Colin burst through the apartment door three days before our wedding, his face flushed with urgency that might have fooled me a month ago. Now I just wondered which lie he'd prepared this time.
"Tessa, thank God you're home." He grabbed my shoulders, his grip tight enough to bruise. "I need your help. It's an emergency."
I set down the wedding favor boxes I'd been pretending to organize. "What's wrong?"
"My college roommate—Marcus—he was in a car accident. He needs a blood transfusion immediately, and his blood type is rare. AB negative." His eyes locked onto mine with desperate intensity. "Same as yours. You're the only match they could find on short notice."
My hand moved instinctively to my stomach, a protective gesture I caught and stopped. Six weeks pregnant. The baby I hadn't told him about, growing inside me even as I planned our escape.
"Of course," I heard myself say. "Of course I'll help."
Because that's what decent people did, wasn't it? They saved lives, even when their own was falling apart.
Colin rushed me into his car, driving fifteen miles over the speed limit to Seattle General. The whole ride, he kept thanking me, his hand squeezing mine with a fervor that felt more like guilt than gratitude. I stared out the window, watching the city blur past, and touched my mother's necklace.
Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones.
At the hospital, Colin steered me through a maze of corridors to the blood donation center. A tired-looking administrator shoved a stack of forms across the counter.
"Sign here, here, and here. Initial the consent forms."
"Wait, I should read—"
"Tessa, please." Colin's voice cracked. "Marcus is dying. We don't have time."
I signed. My hand moved across page after page, my name appearing in blue ink while my mind screamed warnings I ignored. The administrator barely glanced at the forms before whisking them away.
They led me to a donation room, the sterile smell making my stomach turn. Or maybe that was the pregnancy. A young nurse with kind eyes helped me onto the reclining chair, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around my arm.
"You're doing a wonderful thing," she said softly, prepping the needle.
I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. Colin hovered by the door, checking his phone compulsively. I watched the dark red blood flow through the tube into the collection bag, feeling each drop leave my body like a small betrayal to the life growing inside me.
"So how do you know the patient?" the nurse asked, making small talk as she monitored the flow.
"It's my fiancé's friend. Car accident."
Her hands stilled on the IV line. "Car accident?"
"Yes. Marcus something. Colin said—"
"Honey." She glanced toward the door where Colin had stepped out, then back to me. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "This blood isn't going to an accident victim. It's for an elective surgery patient."
The room tilted. "What?"
"I shouldn't be telling you this, but..." She bit her lip, conflict clear on her face. "The patient specifically requested you as the donor. By name. A woman named Brinley Simmons."
The world stopped.
Brinley Simmons. The woman who'd kissed Colin in the restaurant. Who'd destroyed my mother's dress. Who'd written that note in elegant script.
She was taking my blood.
"I need you to stop," I whispered. "Stop the transfusion."
"We're almost done. Just another minute—"
"Stop it now!" My voice came out sharp enough that she flinched, quickly removing the needle and applying pressure to my arm.
Colin reappeared in the doorway. "Everything okay?"
I stared at him, this stranger wearing my fiancé's face. "Marcus, is it? Your college roommate?"
Something flickered in his eyes. Fear. Guilt. The truth, finally, after ten years of lies I'd been too blind to see.
"Tessa—"
"Get away from me." I pushed past him, one hand clutching my bandaged arm, the other pressed against my stomach. The hallway spun as I stumbled toward the exit, my body suddenly feeling wrong, too light and too heavy all at once.
I made it to the parking lot before the cramping started.
Sharp. Vicious. Low in my abdomen, like something inside me was tearing apart. I doubled over against a concrete pillar, gasping as pain radiated through my core.
"No," I whispered. "Please, no."
But I felt it—the wet warmth spreading between my legs, the unmistakable sensation of my body rejecting the life I'd barely begun to protect.
"Tessa!" Colin's voice, distant and panicked. "Someone help! We need help!"
The world fragmented into pieces. Fluorescent lights. Urgent voices. The cold bite of a gurney beneath me. Dr. Chen's face swimming into focus, her expression grave.
"We're losing the pregnancy," someone said.
"Did you know?" Dr. Chen asked gently. "Did you know you were pregnant when you donated blood?"
I tried to answer but couldn't form words. My baby. My secret. The one pure thing left in this nightmare.
Gone.
Colin's face appeared above me, tears streaming down his cheeks. Real tears, for once. "I didn't know," he choked out. "Tessa, I swear I didn't know about the baby. Brinley, she said she needed blood for a minor procedure, she manipulated me, I never meant—"
"Get out," I whispered.
His face crumpled. "Please, let me explain—"
"GET OUT!" The scream tore from somewhere primal and broken, echoing off the emergency room walls. "You killed our baby. You killed our baby for her."
The machines around me beeped frantically as my blood pressure spiked. Nurses rushed in, pushing Colin back, their voices overlapping in urgent medical jargon I couldn't process.
I closed my eyes and felt my mother's necklace against my skin. Cold. Unforgiving. A reminder that love could be worn like armor or wielded like a weapon.
Colin Ford had just taught me which one mattered more.
