Page 103 of Fallen Crown

There’s a knock on the door, and the attending physician enters without waiting for a response. She stops short when she sees me in the bed with Tucker.

“Your Highness,” she says. “I didn’t realize you were in here.”

Jag must not be right at the door, but I’m sure he’s somewhere in the hallway keeping watch. He’s never far.

“I’ve come to update Ms. Tucker on the plan of care.”

“Update away,” I say, making no move to leave.

“Ms. Tucker?”

“He can stay,” she says with her head still on my chest. “He’ll want to know.”

The fact that we’re finally at this point sends a shot of warmth through my body. She trusts me enough to let me stay, and she’s sure enough about my feelings to know I’ll care. As I listen to the doctor detail Tucker’s recovery plan, it really feels like everything is falling into place.

Chapter Forty-Four

Maren

With things between us in a good place, Brice went home to shower and change. I’m being released from the hospital tomorrow morning, but Brice says he’s sleeping here tonight. Now I just have one last difficult conversation before I can look to the future.

Sawyer and Nathaniel stopped by to check on me, and Ava and Gage both called to make sure I wasn’t dead. The difference between older siblings and younger siblings has never been so clear. My dad came too, but he didn’t stay long.

I’m starting to wonder whether Enzo is going to make an appearance like he said when the door to my room opens, and he enters with his hand behind his back. He reveals a bundle of peonies with a flourish.

“Your favorite.” He brings them to the bed and sets them on the table beside me. “I saw them, and I couldn’t resist picking them up.”

Peonies are actually his mother’s favorite flower, not mine, but I didn’t correct him the first time he made the mistake and then didn’t feel I could after that. For the three or four times he’s bought me flowers over the years, it wasn’t worth creating an awkward situation.

“I had some time to think away from all this.” He gestures to my hospital bed as though my being in here is an inconvenience. “And maybe we should sell the house and have our fresh start in the apartment. We should look beyond everything that’s happened this last year.”

“Enzo,” I say, keeping my voice even. “I’m going through with the separation and divorce. It’s too late for us.”

“I don’t accept that.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You spent a year asking me to come back, and now that I’ve come, I’m too late?” He scoffs.

“A year,” I say. “A whole year I asked, and you chose not to return until it was too late.” He’s not going to make me feel bad about this when I even went to Boston, whereas he never came back here. Not once.

“I’m not agreeing to a divorce,” he says.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t get divorced,” I say. Talking to Caitlin earlier prepared me for this response. “All it means is it’ll be drawn out.”

“Then I’ll draw it out. I’ve made mistakes, but I always said I wanted our marriage to work. I never once said I didn’t.”

That’s true, but his words weren’t followed by any actions that reinforced his claims. “I fell off a cliff, had a miscarriage, and I was struggling with depression. You left me, and you left the island. Did you really think I was going to wait here forever to see if you’d decide I was worthy of your love and attention?”

“You were always worthy, M. I was blindsided by you saying you never wanted to have kids. That’s not the understanding we had when we got married.”

“We never talked about it before getting married. What understanding did you think we’d come to?”

“You never said you didn’t want them.”

“You never said you did. We can go in circles, but we didn’t talk about it. After the miscarriage and how you—how you blamed me for not being able to have children—how did you think I’d react? Not an ounce of support from you. Of course I didn’t want to have children with you when that’s your response.”

Enzo and I met young and married young, and maybe we didn’t have enough life experience between us to commit to forever with our eyes open. Marriage isn’t always going to be easy, and oddly, I have zero expectations that my relationship with Brice will be constantly filled with heart eyes and flowers. But I have faith that he won’t walk away when things are rough.

Whatever the path is, he’ll walk beside me, carry me, or let me carry him. I’m certain we won’t let each other down. The last few months with Brice have taught me that we take care of the people we love, always. Even when things were exceptionally hard with his father, he never shirked his duty or tempered his love, and he’s been at my side every step of the way through training. On the course, when I stumbled, Brice was, quite literally, at my elbow to keep me on my feet.

With Enzo, I fell lower than I’ve ever been in my life, and his response was to leave the island. For a long time, I wasn’t emotionally ready to acknowledge how awful it was for him to abandon me given that we were supposed to be partners.