I inhaled sharply, and the pain punished me for it. Clara lifted a straw to my lips. “Small sip.” The water tasted like mercy. I swallowed and tried again. “Did they get it?” She glanced toward the door. “The surgeon will explain everything, but yes. The procedure went better than expected.” I closed my eyes. Better than expected. Not perfect. Not miraculous. But enough. Enough to keep breathing. Enough to remember. Evan. His text came back like a blade sliding between my ribs. We’re getting a divorce, Jessica. I don’t need the burden of a sick wife. The pain in my body suddenly seemed honest. The pain from Evan was dirty. Cowardly. It had no right to exist inside a hospital room where people fought so hard to stay alive. Then another memory surfaced. Mark. The chair by my bed. His calm voice. The trash in your life has finally taken itself out. My insane joke. If I survive this, maybe we should just get married and call it a day. His answer. Okay. My eyes opened. “Mark,” I whispered.

“I asked Clara to give you the application. You filled it out three weeks ago and forgot.”

I frowned.

“I thought that was for parking assistance.”

“It was a very broad form.”

I laughed, but tears blurred the key.

“I can’t keep accepting help.”

“Yes, you can,” he said. “But you can also reject this. That’s the point.”

The point.

Choice.

Evan’s love had narrowed my world until every option led back to him.

Mark’s love—if that was what this was becoming—kept opening doors and telling me I did not have to walk through them.

I took the key.

“Thank you.”

He nodded.

I closed my fist around it.

Then I said, “Ask me again.”

He went still.

“What?”

“The question.”

His face changed. Hope and fear crossed it so quickly my heart ached.

“Jessica, you don’t have to—”

“I know.”

“It’s the day your divorce was finalized.”

“I know.”

“You’re still healing.”

“I know.”

“We can wait.”

“We will wait.” I stepped closer. “I’m not saying we should get married tomorrow. I’m saying I want the question to exist for real this time. Not as a joke. Not as a life raft. Not because I’m afraid. Because I survived, and you were there, and somehow in the ruins of the worst night of my life, something honest began.”

The river moved darkly beside us.

Mark looked at me as if I had just handed him something breakable and priceless.

Then he knelt.