Lucía tightened her grip on the bouquet of plastic roses, willing her hands to stop shaking.

The room smelled of disinfectant and candle wax — nothing like the orange blossom and vanilla she had once imagined for her wedding day. Instead of an altar draped in flowers, there was a hospital bed surrounded by humming machines. And instead of a groom smiling nervously at the end of an aisle, there lay Daniel Vega — unconscious, unmoving, suspended in a coma for four months.

“Lucía Moreno,” the justice of the peace recited flatly, as if processing paperwork rather than vows, “do you accept Daniel Vega as your lawful husband?”

She stared at Daniel’s face. Pale. Still. Almost sculpted in serenity, like a statue abandoned in a museum.

This is madness, she thought.

Just months earlier, her family’s pastry shop had received the largest order in its history — three hundred cakes for the Vega construction company’s anniversary gala. It was supposed to save them from bankruptcy. Instead, a contamination error left dozens hospitalized. Among them: Daniel Vega, the heir.

The lawsuit that followed nearly destroyed her family. Her father’s health collapsed under the stress. The shop was closed. Their name was dragged through every newspaper headline.

Then Daniel’s mother, Doña Carmen, appeared with a proposal that felt like blackmail wrapped in silk.

Daniel’s late father had left a clause in his will: his son must be married before turning thirty-one in order to inherit the company. His birthday was only weeks away.

Marry him, Doña Carmen had said, and the lawsuit disappears. Refuse, and both families fall.

“Yes,” Lucía whispered at last, the word landing more like a sentence than a promise.

When it came time for the kiss, she leaned down reluctantly. She expected the cold stillness of someone lost to the world.

Instead, warmth.

A faint rush of heat beneath her lips. The heart monitor flickered faster for a heartbeat. She pulled away, unsettled, her pulse racing.

By that evening, she was installed in Daniel’s vast mansion.

“It’s only legal paperwork,” Doña Carmen assured her gently. “Live your life. I’ll care for my son.”

But Lucía couldn’t ignore him. He had saved her family. Even unconscious, he had changed her fate.

She began visiting the hospital daily.

At first, she sat quietly and read from the architecture books stacked on his shelf. Later, she started speaking.

“I saw your design for the children’s hospital,” she told him one afternoon, holding his hand. “You wanted indoor gardens so sick kids wouldn’t feel trapped. That’s beautiful.”

She told him about reopening the pastry shop. About her guilt. About the smell of sugar that still made her cry.

Days turned to months.

Somewhere between poetry readings and whispered confessions, Lucía stopped visiting out of obligation. She stayed because she wanted to. She fell in love not with the silent body in the bed, but with the mind she uncovered through sketches and margins filled with notes.

One evening, reading Neruda, her voice broke.

“I think I’ve lost my mind,” she confessed softly. “I know this began as a contract. But I don’t come here for legal reasons anymore. I’m here because I… love you. If you ever wake up, I want you to know that.”

She kissed his forehead gently.

And then — a pressure.

Her fingers tightened instinctively.

Daniel’s hand moved.

Slowly, painfully, like someone rising from deep water, his eyes opened.

The chaos that followed blurred into doctors and alarms. But for Lucía, the world narrowed to his honey-colored gaze meeting hers.

Later, alone, he whispered hoarsely, “I know who you are.”

“You do?” she breathed.

“I heard you,” he said faintly. “Your voice was the only thing that reached me. You read me my own dreams. You told me about the pastry shop. You said you loved me.”

Her cheeks burned.

“I wanted to wake up for you,” he added.

Recovery was slow and grueling, but Lucía never left his side. She helped him walk again. Helped him relearn ordinary movements. Their forced marriage slowly transformed into partnership. The mansion, once echoing and cold, warmed with laughter.

Then Clara returned.

Elegant. Polished. Carrying a designer suitcase and a history Lucía could never compete with.

Daniel’s former fiancée. The woman who had left him years before to chase a career abroad.

“Oh, this arrangement,” Clara said sweetly when introduced. “How tragic for you, dear.”

From that day on, Clara lingered like perfume that refused to fade. She reminisced about trips. About plans. About the man Daniel had once been.

Lucía shrank inside herself.

The breaking point came one night in the kitchen.

“You were necessary,” Clara said quietly, her tone sharp beneath the smile. “But now that he’s awake, you’re not.”

Lucía didn’t argue.

She packed her suitcase in silence and left a letter on Daniel’s nightstand.

Love should not be gratitude, she wrote. Choose freely.

The next morning, Daniel found the bed empty.

Panic surged before he finished reading.

Ignoring his recovering leg, he drove through the rain to the Moreno home and banged on the door until Lucía’s father opened it.

“I need to see her.”

He found her curled on her childhood bed.

“Go,” she whispered. “Be happy with Clara.”

“To hell with Clara,” he said fiercely, kneeling beside her. “She loved the idea of who I was. You loved me when I was nothing but a body in a bed.”

“Our marriage was a contract,” she said through tears.

“It began that way,” he replied. “But you made it real. When I was trapped in that darkness, I didn’t dream of my past. I dreamed of your voice. I fell in love with you before I even saw your face again.”

He pulled a small ring from his pocket — simple, thoughtfully designed.

“This time, Lucía Moreno, will you marry me because I choose you?”

She nodded, sobbing. “Yes.”

Their kiss in that small bedroom held no fear, no machines, no obligation. Only certainty.

Six months later, they married again — this time in the garden, under open sky. Moreno Pastry Shop catered the reception. The Vega company funded the pediatric hospital Daniel once dreamed of.

Clara was long gone.

As they danced beneath twinkling lights, Daniel leaned close.

“When our children ask how we met, what will we tell them?”

Lucía laughed softly.

“That you were asleep,” she said. “And I talked too much.”

He smiled.

“That was the best awakening of my life.”

And in that garden — built from ruin, honesty, and second chances — everyone could see that the strongest structure Daniel Vega had ever created was not made of steel or stone.

It was built from love that began as obligation and became destiny.