Chapter 4 - TWO HEARTS BEATING
Hannah woke to the smell of antiseptic and the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor. Everything hurt. Her abdomen burned with a deep, severing pain, and her arms felt like lead. She tried to blink against the harsh fluorescent lights, panic immediately clawing at her throat.
Her belly. She reached a trembling, IV-bruised hand downward. It was flat.
"No," she gasped, a raw, jagged sound tearing from her dry throat. "No, please, my babies—"
"They're safe."
The voice came from the shadows by the window. Deep, resonant, and so painfully familiar it made her heart stutter on the monitor.
Ethan stepped into the light. He was out of his scrubs, wearing a tailored charcoal shirt that made his broad shoulders look impenetrable. He looked older. Harsher. The soft, laughing boy she had loved at twenty-two had been replaced by a man forged in steel and wealth.
"Ethan," she whispered, shrinking back into the pillows, her eyes wide with terror.
"They are in the NICU. A boy and a girl. Thirty-two weeks, but they are breathing on their own, and they are fighting," Ethan said, moving to the edge of her bed. He didn't sit. He loomed, a tempest barely contained. "You had a severe placental abruption. You almost died on my table, Hannah."
Tears spilled hot and fast down her cheeks. Relief warring with the sheer, blinding terror of seeing him again. "I have to leave," she choked out, trying to push herself up, ignoring the agonizing fire in her stitches. "You don't understand, I can't be here. She'll find out. I have to go."
Ethan’s hands shot out, gently but firmly pressing her shoulders back into the mattress. "Stop. You will rip your sutures. No one is taking you anywhere."
"You don't know her!" Hannah sobbed, weakly pushing at his chest. "Your mother promised she would destroy me if I ever came near you again. After the gala... after New York... she found out. She froze my accounts. She sent men to my apartment. I had to run, Ethan! Let me go before she hurts them!"
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Ethan froze, his hands lingering on her shoulders. The puzzle pieces clicked into place, painting a picture so ugly it made his blood run cold. He stared down at the woman who had haunted his dreams, broken and terrified, trying to flee to protect his children from his own family.
"She won't touch you," Ethan vowed, his voice dropping to a dangerous, absolute whisper. "She won't touch them. You are in my hospital, Hannah. You are mine to protect now."
