Chapter 15
The chaos finally ended in a messy anticlimax–Zoe Young’s “miscarriage“.
Smack!
Eleanor Grace’s slap came with a sharp gust, landing squarely on Adrian Graham’s face. Blood welled at the corner of his lips, but he didn’t even flinch.
“Would it have killed you to hold out seven more months?!” she screamed, yanking his collar. “Now the entire base knows you impersonated your dead brother and slept with his widow! The executive officer himself pulled your promotion papers! Your captaincy is over!”
Adrian stared blankly at the white hospital
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wall, as if Liana Langston’s face had been burned into it.
A nurse opened the door. “She’s awake.”
He stood up stiffly, walking into the room amid Eleanor’s sobbing curses.
The moment the door shut behind him, the scent of disinfectant washed over him.
Zoe Young lay on the bed, her face whiter than the sheets. In her hand was the bloodstained miscarriage report.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said, his voice as raw and dry as a rusted gun barrel.
Zoe suddenly laughed.
The wall clock ticked in the background as her eyes sliced across his hollowed face like
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blades.
“Make it up to me?” she laughed louder, her fingers brushing over her flat stomach. “I fell asleep every night thinking I was holding my husband. I thought I was carrying his child. And now you tell me–my husband was actually his brother?”
Adrian’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
The rain outside hadn’t stopped, trickling down the glass like tear tracks.
“I want you to marry me,” Zoe said softly, her voice as light as a feather yet edged with a kind of death wish. “Marry me under the name Adrian Graham.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” she echoed with a low laugh,
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her bloody nails digging into her palm. “You didn’t think it was ridiculous when you were sleeping with me every night pretending to be him, did you?”
She yanked down her hospital gown to reveal the healing bite mark on her collarbone–left by Adrian in a drunken haze, mistaking her for Liana.
“All of Cloudridge knows I was pregnant with the Captain’s child!” she hissed, voice raw like sandpaper. “Now the baby’s gone. Tell me–what decent family would ever take me?”
Adrian’s temple throbbed with pain.
“You have two choices,” Zoe said, slamming the miscarriage report onto the nightstand. “Keep pretending to be Landon Graham–or marry me properly.”
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