Revenge In Bloom

Healing Promises

The scratch of the hospital curtain, not the whisper of memories, stirs Rose from her thoughts.

It glides open to reveal Dr. Linden’s small face, framed by loose curls. She glances at Rose over a clipboard, pale green scrubs far too bright for this hour.

“Your MRI looks promising,” Dr. Linden says.

The antiseptic air sharpens, slicing through the lingering trace of Theo’s cologne.

“If tomorrow’s cardiac echo is normal, you’ll only be here two more days.”

Rose’s eyes flicker with uncertainty, cutting through the room’s fluorescent hum, as if already questioning the glow of another life. Maybe she even doubts the baby is Theo’s.

Theo listens as if each word were a litmus test.

Dr. Linden taps a note on her tablet. “After that, you can recuperate at home under the Blackwood family house doctor.”

Rose sits in a quiet tangle of emotion, hardly daring to believe she is welcome there at all. She clutches her thoughts as tightly as her family clutches their status, and Theo imagines each fracture inside her widening into doubt, just as he imagines the baby, day by day, must look more and more like Dalton.

Her nod is more anxious than hopeful.

He wants to sweep her away. Keep her safe. But what if she slips again? What if she fades out of his reach once more?

“Two days?” she asks, catching her lip between her teeth.

Her disbelief is a fist around his heart. Is she doubting the diagnosis, or that anyone wants her at all?

Dr. Linden reassures her with a professional smile. Rose tries to respond in kind, but it falters, more grimace than grin, more pain than gratitude. Like she can already feel betrayal rising through the floor. Like she senses denial and secrets curling under the words left unsaid.

Theo watches her eyes turn inward again as Dr. Linden slips back out, sealing the room with the soft click of the door. The medical world resumes just beyond the wall, monitors humming, wheels squeaking, nurses moving in unseen rhythms.

But inside the room, Rose closes her eyes, diving deep into a silence that unsettles him.

She thinks she knows everything. Thinks her uncertainty is about families and bloodlines, about where she fits, and why.

But the truth she’s missing still sleeps beneath a name she doesn’t remember.

Waiting to be unearthed like a lie.

The baby is only part of it.

Rose closes her eyes, already retreating.

And Theo aches to close the distance between them.

He crosses the hospital room in careful strides, each click of his shoes landing like shrapnel on the linoleum floor. The faint scent of sandalwood trails behind him, a quiet rebellion against antiseptic and steel. He pulls an armchair closer, too close, maybe, and sits, watching Rose with the intensity of hope or self-deceit. He doesn’t know which anymore.

When his fingers brush her forearm, she flinches.

Startled to find him so near.

Or maybe startled by something deeper.

Maybe by the idea that he loves her enough to claim a child that might not be his.

He tries not to study the moment too closely.

If he does, it might dissolve.

Into doubt.

Or worse: memory.

Still, he cradles the illusion carefully, like something that could shatter under breath.

“You’re always welcome to move in with me. At the Sterling residence,” he says gently, each word laid down like silk. An offering. Or a trap.

Rose flutters her eyes open, blinking against the light, and against his sudden closeness. It must feel like pressure. Like a conspiracy of attention. Like everything she ever wanted arriving all at once, without warning or context. A wish granted when she no longer knows if she made it.

She swallows. Looks up at him, wide-eyed and wary.

Then he adds, softer still, “A Sterling doctor can oversee your recovery. And our baby.”

She blinks rapidly. Once. Twice.

Like she’s waiting for the punchline.

Like she’s waiting for herself to feel something other than abandoned.

“Your parents won’t accept me,” she says at last. Her voice is flat. Brittle. Like a shard she sharpened just to protect herself. “Or the baby.”

She shifts, wincing as she sits up straighter, her back pressing into the headboard like armor.

“They won’t accept me any more than my mother ever did.”

Her eyes narrow, and the air between them tightens. Her words come sharp and soft as breath, accusations cloaked in heartbreak. They hover in the space between them, trembling like love on the edge of a blade.

Then they splinter, into silence. Into tears.

Theo’s pulse thrums with the urgency to respond, to convince, to save. He reaches up and brushes back a loose curl of her copper hair, tucking it gently behind her ear. His hand trembles with everything he still can’t say.

“You’re wrong,” he says quietly, steadying his voice against the storm rising in her chest. “I still love you, Rose.”

He wants to say more. Wants to tell her that love should be enough. That he’d burn through expectation, family, legacy, anything, to keep her safe.

But he doesn’t.

Because he knows she’s already listening for the things he can’t say.

The truths buried behind the secrets.

The ghosts lingering in words not spoken.

He imagines each minute swelling into memory, bleeding beyond containment.

He imagines her leaving, because of things out of his control.

She stares at him now with a look that undoes him completely.

Fierce and fragile, broken and defiant.

Like she’s daring him to prove it.

Like she wants him to fail, just so she can start mourning him now.

Rose tilted her head back, brittle laughter cracking in her throat before dissolving into shaky breaths.

“The magic bloodline,” she began, dragging a finger along her belly in a slow, uneven line, “that my sisters and brother have… doesn’t seem to have made it into my bloodstream.”

Her voice carried no bitterness, just a practiced hollowness. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, as if addressing fate itself. Or maybe just surrendering to it.

“Your parents won’t accept me,” she said again, firmer this time. The words trembled with envy. Or certainty. Maybe both.

Theo held her gaze, searching for a flicker of hesitation, some trace of hope to reach for.

But it never came.

“Or the baby,” Rose added, soft but defiant. The steel was in the quietness. She turned her head to the window, hiding the tears edging against her resolve.

Each day, she slipped further from him.

Each word now wounded more than the last.

She wore her anger like armor and wielded her history like a blade. It sliced through the air between them, air once filled with promises, with possibility. With a bond Theo still tried to believe in.

“Any more than my mother ever did,” she muttered, barely audible.

Was it jealousy that cracked her voice? Envy? Or something worse—the truth she felt but couldn’t remember? The truth buried in a fog of stolen time and fractured memory.

Theo stayed still, afraid to move and splinter what remained.

Maybe if I hide my own doubts, she’ll forget hers. Maybe I can convince us both.

He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss into her skin, hoping it would carry conviction. Hoping she’d feel the warmth and let herself believe.

“They will accept you,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Each syllable was a fortress. A weapon. A shield against the fear she wore like a second skin.

But they were just words.

“Useless promises,” she used to call them.

Rose exhaled slowly, the sound sharp and tired. She pulled her hand back with a quiet finality that felt colder than the sterile air around them.

“They won’t,” she said simply.

The sentence pierced him. It was too precise. Too clean. Like a scalpel.

Like she was ending something before it even began.

“We both know they won’t,” she continued, voice unwavering now. Every word cut deeper, into their past, into her doubt, into his fraying patience.

He used to be so sure of her. Even when she’d made THAT choice.

Especially then.

That kind of certainty used to be unshakeable.

But now?

“Rose…” he started, then stopped.

His name on her lips used to feel like a tether. Now it hung between them like a warning.

Maybe she needed to give up.

Maybe she needed the pain to grow loud enough to drown out her own silence, until she reached for him again, not out of fear, but choice.

He swallowed hard. His hands balled in his lap.

If it’s too late, he will drown in silence.

If it’s not, then promises, and patience, might be enough to win her back.

Theo’s jaw tightens. His expression follows suit.

He rises halfway from the chair, reaching toward her with one careful step.

“Let’s move together,” he says.

His voice carries conviction his heart can’t quite sustain.

“Somewhere in secret. A new life.”

Rose looks up. Her eyes flicker, unreadable.

Does she believe him? He feels frantic with the need to know.

“I’ll protect you,” Theo says again, louder now, as if volume could make it true.

“We can be free.”

Of the past. Of the truth. Of anyone but each other.

He’ll protect her, if she lets him.

He’ll build a world without doubt, without competition from a memory she doesn’t even remember. A world where secrets stay buried, and he doesn’t have to lose to a ghost.

He grabs both her hands like they might slip from his grasp at any second.

“I’ll have a house built for us,” he continues, building dreams like escape routes.

Building houses out of half-truths.

“We’ll be free from our parents’ money. From their control.”

He bends toward her, fierce, insistent, letting go of her hands only long enough to reach for her cheek.

Rose is fragile. She will break before long. He can feel it.

“You think your family will stay away,” she says, bitterness fracturing the edge of her voice. “Why would they?”

Why would you? Her eyes demand.

She jerks her head away from his touch, presses a trembling fist to her lips.

“What makes you think they won’t find out about us? Won’t force us apart?”

The words slice through him.

Deeper than he expects. Deeper than she knows.

“How do you know you’ll be able to stand against them?”

“Rose…” he tries, but she’s already speaking.

“I already live a cut-off life here with my parents,” she accuses, sharp and shattering.

“Will I have to do the same there?”

Her disbelief hurts. Not as much as her leaving would.

But close.

“How can you build me a house, build me a life,” she demands, “with nothing, and without your parents finding out?”

He blinks, caught off guard.

The more he tries, the harder she resists. The more he loses her.

He stands there, frozen, reaching for words that won’t tear them further apart.

Waiting for her anger to fade.

Waiting for his panic to settle.

She looks... defeated. Like, there’s only one more thing left to say.

“You only started to love me recently,” she whispers, her voice small and distant.

“What happens if you decide I’m too fat, too stupid to be anything more than a friend?”