Married To The Wrong Castellan.

Chapter 4

Delilah’s POV

“Delilah, is it true?”

Someone had shoved a phone in my face before I even made it past the corner.

A photo of a woman leaving a hotel room, her face turned just enough to keep it a mystery. The same hotel Wyatt had stayed in the night before our wedding.

I didn’t even know which lie they were asking about anymore. Three months of this, and there’d been so many versions of the story that I’d lost count of which one was supposed to be today’s.

Cameras came up around me from every side, shutters clicking, voices layering over each other until I couldn’t tell one question from the next.

“Is it true he left you for her?”

“Delilah, over here—”

“Is she pregnant? Is that why he left?”

I flinched and walked faster, my eyes locked on the pavement, refusing to give them a single second of my face.

A hand grabbed my sleeve. I pulled away hard and stumbled off the curb.

“Delilah, just one word—”

I put my head down and ran.

I hadn’t planned on running that morning. I’d only meant to walk, clear my head before the day started, the way I used to before all of this. But somewhere around the second block, my walk had turned into something faster, my body moving before my mind caught up, like if I just went fast enough I could outrun three months of my own life.

I’d tried everything to put Wyatt behind me, packing away the things that reminded me of him, avoiding the restaurants we used to go to, deleting photos I used to look at every night before bed. And every single time I thought I’d made an inch of progress, the world found a way to shove it back in my face. There was either always a headline or a stranger on the street who recognized me from the news and looked at me like I was something to pity. And now there was a photo.

I didn’t get to grieve quietly. I didn’t get to grieve at all. Every version of my heartbreak had already been sold to a hundred different outlets, twisted into a hundred different stories, and none of them were mine.

A van cut me off before I saw it coming. The doors slid open. Cameras spilled out onto the pavement before the van had even stopped moving.

“Delilah! Over here!”

I turned to go the other way and ran straight into two more of them, phones already raised, already recording.

“Delilah, is it true he’s been seeing her for months?”

“How does it feel knowing everyone saw it before you did?”

That one landed somewhere it shouldn’t have. I stopped walking for half a second, and that was all it took for them to close in around me completely, a wall of lenses and shouting voices with no gap left to slip through.

“Delilah, look this way—”

“Just one comment, that’s all we need—”

My chest was heaving now, and it wasn’t from the run anymore. I could feel my own pulse pounding, loud enough to drown half of what they were shouting at me. I turned in a circle, looking for any space to move through, and found none.

“Get back!”

The voice cut through all the chaos at once, sharp enough that a few of the cameras jerked away from me before the person behind the voice even reached me.

“Get back, all of you. Now.”

Then a car door slammed somewhere behind the crowd. A hand closed around my arm and before I could react, I was pulled aside, away from the crush of bodies and flashing cameras, and into open air.

“That’s enough all of you,” he yelled. “She has nothing to say to any of you.”

The cameras didn’t back off right away. A few kept shooting even with him standing between me and the lenses, until his voice cracked out again, harder this time, and one by one they started pulling back, lowering their phones, retreating toward the van.

I stood there shaking, my chest still rising and falling fast as the street slowly cleared around us.

I hadn’t seen him since the morning I woke up on his bed. I had made sure of it. I left rooms whenever he walked in. I took the stairs instead of the elevator. I did anything I could to avoid being near him.

Because being near him meant remembering his bed, my dress on his floor, and the silence between us when neither of us knew what to say.

But right now, his hand was the only thing keeping me steady.

I let him pull me against his side.

“Are you okay?” he asked, keeping one hand at my back as we walked.

“I’m fine.”

My voice sounded weaker than I wanted.

He stopped and looked at me. “You’re so pale.”

“I just need to sit down.”

“Delilah.” His hand tightened around my arm. “Look at me.”

I tried.

But my knees gave out before I could say anything.

His arm caught me before I hit the ground.

The last thing I heard was my name leaving his mouth, low and scared, like it was the only word he could think to say.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed with the Castellan family Doctor standing right over me.

“Ms. Hartwell.” She glanced up with a small, practiced smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, but mostly embarrassed.” I tried to laugh, but it came out crooked. “I don’t usually just collapse in the street.”

“Stress can do strange things to the body.” She pulled a stool closer, sitting level with me instead of over me. “We ran a full panel while you were out. Your blood pressure’s back to normal. It dropped low earlier, which likely caused the fainting.”

“So it was just stress.”

“Partly.” Her eyes moved to Richard, then back to me. “But I do want to talk about a few of your other results. They weren’t what I’d expect from ordinary exhaustion.”

My heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

“I’d like you back this week for a follow-up.” She set the tablet down. “In the meantime, given your condition, you need rest.

No more running from cameras, whatever’s chasing you. It can wait, but your body can’t.”

“Condition?” I asked, confused.

I looked at Richard. He looked just as lost as I felt.

“Wait.” My voice barely came out. “What?”