The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 73

Chapter 49-1

Locke

The first thing I learn about chemotherapy is that it has a sound.

Not one sound, but a collection of them soft shoes on floors, machines humming with a low patience that feels unnatural, quiet voices carrying just enough kindness to make the room feel both gentle and terrifying at once.

Zara hears it too. I know because the second we walk into the treatment center, her fingers tighten around

mine.

She looks beautiful this morning, because she always does. She has her hair in a high ponytail, a soft sweater slipping slightly off one shoulder, boots, faded jeans. It’s the kind of outfit that probably took her five minutes to throw together, and it still makes me want to stop walking just to look at her.

Instead, I keep her hand in mine, because looking at her isn’t the point today. Staying is.

The nurse who meets us has warm eyes and a clipboard. She looks at Zara first, then at me, then at our joined hands.

“You’re staying with her?” she asks.

“Yes.”

The answer leaves me before Zara can speak, and when she glances up at me, one eyebrow raised despite the fear sitting just beneath it, I squeeze her hand once. She gives me a tiny smile.

Brave girl. Stubborn girl. My girl, in ways I haven’t earned and don’t yet know how to name.

The chair they give her is too large, too clinical to be comfortable, and I watch her settle into it with that quiet dignity she wears when something hurts and she’s decided nobody else is allowed to know.

I sit beside her, close enough that when the needle goes in and her breath catches, my hand is already there. Her fingers close around mine so tightly that faint crescent marks will remain in my skin two hours later.

Good. Let them. I want the evidence of her fear, her courage, her spirit, branded on me.

For the first hour, she talks way too much, because she’s heartbreakingly nervous.

She asks me whether forensic accountants all secretly live in penthouses or whether I’m just a particularly pretentious criminal. She asks whether I think Jade will show up later with a basket of inappropriate gifts, then answers herself before I can, saying of course Jade will, because Jade Callahan doesn’t understand boundaries as a concept.

I answer when she needs me to. I let her talk when she doesn’t.

At one point, when the medication is moving slowly through the line and her face has gone pale, I lean closer. “You know, if you wanted uninterrupted time with me, there were easier ways.”

She glares, weak and adorable. “You’re making jokes during chemotherapy.”

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Chapter 49+

I’m providing emotional support.”

“You’re being kind of an asshole.”

“I’m multitasking.”

Her mouth twitches before she can stop it, and there she is for one brief second, my Zara, sharp and amused and annoyed with me in a way that feels dangerously like affection.

By the third hour, the talking stops.

Clam

The fight goes out of her slowly, shoulders lowering, eyelids heavier, fingers loosening around mine, then tightening again whenever she remembers where she is. Nurses come and go; other people sit in their own chairs with their own battles.

I’ve spent years dealing with threats I could map. Money trails, hidden accounts, false corporations. Men who lied badly and men who lied well. Violence, when necessary.

All of those things have shape. Direction. Weaknesses.

This doesn’t. Fucking cancer doesn’t.

There’s no throat to grab. No account to freeze. No man to put against a wall and make regret breathing

near her.

There’s only Zara, sitting in a chair too large for her, poison moving through her body because it might save her life, and me beside her with nothing useful in my hands except hers.

I hate it. God, I fucking hate it. And because I hate it, I make myself sit still.

She sleeps for a while near the end, head tipped toward me, lashes dark against pale cheeks. When the nurse returns to check on her, she glances at me with an expression I can’t quite read.

‘She’s doing well,” she says softly.

“She always does.”

“She needs rest tonight. And hydration, ice chips if water’s too much.”

“My freezer is packed full of ’em.”

“And if nausea starts-”

“I’ve got the medication schedule.”

The nurse’s smile widens slightly. “Good.”

Zara wakes as they’re disconnecting her, blinking at the room like she isn’t sure where she is, then finds me first. The way her face eases when she does is something I’m going to carry for a long time.

“Hey,” I say. “You doing okay, baby?”

Her voice is rough. “Did I drool?”

“Like a rabid dog.”

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<Chapter 49 “You’re lying.”

“Probably.”

That earns me the smallest laugh in the world, but it’s enough for now.

Claim

I take her home to my place, because my place is where she stays now, even though neither of us has said that out loud. In the elevator she leans against my side without a word, and I wrap an arm around her waist, careful, always careful, because chemo is new, the surgery scar still pulls sometimes, and Knox’s bruises have barely faded.

Upstairs, she stares around the penthouse blearily.

“Your apartment is ridiculous,” she murmurs, pale and exhausted and still somehow capable of being a menace. “Your sofa is too far away. I think it’s in another zip code.”

So I pick her up.

She makes a noise of protest that lasts half a second before curling into me, and I carry her to the sofa overlooking the ocean, settling her into the corner with blankets, water, her phone, the remote, and a bowl for throwing up in. She glares at me like I’ve personally insulted her.

“Subtle,” she says.

“Prepared.”

“Morbid.”

“Practical.”

“Hot.”

That almost makes me laugh. “You’re flirting with me while pumped full of drugs?”

“I contain multitudes.”

“You contain chemotherapy and sass.”

Her smile is faint but real. “Also that.”

す

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