Home Entertainment Game Technology Six months after a bullet left me paralyzed, my fiancée secretly ordered the staff to stop my afternoon therapy because she believed helping me was pointless, but the exhausted aide earning twenty-five dollars an hour refused to treat me like a lost cause. I had spent my life surrounded by men terrified of my name, yet it took one brutally honest woman washing my back to make me realize the person wearing my engagement ring had already abandoned me.352

“You cried first.”

“That was neurological.”

“That isn't a thing.”

I reached the end of the bars.

Patel laughed.

I looked at Tessa.

For months I had imagined this moment.

Standing in front of the woman who had refused to let everyone bury me early.

I wanted some perfect sentence.

What came out was, “I'm taller than I remembered.”

She laughed so hard she cried anyway.

Later, after Patel left, we sat near the fireplace.

I gave Tessa an envelope.

She frowned.

“If that's money—”

“It isn't.”

She opened it.

Inside was confirmation that a foundation had paid the balance of her sister's medical treatment and established a fund covering future rehabilitation.

Tessa went completely still.

“How did you get her name?”

“I have expensive lawyers.”

Her face changed.

Not gratitude.

Fear.

“Tessa?”

She folded the paper.

“You shouldn't have done this.”

“I wanted to.”

“You don't understand.”

“Then explain.”