Page 107 of You Owe Me

I should have told her.

The thought hits me with crystalline clarity despite the drugs coursing through my system. I should have told Ainsley about the surgery, about the risks, about the fact that my heart has been trying to quit on me for months. I should have trusted her to handle it, to be strong enough to sit in a waiting room while strangers try to fix me.

Instead, I chose control. I chose the illusion of protecting her over the reality of letting her love me through something difficult.

And now I’m here alone, about to lose consciousness, with regret as my final coherent thought.

The door opens again. Dr. Patel this time, looking professional and confident in his surgical scrubs.

“How are we feeling, Maverick?”

“Ready,” I lie.

He runs through the procedure one more time—insertion points, duration, recovery expectations. All information Ialready know, but I nod along anyway because it gives me something to focus on besides the growing weight of the sedatives.

“Any last questions?”

Just one: What happens to the people you love when you die alone because you were too stubborn to admit you needed them?

But that’s not really a medical question.

“I’m good,” I tell him.

“Excellent. We’ll have you back here in a few hours, and that heart of yours will be running like clockwork.”

Clockwork. Like all the mechanical precision I’ve spent years building around myself is somehow going to transfer to the organ keeping me alive.

The surgical team arrives—more scrubs, more efficiency, more people who see me as a procedure rather than a person. They release the brakes on my bed and start wheeling me toward the OR, and the ceiling tiles blur together as we move down the hallway.

The sedatives are pulling me under now, making everything soft and distant. But even as consciousness starts to slip away, one thought cuts through the pharmaceutical haze with brutal clarity:

I should have told her.

I should have trusted Ainsley with the truth instead of trying to protect her from it. Should have let her decide whether she could handle watching me go through this instead of making that choice for her.

Should have remembered that love isn’t about controlling the variables—it’s about facing them together.

But it’s too late now.

The OR doors swing open, and I’m swallowed by bright lights and sterile efficiency. Someone places a mask over my face andtells me to count backward from ten, and the world starts to fade around the edges.

Ten... nine... eight...

The last thing I think before the anesthesia takes me completely is that if I don’t wake up from this, Ainsley will spend the rest of her life thinking I died lying to her.

Seven... six...

And that’s a regret I’ll carry into whatever comes next.

Five... four...

The darkness takes me, and for the first time in years, I’m not in control of anything.

Three... two...

One.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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