Chapter 31
NOW
Three days pass before they let me out of bed.
Three days of beeping machines and bland food and nurses who check on me not nearly often enough. Three days of staring at ceiling tiles and replaying everything in my head – the collapse, the confession, the moment I turned back instead of walking away.
On the fourth morning, a doctor with tired eyes and a clipboard tells me I’m healing well.
The shoulder is back in its socket, strapped and immobilised.
The ribs will hurt for weeks but they’re knitting together properly.
The concussion has faded to a dull headache that painkillers can manage.
I’m lucky, she says. That word again. Lucky.
I don’t feel lucky.
I feel like someone who’s been taken apart and put back together wrong.
Like all my pieces are in roughly the right places but the connections between them have shifted.
I move through the world now with a strange new awareness of my own fragility, of how quickly everything can collapse, of the thin membrane separating ordinary life from catastrophe.
But I’m alive.
And so is Richard.
‘You can see him now,’ the nurse tells me in the afternoon. ‘If you’re feeling up to it. He’s been asking.’
I’ve been asking too. Every day, sometimes multiple times, until the nurses started rolling their eyes when they saw me coming. How is he? Is he awake? Can I see him? The questions tumbling out before I could stop them, betraying a desperation I didn’t know I still had the capacity to feel.
They wheel me down in a chair – hospital policy, they insist, even though I can walk – through corridors that all look the same, past rooms full of people fighting their own battles against mortality. The fluorescent lights hum overhead. The air smells of disinfectant.
Richard’s room is at the end of the hallway. Private, which undoubtedly costs more than I can imagine. The door is ajar, and through the gap I can see sunlight streaming through windows – real sunlight, not the grey murk that’s been filtering into my room for days.
The nurse parks my wheelchair outside and gives me a look that’s equal parts encouragement and warning. ‘Don’t tire him out. He’s still recovering.’
‘I know. I will. I mean, I won’t.’ The words tangle on my tongue. I’m nervous, I realise. Actually nervous, like I haven’t been since those first days in East Hampton when everything felt new and terrifying and full of possibility.
She leaves me there, and for a while I just sit in the corridor, gathering courage.
What do I say to him? The last time we were together, he was bleeding on my hallway floor.
The last words I heard him speak were my name, shouted in warning as Harvey’s weapon connected with his skull.
He almost died protecting me. Almost died because I let him care about me then become a target for someone else’s obsession.
He deserves the truth.
All of it.
No more lies. No more half-truths and omissions.
If Richard and I are going to have any kind of future – and God, I want us to have a future, want it with an intensity that frightens me – then it has to be built on honesty.
Real honesty. The kind that strips you bare and leaves you vulnerable and trusts the other person not to destroy you with what they find.
I take a breath. Push myself up from the wheelchair, ignoring the protest from my body.
Then walk into his room.
He’s sitting up in bed, propped against pillows, a book open in his lap that he clearly hasn’t been reading.
His head is still bandaged – smaller dressings now, less dramatic than before – and there are shadows under his eyes that speak of sleepless nights.
But when he sees me, his whole face transforms. That smile I remember.
Those warm brown eyes crinkling at the corners.
‘Kelly.’
My name in his mouth is a warm welcome.
‘Hi.’ My voice comes out small. Inadequate. I hover in the doorway like I’m waiting for permission to enter. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Better now.’ He sets aside the book and reaches out his hand. An invitation. A bridge across the space between us. ‘Come here.’
I cross the room on unsteady legs and lower myself into the chair beside his bed. His warm hand finds mine, and I hold on like he’s the only thing keeping me anchored to the earth. Maybe he is.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t…’
‘Hey.’ His voice is gentle but firm. ‘None of this is your fault. He made his choices. You didn’t ask to be stalked. You didn’t ask for any of this.’
‘But you got hurt because of me.’
‘Because you let me care about you?’ He squeezes my hand. ‘That’s not something to apologise for, Kelly. That’s something to be grateful for.’
The kindness of it breaks something open inside me.
Tears spill down my cheeks before I can stop them – hot and messy and utterly undignified.
I’ve spent so long holding everything in, maintaining the facade.
But here, now, with Richard’s hand in mine and his eyes soft with understanding, I can’t pretend any more.
‘There are things I haven’t told you,’ I manage between sobs. ‘About Daniel. The fire. About what I really did.’
‘I know.’
The words stop me cold. ‘You know?’
‘I know there’s more to your story than you’ve shared. I’ve known for a while.’ He shifts a little, wincing at the pain the movement causes, but doesn’t let go of my hand. ‘People don’t run the way you ran without having something to run from.’
‘And you didn’t… you didn’t push? Didn’t try to find out?’
‘It wasn’t my place. You’d tell me when you were ready.
Or you wouldn’t, and I’d have to make peace with that.
’ His thumb traces small circles on the back of my hand.
‘Everyone has things they’d rather keep buried, Kelly.
Parts of themselves they’re not proud of.
Choices they wish they’d made differently. ’
I remember the night of the fire. About standing frozen while Daniel burned. The relief that flooded through me – relief I’ve never admitted to anyone except Harvey, in that basement, with death closing in around us both.
‘What if the things I’m carrying are unforgivable?’
‘Then I’d say you’re being too hard on yourself.
’ Richard’s eyes meet mine, steady and warm.
‘I don’t need to know every detail of your past to know who you are now.
I’ve seen how you treat people. How you care, even when you’re trying not to.
How you came to the hospital while I was unconscious, even when you were terrified and falling apart. ’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘The nurses told me. Said there was a woman who sat in the corridor for hours, asking about me constantly, looking like she hadn’t slept in forever.’ A small smile crosses his face. ‘They said you were quite persistent.’
I laugh through my tears. It’s a wet, ugly sound, but it feels good. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘I was worried about you too. Lying here, not knowing where you were or what was happening. When the police came to take my statement about the attack, they told me about Harvey, the collapse, and you being pulled from the wreckage.’ His voice wavers.
‘They said you’d been unconscious for hours.
That they didn’t know if you’d wake up. I couldn’t even get out of bed to find you.
Couldn’t do anything except lie here and wait for news. ’
‘Richard—’
‘Detective Kirsch came back yesterday. Told me the rest of it. About Harvey being Daniel’s brother, the surveillance and everything he’d been doing to you.’ His jaw tightens. ‘I trusted him. I thought he was one of the good ones. I left you alone with him.’
‘You couldn’t have known.’
‘Neither could you. That’s my point.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘We both got fooled. We both made choices based on incomplete information. That’s not something to feel guilty about – that’s just being human.’
The words hang between us, fragile and precious. Just being human. Like that’s enough.
Like that’s all anyone can ask.
‘I want to tell you everything,’ I say. ‘I want to be honest with you. No more secrets.’
Richard is quiet. His hand stays wrapped around mine, warm and steady, while he considers something I can’t read in his expression.
‘Kelly,’ he says finally. ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve been a doctor for fifteen years. In that time, I’ve learned that people carry all kinds of things: guilt, shame, regret, memories they’d give anything to forget.
And I’ve learned that sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for yourself is let the past stay in the past.’ He pauses.
‘You don’t owe me your trauma. You don’t owe anyone a full accounting of every mistake you’ve ever made or every dark thought you’ve ever had. ’
‘But—’
‘I’m not saying don’t tell me. If you need to share it, if carrying it alone has become too heavy, then I’m here.
I’ll listen. I won’t judge.’ His eyes hold mine.
‘But if you’re only telling me because you think you have to, or because you think I won’t love you unless I know every terrible thing you’ve ever done, then stop. Because that’s not how this works.’
‘You don’t know what I’ve done,’ I whisper.
‘I know what you’ve survived. I know what you’ve been through since you came to East Hampton.
I know you’re kind and brave and stronger than you give yourself credit for.
’ He lifts our joined hands and presses his lips to my knuckles.
‘Whatever else there is – whatever you’re so afraid of – it doesn’t change how I feel about you. ’
‘How can you say that when you don’t know what happened?’
‘Because I know you. The you that exists right now, in this room, holding my hand. That’s the person I care about.
That’s the person I want to build something with.
’ He smiles that warm, crinkled smile that makes everything feel possible.
‘As long as you’re happy, Kelly. As long as you can find a way to be happy. That’s all I need.’
As long as you’re happy.
It comforts me. Gives permission I didn’t know I was seeking.
Absolution I don’t deserve.
Because here’s the truth – the real truth, the one I can barely admit even to myself:
I’ve got away with it.
Harvey is dead. Whatever evidence he gathered, whatever accusations he planned to make, they’re buried with him in the ruins of my old life.
The police see me as a victim, not a suspect.
Detective Kirsch looked at me with sympathy, not suspicion.
The investigation into Daniel’s death remains closed, ruled accidental, no further questions to be asked.
Kelly Reynolds, tragic widow, terrorised by a disturbed officer, survivor of yet another catastrophe.
The narrative is complete.
The secret is safe.
And sitting here in this hospital room, with his love offered freely despite everything I haven’t told him, I feel something I haven’t felt in months.
Relief.
Pure, overwhelming, shameful relief.
I didn’t start that fire. I didn’t kill Daniel. But I stood and watched while he burned, and I felt glad, and that’s a truth I’ll carry with me forever. A truth that Richard is offering to let me keep, locked away where it can’t hurt either of us.
Is that wrong?
Is it wrong to accept his grace without earning it? To let him love a version of me that’s incomplete, edited to hide the ugliest parts?
Maybe.
Probably.
But I’m so tired of carrying it all alone. So tired of the weight and the fear and the constant vigilance. And here is this man – this kind, patient, impossibly good man – offering me something I never thought I’d have again.
A future.
A chance.
A life that isn’t defined by one terrible night and the choices I made in its flames.
‘Okay,’ I say softly.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay. I’ll try. To be happy. To… how did you put it? Let the past stay in the past?’ I squeeze his hand, feeling the warmth of him, the solid reality of this moment. ‘I can’t promise I’ll succeed. I can’t promise the guilt won’t eat me alive some days. But I’ll try.’
‘That’s all anyone can do.’ He tugs gently on my hand, pulling me closer. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’
I lean forward, careful of my shoulder and his bandages, and rest my forehead against his. We stay like that for a moment – breathing the same air, existing in the same space, two damaged people finding something worth holding on to in the wreckage of everything else.
‘I went back for him,’ I whisper. ‘Harvey. When the house was collapsing. I could have left him there, but I went back. I tried to save him.’
Richard pulls away just enough to look at me. ‘You did?’
‘I couldn’t get the timber off him. The house came down before I could free him. But I tried. I—’ My voice breaks. ‘I tried.’
Understanding dawns in his eyes. He doesn’t know the full context – doesn’t know about Daniel and the relief I felt while he burned – but he understands enough.
Understands that this matters. That something shifted in those final moments, in that collapsing basement, when I chose to go back instead of walking away.
‘I’m proud of you,’ he says simply.
Four words. Nothing elaborate, nothing profound. But they nestle somewhere deep inside me, in a place that’s been hollow for a very long time.
I smile.
‘So,’ Richard says, a hint of his old warmth creeping back into his voice. ‘When they let us both out of here, what do you say to dinner? A proper one this time. No interrupted evenings. No stalkers. No collapsing buildings.’
‘That sounds… nice.’
‘Nice?’ He pretends to be offended. ‘I was hoping for something more enthusiastic. “Amazing”, perhaps. “Best offer I’ve had all year.”’
‘Best offer I’ve had all year,’ I repeat obediently, and he laughs – a proper laugh, the kind that crinkles his whole face and makes everything else fade away.
And sitting there in the hospital room, with sunlight streaming through the windows and Richard’s hand still wrapped around mine, I let myself believe it – that maybe, somehow, this broken thing I am can still have something good.
That the darkness I carry doesn’t have to define every moment that comes after.
I got away with it.
The thought should horrify me. Should fill me with guilt and shame and the desperate urge to confess everything, to lay my sins bare and accept whatever judgement follows.
Instead, I just feel tired.
Tired, and grateful, and ready to start building something new.
The past is buried in the ashes of a house that no longer exists.
The future is sitting in front of me, holding my hand, offering love I haven’t earned and grace I don’t deserve.
And Kelly Reynolds is going to take it.
I smile again, and this time there’s no holding it back.