Chapter 72

Chapter 72

Mira’s POV

I had tried so many times but I couldn’t sleep.

My life was a disaster. 

I could swear that there was no other woman like me lying awake at 1am with a dying heart, a living mother who knows nothing about her daughter, a surgery deadline, and two men occupying completely different corners of her chest. 

I picked up my phone. Put it down and picked it up again.

Then opened Ace’s unanswered message from earlier and stared at it long enough that the screen dimmed twice before I finally typed back.

Me: You still awake?

In seconds he answered. 

Ace: Yeah. You okay?

I thought about that question and everything it currently contained.

Me: Not really. Can you come over?

This time there was no pause at all, he didn’t even hesitate. 

Ace: On my way.

He arrived twenty minutes later looking like someone who had gotten dressed in the dark, which he probably had, a grey shirt and dark jeans and his glasses slightly crooked, hair not entirely sorted. He took one look at my face in the doorway and didn’t ask a single question, just came inside and sat on the couch and waited.

I sat beside him. Neither of us spoke for a moment.

“My mother is alive,” I said, breaking the silence.

He went very still.

“Alejandro found her,” I continued, because apparently I was just saying all of it. “She’s been in Millhaven with no memory of who she was. I have a photograph of her. She holds her cup the same way I do.”

Ace looked at me carefully. “Mira.”

“I’m going tomorrow,” I told him. “Zara’s driving me. I don’t know what I’m walking into and I don’t know if she’ll remember me and I don’t know—” My voice broke slightly and I stopped, pressing my lips together.

His hand found mine on the cushion between us.
He didn’t say anything immediately, which was the right call, just held my hand in that warm certain way he had and let the silence do what words couldn’t.

“I should have told you sooner,” I said after a moment.

“About your mother?”

“About everything.” I turned to look at him. “The condition. How bad it actually is. The surgeon in Switzerland. All of it.” I exhaled. “I’ve been carrying it alone for so long I forgot there were other options.”

Something moved through his expression.

“How bad?” he asked quietly.

I told him.

The twelve days. Dr. Harrington. The slot. The number I was still short by. The thirty four percent that made the local option feel less like surgery and more like an expensive way to confirm what was going to happen anyway.

He listened without interrupting, which was harder than it sounded because I could see everything it cost him to stay still and quiet while I talked, the way his jaw tightened at certain parts, the way his grip on my hand changed without him noticing.

When I finished he was silent for a long moment.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said finally, and there was something in his voice that wasn’t quite hurt but lived in the same neighborhood.

“Because telling people makes it real,” I said honestly. “And I needed it to not be real for a little longer.”

He looked at me, then looked down at our hands.

“The money,” he started.

“No,” I replied immediately.

“Mira—”

“Ace, no.” I shook my head. “That’s not why I told you.”

“I know it’s not,” he replied evenly. “But I have it and you need it and you have twelve days which means this specific conversation about pride doesn’t have the luxury of time.” He met my gaze directly, steady and serious in a way that left no room for deflection. “Let me help you.”

I looked at him.

“This isn’t—” I stopped. Started again. “I don’t want you to do this because of how you feel about me. I don’t want it to be—complicated.”

“It’s not complicated,” he said simply. “You need surgery to stay alive. Everything else is secondary to that. Everything.” 

Something in his expression shifted, softer now, losing the businesslike edge. “I’m not doing it because of how I feel about you. I’m doing it because the alternative is not having you around and that’s not something I’m willing to sit with.”

The room was very quiet.

I looked at him, really looked at him, the steady eyes behind those slightly crooked glasses, the way he sat with his whole body turned toward me like I was something worth orienting himself around.

Something pulled in my chest that had nothing to do with my condition.

“Ace,” I said softly.

“Don’t,” he replied, equally soft. “Don’t thank me and don’t argue with me. Just say yes.”

I held his gaze for a long moment.

“Yes,” I said.

Something in his face shifted, a brief exhale of relief that he didn’t try to hide.

He lifted my hand and pressed his mouth briefly to my knuckles, warm and quiet, and I watched him do it and felt it move through me like something I didn’t have responsible language for.

“Go to Millhaven tomorrow,” he murmured against my hand. “Find her. Come back and tell me everything.”

“And then Switzerland,” I said.

“And then Switzerland,” he confirmed.

He lowered my hand but didn’t release it, and we sat there in the quiet of Zara’s living room with the city doing its nighttime thing outside and something shifting between us that had been building for weeks and was becoming increasingly difficult to call anything other than what it was.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

I looked at him.

“I know the timing is terrible,” he continued, his thumb moving slowly across the back of my hand. “And I know you have approximately a thousand things happening simultaneously right now. But I’ve been not saying this for weeks and watching you carry everything alone and I’m done not saying it.”

My heart rate picked up.

“Ace—”

“I’m in love with you,” he said simply. No performance, no buildup, just the words placed between us like something he’d been holding for a long time and had finally set down. 

“I have been for a while. And I’m not telling you because I need you to say it back or because I’m trying to complicate things. I’m telling you because you deserve to know that someone sees all of it, the past, the condition, the stubbornness, the cold hands, all of it 
and isn’t going anywhere.”

The silence that followed was enormous.

I looked at him sitting there, patient and open and completely undefended, and thought about Zara’s voice saying figure out what you want before somebody gets hurt.

I thought about Alejandro’s hands on my face.

I thought about my mother.

“I don’t know what I feel yet,” I said honestly. “About anything. Everything is moving too fast and my head isn’t—” I stopped. “But I don’t want you to not have said it. Does that make sense?”

Something settled in his expression.

“It makes perfect sense,” he replied.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his cheek, brief and warm, and felt him go very still beneath it.

When I pulled back he was looking at me with an expression I felt everywhere.

“Get some sleep,” he said quietly. “You have a long day tomorrow.”

“Stay,” I said. “Not like that. Just—” I gestured at the couch. “I sleep better when someone’s here.”

He looked at me for a second.

Then he reached over, tucked my legs across his lap, leaned his head back against the couch, and closed his eyes like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Sleep, Mira,” he said quietly.

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I closed my eyes.

And somewhere between thinking about my mother’s hands and Alejandro’s voice and twelve days and Switzerland, I felt Ace’s hand rest warm and steady on my ankle.

And for the first time in weeks, I actually slept.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​