CHAPTER 5
1045 Words
JADE'S POV
I don't remember getting into Rafe's car.
One second I was on my knees in the parking garage, and the next I was in the passenger seat of a black truck, the engine roaring, the city lights blurring past the window in long yellow streaks. My phone was cracked in my lap. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Breathe," Rafe said, his voice steady even though his knuckles were white on the wheel. "She's still alive, Jade. The nurse said come, not goodbye. Hold onto that."
"You don't know that," I whispered. "You don't know anything."
"I know you're about to pass out if you don't breathe." He reached over without taking his eyes off the road and pressed his hand flat against my chest, right over my heart. The heat of his palm went straight through my shirt, and for one second, just one, the panic loosened its grip enough for me to gasp in a real breath.
"There," he said quietly. "Just like that. Again."
I didn't ask how he knew to do that. I didn't ask why his touch worked when nothing else did. I just breathed, in and out, all the way to Grace Memorial.
He didn't even park properly. He just stopped the truck in the emergency loop, threw it into park, and ran around to open my door before I could fumble with the handle myself.
"Go," he said. "I'm right behind you."
I ran.
The hospital lights were too bright, too white, after the darkness of the garage. My sneakers slapped against the floor as I pushed past visitors and wheelchairs, past the front desk where someone called my name and I didn't stop, all the way to the elevator, up to the third floor, down the hallway to room 412.
The door was half open.
I skidded to a stop outside it, my chest heaving, and through the gap I could see my mother in the hospital bed, smaller than I remembered, her skin so pale it almost matched the sheets. Machines beeped steadily beside her. Her eyes were closed.
But she was breathing.
She was breathing.
Relief hit me so hard my knees buckled, and I grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling. Rafe's hand landed on my back, steady, grounding, and for a second all I could feel was that.
Then I noticed the chair beside her bed wasn't empty.
Someone was sitting there. Someone holding her hand.
I pushed the door open the rest of the way, and the man in the chair looked up.
Declan.
My whole body went cold.
"Get away from her," I said, my voice shaking. I stepped into the room, putting myself between Declan and my mother's bed. "Don't touch her. Don't you dare touch her."
Declan didn't move. He didn't even look surprised to see me. If anything, he looked tired, in a way I'd never seen on him before, like a mask had slipped somewhere along the way and he hadn't bothered to put it back on.
"Jade," he said quietly. "She's stable. The doctors got to her in time. Her blood pressure dropped, but they caught it early."
"How would you know that?" I demanded. "Why are you even here? Why are you holding her hand?"
"Because I've been visiting her for eight months," he said. "Every week. Sometimes twice."
The room tilted.
"That's not true," I said. "You're lying. You don't even know her."
"Jade." My mother's voice, weak and cracked, came from the bed.
I spun around. Her eyes were open now, watching me, glassy and tired but awake.
"Mom." I rushed to her side, gripping her hand, the one Declan had been holding, and pressed it to my face. "Mom, I'm here. I'm so sorry, I should have been here sooner, I-"
"Jade, sweetheart." Her fingers tightened weakly around mine. Her eyes moved past me, to the doorway, and widened slightly. "Oh."
I turned to see what she was looking at.
Rafe stood in the doorway, frozen, staring at my mother like he'd seen a ghost.
And my mother was staring back at him the exact same way.
"Eleanor's boy," she whispered.
The machines beeped steadily in the silence that followed. Rafe didn't move. His face had gone completely white, his eyes wide, fixed on my mother like the words had physically struck him.
"What did you call him?" I asked slowly.
My mother's gaze flicked between Rafe and me, and something like fear flickered across her tired face. Her grip on my hand tightened.
"Mom," I said again, my voice rising. "What did you say?"
"You look just like her," my mother whispered, still staring at Rafe. "Just like Eleanor, the day she came to me. Crying. Begging me to keep a secret for her. Begging me to never tell you the truth about your father."
The room went silent except for the steady beep of the monitor.
"What truth?" I asked. My voice came out small. "Mom, what are you talking about? Dad died when I was twelve. What does Rafe's mother have to do with-"
"Your father didn't die when you were twelve, Jade." My mother's eyes filled with tears, and for the first time since I walked in, she looked at Declan. Not with fear. With something that looked horribly, impossibly like guilt.
"He left," she said. "The same year Eleanor left her husband. The same year she ran with her son and disappeared." Her hand shook in mine. "Because Eleanor's husband found out what your father and Eleanor had been doing behind his back. For years."
I couldn't breathe.
"Mom, please-"
"Declan isn't just here because of the hospital bills, Jade." Tears slid down her face. "He's here because seven months ago, when I started getting worse, I called him. Because he's the only person left alive who knows the truth about who your real father is."
I felt Rafe move beside me, slow, like the floor had become ice under his feet.
"Say it," he said, his voice barely human. "Whatever you're about to say. Say it now."
My mother looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, and whispered the words that shattered everything.
"Your father, Rafael... and Jade's father... are the same man."
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