Her laugh is brittle.“They wrote him out of my life and called it protection.”
Callum exhales slowly, like he’s bracing himself.“They wrote him out legally.”
Isla’s gaze snaps to his.
“You didn’t know about me,” she says, knowing she’s asked before, but with the legalese they’re reading together, she suddenly has doubts.
It isn’t a question.
Callum doesn’t hesitate.“No.Keir never told me he had a child.Not once.And here’s why.”
You will not publicly acknowledge your daughter.
The certainty lands like a clean cut, painful but precise.Isla hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear that.How much she needed to believe this isn’t something Callum carried as a secret too.
“If I’d known,” he continues, quieter now, voice roughened by something like anger, “I would’ve asked why.I would’ve pushed him.I would have told him he needed to meet his daughter before time ran out.”
Isla studies his face for any sign of evasion.Finds none.
“Good,” she says, the word barely audible.“I needed to know that.”
Callum watches her carefully.“Why?”
Because if he had known, if he had been part of the silence, it would have shattered the one fragile thing Isla has begun to trust here.
“Because if you’d known,” she admits, “then I would have lost you too.”
Callum stills.
“I wouldn’t have let you,” he says.
She shakes her head.“Maybe not consciously.But part of me would’ve wondered if you were another person who agreed I was better loved from a distance.”
Callum’s mouth tightens.“That wasn’t love.”
“What was it?”Isla asks.
“Fear,” he answers.
She turns back to the papers, because if she looks at him too long, she might let herself believe he means what he says.And belief has always been the most dangerous thing.
They read slowly now.
Not hunting for the next shock.Not skimming.Actually reading.
Callum’s eyes move differently than hers; he looks for leverage, intent, what the law allows and forbids.Isla reads for betrayal.For the places her childhood is hidden inside clauses and footnotes.
“This clause,” Callum says, pointing lower on the page.“Indirect contact.”
Isla leans closer and reads, lips parting.
He can’t ask about her through schools.Through venues.Through acquaintances.
“He couldn’t even ask if I was okay,” Isla whispers.
Callum’s gaze hardens.“That’s deliberate.That’s containment.”
The word settles heavy and ugly between them.
