Chapter 2

The hospital room fell dead silent.

Kayden stood by the bed for a moment and sighed.

"Fine, get some sleep. I'll come back to see you later. Cherry's place is still a mess, so I need to head back and supervise the plumbers for her."

The door clicked shut.

I opened my eyes and stared at the sterile white wall.

Dr. Ethan walked to the foot of my bed, flipping through my chart.

"Summer, your heart is at its absolute limit. You cannot afford any emotional stress."

"I know, Dr. Ethan."

He closed the file and looked at me, his eyes softening slightly.

"We are still waiting on the donor list. Until then, you must keep your emotions stable."

"I will."

He turned to leave, but stopped just before the door.

"I’ve noted your nut allergy on your bedside chart. From now on, the nurses will verify any food brought into this room."

"Thank you."

Dr. Ethan didn't say anything else. He pushed the door open and stepped out.

I pulled out my phone and opened SnapChat. The pinned chat at the very top was my conversation with Kayden. The background was a photo of us at the beach two years ago. He was holding me in his arms, laughing under the sun.

He had told me back then, *Summer, as long as I'm here, I’ll never let you suffer.*

I changed the chat background back to the default plain white. Then, I tapped his profile and opened his location on Snap Map.

Three days ago, he had voluntarily shared his live location with me, claiming he wanted to give me "peace of mind."

The little icon was pulsing. It was parked right outside a single-apartment building in the north end of the city.

He really did go back to Cherry's.

Does supervising a plumber take all night? I didn't know.

All I knew was that my heart monitor had spiked violently just a moment ago. But very quickly, it settled back into a flat, steady rhythm.

Like a pool of stagnant water, it could no longer be stirred.

The next morning, my mom arrived.

She brought a thermos of hot, homemade chicken soup. As she poured it into a bowl, she sighed.

"Kayden called me last night. He said you fainted while trying on dresses and that he was worried sick."

I blew on the soup, keeping my head down.

"He also said he wanted to stay here with you, but his department had an urgent project that he couldn't walk away from. He asked me to come keep you company."

An urgent project. So Cherry’s burst pipe had now officially become a company project.

I set the bowl down.

"Mom, the soup is delicious."

My mom looked at me, hesitating.

"Summer, did you and Kayden get into a fight?"

"No."

"Then why..." She paused, lowering her voice. "Back during the Christmas holidays, Mrs. Gable told me she saw Kayden at the mall shopping with a girl. She said the girl was holding his arm, looking very intimate."

Christmas. I was lying in the ICU for three days due to sudden heart failure.

Kayden had stood outside the glass window of my ward, took a phone call, and left in a hurry. He told me it was end-of-year billing and he couldn't get out of it.

So, he was actually out buying clothes for someone else.

"Her name is Cherry. She's his coworker," I said, my voice as calm as if I were talking about a stranger.

My mom got anxious. "Coworkers hold hands at the mall? Summer, how can you be so careless about this! With your health the way it is, if Kayden really has someone else..."

"Mom," I interrupted her. "I'm tired. I want to sleep for a bit."

Seeing how pale I was, my mom swallowed the rest of her words.

"Alright, go to sleep. I won't nag. Just focus on getting better, nothing else matters."

She tucked the blanket around me, packed up the thermos, and left.