My heart stuttered. “Blake?—”
“And when I find them,” he continued, one hand coming up to cup my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone in a touchthat was anything but clinical, “they’ll learn exactly how much damage a doctor can do.”
The promise in his voice sent ice water down my skin, but whether from fear of the threat or the way he was looking at me, I couldn’t tell. And as his words sank in, a more terrifying question surfaced.
What if Blake was right? What if this whole time, someone had been making me sick?
No. That was lunacy. People don’t get poisoned to death very often, and they certainly don’t get poisoned slowly for over a year.
What if my illness was making Blake come unhinged?
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
He left me here. Alone with my torturous thoughts, and just like last time, he didn’t even bother to explain why.
I stood up and exited the room, and as I stepped into the hallway, a sliver of light caught my eye. The mystery door stood ajar, golden light spilling onto the hardwood floor like an invitation.
Blake must have gone in there. Whatever was in that room had drawn him away from me. Urgently.
But what could it be? It was silly and irrational to wonder if the room held the answers to why he pushed me away, why he’d crushed any hope of us being together, why he’d chosen his promise to Ryker over me. Chosen his unspoken demons over the possibility of love. Those answers lay in his guarded heart, not some mystery room.
And yet my feet inched closer to it.
He was probably just looking up some latest test result. Nothing to do with our non-relationship situation.
God, I hadn’t realized how deep the roots of hope had grown until he’d ripped them out. All these years of maybes and what-ifs, of lingering touches and heated glances—gone. And all I had left wasfriendBlake.MedicalBlake.
What if I wasn’t sick? Would he even be talking to me right now? What if I was mistaking some of his care as feelings when it was nothing more than doctor stuff?
My hand trembled as I pushed the door open.
And then I took a step back.
“Oh my God.”
48
TESSA
My heart pounded against my ribs. Papers. Dozens, no, hundreds, of papers covered every inch of the walls, and as I moved closer, my stomach dropped. These weren’t just any papers.
They were mine. Every lab result. Every doctor’s appointment. Every symptom I’d mentioned over the past year, meticulously documented and arranged like evidence in a murder investigation. Red strings connected documents, creating a web of my illness. Post-it Notes in Blake’s precise handwriting were everywhere, covered in questions: Stomach inflammation? Connection to headaches? Environmental triggers?
Above the chaos were carefully printed headers: Immunology. Neurology. GI. Autoimmune possibilities.
“Tessa …”
“What is this?”
“I can explain.”
“When did you have time to do all this?” Why wasthatmy question right now? There were much bigger ones to ask!
“At night,” he said absently, as if missing sleep wasn’t significant. “Here.” Blake’s voice was tight as he moved to another wall, which was also covered. “Look at this.”
A timeline stretched across the surface of this wall, each date connected by more red string. First symptoms. First GI complaint. Unexplained hives. But it wasn’t just medical data. He’d noted every major event in my life around that time. The day I moved into my townhouse. How many days passed before the symptoms started. Things I’d jotted down in that notebook I’d given him, which lay open on the table in the corner.
