The rescue team arrived at 3:00 am. Valentina’s face was streaked with tears and ice, her hands bright red from the cold.
Even so, she stubbornly kept her flashlight raised, methodically searching every inch of the cliff base alongside the rescue workers.
“I found them! Over here! Bring a stretcher!” one of the team members suddenly shouted.
Hearing his call, Valentina immediately stumbled toward the voice. She saw Chris lying among the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff, a pool of dark red blood beneath him.
Meanwhile, Jake lay motionless a short distance away. He was clearly dead.
“This one’s still breathing! Come on, help me get him to the truck. We need to get him to a hospital!”
Valentina dropped to her knees in the snow, her hands shaking as she took Chris‘ ice–cold fingers in hers. His scarf had come loose during the fall, exposing the lower half of his face in the moonlight. But the darkness was too deep for her to make out his features clearly.
She could only see the blood at the corner of his mouth, and his breathing was so shallow she could barely detect it.
“Hold on… Chris, please be okay…” she choked out, tears splashing onto his face.
The county hospital’s fluorescent lights were harsh and blindingly white. Valentina sat on a bench outside the operating room, her fingernails digging deep into her palms.
All she could think about was that last look Chris had given her before tumbling off the cliff-
how those usually calm eyes were filled with an indescribable longing.
Finally, the surgery lights went out. Valentina immediately jumped to her feet and hurried toward the emerging doctor.
The surgeon pulled off his mask. “The patient is out of immediate danger, but he’s lost a lot of blood. We’ll need to monitor him closely for a while.”
Valentina let out a long breath of relief, her knees nearly buckling beneath her. When the nurse led her into the room, Chris had already been patched up.
He lay quietly on the hospital bed. His face was no longer concealed, revealing his complete, pale features.
Valentina stopped dead in her tracks. She had seen this face before.
Several months ago, when Daniel’s older brother Marcus got married, she had tagged along to
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the celebration. The groom had looked handsome and distinguished in his military uniform as he lifted his bride amid the cheers and catcalls from the crowd.
But for some reason, that striking face had shown no trace of a smile. Instead, he’d looked incredibly serious.
As he passed by her, Marcus had suddenly turned and looked directly at her. That gaze had been so complex and intense that she’d never forgotten it.
Later, she’d heard that Marcus had been called away on an emergency mission on his wedding night and never returned. Eventually, the military announced that he’d been killed in action. They never even found his body.
That was when her nightmare began. The Pierce family had pressured Daniel to have a child with his sister–in–law, and Daniel had eventually become entangled with Camille.
But now, this man she’d been calling “Chris” looked exactly like Marcus!
Valentina stumbled backward, her mind reeling with confusion. If he really was Marcus, why hadn’t he gone home?
Why was he hiding in the mountains under a false name? And why… why had he ended up by her side?
The man on the bed frowned slightly, as if he was starting to wake up. Valentina’s first instinct
was to run.
She’d finally escaped everything connected to the Pierce family and didn’t want to get tangled up with anyone related to Daniel ever again. But seeing Chris‘ pale face and bandaged chest, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
This was the man who had shielded her from the wolf pack, taught her about meteor showers, and made her wind chimes from pine cones and nutshells.
Valentina slowly walked back to the bedside, studying his face with conflicted emotions. She sat in the chair beside his bed through the night, thinking quietly until dawn broke. Finally, she gently took his hand.
“I don’t care who you are…” she said softly. “When you wake up, I’ll wait for you to tell me yourself.”
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
