The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 514

Chapter 252-2

+25 Points

It’s faint, but it’s still there. Beneath the crisp, clean linen, there’s the undeniable, intoxicating

memory of him:

Hs skin, his hair, the warm, dark musk that used to wrap around me every single night when he would pull me against his massive body, tucking my head securely under his chin until the dark

couldn’t touch me.

My mind flashes backward, memories flooding my brain like a breached dam:

I remember the ensuite shower, the thick steam filling the glass enclosure, the feel of his slick hands gripping my hips, lifting me until I was wrapped around his waist. He pushed me back against the warm tile, his mouth devouring mine, wet and ruthless, while his fingers stroked the

sensitive skin of my inner thigh.

He loved the weight of me in his arms, loved the breathless, shattered gasps he pulled from my throat as he sank into me, his forehead pressed to mine while the hot water poured over his broad

shoulders.

He whispered low, dark promises against my begging lips, his breath ragged, telling me he would tear the world apart, burn every street in this city to ash, before he ever let anyone take me or our child away from him.

I remember him catching me right against this bedroom wall, pulling me into his arms the second we walked through the door after a long day, completely incapable of waiting even three more steps to get to the bed.

His hands had been everywhere: in my hair, beneath my shirt, dragging his knuckles down my spine

until I arched into his touch.

He worshipped every inch of my body, kissing my throat, my collarbones, pressing his lips to the slight, early rounding of my belly with a slow, heavy reverence that made me feel entirely consumed, entirely his.

And just a few hours ago in the hospital, those same hands had violently shoved me away on a

cold floor.

Those same eyes had looked at my soft bump, looked at my tears, and seen an enemy. A stranger.

A threat.

“How?” I whisper into the empty bedroom, the sound muffled by his pillow, wild, desperate, and completely broken. “How could you forget me? How could you forget us?”

14

<Chapter 252-2

+25 Points

The room gives no answer. The wind continues to lash relentlessly against the massive glass windows, a rhythmic, hollow drumming that underscores the sheer, terrifying scale of my isolation.

ay back across the smooth, tight coverlet, staring up at the shadow–draped ceiling, my hand resting over my lower stomach. Inside me, the baby shifts again, a faint, tiny flutter pressing against my palm, as if trying to reach through the dark to comfort me.

I close my eyes, feeling the sharp, sullen ache in my ribs, the crushing weight of the silence

pressing down on my lungs like lead.

It would be so easy to give up right now. It would be so easy to let the despair swallow me whole, to pack my bags, and accept that the man I love was completely erased in that sub–basement.

It would be so easy to accept that the cold, paranoid ghost sitting in Room 412 is all that remains.

But as my baby moves again beneath my hand, a sudden, fierce ember ignites beneath the

suffocating grief.

I open my eyes, staring into the room.

The man sitting in St. Jude’s Hospital doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t remember the taste of my mouth, the sound of my voice, or the feel of our baby moving beneath his palm.

He lost his memory, but the soul that loved me is still trapped inside that battered, broken body. He’s sitting in an ICU right now, surrounded by telemetry monitors, alone in a world he no longer recognizes, holding onto his coldness because it’s the only weapon he thinks he has left.

So I’ll be his.

I sit up slowly on the edge of our bed, wiping the dampness from my cheeks with the back of my hand. My body aches, my heart is shattered into a thousand jagged pieces, and the path ahead looks like an endless crawl through broken glass.

But as Xena walks into the bedroom and rests her heavy head on my knee, looking up at me with

steady, devoted dark eyes, I press my hand firmly against my stomach, feeling the tiny, quiet shift

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