FALLING FOR MR DOMINIC IN 30 DAYS

Chapter 4

Thursday, Genevieve showed up at nine. Stayed thirty-one minutes.

Not that Marisol was counting, exactly. She just happened to note the time when Genevieve signed in, and noted it again when she left. Purely procedural. Had nothing to do with how closely she'd been watching that corridor all morning. Nothing at all.

Through the window: the two of them. Genevieve at the bedside, composed, attentive, doing all of it exactly right. Holding his hand. Answering whatever he asked in that steady, measured way. Nothing in her posture said anything but a woman visiting the man she loved.

A good performance. Marisol was starting to understand that pretty much everything Genevieve did was a good performance, and that the bathroom floor at two a.m. had been the single crack in it. The one moment it slipped. Genevieve had spent every hour since making sure it didn't happen twice.

On her way out, Genevieve stopped at the nurses' station.

"He's asking about the missing years." Low voice. "I told him what the doctors want. Broad strokes. Nothing specific. Let him lead the pace."

"That's the right call."

"He asked about you." A pause. "Wanted to know who the nurse on nights was. I gave him your name. He said you two had talked." Another pause. "Honest, he said. That he appreciated it." She held Marisol's eyes a moment, something unreadable moving behind them. "He doesn't say that about many people."

Marisol didn't answer.

"Keep being honest with him. About the recovery. The progress. The things that are actually yours to be honest about." The emphasis landed exactly where she meant it to. "We understand each other."

Then she left.

Marisol stared at her chart and didn't process a single word on it. Thirty seconds, easily.

That night, he was different.

They'd cut his pain meds back, which left him sharper but rawer too, more exposed to whatever sat underneath everything. He was sitting up when she walked in, a book open on his lap he clearly wasn't reading.

"You don't have to pretend to be reading," she said, checking his IV.

He glanced at the book. "That obvious?"

"Page hasn't turned in forty minutes. Patricia flagged it in the handover."

He shut the book. "She's sharp."

"It's the job."

He set the book aside and looked at her with that same unguarded honesty she was starting to expect, none of the social padding most people ran on without thinking. "I've been trying to remember. The missing years." A pause. "Doctors say don't force it. That it comes back on its own schedule." Another pause. "Never been good at waiting on anything."

"What do you remember? Before the gap."

"Everything." No pride in how he said it. "The company, the people in it, what it felt like putting it together. Clear as day." Quiet a second. "I remember the early days especially. When it still felt like mine."

"And it stopped feeling that way?"

He looked at her. "Must have. Judging by whatever I can pull off the edge of the gap. That last little stretch right before it goes black." A small shake of his head. "Like trying to read the last page of a chapter somebody tore out."

She pulled the chair over without deciding to, and sat. Second time she'd crossed that particular line. Standing to sitting. Managing to just being there. Some part of her brain noted it, still playing the careful one.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Genevieve." Slow, the way he said the name. "We were engaged."

"Yes."

"I don't," he stopped himself. "I know who she is. I remember meeting her. Figuring out how I felt about her. But asking her to marry me?" A beat. "Nothing. I don't remember what that felt like at all." He looked toward the window. "Should I be upset about that?"

Marisol picked her words with care. "Emotional memory can lag behind the factual stuff, they say. Doesn't mean it's gone for good."

"Doesn't mean it's coming back, either."

"No." Honest. "It doesn't."

He sat with that. Then, "You think she knows that?"

Marisol thought about a bathroom floor. A positive test. Ten thousand dollars, spent in under a minute.

"I think," slower now, "everyone who cares about you is carrying a lot of worry right now. Her included."

He looked at her. Something assessing in it. Underneath, something almost grateful, for an answer that managed to be honest without cutting, that held the mess instead of flattening it.

"You're careful," he said. "But you don't lie."

"I try not to."

That one cost her something to say. She noted the cost and kept moving past it.

"My friend Callum's coming tomorrow. Been trying to get here since the accident, work kept getting in the way." A pause. "Looking forward to seeing somebody who knew me before all this."

"That'll be good for you."

"You working tomorrow?"

"Nights, through Sunday."

"Good." That word again. Settled. Simple. Like her being there was just a fact about the world he was still relieved to find true.

She stood, put the chair back, checked the chart one last time.

"Marisol."

"Yes?"

"The clinic."

She stopped mid-turn. "What about it?"

"You mentioned it earlier. While you were on the phone doing the drip. Something about a building inspection." A beat. "The second you said the word *clinic*, your whole voice changed."

She stared at him. A thirty-second call from her landlord about the Riverside inspection. She hadn't thought he was even awake enough to catch it.

"It's nothing. Just an idea I've had."

"Didn't sound like nothing."

She looked at him there in the low blue light. A man who'd just been told two years of his own life were unaccounted for, lying in a hospital bed managing pain he wouldn't admit to out loud, waiting to find out who he'd turned into, and somehow he'd still caught a thirty-second phone call and clocked the exact change in her voice.

"It's a clinic," she said finally. "In Riverside. Been working toward it a long time."

"What kind?"

"Community health. The neighborhood needs one." A pause. "Still a long way off."

He held her eyes. "Don't let anyone talk you out of it."

She held his gaze right back.

"Get some sleep," she said, and walked out.

In the corridor she put her hand flat against the wall for a second. Thought about how a person could be so careful about so many things and still end up standing exactly where she had no business being.

Then she went back to work.