Dusk Snow Hides All Return (Rowan and Adrienne) novel Chapter 24

< Chapter 24

Chapter 24.

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With that, he didn’t give them another look, turned, and walked toward the stairwell.

“Rowan-!” Mrs. Ashford let out a fagged, broken cry. She tried to chase after him, but her legs buckled under her. She couldn’t

even stand.

Mr. Ashford Sr. collapsed where he sat, hands covering his face, making these low, trapped–animal sounds. His shoulders shook violently.

Rowan didn’t look back.

He took the stairs down, one at a time. His footsteps echoed through the empty stairwelk It wasn’t until he walked out the hospital doors and the cold wind hit his face that he finally stopped. He leaned against the freezing wall and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the ground.

Then he lifted his hand, covered his face, and his shoulders started to shake hard.

No sound. Just big, heavy tears pouring out through the gaps between his fingers, hitting the cold pavement.

It wasn’t that he didn’t hurt.

It was just that there was no going back anymore.

The light outside the Operating Room finally shut off a few hours later.

The doctor came out, exhausted but relieved. “She’s lucky. The blade missed her heart by a few centimeters. She lost a lot of blood, but we got to her in time. She’s out of danger. She just needs rest.”

Adrienne was wheeled into a hospital

room. The anesthesia wore off. When she came to, it was the next afternoon.

The moment her consciousness returned, a sharp pain ripped through her back. She didn’t care. Her eyes snapped open, her voice coming out raw. “Where’s Rowan? Where is he?”

Mr. Ashford Sr. and Mrs. Ashford, sitting at her bedside, exchanged a look. Their eyes dodged hers.

Adrienne’s stomach dropped. A massive, drowning panic grabbed her by the throat. She shot upright, ignoring the tearing pain of the wound in her back, and yanked the IV needle out of the back of her hand. Blood spurted out instantly.

“He’s gone, isn’t he? He left again, didn’t he?!” Her voice climbed, twisted with panic and fear, her eyes bloodshot, like a cornered animal at the end of its rope. “Talk to me! He doesn’t want me again does he?!”

Mrs. Ashford, terrified by how unhinged she looked, started crying. “Adrienne, please don’t do this to yourself! You need to rest… Rowan, he… he left… He said… he said…”

“He said what?!” Adrienne grabbed Mrs. Ashford’s arm, her grip hard enough to crush bone.

Mrs. Ashford winced, her face going white. Her voice shook. “He said… don’t come looking for him…”

Six simple words, like a final sentencing, cast Adrienne straight into endless hell.

Her hand went slack. She stared up at the white ceiling. And then she started laughing, quietly. The laugh was rough, ugly, and i

got louder and louder until it turned into full–on hysterical laughter, tears streaming down her face.

“I owe him a life,” she kept repeating, her eyes glassy and unfocused. “I owe him a baby. I owe him five years of his life. I owe him so many betrayals, so much pain… How do I pay that back? How could I ever pay that back?!”

“He won’t even give me the chance to try… ha ha…”

The doctor and nurses came rushing in at the sound of it, pinned her down, and injected her with a sedative.

Under the drugs, Adrienne slowly went quiet. But her eyes stayed open, fixed on the ceiling, empty. Tears kept sliding silently

down into her hair.

< Chapter 24

Shert lost.

Lost everything.

Even trading her life for his hadn’t bought her a single glance back.

After Adrienne was discharged, she was a completely different person.

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She stopped trying to get close. She just stayed silently at the edges of his life, punishing herself, trying to atone.

Every morning, a bouquet of dew–covered sunflowers showed up at his apartraent door, right on time.

Rowan would open the door, see them, pick them up with zero expression, and drop them in the trash can at the end of the hallway.

The café where he used to work quietly changed ownership.

The whole place got redone–industrial style out, warm, bright natural–wood style in. The style he’d once mentioned offhand that

he liked.

The Café Manager announced with a broad smile that his salary was being tripled.

Next day, Rowan turned in his resignation.

Alliance Française, where he was enrolled, received a massive anonymous donation with the sole condition of waiving all tuition fees for a student named Rowan Ashford.

A week later, the school received the returned funds with a concise note attached: Not necessary.

When he caught a cold, when he was coughing, the exact right medicine and a freshly made batch of pear and rock sugar tonic would mysteriously appear at his door.

He never touched them. He just left them outside until they went bad, and the cleaning crew eventually threw them out.

Adrienne was like a ghost. Everywhere. Never

seen.

Montreal winters dragged on. A blizzard hit out of nowhere.

Rowan spiked a high fever and passed out in his apartment.

Viena couldn’t reach him. Desperate, she dialed the number Adrienne had left behind.

When Adrienne broke the lock and burst in, he was already barely conscious, his cheeks burning red.

At the hospital, she stayed by his bed for three days and three nights, never leaving his side for a single moment.

Rowan woke up, saw the woman next to his bed–completely wrecked, her eyes sunken deep–and his gazqstayed still as a frozen pond.

“Thanks.” His voice came out rough. “How much are the medical bills? I’ll pay you back.”

Adrienne twitched her lips into a smile that was uglier than crying: “Rowan, do you really have to keep such a clear ledger with me?” “We don’t really know each other.” His tone was flat. He looked away.

Adrienne felt it like a blunt hit straight to the heart.

She looked at him for a few seconds. Then, out of nowhere, she got up, stumbled, and walked out of the room.

Outside, the snow was coming down thick.

Wearing nothing but a thin hospital gown, with the gauze bandage on her back still seeping blood, she knelt rigidly in the snow at the hospital entrance.

The freezing wind whipped the snowflakes like tiny blades across her exposed skin.

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