43. PULSE LOST

She dreamt of him that night.

Not the way he looked under fluorescent hospital lights.

Not the version of him wearing scrubs and guarded eyes.

But the one she never really had bare skin, soft voice, steady hands.

In the dream, he was in her apartment, the air warm and low-lit, his jacket already gone, his breath slow against her shoulder. No words were needed. Just the weight of him. The warmth. His fingers tracing her spine like he was trying to memorize it. And she let him. Her mouth found his. It wasn't rushed. It wasn't desperate. It was slow the kind of kiss that knew it didn't have to end.

He laid her down gently, reverently, as if she were something fragile he was finally allowed to hold without fear of breaking. Their bodies moved like music like breath syncing after too many days without air. He whispered her name only once. And in that whisper, she heard everything he hadn't said the day he left.

Then... silence.

The kind that didn't ache.

The kind that held.

Nora woke to the sound of her own breath, caught between her ribs like it had nowhere left to go.

The sheets were twisted. Her skin warm. Her heart - too fast.

The room was dark, still. But he wasn't there.

He never had been.

She sat up slowly, pressing her hands to her face. Her throat burned. Not from crying. From the weight of memory. Or maybe longing.

The apartment felt too big.

The quiet felt too sharp.

It had been weeks since the lawsuits. Since Brenner's disappearance. Since Elias told her, quietly, that the board had decided to settle not to save face, but to survive. No one spoke his name anymore. The man had vanished into shadows, and Westbridge was trying to rebuild from ashes and silence.

But Nora didn't care about the hospital anymore.

She cared about the part of her that didn't feel finished.

Not with him. Not with Rowan.

She opened his letter again that morning.

The one he'd left before he walked away.

Her fingers lingered over the final lines.

If this is goodbye, let it be honest.

And if it's not... maybe someday, I'll be someone worth coming back to.

She closed her eyes.

And for the first time in days, she didn't fight the tears.

She let them fall, silently, like the words she never said.