Chapter266 Clifton, I Don't Think I'll Last Until You Come Back

Chapter266 Clifton, I Don't Think I'll Last Until You Come Back
Clifton was so deep in his own guilt that he didn't notice the slight movement of her fingers against his palm.
On the bed, Miranda's eyes slowly opened.
The hospital ceiling above her was too white. The antiseptic smell reached her before anything else, and her mind sat blank for a few seconds before the memories of the basement came back to her.
So it wasn't a hallucination.
The voice calling her name in the dark had been real.
Clifton had come back.
Just like the first time she had been taken, he had found her.
Miranda's cracked lips moved. Her throat felt like raw heat. She pushed out one rough syllable with everything she had.
"Clifton."
It was barely sound.
The man at her bedside snapped his head up.
Their eyes met.
Miranda looked at the red in his eyes and the disarray in his expression, and tried to curve her lips into something reassuring.
"Water," she said quietly. "Can I have some?"
"Yes." He was already moving.
He poured a glass of warm water, came back, and eased her carefully upright, supporting her upper body against him. He dipped a cotton swab and moistened her lips first, patient and slow, waiting until she was ready. Then he held the glass to her mouth and fed her small sips, one at a time.
When she had finished the glass, he pressed the call button.
The doctor came quickly, ran through a full check, and gave his summary.
"Fever has broken. She's very weak, but there's no longer any risk to her life. She needs rest."
The last knot in Clifton's chest came undone.
Miranda had been lying still for so long that her whole body had gone rigid. She shifted slightly and started to push herself up.
Clifton moved immediately.
"Don't." A tight note ran under the word.
He slid one arm behind her knees and the other behind her back and lifted her entirely off the mattress, gentle as if she were made of something that could crack, settling her against the raised headboard.
The same went for every trip to the bathroom. He carried her in and stood just outside the door until she was ready.
Miranda found this mildly impossible to argue with, though she tried.
For seven days he was the same.
He fed her, helped her clean up, handled everything himself.
Under that kind of care, Miranda felt herself steadily coming back. The whip wounds still needed time, but her energy had largely returned.
On the morning of her discharge, the weather was good.
Out in the hospital corridor, Christian spotted Harrison standing not far from the room, saying nothing, watching the door.
He had heard from Clifton that Harrison had brought people to the Martinez property that night too.
He had been a step behind. But the intention had counted for something.
"You're not going in?" Christian walked over, his tone unusually mild.
Harrison's gaze went through the small window in the door to the figure inside, the one smiling at something Clifton had said.
The light in his eyes went quiet.
He shook his head slowly.
"No." The word carried something in it that didn't have a clean name.
"I missed my chance."
Not just that night. From the moment he had chosen to let go, there had been no more chances. Not in this life.
Christian looked at his retreating back and said nothing further. He turned and went inside.
"You're here." Miranda's face lit up.
"Picking you up." Christian smiled, then seemed to remember something and let a satisfied look through. "Oh, and I have some good news."
"What?"
"Mom and Dominic finalized the divorce." His voice carried the easy relief of a long-held breath let out. "And he left with nothing."
"Nothing?" Miranda stared at him. That made no sense for a man as greedy as Dominic.
Christian looked at the answer in her expression and turned his gaze to Clifton, who was folding clothes across the room. "Thank your husband."
It turned out that while Clifton had been dealing with the Martinezes and Celeste, he had also uncovered Dominic's involvement.
He had quietly put people on the case and gathered everything: years of affairs during the marriage, the quiet transfer of shared marital assets, and the contacts made with Prescott's competitors with the intention of doing damage.
When Arabella had that entire file placed in front of Dominic, there was nothing left to fight with. He signed the divorce papers and walked away with what he had come in with.
Evelyn, upon learning he had lost everything, had ended the pregnancy and left the country.
He was also facing legal consequences of his own.
When Miranda realized it was Clifton who had made it happen, something warm moved through her and she started to say thank you.
"You never have to say that to me." Clifton looked at her with an ease that said he had expected exactly this. "Not once. Not ever."
Miranda blinked and looked at him, and felt something settle into place inside her that she hadn't realized was loose.
Clifton zipped up the bag, turned to her, and held out his hand. His expression was quiet and warm.
"Time to go home."
"Okay." Miranda smiled and put her hand in his.
--
Two months of careful recovery had brought Miranda's weight back up by twelve pounds.
She looked at the fuller face in the mirror and made a firm decision: tonight she was going to tell Clifton that she refused to eat another bowl of bland nutritional soup. Enough was enough.
But dinnertime came and went, and Clifton still wasn't home.
Miranda asked the kitchen to keep the food warm and settled onto the living room sofa with the television on.
She didn't make it very long before she was asleep.
She woke to cold air.
The living room was dark. The television had been turned off while she slept, and someone had laid a light blanket over her.
Miranda sat up, rubbed her eyes, and registered that someone was standing in the darkness not far away.
"Who's there?" She went tense immediately.
"It's me."
Clifton's voice. She exhaled completely.
She reached for the wall switch.
His hand came down over hers before she found it.
"Don't," he said. There was a smile somewhere in his voice. "I have a surprise for you."
"What is it?"
"Come and see."
He took her hand and led her through the living room and out into the garden.
The sky was clear and full of stars.
"Where's the surprise?" Miranda looked around in every direction.
Clifton said nothing. He raised his free hand and snapped his fingers.
Several seconds passed.
Then the first firework shot up and burst open against the night sky like the beginning of something enormous.
Then dozens. Then hundreds.
They filled the air above the Prescott estate in wave after wave of color and light, so bright the grounds below were lit almost like day.
Miranda stood without words.
But the fireworks weren't the thing that stopped her heart.
It was the drones.
Hundreds of them, moving in formation, forming letters against the sky in steady, glowing light.
The message was clear and enormous:
Miranda, will you marry me?
Her heart skipped a full beat.
She turned.
Clifton was on one knee on the garden path.
He was holding a ring in his left hand. The diamond caught the light from the fireworks above and scattered it in every direction.
In his right hand, he held a document instead of flowers.
Miranda read the bold characters on the cover, and her vision blurred.
Property Transfer Agreement.
Clifton looked up at her. In his eyes there was nothing and no one else.
"Miranda," he said, each word measured and certain, "in these months together, I understood how much you mean to me, and I recognized something I had not allowed myself to feel before. I love you."
"Everything I have, my wealth, my position, my power, I want to share all of it with you."
"Will you tear up the original agreement and marry me? For real, this time?"
Before Miranda could find her voice, a chorus erupted from the path behind her.
"Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!"
She turned around.
Her mother, Christian, Prescott, Lisa, Mia. Everyone she loved was standing there at the edge of the garden, all of them beaming.
Miranda turned back to Clifton, laughing through the tears that had already started.
She looked at the man on his knee in front of her, who was offering her his whole world in both hands, and nodded hard.
"Yes." Her voice broke just slightly on the word. "I'll marry you."