***
Emma sat on the couch with their daughter nestled against her chest, as if she had always belonged there. They had been home from the hospital a week now, slowly finding their rhythm with a newborn. Nora’s breaths came soft and steady, the faintest coos breaking the air every so often, coaxing a smile from Emma despite her fatigue. One tiny hand gripped hermother’s shirt, holding tight as though she already knew where she was safest.
“She’s so calm,” Emma said, her cheek resting against their daughter’s head. “I don’t know how we got this lucky.”
He stood in the doorway longer than he should have, caught by the picture they made together. It was everything he’d once believed he wanted—his beautiful wife, their newborn baby, and a home wrapped in warmth—yet his feet wouldn’t carry him inside. He stayed there, motionless at the threshold.
The quiet perfection of it pressed down on him harder than any noise ever could. The ache in his chest didn’t ease in the presence of all this goodness; it only sharpened. He wanted to feel grateful, but heartbreak bloomed in the space where gratitude should have been.
Eventually he forced himself to cross the room, bending low to kiss the crown of Nora’s head. She smelled of clean cotton and baby powder, impossibly delicate against his lips. He didn’t feel worthy of being her father.
Emma looked up at him, her eyes brimming with quiet wonder. “She’s incredible, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Liam whispered, because it was the only truth he had. She was perfect.
He sat beside them on the couch, Emma’s head finding his shoulder. He told himself to let the comfort sink in and to stop reaching for what was already gone. Yet when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t Emma’s fingers he felt twined with his. It was Jacob’s hand covering his own, firm and grounding, the rough heat of his palm steadying him in a way nothing else could.
He could almost hear Jacob’s voice against his ear, the kind of murmur that curled straight down his spine:breathe, I’ve got you.For a moment, the scent of baby powder blurred, replaced by Jacob’s cologne, rich and devastatingly familiar, dragging him somewhere he shouldn’t go. His eyes flew open, shamehitting hard. He hated himself for carrying a love into this room that had no place here.
Later, when Emma and Nora had drifted upstairs and the house grew still, he stayed behind in the kitchen. The lamp burned low, throwing soft light across the clutter—the bottles drying by the sink, his hoodie on the back of a chair, and a mess of things spread across the table.
All the details of a life he had chosen freely. He should have felt anchored. Instead, all he could do was ache for the man who owned his soul. He hadn’t seen Jacob since the day he slipped out of his arms and walked out the door without looking back. A whole week had passed—it felt so much longer.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, thumb hovering over the name he shouldn’t be looking at. The letters blurred with tears he couldn’t hold back. Seven days, and nothing—no messages, no calls, only the silence he had chosen. Jacob would never ask for what Liam couldn’t give, and he understood why Liam needed to do this.
His throat burned and his heart stung. He set the phone face-down on the counter and gripped the edge until his knuckles hurt, forcing himself to breathe through the tears.
Thank God his family was arriving tomorrow—his parents and sisters, eager to meet the newest member of the family. He could already picture his mother sweeping through the doorway with flowers and too many bags, her laughter spilling into every quiet corner. His father would cradle Nora as if she were made of glass. And his sisters would pass her from arm to arm, each insisting she had their eyes.
Hopefully the noise and the love would fill the hollow spaces for a while. Maybe his mother’s hugs could hold him together, if only for a moment. For now, that would have to be enough.
Chapter 40
Jacob
It had been three weeks since Jacob had last touched him. Since he’d last heard Liam’s voice, tasted his mouth, or felt him come apart in his arms. Three weeks since Liam had walked out of this house and left Jacob standing in the middle of the room with nothing but the ragged sound of his own goddamn breath.
He hadn’t expected heartbreak to feel physical; he hadn’t known it could cut this deep. What he felt wasn’t the dull ache of missing someone, or the cliché of longing. It was a raw wound torn open inside him that refused to close. Every breath scraped across it, and every quiet hour pressed salt into it. Liam was the ache itself, lodged too deep to carve free.
Nights were the worst. He’d lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying every second of their time together. He tried reading, writing, even lifting the piano lid once, only to close it again without pressing a single key. Running helped sometimes—pounding pavement until his lungs burned and exhaustion drowned out the pain—but even then, Liam was there, tucked into the shadows of his mind.
He had spent his whole life building walls to keep himself from this very place. Growing up the way he had, there had never been another choice: want nothing, need nothing, feel only whatyou can control. That was survival. That was safety. It had worked, too, until Liam. Now Jacob barely recognized the man in the mirror, carrying grief he could neither hide nor release.
He still had the kids twice a week, and he tried to make every hour count. He gave them everything—stories, games, warmth. His love for them was the only thing that hadn’t broken, untouched by the wreckage. But every time he dropped them off, the silence swallowed him whole. Caroline barely looked at him when she opened the door, and he couldn’t blame her. He was the reason for the frost in her eyes and the coldness in her voice.
Work had started to pick up again: press, promo, post-production. Liam had been out on paternity leave since the baby’s birth, a grace period the studio had extended more generously than most actors could dream of. That grace had run out now. Today would be the first time seeing each other since it ended. They’d both been called into the studio for an ADR session—and of course, it had to bethatscene.
Automated Dialogue Replacement was supposed to be simple—fix the sound, nothing more. They would be in a booth together, watching themselves on screen, their voices syncing to their own lips until the two moved as one. Perfection wasn’t only in the precision; it lived in the breaths, in the pauses, in the timing that cracked open something raw. The chemistry had to spark just as fiercely as it had the first time.
Jacob stood with the script loose in his hand, headphones slung around his neck, eyes unfocused on the page. The sound engineer shifted sliders on the board behind the glass, the faint hum of equipment filling the silence. He was trying not to feel like a man trapped in a cage waiting for the door to open. His pulse was restless, braced against a hit he knew was coming.
The door swung open, and Liam stepped inside. Three weeks hadn’t dulled it. The gravity hit hard, the same impossible pullthat had lived inside Jacob’s bones since the moment they met. The one he’d tried and failed to silence, over and over again.
Liam looked exhausted, bruised crescents darkening the skin beneath his eyes. His hair was unstyled, as though he hadn’t even cared enough to glance at a mirror that morning. He carried the air of someone who had used every ounce of strength just to get here, and even that wasn’t enough to disguise how goddamn beautiful he was.
“Hey,” Liam said quietly.
Jacob forced his voice level. “You good?”
