THE LOST HEIRESS RETURNS AFTER DIVORCE
Chapter 94: That Must Be Exhausting

Chapter 94: That Must Be Exhausting

The elevator had stopped moving ten minutes ago.

Or maybe it was five. Time warped strangely in enclosed spaces — especially when you didn’t want to be in them to begin with.

Heather tried not to look at the walls. She stared at the silver seam between the elevator doors instead, hoping it would part.

That it would swallow her whole and spit her out somewhere quieter and far.

She was still holding Jake Calloway’s coat, loosely over her shoulders like a mistake. It was warm and gentle. And something she didn’t deserve after everything she’d muttered under her breath at him.

He hadn’t said much since offering it. Just a quiet, "It’s not cheating. It’s a coat."

That had caught her off guard. As if she’d even been thinking about Caius in that moment.

She wasn’t.

She was thinking about how her teeth wouldn’t stop clenching, and how her arms felt like brittle branches.

She was thinking about how much she hated tight spaces, and how this elevator reeked faintly of corporate polish and bad perfume.

She was also thinking about the dress — the one Penny told her not to damage. And now it was... Penny was not afraid of replacing it, you can’t replace set’s designs.

The coffee stain had bloomed like an ugly badge across her chest. Caius had tried to clean it, which somehow made it worse.

His hand had been too close. She hadn’t said anything then, because people were watching. But she felt it. That burn not from hot coffee, but from being handled.

But here she was, in this freezing box of steel and silence, and she suddenly felt colder.

Heather let out a slow breath and tilted her head back against the wall. The lights above flickered again, but stayed on.

For now.

She heard Jake shift slightly.

"You’re going to be busy," he said gently, like he was picking up a thread that didn’t exist yet.

She blinked and turned her head toward him.

"What?"

"After this. The movie. All the press, the attention," he added. "I imagine you’ve got a lot lined up."

Heather hesitated, unsure why it annoyed her — the way he spoke like he knew anything about her.

But she nodded. "Yeah. A few projects. Three, maybe four."

He smiled a little. "Impressive."

She looked away, not quite accepting the compliment. She didn’t need his praise, or anyone’s praise.

But something gnawed at her chest. That reminder that all this work wasn’t even about love for the craft anymore, especially not lately.

It was now for survival and distraction, staying too busy to feel anything deeply.

Jake leaned back against the wall again, stretching out his legs a little.

Heather glanced at him from the corner of her eye. There was a calmness in him that made her feel more restless.

She suddenly remembered something, like a thought bubbling up after being buried too long.

He’d sponsored Miss H’s film.

Why?

That question had been flickering in her brain since the premiere night. But she hadn’t wanted to care enough to ask. She knew why Caius was sponsoring the film... To get to her, but she never knew Jake’s intentions.

And now, locked in this elevator, wrapped in his coat and her own anxiety, she found herself turning toward him again.

"You didn’t know her."

Jake looked over at her, curious. "Sorry?"

"The producer of the film. You didn’t know her."

He tilted his head. "Miss H?"

Heather nodded, slowly. "No one really does. She’s... anonymous."

Jake smiled faintly. "Yeah. That’s part of the intrigue, right?"

"So why’d you fund the film?"

He blinked slowly, not expecting the shift. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "I just don’t get it. It wasn’t a flashy project. It wasn’t commercial. Hell, it wasn’t even supposed to reach mainstream screens. So... why?"

Jake was quiet for a moment, but his expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked... thoughtful.

"I read the script," he said finally. "Someone sent it to me."

"Someone just randomly sent you a script from a ghost producer and you thought, ’Let me throw money at this’?"

Jake laughed under his breath. "Not exactly."

She waited.

"I was told the writer had something to say," he continued. "And I believed it."

Heather crossed her arms tighter over her chest, mostly to ignore how the coat kept slipping from her shoulder.

"You believed in a faceless writer with no real name, no face, no track record."

He met her gaze. "I believed in the voice."

She didn’t reply, but her chest tightened a little, and she disguised it behind a scoff.

"Right."

Jake didn’t press, he just watched her for a second longer, then looked down at his shoes.

That voice he talked about — it was hers. Her soul was in that script, disguised and cloaked in fiction. She’d written it in the middle of nights, when she felt invisible and needed to bleed.

And now this man — this irritating, stupidly calm billionaire — was telling her it moved him?

She didn’t know how to feel or even want to feel.

"Do you fund a lot of stories like that?" she asked after a beat, trying to sound detached.

"I try to. The ones that matter."

She looked at him again. "Why?"

He was quiet. Then he turned to her with that same even tone.

"Because I don’t know how much time I have left."

Her breath caught.

"What?"

"I have cancer."

That was the real truth?

Heather blinked at him, her body was still frozen against the wall. A strange ringing filled her ears.

Her nanny had died from cancer. Breast, then bone, then lungs. She remembered the way the woman used to hide the pain, smiling through it until her lips turned gray.

"Are you..." she didn’t finish the question.

Jake shook his head. "Not terminal. Atleast not yet. But it’s aggressive."

Heather swallowed hard, she hadn’t expected it to hit her like this.

For a moment, she looked down at the coat. But didn’t say sorry because she knew how much that word meant nothing.

"That must be... exhausting."

He looked at her in surprised, but then smiled softly.

"Yeah," he said. "It is."

Jake hadn’t meant to say it, especially not to her.

He’d practiced telling people before — investors, old friends, a few board members — and it always came out smoother than that.

Rehearsed, polished, professional. A fact to acknowledge, not something to dwell on.

But here, in this freezing little box where time stretched and nothing felt real, it had slipped.

"I have cancer."

He heard the words again in his head, quieter this time.

Heather hadn’t looked at him with pity. But something else flickered in her eyes, something distant and raw.

He recognized it — not from her performances, but from life.

She knew the disease. Not personally maybe, but close enough.

And yet she didn’t say I’m sorry, or That must be hard, or You’ll get through it. She just said, That’s must be exhausting.

He liked that, because it was.

Not just the illness — though the treatments, the fatigue, the long conversations with too many specialists certainly qualified — but the weight of knowing.

The permanent whisper in his ear: You may not get the time you thought you had.