MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Emma's hand shook as she reached for her phone. Her finger trembled as she played the first voicemail. The doctor's calm, clinical tone delivered words that shattered her world.

Massive stroke. Critical condition. Next of kin needed immediately.

"No, no, no." The whisper fractured the peaceful darkness.

James stirred beside her. "Emma? What is wrong?"

"I have to go." She scrambled from the warm bed, fumbling for clothes scattered across the floor. Panic crashed over her in cold waves, bringing choking guilt.

She had been here, wrapped in silk sheets and a stranger's arms, while her grandmother lay dying.

"My grandmother. She is in the hospital. I have to go now."

"Emma, slow down." James rose, his brow furrowed with concern. "Let me help. I will drive you."

"No." She pulled away from his offered hand, yanking on her dress. "I do not have time. I should have been home. I should have answered my phone."

She could not look at him, could not let him see her fall apart. This magical night now felt like a terrible mistake, a beautiful distraction that might have cost her everything.

"At least let me call you a car." His voice was firm but gentle. "Give me your number. Let me check on you."

She grabbed hotel stationery and scribbled her number, her hand shaking so badly the pen skipped on the last digit, smearing ink into an unreadable mark. She was already moving toward the door, her mind a storm of fear and guilt.

"Last night was..." She could not finish.

Beautiful. Perfect. A dream I must wake from.

"I am sorry."

She fled without looking back.

The taxi ride blurred into streaking city lights and frantic, silent prayers. James Wilson and their incredible night already felt like a memory from another lifetime.

In his hotel suite, James woke alone to profound emptiness. His heightened senses registered her absence immediately. The cooling sheets. The fading scent of her skin.

Then he found the note.

The hasty, dismissive words stung his pride. He had allowed himself vulnerability with a human, and she had left without explanation, leaving only a polite, cold thank you. His concern curdled into familiar bitterness.

He tried the phone number, his frustration mounting with each failed attempt. The smudged digit made it useless.

He called his assistant, demanding a search for an Emma Lopez who worked for Artful Appetites. The results led nowhere. Dozens of Emma Lopezes existed in Crestwood, and the catering company seemed to be a ghost, a temporary business name used for a single event.

She had vanished completely.

He hardened his heart, concluding she was like all the others. Another human who had used him and walked away.

At the hospital, Emma ran through sterile corridors until she found her grandmother's ICU room. The woman who had taught her to cook, to laugh, to dream looked impossibly small and frail, lost in tubes and wires that beeped with cruel, artificial life.

"Abuela," Emma whispered, her voice breaking as she took her grandmother's cool, unresponsive hand.

The doctor explained the prognosis in gentle terms. The damage was significant. Recovery would take months, if it came at all.

For days, Emma sat vigil, her world shrinking to the rhythmic sounds of machines. Her phone, thrust into her purse in her haste to leave the hotel, eventually died. Nothing existed beyond those four white walls.

The next three weeks passed in a blur of grief and exhaustion. Days were spent at the hospital, holding her grandmother's hand and whispering stories of their shared past. Nights were spent working extra catering shifts, her body moving on autopilot while her mind replayed every doctor's report.

The magical night at the Grand Crestwood Hotel faded into a distant, painful memory. There was no time to dwell on the man from the hotel, no space in her heart for anything but gnawing fear for her grandmother and crushing responsibility.

But her body remembered what her mind tried to forget.

The fatigue and waves of nausea began subtly, which she attributed to stress and grief. Then one morning, the world tilted. She stood in her tiny, sunlit bathroom, staring at two pink lines on a positive pregnancy test.

Dizziness washed over her.

She thought of James, of his intense gaze and the smudged, useless phone number. She had no way to find him, no way to tell him that their one perfect night had created a new life.

Terror flickered through her, followed by a fierce protectiveness. Emma pressed a hand to her still-flat stomach and made a decision. She would handle this alone, just as she had handled everything else.

This child would be hers, and hers alone.

She tried one final time to find James, calling the hotel, but learned he had checked out with no forwarding information. The Grand Crestwood would not release guest details. She could not afford a private investigator.

She accepted her new reality.

Her grandmother stabilized slowly over the following weeks, though she would never fully recover. Emma juggled medical bills, pregnancy symptoms, and relentless work. When a lawyer appeared at her door six months later with an offer from the H.M. Foundation, a generous monthly payment to support single mothers, she was too desperate to refuse.

Too exhausted to question the timing or the anonymity.

She simply accepted the lifeline and moved forward.