rate’s elevated,” Nurse Santos noted one evening during rounds, eyeing the monitor with suspicion.
I’d obsessively read every article online I could find about Carter Industries, including coverage of Jed Carter’s funeral. One photo showed Cole in a suit, his expression fierce and proud.
Another tab on my laptop showed Tristan’s stats with the hockey team, and gossip sites reported scouts courting him. He was getting everything he’d ever dreamed of.
And Alek? He’d quietly disappeared from the media, but I knew he wouldn’t stay hidden for long. It wasn’t in his nature. A quick search of sports websites showed that he’d been spending time in Boston with the owners of the Boston Anarchists.
They were all moving forward.
Without me.
Because they’d decided—without asking me, without giving me a choice—that I needed protection from them, that I needed freedom.
As if freedom meant anything without them.
By the time Christmas came and went, I was walking the hospital corridors without assistance.
Nurses who had hovered now nodded as I passed, my pace steady and determined.
The cardiac monitor my medical providers insisted on showed my heart’s growing endurance, my resting rate dropping as my strength returned.
“This is a textbook recovery,” one doctor remarked to new residents as they toured the cardiac wing. Fuck him. There was nothing textbook about my motivation.
Dr. Kouassi’s discharge orders included strict limitations on physical activity—no heavy lifting, no strenuous exercise, and absolutely no stress.
The holidays crawled past in a blur of follow-up appointments and rehabilitation exercises.
Each day I got stronger. Each day, gifts arrived from three men who said they wanted to give me space—thoughtful, expensive, and always exactly what I needed.
A new laptop for my studies. Workout gear for my recovery. Books to keep me occupied.
The first time I put the treadmill on an incline as I walked, my chest tightened in warning. I slowed but didn’t stop. By New Year’s, I could walk a mile. Not fast, not pretty, but continuous.
“Your cardiac function is nearly back to baseline,” my cardiologist said at my four-week follow-up, sounding faintly surprised. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”
Oh, I would.
Each gift from my men proved they couldn’t let go, no matter what their letters claimed. Each improvement to my health was another argument against their absence. Each passing day without them strengthened my resolve rather than weakening it.
My early acceptance letter from Boston University School of Medicine felt like validation. Everything they’d pushed me toward—my studies, my health, my future—was falling into place.
Everything except them.
And whose fault was that? Mine, for almost dying? For being too weak to survive Jed Carter on my own? For daring to love three men who thought they knew better than me?
Or was it theirs, for deciding that making decisions for me was easier than trusting me to make my own?
I knew the answer, and soon, they would too.
The spring semester started in two weeks. By then, I’d be cleared for “normal activities,” whatever the fuck that meant. I’d be strong enough to hunt them down and make them face what they’d done.
Their control had given me choices. Their love—because it was love, even if they were too stupidly noble to admit it—had given me courage.
They wanted to give me freedom?
Fine.
I’d take it.
And I’d make them mine too.
But this time, I’d do it on my terms.