Page 2 of Obsessing Over His Favorite

Then—silence.

Everything went still.

No pain.

No fear.

No sound.

***

Emily's eyes fluttered open at the sound of a high-pitched, deafening beep. A heart monitor. The sharp scent of antiseptic filled her nose. Lights flickered above her. The high-pitched sound gradually softened as she returned to consciousness. Every inch of her body throbbed with pain.

She was in a hospital.

A young doctor hovered over her, stitching the wound on her scalp. The needle pierced her skin, and she winced.

As she blinked through the pain, she recognized him instantly. Tall, sharp-jawed, and cold. He was Taylor Scott, Lucas’s best friend.

“Mr. Cantrell,” a voice said across the room, “Ms. Crawford’s been in an accident. She’s at the hospital now, receiving treatment. Will you be coming to the hospital?”

Emily turned her head slightly, her eyes flickered toward the voice. It was Dillon—Lucas’s secretary.

“She’s got a deep gash on her shoulder too,” a nurse told the other doctor urgently. “She’s bleeding heavily. We need to patch that up.”

Dillon had his phone on speaker.

As Dillon started talking, Taylor signaled Dillon to bring the phone closer, his hand still working on Emily’s stitches. The phone hovered just inches from her face.

The voices around her were muffled. Emily drifted in and out of consciousness, catching only fragments—some clear, others lost in a fog. She struggled to stay awake, but her body was heavy, numb.

“Is she dead yet?” the man on the other side of the call asked flatly. Cold. Detached.

The voice that once made her heart skip.

“If she’s not,” he continued, “then stop bothering me."

It was Lucas Cantrell.

Her boyfriend.

The man she had loved—blindly—for five long years.

Emily’s eyes fluttered toward the sound. Dillon held his phone out on loudspeaker, his face twisted in annoyance. Her blurred gaze caught the moment he cut the call, the dial tone echoed through the hospital room like a cruel taunt.

Taylor got to his feet and let out a sharp exhale, tugging off his gloves with visible boredom. “I’m done here. The rest is your problem,” he told the other doctor, who was now stitching up Emily’s shoulder.

Without another glance at Emily, he turned and left the room.

The doctor stitching her up glanced at his colleague. “Did you see that blood clot in her head? Behind her ear? What do you think—should we operate?”

“Let it be,” the second doctor replied under his breath. “It’s large, but I think it’ll dissolve naturally. We should avoid putting her under again. No need to stress the body further.”

The first doctor nodded. “If she’d gotten here five minutes later, we would've lost her. She’s lost too much blood already—I had to order every unit left in storage.”

“Do it right,” the second doctor muttered gruffly. “She’s dating a bigshot billionaire. If she walks out of this place worse than shecame in, the hospital takes the hit. If anything goes wrong, it’ll blow back on us.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” the other replied under his breath.