#Chapter 39 - Winning Her Back

Layla I’d always prided myself on my independence. Before Vasco, I’d crafted myself from a country girl into a big-city med student. And after he dumped me on my wedding day … Well, I picked myself up by my bootstraps and rebuilt my life—my self—brick by brick then, too. And Aldo, this new version of him, anyway, seemed determined to bring it all crashing down once again. Like the wolf outside that third little pig’s damned house. After eight years of silence, after months of keeping me at arms’ length, after flaunting Aurora around me … After I’d hardened my heart to him, it seemed he was determined to win me back. When I first walked into the hospital the next morning, the entire place was aflutter. Murmured voices, whispers, smiles. Disbelieving laughs. It was like a wildfire of rumor had swept through the place—but nobody was looking at me. “What’s going on?” I asked one of the nurses at the station. She looked, for lack of a better word, shell-shocked. A wide smile sp