The Forbidden Throb (Emma and Daniel) novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74

Daniel’s POV

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Emmad gone under twice before I’d reached her, her small body limp and terrifyingly still.

Getting het back to shore. The CPR. The way she’d finally coughed up seawater and gasped for air. The paramedics

arrived.

And the sharp, blinding pain in my left side when I’d tried to stand. The rib I’d cracked against a submerged rock

during the rescue.

Father’s face in the hospital. Not concerned–furious. “You could have been killed. What were you thinking? You

have responsibilities. A future.”

Mother’s quiet disappointment. “Daniel, you know better.”

The decree that followed: No more solo travel. No more beaches. No more unnecessary risks.

I’d been shipped back to Boston the next day, before Emma had even been discharged. No chance to say goodbye.

No way to explain.

After that, she became a warm memory tucked away in the back of my mind.

I’d think of her sometimes, wondering if she still collected sea glass, if she still wore her hair in that messy braid.

Years passed. Emma became just another chapter from my memory–one I’d filed away with other things.

Until I saw her again.

3

Emma had just moved to Boston. My grandfather invited her family for dinner at the house. I recognized her immediately. But when our eyes met across the entrance hall, there was no flicker of recognition in hers. She offered me the same polite smile she’d given the others, the same careful courtesy she extended to every stranger.

She didn’t remember me at all.

I’d learned the situation through family gossip in the days that followed.

Her grandfather had passed away. Her mother had remarried. My grandfather explained his old friend–Emma’s grandfather had doted on this granddaughter above all others. He couldn’t bear to see her struggle, especially now that she’d been left adrift in the aftermath of loss and her mother’s new marriage.

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Chapter “I

There had once been an arrangement between nu families. Nicholas was closer to her age, my grandfather pointed out, suggesting they should spend more time together.

At first, I simply felt sorry for her. She carried her grief quietly, the way people do when they’ve learned early that no one really wants to witness their pain. I found myself hoping she’d find happiness here, perhaps with Nicholas.

I thought of her as I might a younger sister someone to be looked after, protected from the casual cruelties of

our world.

Nicholas followed our grandfather’s advice. He began seeing her more frequently–dinners, museum visits, family gatherings. And as Nicholas spent more time with Emma, I found myself crossing paths with her more often as

well.

I began to notice how my gaze would linger. The way I’d track her movements across a room, catching the play of

light in her hair, the subtle shift in her expression when someone said something that displeased her. How I’d find

myself listening for her voice in conversations, waiting for her particular laugh.

At first, I told myself it was merely attentiveness. The natural concern of someone looking after an old friend.

But the excuses grew thinner with each passing week.

I’m not sure when exactly it changed.

There was no single moment of recognition, no dramatic revelation. Instead, it crept up on me gradually, the way

hypothermia does.

By the time I realize what’s happening, it’s already too far gone–she and Nicholas were already together.

I watched them at family dinners, his hand possessive on her shoulder, her smile when she looked at him. I’d told myself it made sense. Nicholas was young, closer to her age. They shared the same world, the same generation.

And I told myself, over and over, that what I felt was wrong. Inappropriate. Impossible.

She would be Nicholas’s wife. She seemed very happy. I had no right, no claim, no justification for this thing growing in my chest like a tumor I couldn’t excise. !!]

So I did what I’d always done best: I controlled it. Suppressed it. Buried it beneath layers of professional focus and family obligation.

I threw myself into my work with renewed intensity, took on additional surgeries, and volunteered for the cases no one else wanted. Sixteen–hour days. Twenty–hour days. Whatever it took to be too exhausted to think, to feel.

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Chapter 24

1 fold myself that feelings like this would fade eventually.

Perhaps someday, I thought, this ache would disappear as silently as it had come.

That time and discipline would cure what willpower alone could not.

I told myself a lot of things that autumn.

None of them was true.

Instead of fading, it grew. Metastasized, if I were to use the clinical term.

Every time I saw her, every conversation we shared–it only made it worse. The ache deepened, sharpened, became

something I could no longer pretend didn’t exist.

And then came the night of the charity gala.

The night she found Megan in Nicholas’s bedroom.

I can still see her face when she emerged from that hallway–the careful composure cracking.

That was the moment. The exact moment I stopped being able to lie to myself about the depth of what I felt.

Every instinct in me wanted to take her back inside. To make her confront Nicholas right then and there, to force

the confrontation that would shatter whatever remained between them.

Part of me–the dark, selfish part inside me–wanted to use this moment to destroy their relationship irreparably.

But then she looked at me, her voice barely steady, and asked me to take her home.

Just that. So quiet, so defeated.

Maybe she still loved him, despite what she’d just witnessed. The realization hit me like a missed diagnosis: I could expose Nicholas’s betrayal, could use her pain to my advantage, but it would only hurt her more.

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