He stayed awake the whole night, sitting at Emma’s side while she drifted in and out. When the nurses brought Nora in from the nursery, he held her close, watching every twitch of her mouth and every flutter of her eyelids, as if memorizing her could make amends for everything else.
He already loved her with a force that frightened him. Emma had given everything to bring their daughter into this world, andhe had betrayed her before their child had even drawn her first breath.
By noon he was gone. He told Emma he needed a shower, clean clothes, and a few things from the house. She smiled at him and murmured, “Don’t be long.”
He drove straight to Jacob. The door opened as if he had been waiting. His eyes were shadowed and his jaw carved tight, the look of a man who hadn’t closed his eyes all night.
Liam stepped inside without asking, shut the door, and stood in the silence that swallowed him whole. The house was unchanged: a mug by the sink, a book abandoned on the table, the faint trace of his own cologne clinging to the air like it had never left. The punch of it nearly brought him to his knees.
He stopped in the middle of the room, jacket still on, unable to sit or speak. Jacob watched him from a few feet away. For a second Liam thought:Don’t do it. Lie. Say you just needed to see him. Just for a minute. Say nothing at all and let him kiss you like you still belong to him.
But he couldn’t.
Tension tightened Jacob’s features, and Liam saw realization strike in his eyes before he looked away. Jacob already knew what he hadn’t yet spoken aloud. The flicker of pain before he turned cut through Liam like a knife, splitting his heart wide open.
“I just came from the hospital,” he said.
Jacob nodded once. “How’s Emma? The baby?”
“Emma’s okay. Tired. Sore.” His throat closed. “Nora’s… she’s tiny. Healthy. Strong lungs.”
Jacob didn’t smile; he just stood there, braced for the blade to fall.
Liam hated himself for what he was about to do. The words were already carving into him before he could force them out. “I can’t do this anymore.” His voice splintered on the break.
Jacob didn’t move.
“I have to try,” Liam pressed, each syllable scraping his throat raw. “For Nora. I owe her that much.”
Jacob’s body stayed loose, almost casual, but Liam knew better. He had learned to read every flicker of restraint, and saw how rigid he had gone beneath the surface. How stillness had become armor.
Liam’s chest burned. “I love you.” The words tore out of him like something ripped free, shattering in the air between them. Real and so full of grief it almost doubled him over.
Jacob flinched, the force of it flashing raw across his face before he strangled it down. “Don’t,” he said, voice breaking on the word. “Don’t say that now.” He turned his head, every muscle trembling with the effort to hold steady. “You can’t tell me that and still walk away. You don’t get to do both.”
The words hit Liam square in the chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. He dragged a hand through his hair, desperate for air, for relief. A tear slipped hot down his cheek, proof of everything breaking inside. “This isn’t what I want. I need you like I need breath. Walking out of here will rip something out of me I’ll never get back.”
Jacob’s eyes followed the tear, his jaw tightening, pain breaking through before he forced himself still again.
Liam snapped, crossing the distance between them and grabbing a fistful of Jacob’s shirt, yanking him close. His mouth crashed against Jacob’s, pouring everything he couldn’t say into that kiss—love, regret, longing so sharp it felt like pain.
Jacob kissed him back with a violence that felt like desperation. His hands gripped hard at Liam’s hips, dragging him in, slamming him against the wall hard enough to rattle the frames. His mouth was rough and unforgiving, tongue sweeping deep, demanding everything. A kiss that said:mine, even if you leave.
Liam made a sound—torn from the depths of his chest—a sound only Jacob could ever wrench out of him. Jacob swallowed it whole, and pulled back just enough to murmur, “As long as you still react like this to me, you’ll never belong to anyone else.”
Liam’s knees almost buckled.
He kissed him again—fast, bruising, frantic—before tearing himself away, chest heaving as though he’d clawed his way back from drowning. He pressed his forehead to Jacob’s, eyes shut, trembling with what he couldn’t allow himself to have.
It took everything not to stay and fall apart in Jacob’s arms, but a newborn lay in a hospital bassinet and Emma was waiting for him to come back. “I have to go,” he whispered. The words tasted like blood. “I’m sorry.”
Jacob didn’t answer. His hands held on, unyielding for one last moment. Then, very slowly, they loosened.
Liam stepped back, turned, and walked to the door on legs that no longer felt like his own. His lungs seized as the tears came, violent and sudden, racking his whole body. He felt hollow, as if something essential had already slipped out of him. His body kept moving, but the rest of him stayed behind.
Jacob didn’t stop him.
The silence that followed screamed.
