My baby.
My whole heart.
I swallow hard, the motion tight and scratchy.
Cold fear spreads through my chest, hollow and sharp, settling deep like ice water. What if the judge believes Kevin? What if his money really is enough to blur the truth? What if the world sees me as the villain he painted me to be? What if all the years of bruises, seen and unseen, don’t matter to the people who decide our fate?
What if they take her?
The thought alone sends a tremor down my spine. My throat closes up. I shut my eyes and press my palms into them until bursts of color spark behind the darkness.
I can’t lose her.
I can’t even breathe at the thought.
A small hand touches mine.
“Mommy? You okay?”
I blink back into the room and find Mia staring up at me with that instinct children have, the kind that knows when the air around their mother changes. She doesn’t know what’s wrong, but she knows something is.
I force a smile, even though it feels delicate, like it could shatter with one more heartbeat.
“I’m okay, baby. Just thinking.”
She clambers into my lap and tucks herself under my chin, fitting there as if she were made for that space. The warmth of her little body anchors me to the present, loosening the panic tightening around my lungs.
“You forgot your smile,” she says in that solemn, earnest four-year-old voice.“We gotta find it.”
My chest cracks wide open.
I kiss the top of her head, breathing in the familiar sweetness of her vanilla shampoo, and whisper,“You already found it for me.”
She wiggles back down to watch the movie, content, but the fear slides right back into me, sharp and relentless. I pull the blanket around us, but my skin still feels cold.
Next week, a stranger will sit behind a wooden bench and decide my entire life. Decide Mia’s life. Decide if she stays with me, or if she goes back to a man who never loved either of us. A man who only wants to win.
My heart slams hard against my ribs.
I want to believe Ethan when he says we’re not alone. I want to believe we have a fighting chance. I want to believe love is enough to hold back someone like Kevin.
But Kevin’s shadow feels so big. Too big.
I press a hand to my stomach, trying to quiet the storm twisting inside me, and whisper a prayerPlease.
Please let me keep my daughter.
Please don't let him win.
Down the hall, Ethan’s muffled voice filters out from his office, steady, calm, controlled. It’s the sound of someone already standing between us and the world.
I know he means it when he says we can run. That he’d leave everything behind for us.
But I could never do that to him.
Not to his family. Not to his crew. Not to this town he loves. I won’t turn him into a criminal just because I’m trapped in someone else’s war.
And I know my parents. I know exactly what they’re doing. This has been their plan all along, if they can take Mia from me, they know I’ll come crawling back. They know my weakness. They know I’ll follow my daughter anywhere.
