Chapter 19 #2
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “I don’t have anything, Alex,” I bite out.
“I’m just a goddamn nurse who was dumb enough to fall for a memory-wiped mystery man with abs for days and a dick that makes you forget your own name. Turns out, surprise! He’s a billionaire with a country club girlfriend and a penthouse view.”
I shove the cart forward, my knuckles white, ready to roll my dignity straight down the ICU hall, but he moves fast—too fast.
His arm hooks around my waist and I hate that my body remembers him instantly.
His chest presses to my back, like he’s always belonged there.
He smells like something bottled and tailored, high-end and heartbreak, and it makes my eyes sting.
“You don’t smell like ramen noodles and my shampoo anymore,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “You smell expensive. Untouchable.”
“I’d throw every fucking suit in the East Wing closet if it meant smelling like your lemon-strawberry bullshit again,” he murmurs, right into my neck, and it makes my knees weak. “Carol, don’t do this. Don’t pretend like I didn’t matter. Like we didn’t matter.”
“You’re engaged, Alex,” I say, and it burns like acid. “Your little Stepford heiress came looking, remember? So go be a Vanderbilt and marry into your legacy.”
He tightens his arm, just enough that I feel the thrum of his pulse at my back.
“I broke it off the moment I got my fucking signature back,” he grits out.
“Genevieve can choke on her pearls. There’s only one woman I’m chasing, and she lives in a shoebox with a busted coffee machine and made me the best goddamn broccoli pasta I’ve ever had.”
My throat clenches so tight it hurts.
“You don’t get to do this,” I rasp. “You don’t get to vanish and then show up with flowers and pretty words.”
He turns me around, hands still on my waist. His eyes are fire. “Then tell me to fuck off and I will,” he says. “Right now. I’ll walk away. But if there’s even a sliver of you that still wants me… say it, and I swear to God, Carol, I’ll never leave you again.”
His nose brushes my hair, and god, he still knows how to weaponize proximity like a fucking sniper. “Carol, please… ”
I close my eyes, heart hammering, tears cracking my pride behind my eyes.
“I’m not from your world…” I murmur.
“No, you’re not” he says, “But you’re the only person who makes the world worth living.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” I say, weak.
His fingers flex on my waist like he’s anchoring himself to me, like if he lets go I’ll vanish into the goddamn sterile linoleum and leave nothing but lemon shampoo and crushed peony petals behind.
“I promise you won’t,” he whispers again, voice wrecked but steady. “Just be mine again, Carol. Let me earn it, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, bill by fucking bill if I have to. I’ll beg if that helps.”
I huff a laugh, tears sliding hot down my cheeks as I press my forehead to his chest. “Don’t tempt me. I’d make you beg. On your knees, Vanderbilt. In Tom Ford.”
“You want me on my knees? I’ll do it right now. Front of the nurse’s station. Fuck it—give Rhonda a show.”
I snort, half-laughing, half-sobbing, clutching his shirt like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. “God, you’re such a cocky piece of shit.”
“Only for you, baby,” he says, brushing his thumb across my cheek, catching the tears like he’s cataloguing them. “Crash was the best fucking version of me. I’m not letting him die now that I remember who I am.”
I look up at him, throat dry, lips trembling. “What about your empire, Vanderbilt?”
He shrugs. “They’ll wait.”
“What about Genevieve and the old money stepford fantasy?”
“Dead. Buried. May she rest in designer peace.”
My chest seizes with laughter that tastes like hope and salt and all the shit I’ve been holding down for two goddamn months.
“You better not be full of shit,” I whisper.
He leans down, lips a breath from mine. “I’m full of you, Carol. Always have been.”
And just like that, I kiss him. Hard. Like a punch to the past and a middle finger to every regret. I kiss him like I’m staking a claim—Crash and Alex, both of them mine.
----
Alexander Vanderbilt
Getting Carol into my penthouse feels like yanking the goddamn universe back into alignment.
She steps through the doors and freezes, eyes darting like she’s just walked into the Vatican with muddy boots.
Her fingers twitch near her coat, like she’s ready to bolt or fold it into a goddamn apology.
And yeah—it’s a lot. Marble floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline like a postcard.
It’s curated, cold, designed to impress the kind of people who drink their scotch neat and fuck their assistants in glass offices.
Carol doesn’t belong here.
And that’s exactly why she should.
She looks around, lips parted, brown eyes wide and reverent, like she’s waiting for a voice from the clouds to yell you don’t belong here, nurse.
Her shoulders stay stiff, her coat clinging to her like armor, and I swear I can feel the moment she starts calculating the square footage like it’s a threat.
“This place is…” she says finally, voice soft but laced with disbelief, “…fucking insane.”
I grin, toss my keys on the counter, and walk back to her, slow. “You think this is crazy? Wait ’til you see the espresso machine.”
“Alex,” she says, eyeing the velvet furniture like it might fine her rent just for sitting, “this rug probably costs more than my student loans.”
“Then step on it twice,” I smirk. “Make it work for it.”
She gives me that look—half disbelief, half don’t-fuck-with-me—but the tension’s still coiled in her shoulders like she’s waiting for a security team to drag her out for breathing near imported leather.
She’s all twitchy energy and hesitant steps, like she’s trespassing in a goddamn museum.
It’d be adorable if it didn’t make me want to burn this whole penthouse down and build her a studio with three locks and a dishwasher that doesn’t suck.
“This woman,” I think, watching her eye the couch like it’s gonna bite her. “She can shove a tube down a screaming drunk’s throat at 2AM, cuss out a surgeon and meal prep for the week. But God forbid she sits on the couch of a man she used to ride like a rented stallion.”
Her voice comes, small and uncertain. “You said… um— you couldn’t call me, or something.”
I step closer. “Yeah. Reginald and Leopold had me on fucking house arrest for almost two weeks.”
Her brows lift. “What?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “No phone, no news, nothing. I was their little confused heir puppet, locked in a marble cage.”
She blinks. “Why the hell would they do that?”
“Because I’m a liability,” I say, letting the words hang there. “A goddamn ticking time bomb with too much memory and too many questions. And now that I remember everything?” I tilt my head. “They’re right to be afraid.”
She stares at me like she’s seeing another version again. Not the apron-wearing, one-arm homeless man with a bad case of memory loss. Not even the vulnerable man she found half-dead on a gurney. But this me—suit, teeth bared, crown back on my fucking head.
“I missed you,” I say, quieter now, voice low like a prayer I don’t want the walls to hear.
I tug her in—onto my lap, my hands greedy on her waist, fingers splayed like I’m afraid she’ll vanish if I blink.
Her hips fit like they were always mine to hold, her thighs bracketing me as she settles with hesitation still flickering behind her eyes.
And fuck, I want to kiss the doubt right off her face.
Eat it from her mouth until there’s nothing left but the taste of us.
“Do you know how hard it was?” I murmur against her neck, lips brushing her skin.
“How fucking hard it was to wake up in this soulless penthouse and not have you hogging the blanket, not have your stupid lemon-strawberry shampoo in the air, not hear you cursing at your keys or arguing with a box of pasta?”
Her breath shudders. Her fingers curl into my shirt.
“I’ve been starving for you,” I go on, mouth at her collarbone now, teeth grazing just enough to make her gasp.
“Starving, Carol. Every second they kept me away, all I could think about was the way you moan when I’m buried inside you. The way you call me baby. The way you looked at me like I wasn’t broken.”
I grab her chin, tilt her face to me.
“They can keep the fucking empire. I’d set it on fire if you asked.”
And then I kiss her, hard and deep, because I can’t hold it in anymore. Because she’s home, and I’m done starving.
She pulls back, stubborn as hell, golden hair falling loose from that frazzled nurse bun, cheeks flushed, lips swollen, and eyes sharp like a goddamn scalpel. Still breathing hard, still sitting on my lap, but trying to rein it all in—like she needs to understand before she lets herself fall again.
And I can’t blame her.
“So what happened?” she asks, voice low but fierce. “Like… with everything. The marriage, the empire… all of it.”
I sigh, lean back into the couch with her still straddling me, one hand on her hip just to keep her close, grounded.
“Before I met you—before the accident, before I was ‘Crash’ and just a guy with a busted arm and a hard-on for a gorgeous nurse—I found documents.”
I look her dead in the eyes. “Important ones. Stuff my father didn’t want anyone knowing about. My mom—Margaret—she wasn’t just some heiress with a fading name. She had leverage. Legacy shares in the Vanderbilt Conglomerate, given to her by her father. Untouched. Unbothered.”
I shift, jaw clenching.
“She left them to me. Not my father. Not Reginald. Me. And on my thirth birthday, they mature. Full control. Legal and clean. They’d have to answer to me. And that scared the ever-living fuck out of them.”
Carol’s eyes are wide now, lips parted.
“I had just found that out when the accident happened. When I disappeared. When they suddenly had a chance to ‘handle’ the situation quietly. No cops. No press. Just missing. A freak accident no one could confirm.”
She swallows, her fingers gripping my forearms tighter.
“Jesus,” she whispers, voice barely there.