Chapter 52
Mira’s POV
I didn’t remember walking into the house.
One second I was outside watching Alejandro’s car disappear down the driveway like I hadn’t just blown up the best thing that had ever happened to me, and the next I was standing barefoot in the middle of the living room with no memory of taking off my heels.
Classic dissociation. Very healthy. Totally fine.
I let out a slow breath and stood there like an idiot, staring at nothing.
The proposal. The ring. That look on his face when the word left my mouth.
No.
God, I was such an idiot.
“I didn’t lose him,” I said out loud, because apparently I’d started talking to myself now. “I just postponed things.”
Even the empty room didn’t believe that.
I reached for my phone before I could spiral any further, because there was exactly one person on this earth qualified to deal with me right now and her name was Zara.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Mira! How did it go? What did he do? I swear if he pulled some dramatic billionaire stunt I’m going to need every single detail because I’ve been sitting here losing my mind since you left and”
“Come over.” I sighed.
“What?”
“Please, Zara. Just come.”
She didn’t ask anything else. “I’m on my way.”
I dropped the phone onto the couch and stood there a second longer before dragging myself to my room to get out of the dress. I couldn’t look at it anymore. It felt like a crime scene.
By the time she arrived, I’d changed into something comfortable and was sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing productive with my brain. The doorbell snapped me out of it.
Zara walked in and immediately scanned my face the way she always did, like she could read my entire situation from my expression alone. Unfortunately, she usually could.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He proposed.”
Her whole body went still.
“Sorry, he what?”
“Proposed. Ring and everything.” I gave her a flat smile. “Very romantic actually but terrible timing.”
She stared at me. Then her eyes dropped to my hands. Then back to my face.
“Mira. Where is the ring?”
I looked at her.
Her face fell. “No.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“MIRA.”
I flinched. “Can you not scream at me right now, I’m already suffering.”
“You said no to Alejandro Montenegro?” She grabbed my arm. “The man who has never in his life asked anyone for anything just got down and proposed to you and you told him NO?”
“I’m aware of what I did, thank you.”
“What is wrong with you!”
“A lot of things, actually.” I pulled my arm back. “Sit down. I need to tell you something.”
Something in my voice must have landed differently because she stopped, really looked at me, and sat down without another word.
I exhaled.
“You remember the woman from the store? The one who bumped into me last week?”
Zara’s brows came together. “The one you said felt off?”
“She didn’t bump into me by accident.” I stared at my hands. “She knows me, Zara. From before. From the club.”
Silence settled between us, the careful kind.
“She knows everything,” I continued. “And she’s here, which means everything I’ve been running from is about to catch up with me, and I couldn’t stand in front of Alejandro and say yes to forever when he doesn’t even know who the hell he’s saying it to.”
Zara was quiet for a moment. “Okay. That’s okay, I hear you. But Mira, you could’ve just talked to him.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t have to reject the whole proposal.”
“I know.”
“That man looked at you like”
“Zara.” I cut her off. “There’s more.”
She went still again.
I didn’t want to say it. I’d been not saying it for weeks now, keeping it tucked away in some quiet part of me where I could pretend it wasn’t real. But sitting here in this house with that look still fresh on Alejandro’s face, I was so tired of carrying it alone.
“My condition,” I said. “I went back to the doctor.”
Her expression shifted immediately. “And?”
“Two weeks.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“That’s what he said. If I don’t do the surgery in the next two weeks…”
I didn’t finish it. I didn’t need to. She already knew what came after that sentence.
Her jaw tightened. “Mira.”
“I was going to tell him at the charity gala,” I said quickly. “Everything. My past, the condition, all of it at once so he could decide what he wanted to do with that information. I wasn’t trying to hide it forever, I just needed a little more time to figure out how to say it without it sounding like a goodbye.”
“And the proposal caught you off guard.”
“He wasn’t supposed to propose, Zara! We were just at dinner!” I pressed my palms to my eyes. “How was I supposed to say yes knowing I haven’t told him I might not survive the next month? That’s not a yes, that’s a trap.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“You’re scared,” she said finally.
“Obviously I’m scared. My past is literally walking back into my life, I have maybe two weeks before my heart gives out on me, and the man I love just asked me to marry him like everything is perfectly fine.”
My voice cracked slightly on the last part, which I hated. “I didn’t want to lie to him. Not about something like this.”
“You’re not going to lie to him,” Zara said. “You’re going to tell him. At the gala. Like you planned.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
She reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezing once. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to. That was the thing about Zara, she always knew when to talk and when to just sit with you in the mess.
“I really screwed up tonight,” I muttered.
“Monumentally,” she agreed.
I shot her a look.
“But it’s fixable,” she added. “You just have to stay alive long enough to fix it.”
I almost laughed. “That’s your your pep talk?”
“That’s my pep talk.”
I opened my mouth to respond when something hit me.
Not metaphorically.
A sharp, vicious squeeze right in the center of my chest, like something had reached in and decided now was a great time to remind me it was there. I stopped mid-breath.
“Mira?”
I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to breathe through it, but the pain spread fast, wrapping around my ribs and pulling tight.
Then the cough came.
Once, hard. Then again, worse.
I pulled my hand from my mouth and felt warmth before I saw it.
It was blood.
“Oh shit,” I breathed.
“MIRA.” Zara was on her feet instantly, hands on my shoulders, voice jumping three octaves. “What is happening right now”
Another cough tore through me and I couldn’t answer her because my vision was starting to blur at the edges and my heartbeat was all wrong, too loud, too fast, filling my ears like a drum nobody asked to play.
I looked up at her.
“Call someone,” I managed.
Her face was pale. “I’m calling someone, I’m calling right now, just breathe okay, just”
I closed my eyes.
I’m running out of time.