Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 234

Chapter 234

I could walk away. I could go back inside, tell Pat that Kingsley was a desperate man who had made a terrible choice, and let the chips fall where they may. None of this was my responsibility. I had my own problems, my own war with Seraphine, my own marriage to untangle.

But I thought about Evelyn Duke, lying in a hospital bed, her heart failing, her son begging for a miracle that was not coming.

I thought about what it felt like to watch someone you loved slip away while you stood there helpless.

I stood up, got into my car, and drove to the hospital address listed in the file.

I walked through the front doors and asked for Evelyn Duke’s room.

The nurse at the counter gave me a curious look but pointed me down the hall.

Evelyn was in a small room at the end of the corridor, a private room that must have cost Kingsley every spare penny he had. She was asleep when I walked in, her face slack, her skin pale and waxy, her body lost in the hospital gown that hung loose on her diminished frame. Tubes and wires connected her to machines that beeped and hummed in the quiet of the room. Her hair, once probably a rich dark brown like her son’s, had gone thin and gray, pulled back from a face that looked older than her years.

I stood at the foot of her bed and watched her breathe.

She did not know I was there. She did not know that her son had almost destroyed himself trying to save her.

I pulled out my phone and called the hospital’s billing department.

“My name is Celeste Fisher,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I want to pay for Evelyn Duke’s surgery. In full.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Ma’am, the cost of the procedure is two million dollars.”

I turned.

Kingsley was there, his chest heaving, his face shining with sweat, his eyes wild and desperate. He looked like he had been running for miles, his shirt untucked, his hair disheveled, his hands shaking at his sides.

He stopped a few feet away from me, his breath coming in ragged gasps. And then his legs gave out and he fell to his knees on the concrete, his head bowed, his shoulders trembling.

He looked up at me, his eyes red, tears streaming down his face. “Why? After everything I did, why would you do this for me?”

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