The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 50

Chapter 36-2

Clas

“Zara.” Locke’s voice is low, close, roughened with something that I don’t have the strength to identify. “Oh, baby.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because humiliation rises faster than reason, because even now some part of me thinks that I should be able to manage this with more dignity than I am. “I don’t want to cry in front of you.”

“None of that,” he says, getting to his feet. “You’re not the one who should be sorry about a single fucking thing.”

And then he lifts me, he actually lifts me. Out of my chair, away from the table, away from the papers and the screen and the terrible neatness of all those damning numbers, as though I weigh nothing.

A broken laugh escapes me through the tears, helpless and mortifying, and then he sits on the leather sofa, with me tucked sideways across his lap. His one hand is rubbing circles on my back, and the other is holding my head against his muscled shoulder while I finally stop trying to keep myself together. I bury my face against his neck and cry like something inside me has split wide open.

God. The relief of it. The awful, beautiful relief.

Locke doesn’t tell me to calm down. He doesn’t tell me everything will be okay, doesn’t make promises too large for the room, doesn’t try to fix in words what can’t be fixed that way.

He just holds me, his hand moving slowly through my hair, his chest solid beneath my cheek, his body so warm and immovable around mine that for the first time in months, I have somewhere to put the weight.

“I can’t keep doing this,” I say against his shirt, the words barely words at all. “Every time I think I know how bad it is, there’s more.”

His arm tightens around me. “I know.”

“I’m tired.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to be this tired.”

“I know, baby.”

Something about that undoes me more than anything else could have. Not advice, not reassurance, just the simple fact that he hears me. That he isn’t asking me to make sense. That he isn’t turning my pain into a problem he needs to solve.

I lift my head eventually, though I don’t move far because I don’t want to, because his arms around me feel like the only thing keeping the room from tilting again. His thumb brushes beneath my eye, catching a tear with such impossible gentleness that my throat tightens all over again.

“There’s something I haven’t told you,” I say. “I haven’t told anyone.”

His expression stills, but he doesn’t tense, doesn’t push, doesn’t make the moment heavier than it already is. “Okay.”

1/3

Chapter 36-2.

draw in a shaky breath. “About a week before I was in the car accident, the doctors told me that I had stomach cancer.

His eyes remain on mine, steady and gray and warm.

“In the accident, I was ripped open by the twisted metal,” I say. “They were already operating on my stomach because of that, because of all the internal injuries. So they removed the malignant masses while they had me open on the table.”

For a second, I can’t go on. Locke’s hand slides up my back, slow and grounding.

Claim

“They think they got it all,” I say. “They also think that they caught it early enough, and the doctors keep saying how lucky I am, which is such a strange thing to be told when you wake up after a devastating car accident.”

His jaw flexes once, but his voice stays calm. “You need treatment?”

I nod. “Chemo next week, just to make sure any remaining cancer cells are destroyed. I’ll probably need three rounds in total.”

There. There’s the truth. The whole, terrifying truth, the one that’s been easy to avoid with all the Knox drama going on.

“I’m scared,” I admit, and somehow those two words are harder to utter than all the others. “I’m so scared,

Locke.”

His hand cups the side of my face, and he looks at me like every word matters, like every fear I’ve just handed him has been received and held and accepted without hesitation.

“Of course you’re scared,” he says. “Anybody would be. But you’re not doing it alone. You hear me? Chemo, doctors, lawyers, Knox, every single ugly damn thing we find in these papers. You’re not doing any of it alone.”

I stare at him, at this hard, dangerous man holding me on my father’s sofa like I’m something precious, like my fear isn’t too much for him, like my brokenness hasn’t made him reconsider anything.

“You barely know me,” I whisper.

Something shifts in his eyes, dark and certain. “I know enough.”

The answer is so simple that it steals the air from my lungs. His forehead rests against mine, and for a while, neither of us speaks.

There’s nothing to say, though, not really. The truth has been spoken, and Locke is still here. The fear has been named, and his arms are still around me. I’ve shown him the worst, most frightened part of myself, and he hasn’t moved away.

Instead, his thumb brushes along my jaw, slow and careful, and something in the air changes. It changes the way dusk changes a room, one shadow at a time.

The grief is still here. The fear too. But underneath it, warmth begins to move, low and quiet and undeniable, because comfort has its own intimacy, and being held like this after telling the truth feels more vulnerable than being naked ever could.

2/3

Chapter 362

Clam

Locke notices the shift. His gaze drops briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and there’s heat There now, restrained by nothing except the careful way he always gives me room to choose.

“You okay?” he asks softly.

I almost laugh, because the answer is complicated and impossible and probably no, but also somehow more yes than I have been in a very long time.

So I don’t answer with words. I let my fingers curl into the front of his shirt. I let myself lean closer. I let myself want.

And sitting in Locke’s lap, with tears still damp on my cheeks and his hands still gentle on me, I feel something else begin to rise.

Need.

I lift my face to his. “Locke…”

My voice is unsteady, but his name isn’t.

His eyes darken. “I’ve got you, baby.”

And this time, when he kisses me, I believe him.

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