YOU LOVE ME LIKE A SECRET

SOMETHING WAS WRONG

The room was unnaturally quiet, as if even the machines were holding their breath.

Elena lay in the wide hospital bed, fragile beneath the soft glow of a single bedside lamp. Tubes and monitors surrounded her like delicate silver threads, their rhythmic beeps the only proof that life still clung stubbornly to her body. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, but her eyes — when they opened — were clear. Knowing. Far too aware for someone balancing on the edge of forever.

Xu Shein stood beside her, his hand resting lightly on hers. The powerful man who had once pinned me against rain-streaked glass and taken me with slow, devastating thrusts now looked smaller. Human. The armor of the untouchable billionaire had cracked open, revealing raw exhaustion and a grief so deep it seemed to hollow him out from the inside.

Eden Hernandez remained at the foot of the bed, composed as ever, but her eyes carried the truth: something was very wrong.

“You should sit,” Eden said gently. “You look like you might fall.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. My legs carried me closer on their own, heels silent on the thick carpet. My silk dress still clung damply to my skin from the earlier rain, a constant, humiliating reminder of every place Xu Shein’s hands had been just hours ago — my breasts, my hips, the slick heat between my thighs where my body had welcomed him even as the world burned down around us.

Elena’s eyes fluttered open fully. They found me.

And she smiled.

Small. Almost shy. Devastatingly kind.

“Lin Yue,” she whispered, her voice fragile as spun glass.

My throat closed instantly. Hearing my name on her lips felt like a wound and a caress at the same time. This was the woman whose husband I had let ruin me in shadowed hotel rooms and the back of his Maybach. The woman I had resented in silence while I came apart around his c**k, moaning his name like a prayer meant only for me.

“It’s okay,” I managed, my voice barely audible. “I’m here.”

Xu Shein’s fingers tightened around Elena’s. She turned her head toward him with visible effort, her expression softening with a love so profound it hurt to witness.

“Xu Shein…” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” he said immediately, voice rough and breaking. “Just breathe. Please.”

Something in the air shifted — tense, unspoken, heavier than the monitors’ steady rhythm. I felt it like a chill against my damp skin. There was more here. Layers beneath layers. A truth still hovering just out of reach.

Eden stepped forward. “Lin Yue… she’s stable for now. But it’s fragile. There’s something you need to understand.”

I turned to her, heart hammering. “What?”

Eden’s gaze was grave. “This isn’t just an illness with a neat timeline. The treatments buy time, but things can change without warning. Rapidly.”

The words landed like slow, deliberate thrusts — deep, inescapable. Critically ill. Not temporary. Not something that might pass. A shadow that had been lengthening for months while I had been spreading my legs for her husband and telling myself our passion was beautiful.

Xu Shein looked at me then. Really looked. His dark eyes held exhaustion, regret, and something deeper that made my chest ache with unwanted longing.

“I should have told you,” he said quietly. “So many things. I should have done everything differently.”

I shook my head, tears burning. “It’s not your fault.”

“No,” he murmured, glancing down at Elena’s hand in his. “It’s… complicated.”

I stepped closer to the bed. Elena watched me with those calm, fading eyes. She had known. She had carried the knowledge of us while fighting for every breath. The shame that washed over me was immediate and crushing. Because while I had been dripping down his fingers and crying his name in ecstasy, she had been here — alone with the truth and the slow unraveling of her body.

Something was wrong.

Deeper than betrayal. Deeper than illness. Something in the careful way they looked at each other, in the weighted silence, told me the story I had walked into was far more intricate — and far more devastating — than I had imagined.

And I was standing directly in the center of it.