She Was the Treasure All Along novel Chapter 977

The next morning, Helena was jolted awake by her alarm.

She pushed herself up on trembling arms, a dull ache throbbing in her lower back.

She sat in silence for two seconds before bending down to pick up the toy from the floor. She washed it meticulously and buried it back in the depths of her cabinet.

She moved mechanically, her face completely devoid of emotion.

After taking a scalding hot shower, she got dressed and briefly checked her reflection in the mirror. Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes, and there was a tiny scab on her lower lip where she had bitten down too hard. Aside from that, she looked completely normal.

Swain had sent her a text. It was a photo of a morning coffee and a breakfast sandwich sitting on the piano in the rehearsal studio, illuminated by the morning sun.

Underneath the picture were three words:

*I am sorry.*

Helena gripped her phone, the raw, humiliating memories of last night crashing over her. The only person in her head had been...

She lowered her eyes, dropped the phone into her purse, and drove out of her complex.

She had intended to go straight to the studio, but halfway there, she changed her route.

She pulled into the hospital parking garage.

Carrying her sheet music and her tablet, she walked right into the VIP ward.

The floor nurse smiled when she saw her. "You're early today, Ms. Helena. Mr. Lonsdale just woke up."

Helena gave a brief nod.

Morris was propped up in bed, reading a book. He glanced up when he heard the door open.

His dark eyes lingered on her face for exactly two seconds before returning to the page.

"You're here early."

"Yeah." She dropped her bag onto the small sofa and pulled out her tablet. "I can get my work done from here just as easily."

She didn't offer any excuse for skipping the studio. Instead, she set a fast-food bag on his overbed table. "I bought extra breakfast. Do you want some?"

Morris eyed the greasy McDonald's wrapper. He absolutely never ate fast food.

Seeing his hesitation, she reached out to pull it away, but his voice stopped her. "Open it for me."

She blinked in surprise, then unwrapped the sandwich and handed it to him. "It's actually pretty good."

Her eyes darkened.

The fleeting joy vanished. What did it matter? Knowing your place was the most important rule of survival in her world.

She quietly sat down on the sofa. Morris watched her for a moment, then set the half-eaten sandwich down, abandoning it.

He had already eaten a perfectly balanced, nutritious breakfast anyway.

The room fell into a long, heavy silence.

A nurse came in to change his dressings. His fingers were still long and beautiful, but the tendon damage required absolute stillness. He couldn't even use both hands to turn a page.

Helena kept her head down, her pencil hovering over the paper. She wrote a note, furiously erased it, wrote it again, and erased it until the paper started to tear.

She sat there for over an hour, unable to string together even half a measure of melody.

The brutal, degrading release of last night had drained her physical energy, but the anxiety remained. And staring at the blank page only amplified the terror.

The music was locked inside her chest, a tangled, suffocating knot. The harder she pulled, the tighter it got.

"What exactly were you trying to write last night?"