The moment Mrs. Cross slipped from his lips, Nathan’s gaze lingered on her face, the way her expression tightened somewhere between confusion, disbelief, and… fear hit him harder than it should have.

He’d imagined this reunion for weeks, plotted exactly how he’d confront her, how he’d corner her into fulfilling the marriage clause.

But he hadn’t imagined her looking at him as if his voice itself was a wound reopening.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that face until it turned toward him again older now, paler, colder and sharper at the edges.

No trace of the girl who used to race him down the beach until their lungs burned, No warmth from the sixteen-year-old who’d clung to his jacket at the airport, trying not to cry when he left for Japan.

He’d known about the betrothal for only six months, a well sealed file signed before they were born, tucked away in the depths of his father’s safe.

Finding her was supposed to be easy

Find her, sign the papers and secure his inheritance

Except finding her turned into the kind of hunt he never anticipated.

The first hit had been the accident, it had shaken Los Angeles, made headlines across the country.

"Heiress Matilda Jones Dead After Car Wreck"

The details were brutal enough that even his father had believed it without question. Nathan had mourned quietly, somewhere between disbelief and a hollow ache for the young girl he loved but never told

He might have believed the lie forever if his instincts hadn’t whispered something’s off.

It started with her two most trusted assistants people he vaguely remembered from society functions making frequent trips between Boston and L.A.

Harmless, maybe but Nathan thrived on patterns, and this one smelled wrong, digging deeper only unraveled more threads: the swift transfer of her assets into other hands, the suspicious speed at which her company’s management reshuffled after her supposed death.

People grieve slowly, Vultures don’t.

So he’d tailed one of those assistants and the trail led him here to a discreet private hospital in a remote part of Boston and there she was lying there motionless tubes connected to her from so many parts.

She was alive, breathing.

And yet, not the Matilda he remembered..

The Matilda he remembered had fire in her veins, she was stubborn, relentless and impossible.

The little girl who once sat on his shoulders during the Fourth of July parade and declared she’d “own the whole city someday.”

Ada, the woman closest to her, claimed to know nothing beyond “confidential health matters.” But Nathan saw it in her eyes there was more. If the accident had been planned, if someone had tried to erase Matilda from the world, then they’d nearly succeeded, There was more to the accident, there was more to why she’d been hidden for two years, tucked away from the world.

The contract marriage was now more than an inheritance clause. It was the only way to pull her back to L.A., keep her under his protection, and find the truth.. then make everybody that had a hand in her fall pay dearly.

But standing here, looking at her like this, Nathan realized something far worse than her accident had happened, Something had stolen the girl he’d once known and maybe, she’d never come back, his throat tightened around the thought.

The door behind him creaked cutting off what he wanted to say, Nathan turned, half expecting Ada.

Instead, a man stood there, hesitating on the threshold.

Matilda’s breath hitched. “Ethan?”

Nathan’s head snapped toward her. Ethan?

The name she’d just whispered was the one carved into her parents’ headstone the brother she’d buried 10 years ago.

The man stepped in slowly, as though afraid she might disappear if he moved too fast. He was older than the boy in the photographs Nathan remembered, his features sharpened, his frame leaner, but those golden-brown eyes were unmistakable.

Matilda’s voice trembled. “You were… on the plane. I saw the river… they told me—”

“I know.” His voice cracked, low and rough, each word carrying years of silence. “After the plain crash I fell over the cliff into the waters the current took me downstream, and I woke up in some stranger’s hut, half broken. An old woman… had saved me and she spent four years putting me back together.”

Matilda’s hands gripped the blanket, knuckles white.

“When I could finally walk without pain, I tried to come back,” Ethan continued, his gaze dropping. “But they’d already declared me dead. I didn’t exist anymore, Tillie. Not on paper, not anywhere, you had moved on and I thought… maybe it was better for you that way.”

Her eyes glossed over. “Better for me? I mourned you, Mom and Dad for years?, move on how could I when I didn't understand why the trip I refused to take was what took all your lives, I was left alone in the world”

“I know and I'm sorry Tillie ” His voice broke on the words.

“And I watched from far enough that you wouldn’t see me. Five years of watching you try to smile while you were alone. I wanted to come sooner, but every time… I was held back unable to until I heard about your accident, I completely broke down then”

Nathan’s throat tightened as Ethan looked at him, then back at her.

“Until my source found some clues and we found out you were alive here in Boston, After I came here I met Mrs West and she confirmed it, I have been sitting by this hospital bed waiting for you to come back so I could apologise for leaving you all alone by yourself for all these years

Two years, Tillie..... I've been waiting for you to open your eyes.”

For a moment, the room was silent except for the hum of the machines.

Matilda reached for him then, her hands trembling, and Ethan stepped forward, pulling her into his arms like he was afraid to let go. She buried her face in his shoulder, a sound escaping her that was neither a sob nor a laugh just pure disbelief.... and a hint of gratitude, she wasn't alone anymore.

Nathan turned his face away, letting them have the moment. But deep inside, one thought gnawed at him a memory of the bright, fearless girl she’d once been, the one who used to trail him through every hallway, the one who’d cried at the airport when he left.

Now, sitting before him was a stranger wrapped up in broken pieces of the past.

"What happened to you in the last twelve years,.....Buttercup?