Ethan’s pov
She said “exhaustion” so easily I almost believed her.
Almost.
The doctor Marcus’s security team found within twenty minutes of my call was a small, no-nonsense woman named Dr. Okonkwo who arrived at the mansion looking mildly irritated at being summoned by helicopter budget instead of ambulance, and who examined Zara in the downstairs sitting room with the kind of brisk efficiency that made me trust her immediately.
“Vitals are fine,” she said afterward, snapping her bag shut, addressing me since Zara had gone quiet the second the exam started.
“Blood pressure’s a touch low, which tracks with fainting in the heat. Pulse is normal. She’s dehydrated and running on what sounds like very little food today.”
“That’s it?” I said.
“That’s the whole explanation?”
“That’s the explanation that fits what I found.” Dr. Okonkwo glanced at Zara, something assessing in her look that I couldn’t quite read.
“Mrs. Vance, are you sleeping well?”
“Not really,” Zara admitted, sitting up straighter on the couch than she had all afternoon.
“It’s been a stressful few weeks.”
“That would do it. Exhaustion plus low blood sugar plus heat is a fairly textbook recipe for what happened today.” She turned back to me.
“I’d recommend regular meals, more water, and an actual night’s sleep before anything more invasive. If it happens again, or if she develops other symptoms, bring her in properly and we’ll run a full panel.”
“A full panel of what?”
“Bloodwork, mostly. Standard stuff.” She was already packing up, unbothered, treating this like the routine call it probably was for someone in her line of work.
“But I don’t think that’s necessary today. She needs rest more than she needs needles.”
“What kind of bloodwork, specifically?”
“Iron levels, blood sugar, thyroid panel, the usual suspects for someone who fainted.” Dr. Okonkwo shrugged into her coat.
“Nothing exotic. I’m not chasing anything alarming here, Mr. Vance, I promise you that.”
“You’d tell me if you were.”
“I’d tell your wife first, since she’s the patient. But yes, I’m not in the business of hiding concerning findings from either of you.” A faint, knowing look crossed her face, gone before I could parse it.
“Try not to worry yourself sick over this. One fainting spell in the heat isn’t a crisis.”
I walked her to the door myself, some instinct telling me to get a second opinion out of earshot of Zara, though when I asked Dr. Okonkwo directly whether there was anything else it could be, she just gave me a look somewhere between patient and amused.
“Mr. Vance, your wife fainted from heat exhaustion and low blood sugar. It happens to people who skip breakfast in eighty-degree weather. I promise you it’s not more complicated than that.”
It should have been reassuring.
Instead it just sat wrong in my chest the whole drive back to the sitting room, though I couldn’t have told you exactly why.
Zara was still on the couch when I came back in, a glass of water Marta had brought her sitting untouched on the side table, her eyes closed, looking smaller than I’d ever seen her look, which was saying something for a woman who’d spent an entire gala refusing to be talked down to by half of Manhattan’s old money.
“Hey.” I sat down across from her.
“Embarrassed, mostly.” She opened her eyes.
“I made a whole scene in front of your crew.”
“You didn’t make a scene. You fainted. Those are different things.”
“Reyes is never going to let me live that down.”
“Reyes is more worried than amused, trust me. He called twice on the drive back to check if you were okay.” I studied her face, still pale, still not quite meeting my eyes the way she usually did without effort.
“What’s going on, Zara?”
“You heard the doctor. Exhaustion.” She said it easily, almost too easily, reaching for the water glass like the conversation was already over.
“You’ve been tired for weeks. Everyone’s tired. This was different.”
“Different how?”
“You went white as paper and dropped like your legs stopped existing. That’s not run-of-the-mill tired.”
“It’s been a stressful month, Ethan.” She took a slow sip of water, buying herself a beat, and I noticed it, filed it away the way I’d started filing away small things about her without quite admitting to myself that I was doing it.
“The gala, your father, Noah being weird about money. It adds up.”
“Noah’s being weird about money?”
“Nothing. Forget I said that.” A flicker of something crossed her face, irritation at herself, maybe.
“I’m fine, Ethan. I promise. I just need to eat better and sleep more. The doctor said as much.”
“The doctor also said she’d want to run a full panel if it happens again.”
“It’s not going to happen again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know myself.” Her voice had an edge to it now, not quite sharp, but close, the tone of someone who wanted the subject closed and wasn’t going to say so directly.
“I’ve been running on fumes since before I met you, Ethan. This isn’t new. I just usually catch it before it gets this bad.”
That should have satisfied me.
It was a reasonable explanation.
I wanted to let it go.
Some part of me, though, the part that had spent a lifetime reading rooms and reading people because my father demanded it of me before I could walk properly, kept snagging on the way she’d said exhaustion, too smooth, too rehearsed, like she’d practiced the word in her head before she ever said it out loud to me.
“Okay,” I said anyway, because pushing harder felt like it would break something I didn’t fully understand yet.
“Okay. Rest. Food. I’ll have Marta clear your schedule for the next few days.”
“I know I don’t have to. I’m doing it anyway.”
Something in her expression softened at that, just slightly, guard dropping half an inch before she caught it and pulled it back into place.
“Thank you.”
“You scared me today,” I said, before I’d fully decided to say it out loud.
“On the concrete. I don’t think I’ve been that scared in a long time.”
She went still.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s not what I meant.” I ran a hand through my hair, trying to find words for something I hadn’t examined closely enough yet to explain properly.
“I just… I watched you go down and for a second I couldn’t think of a single thing except getting to you. Nothing else existed. Not the company, not the board, not any of it. Just you, on the ground, and me not fast enough to catch you before your head hit concrete.”
“You did catch me. Mostly.”
“Mostly isn’t good enough.” I met her eyes, and something passed between us that had nothing to do with contracts or six-week arrangements, something I didn’t have a category for yet in the careful, ordered version of my life I’d built to keep exactly this kind of complication out.
“I need you to actually tell me if something’s wrong. Not the polished version. The real one.”
“There’s nothing else to tell.” She held my gaze steady when she said it, which almost worked, almost erased the flicker I’d caught earlier, except I’d spent thirty-one years learning to read people who didn’t want to be read, and something about the stillness in her face right then felt less like calm and more like control.
I let it go anyway.
I told myself it was kindness, giving her the space to rest instead of interrogating a woman who’d just fainted in ninety-degree heat.
Some smaller, more honest part of me suspected it was also cowardice, that I didn’t push because some part of me was afraid of what I’d find if I did, afraid it would change the shape of an arrangement I’d started to like far more than I’d planned to.
“Get some rest,” I said instead, standing.
“I’ll check on you in an hour.”
“You don’t have to hover.”
“I’m not hovering. I’m checking.” A small, uneven smile.
“There’s a difference, apparently. You taught me that.”
That got a real laugh out of her, small but genuine, and something about hearing it eased something tight in my chest.
I found Marta in the kitchen twenty minutes later, going over dinner plans with the chef, and I stood in the doorway a moment before either of them noticed me.
“Change the menu,” I said.
“Something light for Zara tonight. And ginger tea, she mentioned once that she likes it, back when we first moved her in. See if we have any.”
Marta’s eyebrows lifted slightly, though she said nothing beyond, “Of course, sir,” and turned to relay the instruction to the chef with a small, private look I pretended not to notice.
That night I told the chef to start making the ginger tea she liked, and I didn’t understand why I cared so much about a woman who was supposed to leave in five weeks…