The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 135

Chapter 79-1

Zara

The soup smells much better than it tastes, but that isn’t Jade’s fault. Nothing tastes right for about five days after chemo.

Everything is either too sweet, too bitter, or metallic enough to make me wonder if someone has dissolved a handful of coins into it. My bones ache, my skin hurts, even my hair feels heavy.

Jade sits beside me on the bed, watching every swallow as though she can personally intimidate the soup into staying inside me.

“One more,” she says. “That’ll make a whole six bites.”

“That’s what I said three spoons ago.”

“Yes, but now it’s my decision.”

She places the bowl on the dresser and returns with a glass of water. I take a tiny sip and rest my head against the pillow.

“I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you,” Jade says, just out of the blue. “Locke is downstairs.”

My eyes fly open and for a second, I think I misheard her. The room remains exactly the same. The curtains move faintly in the heat from the radiator. A car passes outside. Somewhere below us, Mayhem says something too low for me to hear.

“What?” I stammer.

“Locke is here.”

“Since when?”

“Not long,” she says. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

“And Mayhem actually let him in?”

“Barely.”

That almost makes me smile. Almost.

“I don’t want to see him.”

“I told him you might say that.”

“Good.”

Jade nods, but she doesn’t move. I look at her, and she looks back, giving me a look that I know far, far too well

“No,” I say. “No way.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Chapter 794

“You’re about to.”

“Okay, listen.” Her mouth flattens. “I usually support every instinct you have.”

“Usually?”

“Okay, always. Annoyingly for your brother.” She narrows her eyes at me. “The thing is, though, that he knows.”

“What does Mayhem know?”

“Not Mayhem,” she says. “Mayhem knows jack shit most days. I’m talking about Locke.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling lost at sea. “What does Locke know?”

“What Willow was doing.”

The air changes. I sit a little straighter, and pain moves through my spine in a slow, ugly wave. Jade immediately reaches towards me, but I shake my head.

“How?” I say. “How does he know?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Then how do you know that he knows?”

Clam

“Because I asked why the fuck he was here, showing his oh-so-punchable face in my living room, and he said he needed to apologize for not believing what you saw.”

I look towards the bedroom door. My heart beats harder, though the rest of me feels too tired to contain it.

“He said that?”

“Yes.” Jade watches me carefully. “But if you still want him gone, he goes, babe. I’ll kick his ass to the curb myself.”

I should say yes, I know that. I’ve spent the last two days trying not to think about him. Trying not to remember his face in the hospital room, or the way he stopped moving the second I told him to leave.

Trying not to wonder whether he’d slept. Whether he’d eaten. Whether he hated me. The last thought angers me enough to cut through the fatigue.

I shouldn’t care whether he hates me. I should care that I felt humiliated in my own home while my body was failing beneath me. But pain has never been obedient.

“Send him up,” I say. “I’ll listen to what he has to say.”

Jade’s eyebrows rise. “Are you sure?”

“No.” I sigh. “Not really.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“It’s all I have.”

Chapter 79

“I’ll be downstairs.” She studies me for another second, then leans down and presses a kiss to my Turehead. “And if you need me -”

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