“Please…” She turns tear-stained eyes to me. “I love you, Landon. I always have. It’s killing me to think it’s all going to end like this, with you walking away from me and Evans ending up in jail.”
“Ava.” I try to sound patient. “You’re not well. You need to rest.”
“I love you,” she says again. “Does that not matter? I waited a decade for you, and now I’ve almost died for you. You can’t just walk away from me, Landon, please.”
“Stop it. This”—I gesture around the room—“it’s not about us. It’s about you getting better.”
Her eyes flash with something like resentment. “Fuck getting better. I need you. You always came back to me before. Why can’t it be the same this time?”
“Because I love someone else, Ava, more than I ever thought it was possible to love.” Her lips tremble, and I can’t help feeling bad for her. “I’m sorry this happened, but if you want to be in my life in any capacity, you must accept that Rachel is the only woman who’ll ever mean anything to me.”
She turns her face away. “So why did you come?”
“Because she asked me to.”
She makes a sound. “And she’s here too?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can leave.” Her jaw sets. “I’ll be fine.”
“Ava—”
“No, don’t.” She smiles bitterly. “I don’t want your pity. Please. I’ll be fine.”
She presses a button, and a nurse enters the room. I wait as she attends to Ava. In a few moments, she’s asleep again.
“She’ll be out for a while.” The nurse smiles at me. “Maybe you can come back?”
I shake my head. “No. There’s no point.”
When I return to the suite, Rachel is not there. For a short moment of panic, I rush to check that her things are still in the closet. They are.
She’s not leaving me. She said she wouldn’t.
Though after everything, after all the things I told her before we left New York, who would blame her?
I fix myself a drink, remembering the resentment in Ava’s eyes, the pain and dismissal. But no matter how sorry I feel for her, I can’t give her what she wants, and I can’t let Evans hurt anyone else.
The door to the suite opens and Rachel comes in. She’s dressed simply, and when she sees me, her face breaks into a soft smile.
Her appearance and her smile bring me so much relief that for a few seconds, I’m speechless. “I wondered where you were.”
“Claude could have told you,” she says. “I went to see Jules.”
I haven’t even done more than speak to Cameron on the phone. “How is she?”
“Ready to pop.”
I spend a moment imagine Cameron and Jules’s future offspring. “Would you like something to drink?” I ask Rachel.
She refuses with a small headshake. “How is she?”
Ava.
“She’s doing great. Evans is still missing, but many people are trying to find him. He wanted more money, it seems, and when he found out she met with me in New York, it drove him crazy enough to hurt her.”
“What will happen when they find him?”