After Flor’s call, everything moved with a dizzying velocity. Somehow, I managed to call Silvia. Telling her I was flying to Chicago was easy but convincing her not to drop everything and come with me took every ounce of restraint I had left. I won’t let her lose her job and derail her life just because mine is collapsing.
I shoved a few clothes into a bag, grabbed my wallet, and somehow ended up at the airport hangar in less than an hour. David had already handled everything.
Now I'm sitting in the leather seat of the jet, strapped in as the plane cuts through the sky at impossible speed—and the world finally stops moving. There is only the low hum of the engines and the deafening silence of my own thoughts.
Where was he shot? Who shot him? Why? How is he? Will I have the chance to tell him…?
I don’t know.
Involuntarily, I place my hand over my belly.
I only know that the man who walked into my life five years ago and carved himself into my soul is fighting for his life. And I will not let him fight alone. I will not leave his side. Never again.
For weeks, I've complicated our relationship—analyzing it, and trying to determine if it was damaged or fated? Lasting love or just a bright burning moment?
But here, suspended between San Diego and Chicago—between life and death—the labels fall away. They are too small for what we are.
It’s not complicated. It's simply life.
He loves me and I love him.
His shadows, insecurities, fears and past came in between us.
But so have my own. I see that now.
I’m so grateful for the trip I took with Silvia. There, away from Dorian, away from Chicago, away from the echoes of who I used to be, I found myselfagain—not the innocent dreamy girl from five years ago, but the woman I’ve become. A woman who knows her strength, who understands and accepts her wounds, her imperfect self.
What happened to me does not define me. What I choose, does.
I choose to live every day with gratitude and joy. I choose to open my heart. To love.
I choose him.
Not because I know his heart but because I know mine.
Losing him… is not an option. It will not happen.
I close my eyes and pray—a desperate, whispered plea to the Universe, to fate, to any force willing to listen.
My hand automatically drifts lower, resting flat against my stomach, covering the miracle I hadn't dared to claim until an hour ago. The warmth from my palm radiates inward.
Our baby.
A tiny, insistent flicker of life that defies the odds.
The fear inside me doesn't vanish, but it changes, sharpening into an iron core. I cannot break. I will not shatter. I will not let Dorian die when our dream is about to come to life.
I open my eyes, staring at the glass, seeing my own reflection—pale but resolute.
"You don't get to leave,” I whisper to him across the miles, my voice cracking with devotion and fury. "We're not done. I won't allow it."
My hand presses harder on my stomach, sending my silent decree down into the new life growing there.
We have to be strong. All three of us, sweet pea.
The plane dips slightly as the pilot begins the descent into Chicago airspace. The new life blooming inside me—this fragile, miraculous future—is now threatened by the possibility of losing the life that created it.
And that is a price I will simply not pay.
