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I tug my phone out of my pocket.
I was warned not to use my phone on this ward. The nurse who wagged her finger at me told me to silence it. I did, but a glance through my missed calls and text messages tells me my wife hasn’t tried to contact me.
“Dammit,” I say, not giving a shit if the nurse overhears me. “Where are you, Trina?”
“I’m here.”
I don’t know if I’m fucking dreaming or not, but I turn at the sound of that soft voice.
“Graham,” my wife says my name, and suddenly my world feels centered. “I’m so sorry.”
I go to her. I don’t care that she has two cups of coffee in her hands. I wrap my arms around her and hold her against me.
Then, I sob into her neck.
I cry for the pain I see on her face.
I cry for the tears streaming down her cheeks, and I cry for the man in bed who gave me my life.
He rescued me from the downward spiral I was in.
He sent me to a school where I met my best friends, and he gave me a job working alongside him.
The entire time he was helping me, he was burdened with a grief so profound it almost destroyed him. Then, another layer was added to that when he lost his wife.
“How…how is Mr. Abdon?” Trina stutters out.
I step back and grab both cups of coffee from her. “Come with me. He’s asleep, but I know he’ll want to see you when he wakes up.”
Her hand on my forearm stalls me. “He won’t. Something happened earlier. I don’t know how much he told you.”
“None of it,” I say. “All I know is that he had your wedding rings. Please, Trina, come with me and tell me what’s going on.”
As another tear falls onto her cheek, she nods. “I’ll tell you all of it.”
Trina stands next to Lloyd’s hospital bed, staring down at him. “This is all my fault. He’s going to die because of me.”
I wrap my arms around her from behind to still her. She’s shaking through a series of sobs.
“He’s not going to die, Trina,” I reassure her. “He needs a procedure. Once that’s done, the doctor told me there’s a strong chance that Lloyd will live for years.”
She spins around to face me. “What?”
I skim a hand over her cheek to brush away her tears. “There’s a partial blockage in one of the arteries that lead to his heart. He needs a cardiac stent to open it back up.”
“Then he’ll be okay?” her voice holds as much hope as her eyes.
I see what I feel when I look at her, relief and trust that what the doctor said is true. Lloyd isn’t going anywhere. He’s going to be a part of our lives for years to come.
I want Trina to be a part of my life forever, so I glance down at her hand. “Why did Lloyd have your wedding rings?”
She bites her bottom lip. “This isn’t the time to talk about this, Graham. I don’t think I should be here when he wakes up. I upset him.”
She tugs free of my grasp and heads toward the door.
I’m on her heel before she makes it halfway there. I grab hold of her arm. “Stop, Trina. Please. I need to understand what the hell happened today.”
Her head drops. “He went to the bakery to get a chocolate cake. He spoke to my mom about us. She told him he was wrong about us being married. She told him where I really live, Graham. He knew our marriage was fake.”
I move around until I’m standing in front of her. “He confronted you about all of this?”
Her head shakes. “I went home…to the penthouse to see if I could explain things since you were in that meeting. It didn’t go well.”
“What happened?”
Her gaze meets mine, and I see defeat there. I see a broken spirit and endless sorrow swimming in her eyes. “He told me about your past. He told me about your mom.”
I swallow back the pain that always hits me when I think of that day. It was the day I woke on the subway to find my mother gone. I never saw her again.
“Mr. Abdon was angry.” She tugs on the sleeve of her blouse. “He assumed our fake marriage was your idea. I could see how much that pained him, so I told him I had come up with the plan. I explained that I suggested we get married and that I was the one who negotiated the payout.”
“Trina.”
She steps closer to me to cup her hands over my cheeks. “He loves you, Graham. I could see how much it hurt him that we had deceived him, so I wanted to spare you both that. It’s better this way. I can walk away, and you can rebuild the bond you share with him.”
