Chapter 3 - The Awakening
Sloan woke up to the sound of low, steady breathing.
The hospital room was dim.
The beeping of the monitors matched the pounding in her head.
She remembered the blueprints. The sharp pain in her hip. The floor rushing up to meet her.
“Hazel? Iris?” she rasped.
“They’re asleep.”
The voice came from the corner of the room.
Deep.
Familiar.
And impossible.
Sloan turned her head.
Griffin Drake was sitting in the vinyl hospital chair.
Hazel was curled into his side, her head resting on his chest. Iris was asleep on his lap, wrapped in his expensive suit jacket.
Griffin had one arm securely around each of them.
He looked perfectly natural holding them, as if he had been doing it every day of their lives.
Sloan’s heart hammered against her ribs.
Panic seized her.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“You listed me as your emergency contact,” Griffin said quietly.
Sloan closed her eyes.
Ten years ago, she had filled out a medical form at a free clinic. She had been alone, terrified, and newly pregnant. When the form asked for an emergency contact, she had written Griffin’s name and number in a moment of pure vulnerability.
She had never updated the file.
She had never thought they would actually call him.
“They shouldn’t have bothered you,” Sloan said, her voice shaking.
“Bothered me?”
Griffin’s gray eyes locked onto hers.
The intensity in them made her breath catch.
“Sloan. You collapsed from severe exhaustion and dehydration. Your daughters thought you were dying. They called the only number they could find.”
He looked down at the sleeping girls.
“And they asked me a question on the phone.”
Sloan turned her face toward the wall.
“Griffin, please.”
“They asked if I was their father.”
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating.
“Are they mine, Sloan?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears leaked onto the sterile hospital pillow.
“Yes.”
Griffin exhaled a shaky breath.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t throw anything. He didn’t demand explanations.
He just pulled the girls a fraction of an inch closer to him.
“Eight years,” he whispered.
“I was trying to protect them,” Sloan cried softly.
May you like
“From me?”
“From your family.”
