Chapter 426
[ 703 words ]
Chapter 426:
Her mind replayed the recent whirlwind. The threat from Melanie Thorne was gone—Jarrod had seen to that, permanently. But the fear she’d planted hadn’t faded so easily. Three times in the past week, a blocked number had called her phone. When she answered, there was only breathing—heavy, deliberate, laced with a hatred that made her skin crawl. Then, just two days ago, she’d spotted the same black sedan she usually saw out front parked outside the grocery store. Different plates, but too similar to be a coincidence. She’d never confirmed who it was, but her mind, still raw from everything that had happened, conjured shadows everywhere. The threat felt real, even if its source was no longer clear. Then there was Donovan Sinclair, and that final, brutal conversation in the restaurant—the fortune he had tried to press into her hands, the money she had refused with a single, unyielding declaration. She had walked away from it. From him. She had drawn that line herself, without Jarrod’s intervention, without anyone’s permission. It was the one victory that felt entirely her own. And yet, even now, she could still feel the weight of his absence, the strange grief of losing someone she had barely begun to know. All of it, every victory and every loss, seemed to orbit the same sun: Jarrod’s world. His name. His influence.
A bitter taste filled her mouth. She hated it. She hated this feeling of being a passenger in her own life, her path cleared by a force she didn’t control. She needed to feel the ground under her own feet again. She needed to reclaim a piece of herself that had nothing to do with being Mrs. Romero.
The hostility from Harper and Cornelia was a known quantity, a battle she knew was coming. To face them, to face anything, she couldn’t be this dependent, this fragile thing waiting for her husband to come home. As long as Jarrod was a phone call away, she was safe. But she couldn’t live like that. She wouldn’t.
The decision solidified in her mind, clear and sharp. She needed to work.
𝖡е 𝗉𝗮𝘳𝘁 о𝘧 𝘰𝗎𝗋 𝗰о𝗆m𝘶𝘯i𝗍y 𝗈𝗻 𝗀al𝗇o𝘃𝖾𝗹𝘀.c𝗈𝗺
She dressed quickly in a set of plain blue scrubs, the familiar, slightly coarse fabric a comfort against her skin. She bypassed the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time, needing the physical exertion. She nodded to the man in the black sedan as she got into her own car, a silent acknowledgment, and drove toward Washington General.
The moment she stepped through the automatic doors, the smell of antiseptic hit her. It was clean, sharp, and familiar. It was the smell of purpose. For the first time in days, the knot of anxiety in her stomach loosened its grip. She was heading for Dr. Finchley’s office to discuss her return when a figure stumbled around the corner, nearly colliding with her.
It was Dr. Julian Croft.
He looked terrible. His usually neat hair was unkempt, a dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a deep, weary red. The confident, almost arrogant energy he usually carried was gone, replaced by a haunted exhaustion.
He saw her, and a flicker of something—surprise, maybe relief—crossed his face before it crumpled into an expression of profound regret.
“Caroline…” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m so sorry. About your mother… and about… everything I did before.”
He was trying to bridge the chasm that had opened between them, to rewind time to before everything had shattered.
She looked at him, and to her own surprise, felt nothing but a quiet, settled peace. The anger, the betrayal—it had all burned away in the fires of the last few weeks. “It’s over, Julian. I don’t blame you.”
Her calmness seemed to give him an opening, a sliver of hope. He took a step closer. “Romero… he deployed, didn’t he? You must be worried sick.”
It was a question wrapped in the guise of concern, a scalpel searching for a weakness.
Caroline nodded, her expression unreadable. “Yes. I’m worried.”
A desperate light ignited in his eyes. He saw a crack, a chance to pry her away from the man he saw as a monster. “He just left you here? Alone? To deal with all of this… How could he—”
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