Chapter 2 - Two HeartbeatsClaire woke to darkness and machines.
Too much blood.
It soaked through her pale blue dress, streaked across the paramedic’s gloves, and disappeared beneath the white blanket covering her thirty-two-week pregnant belly.
“Stay with me, Claire.”
Someone kept saying her name.
She tried.
God knew she tried.
But every bump of the ambulance sent another blade of pain through her abdomen.
“My babies…”
“They still have heartbeats.”
“Both?”
The paramedic hesitated.
That hesitation terrified her more than the sirens.
“Both,” he finally said.
Claire closed her eyes.
Eight months.
She had spent eight months protecting them.
Eight months talking to them in the tiny apartment she rented above a bakery in Evanston.
Eight months pretending she wasn’t afraid.
And now, after one ordinary Tuesday afternoon, everything was slipping away.
The emergency doors at St. Catherine Medical Center burst open.
“Thirty-two-year-old female, thirty-two weeks with twins, heavy vaginal bleeding, hypotensive, probable placental abruption!”
Claire was rushed beneath blinding ceiling lights.
Faces appeared above her.
Nurses.
Residents.
An anesthesiologist.
Someone cut her dress.
Another person pressed an oxygen mask over her mouth.
“Where’s OB?”
“Operating Room Four is ready.”
“No time. Fetal heart rate on Baby B is dropping.”
Claire’s fingers closed around the nearest nurse’s wrist.
“Please…”
The nurse leaned closer.
“My babies.”
“We’re going to do everything we can.”
Claire wanted more than that.
She wanted a promise.
But hospitals did not make promises.
Especially not when monitors were screaming.
The gurney turned sharply.
Then Claire heard a voice.
A man’s voice.
Calm.
Controlled.
Authoritative.
“CBC, type and cross six units. Activate massive transfusion protocol. Get neonatal teams for two preemies. How long has she been bleeding?”
Something inside Claire stopped.
Not her heart.
Something older.
Something she had buried five years ago.
She knew that voice.
No.
Impossible.
She forced her eyes open.
A tall surgeon stood beneath the operating lights pulling gloves over his hands.
Dark hair beneath a surgical cap.
Broad shoulders.
Green eyes visible above a mask.
Five years disappeared.
Claire was twenty-seven again.
Standing barefoot in a lake house outside Chicago.
Holding an engagement ring in her palm.
Listening to Adrian Vale tell her their future had become inconvenient.
Listening to him choose his family empire over her.
Listening to the man she loved say words she had never forgotten.
You deserve someone who can give you a normal life.
She had slapped him.
Then she had walked out.
Claire never saw him again.
Until now.
The surgeon stepped toward the table.
His eyes moved to her face.
He froze.
Only for a second.
But Claire saw it.
“Claire?”
Her chest tightened.
Adrian Vale pulled his mask down.
Five years had sharpened him.
He looked older.
Harder.
Still devastatingly familiar.
“Claire Monroe?”
She turned her face away.
“Get another doctor.”
“There isn’t time.”
“I said—”
A violent contraction stole her breath.
The fetal monitor alarm changed pitch.
Adrian’s entire expression transformed.
Personal shock vanished.
The surgeon took over.
“Baby B is crashing.”
Claire’s eyes filled with tears.
“Save them.”
“I will.”
“You don’t get to promise me anything.”
His eyes flickered.
She saw the hit land.
Good.
Then Adrian looked at her belly.
His brow furrowed.
“How far along?”
“Thirty-two weeks.”
Something changed in his face again.
Claire noticed.
She understood immediately why.
Eight months earlier, there had been one night.
One terrible, beautiful mistake.
A charity gala at the Peninsula Hotel.
Claire had been working for an education nonprofit.
Adrian had attended as a donor.
They had avoided each other until midnight.
Then champagne, old grief, and five years of unanswered questions had burned through every defense they had.
Claire had left before sunrise.
She had discovered the pregnancy six weeks later.
She never told him.
Because Adrian Vale had already broken her once.
She would not hand him the power to break her children too.
Now his gaze moved from her stomach to her face.
“Claire…”
“Don’t.”
His eyes widened.
A nurse announced, “Heart rate eighty and falling.”
Adrian pulled up his mask.
“General anesthesia. Now.”
Claire grabbed his wrist.
“Whatever happens to me, save my babies.”
He stared down at her.
“You’re all leaving this room.”
Then darkness rushed toward her.
The last thing Claire heard was Adrian’s voice giving orders.
The last thing she felt was someone squeezing her hand.
And the last thing she saw before everything vanished was something she had never expected to see in Adrian Vale’s eyes.
Fear.
Adrian made the incision ninety seconds later.
Blood flooded the surgical field.
“Major abruption.”
“Suction.”
“Pressure dropping.”
“Baby A first.”
Adrian’s hands moved automatically, but his mind screamed one impossible question.
Thirty-two weeks.
The gala had been thirty-two weeks ago.
Almost exactly.
“Baby A delivered.”
A tiny boy emerged.
Silent.
Blue.
Adrian’s heart stopped.
“Come on.”
The neonatal team rushed the baby away.
Seconds later came a cry.
Weak.
Furious.
Alive.
Adrian nearly lost his breath.
“Baby B.”
The second infant was smaller.
A girl.
She did not cry.
The neonatal team began resuscitation.
Adrian forced himself to keep operating while somewhere behind him doctors fought for the child who might be his daughter.
Claire’s blood pressure collapsed.
“Sixty over thirty.”
“Two more units!”
“There’s uncontrolled bleeding.”
Adrian looked at the woman he had spent five years trying unsuccessfully to forget.
Then at the two tiny infants across the room.
His world narrowed to one brutal certainty.
May you like
He might have found his family at the exact moment he was about to lose all three of them.
And Adrian Vale had never been more terrified in his life.
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