Eva's POV
The phone call comes at 11:47 PM, and I know—I just know—it's the call I've been fearing for three years.
"Miss Hart?" The nurse's voice shakes. "Your mother... you need to come now. She's asking for you. She doesn't have much time left."
My hands shake so badly I almost drop the phone. "How long?"
"Hours. Maybe less."
The words hit me like a punch to the stomach. I'm standing in my tiny Barcelona apartment, wearing yesterday's clothes because I fell asleep at my desk again. I've been working eighty-hour weeks, planning buildings I'll never see built, all to avoid thinking about what I left behind in New York.
Who I left behind.
"I'm coming," I whisper. "Tell her I'm coming. Please tell her I'm sorry."
I grab my purse and run.
The streets of Barcelona are slick with rain. My rental car—a beat-up hatchback that barely starts on good days—coughs to life on the third try. My mother is dying four thousand miles away, and I'm stuck in a strange country because I was too scared to face my own life.
Three years ago, I had everything. A man who loved me. A job offer at the best architecture company in Manhattan. A future so bright it hurt to look at.
Then Dominic proposed.
He took me to our bench in Central Park—the place where we first kissed—and got down on one knee with his grandmother's ring. The diamond caught the streetlight, and I felt my entire world shrink down to one scary question: was I ready to be someone's wife? Someone's everything?
I said yes because I loved him. Then I spent three weeks having panic attacks in bathroom stalls.
What if I lost myself? What if I became just "Dominic's wife" instead of Eva Hart, planner, dreamer, woman with her own plans? What if liking someone that much meant giving up who I was?
So I applied for a job in Barcelona. And when I got it, I took it.
I still remember Dominic's face when I told him. We were in his apartment, and he'd just made dinner—my favorite pasta with too much garlic. He stood there with the engagement ring on the counter between us, and I said the words that killed us both.
"I can't marry you. I'm moving to Spain."
He didn't yell. Didn't beg. He just looked at me with those dark eyes and asked, "Is this really what you want?"
I lied. "Yes."
Three years. Three years of saying I made the right choice. Three years of building a business while my mother got sicker and sicker, calling me every week, her voice getting weaker.
"Come home, Eva," she'd say. "Life is too short to run from the people you love."
But I was good at running.
Until tonight. Until the nurse called and said Mom was asking for me one last time.
I press harder on the gas pedal. The airport is twenty minutes away. There's a red-eye trip to New York at 1:15 AM. If I'm lucky—if traffic cooperates, if I don't hit every red light—I might make it. I might get to hold my mother's hand one more time. Tell her I'm sorry for wasting three years being a wimp.
Rain pounds against the glass. My wipers can barely keep up. I'm crying so hard I can barely see the road, but I don't slow down. Can't slow down.
My phone rings. Mom's nurse again.
"Please," I beg into the Bluetooth. "Please tell me she's still—"
"She's holding on," the nurse says softly. "She keeps saying your name. She's fighting, Miss Hart. But you need to hurry."
I'm flying now, swerving between cars, my heart pounding in my chest. The airport exit is just ahead. Five more minutes. Just five more minutes and I'll be on that plane. I'll be going home. I'll get there in time.
I have to get there in time.
An intersection shows through the rain. The light is yellow, about to turn red. I should stop. I know I should stop.
But Mom is dying, and I've already lost three years.
I press the gas pedal all the way down.
The light goes red just as I enter the intersection.
That's when I see it—headlights coming from the left, way too fast, way too close. A massive delivery truck, skidding on the wet pavement, the driver's face frozen in fear as he realizes he can't stop.
Time slows down in the weirdest way.
I think about my mother, dying alone in a hospital bed four thousand miles away.
I think about Dominic, and the life we could have had if I hadn't been so afraid.
I think about all the buildings I designed but never saw finished, all the dreams I chased while running from the only thing that mattered.
Love.
I should have stayed. I should have married him. I should have called my mother every day instead of once a week. I should have lived instead of hiding.
The truck hits my car with the sound of thunder and broken glass.
Metal screams. My body slams against something hard. Pain bursts through my chest, my head, everywhere all at once.
I taste blood.
The world tilts sideways, and I realize I'm upside down. The car is rolling. Glass is everywhere. Something warm runs down my face.
My phone is ringing somewhere in the ruins. Mom's nurse, possibly. Calling to tell me I'm too late.
I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry.
Everything goes black.
And then— Nothing.
Except...
Somewhere in the darkness, I hear something impossible.
A baby crying.
But that doesn't make sense. I don't have a baby. I'm dying alone in a car crash in Barcelona.
Aren't I?
The crying gets louder.
And then I feel it—pain like I've never felt before, ripping through my body like fire, like I'm being torn apart from the inside out.
My eyes snap open.
But I'm not in the car anymore.
I'm lying on a bed, surrounded by bright lights and people in medical masks, and someone is screaming, "She's flatlining! We're losing her!"
A baby screams.
My body convulses with pain I can't understand.
And the last thing I think before everything goes dark again is: Where am I?
And whose baby is crying?