Chapter 180
Chapter 180:
The last thing I remembered was the cold. The crushing, suffocating darkness of the water. And then — him. His lips on mine, breathing life back into my lungs. His voice, broken and desperate, begging me not to leave him. He had come for me. He had saved me.
I shifted my hand against the scratchy hospital sheets, my trembling fingers seeking an anchor in this drifting sea of pain.
Warmth.
My fingers brushed against a large, solid hand resting on the edge of my bed. I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I latched onto it with every scrap of weak strength I had left, clinging to it like a lifeline.
“Dallas…” I croaked, my voice like sandpaper scraping against stone. My throat was raw, burning from the river water I had inhaled.
The hand didn’t pull away. Instead, it turned and engulfed my smaller fingers in a firm, possessive grip. A thumb brushed over my knuckles — soothing, constant.
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, leaking down into my hairline. He was here. He hadn’t left me. After everything — the kidnapping, the gun at my head, the drowning — he was right here by my side.
I forced my eyes open, fighting the blur of medication and exhaustion. A dark silhouette sat in the chair beside my bed, leaning close. My vision swam, unable to fix on the features, but I knew that shape. I knew that presence.
“I love you,” I whispered, the confession spilling from my lips before I could stop it. It was the truth I had been too afraid to speak — the truth that had almost died with me in that river. “Dallas… don’t you dare leave me again p>
The air in the room seemed to freeze.
𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘯
Before the figure holding my hand could answer, the sound of the door handle turning cut through the silence like a gunshot.
I blinked, trying to clear the fog from my eyes, and turned my head toward the door.
Dallas Marshall stood there.
He was a wreck. His expensive suit was ruined — sodden and clinging to his frame, dripping river water onto the pristine linoleum floor. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his chest heaved as though he had run miles to get here.
But it was his eyes that stopped my heart.
A moment ago they had been wide with frantic worry. Now, as his gaze dropped to my hand — tightly interlocked with the hand of the man sitting beside my bed — they went dead.
The light in them didn’t just fade; it was extinguished. The relief, the love, the desperation — all of it vanished, replaced by a void so cold it made the river feel like a warm bath.
Confused, I tried to pull my hand away and reach out to him, but the fingers intertwined with mine tightened their grip.
I looked up at the man sitting beside me. My vision finally sharpened.
It wasn’t Dallas.
Braydon Hyde sat there, his face arranged in a mask of concern that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He watched me with a possessiveness that made my skin crawl, but he didn’t let go.