Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
ROMAN
Later that afternoon, I finally escape the investor meeting from hell.
Despite the chaos, I'm pretty sure I convinced everyone to back this project, though only Sam Thierry committed on the spot—ten million dollars, no hesitation.
Figures. The guy's environmental portfolio makes this a no-brainer for him.
I've barely settled back at my desk when my phone lights up with Max's name.
The phone slips in my sweat-slick palm. "Rome," he says. "Dad's in the hospital."
Hospital? My heart doesn't just seize—it fucking implodes. Shouldn't matter. I've told myself for twenty-two goddamn years that I don't care about my father. Then I shake my head, knuckles white around the phone. Who the hell am I kidding? If I lose Dad now—
"What's wrong?" My voice scrapes out, barely recognizable.
“Went into cardiac arrest at work. His heart stopped beating for three minutes. Thank God Whole Foods had an AED or he'd be dead right now."
My throat closes like someone's strangling me. The room spins. Dad's heart stopped. He was clinically dead. I grip the edge of the table, knuckles white. "Jesus Christ. What caused it?”
"They're running tests, but they think it's Long QT Syndrome.
His heart's electrical system is fucked up.
He's been killing himself—working full shifts at Whole Foods, then staying up until 3 AM every night on that resort proposal.
Doctor said if he doesn't get a pacemaker immediately, the next time will be his last."
“Where is he?”
“Cedars.”
Lilith's waiting for me tonight. But Dad's heart stopped.
They had to shock him back to life. I've been clutching this grudge for twenty-two years, and for what?
If that AED hadn't been there, if his heart had given out in some random grocery store aisle—that would've been it. No more chances. No more time.
The realization hits me hard and fast—beneath all this anger, I've loved him. Always have. And I almost lost the chance to tell him so. One cardiac event, and suddenly all you're left with is regret, that hollow echo of "too late" that follows you to your own grave.
I'm halfway to Cedars Sinai before I realize what I'm doing. My fingers find Lilith's number while I weave through traffic. When I push through the hospital doors, Max, Ansel, and Silas are already pacing the waiting room floor. Celeste, Max’s wife is here, too, looking terrified.
The revolving door keeps spinning. Cam bursts in wearing scrubs, stealing minutes from his ER shift downstairs.
Connor follows with makeup still on his face, straight from set.
Kalen slides in next, guitar calluses visible as he runs a hand through his hair.
Just as I think we're missing one, Asher appears, completing our reluctant brotherhood tableau.
I scan the room—eight mega-successful sons huddled under fluorescent lights for a man who walked out on us.
Connor's face has launched a dozen blockbusters.
Kalen's fingers have strummed to millions.
Each of us commands empires from different corners of the world.
Yet here we sit, brought to our knees by our father's failing heart—the same heart that had no trouble leaving us all those years ago.
The doctor emerges, his face a mask of professional concern. "We're prepping your father for emergency surgery to install a pacemaker,” he says, before leaving again, and my stomach drops. Emergency surgery. The words echo in my head.
I nod mechanically, aware of my brothers' pale faces around me. A thought slices through my worry—Dad's eco-resort project. Can he handle the stress during his recovery? If he can’t, I'll have to step in, on top of my own properties, just when I'd promised Lilith more of my time.
Christ, listen to me. My father died and was brought back and I'm thinking about business logistics. But isn't that part of it too? Giving him something to be proud of? Maybe after recovery, he could run one resort, at least. Not multiple. Not now.
The doctor comes back out. “Is there a Roman Kensington here?” he asks, looking around the waiting room.
I stand up and nod.
“I’m Roman Kensington.”
“Mr. Michael Kensington would like to see you.”
So Dad asked for me specifically. I swallow hard and trail behind the doctor, my pulse hammering against my collar.
The room—private, of course—screams Granddad's influence.
No shared accommodations for a Kensington.
Polished hardwood instead of linoleum. A deep burgundy quilt that definitely didn't come from hospital supply.
Plush armchairs that could belong in a luxury suite.
I step through the doorway and there he is, propped against pillows, his expression shifting from expectation to genuine surprise, like he'd issued the command but never actually expected me to obey it.
“Roman!” he says, his green eyes lighting up like candles.
I don't say anything. I just sit in the soft chair by his hospital bed.
I'm surprised by how nice this room is. Most hospital rooms I've seen have those ugly green or white walls, cheap floors, thin blankets, harsh lights, a basic TV, and that weird hospital smell.
I've been lucky enough to never stay in one myself, which is probably why I'm so impressed right now.
It's always seemed strange to me that hospitals don't make their rooms more comfortable for healing.
If you're sick, you should be in a nice room.
That's why I make sure every room in my resorts feels like a sanctuary—the kind of place that soothes you the moment you walk through the door.
Hospitals charge $2,000 a night for a crappy shared room—they could at least make them look decent.
I stalk into the room. "You asked for me."
"I did." He nods, extending his hand. My pulse hammers as I grip it—harder than I should. His eyes ignite, not just brightening but blazing like a man seeing salvation. "Roman—"
"Dad," I cut him off, my voice like gravel.
"Save it. We both know what happened. You had choices.
You chose the bottle over your sons. Over me.
" My jaw clenches so tight my teeth might crack.
"I will never—never—forget watching you walk out that door.
It wasn't okay then. It's not okay now." My chest heaves with each breath.
"But goddammit, I love you. That's the tragedy here.
I never stopped, not through twenty-two years of birthdays, milestones and graduations you missed.
" Something breaks in me. "If I didn't love you so much, your betrayal wouldn't still be burning a hole through my chest."
Tears gather at the edges of his eyes, threatening to spill over. Twenty-two years have passed since those three words crossed my lips to him. After today's close call, I can't bear the thought of him not knowing—that despite everything, my love for him remained, buried but unbroken all this time.
Dad's hand trembles in mine, but I don't pull my hand away.
"Roman," he says, his voice cracking. "The regret I carry—for leaving you boys—it's...
" His Adam's Apple bobs as he struggles to continue.
"Stephanie. Alecia. A granddaughter and daughter-in-law I'll never know.
" He looks down, shaking his head. "Connor's Oscar speech.
Kalen clutching those Grammys. Your championship game when you made All-California.
" His breathing grows uneven. "Every graduation.
Every sporting event. Every piano recital for Ansel and Kalen.
Every play Connor starred in. Every milestone.
Gone." His chest rises and falls heavily.
"If I could rewind time... But that's not how it works, is it?
While I was drowning myself in booze and self-pity, your lives kept moving forward.
The world didn't stop because Michael Kensington checked out.
I just... missed everything that mattered. "
I nod, my eyes stinging. When's the last time I let myself cry?
After he walked out, I put my fist through drywall instead of shedding a tear.
Decades of his absence, and all I've done is throw things, punch walls, and scream.
Even when I thought Lilith was gone for good after the Blake incident, I just hit the gym with Caspian until my knuckles bled and my muscles screamed.
My brothers, though—Cameron with his song writing, his cooking and his do-gooderism, the twins with their heart-to-hearts—they've probably all had a good cry.
Hell, even Ansel and Max, tough as they try to be, probably let it out sometimes.
Maybe that's why they can move forward while I'm stuck in this loop of rage.
Maybe there's something to this vulnerability shit after all.
“Dad,” I say. “I’m not quite ready to forgive and definitely not ready to forget.
But I am ready to talk. I guess that’s all I can ask from myself that I can be in the same room as you and we can be friendly again.
” I nod. “But, for the first time in a long time, I think I might get there - be ready to forgive. At some point in time. Baby steps.”
Dad’s face breaks into a smile. “That’s all I can ask,” he says.
I hold his hand a little longer, feeling the chill of his skin against mine, the bones too close to the surface. In our home videos, Dad was a 6'3" mountain of a man with shoulders that filled doorways.
Now his hospital gown hangs loose, and his eyes hold a sorrow I can't bear to name.
During his sober stretches, he was the father who taught me to carve through powder, who showed me how to read waves before I could read books, who stood behind me with steady hands as I baited my first hook—and that man seems impossible to find in this bed.
I remember being nine, racing him down the Streif in Kitzbühlen, that insane Austrian slope with its 85% gradient where we hit 120 MPH, and I wasn't scared because he was there. Where did that father go?