Isla can no longer sit beside Callum, she stands, pacing the room as if movement might keep her from collapsing.
“I thought,” Isla says finally, voice thin, “that once I knew the truth, it would feel clarifying.”
Callum lifts his eyes to hers.
“And?”he asks.
“And instead it feels like someone tilted the world sideways,” she answers.“Now nothing lines up.”
Callum nods once.Not agreement.Recognition.
“My mother always said he didn’t want to be a father,” she says, voice sharpening.“That music mattered more.”
Callum watches her carefully.“That’s not what this says.”
Isla stops and turns on him.“Then what does it say?”
“It says he agreed he was a liability,” Callum replies.“And she convinced him absence was safer than unpredictability.”
Isla’s throat tightens.“So he chose exile.”
“He chose what he believed would hurt you least,” Callum says.
“That’s still a choice,” Isla snaps.
“Yes,” he answers without flinching.“And it cost you.”
The honesty hits her harder than defense.
Isla sinks back down on the bed, and flips more pages.There are sections about discretion, reputation, and public exposure.The language has her mother’s fingerprints all over it, polished, strategic, brutal in its calm.
“This wasn’t only about love,” Isla realizes aloud.“It was about image.”
Callum nods.“Your mother protected you.And the life she envisioned for you.”
Isla swallows, anger turning inward.“She always said she sacrificed everything for me.”
“She did,” Callum replies gently.“And she also controlled everything.”
The duality hurts more than condemnation would.Because Isla can see her mother’s fear too, see it as a human thing.Not a villain thing.
Exhaustion washes over her.
“My whole life,” she says softly, staring at the papers, “I believed one version of him.”
Callum stays silent, giving her room.
“A man who walked away.Who didn’t care enough to stay.”Her voice trembles.“I built myself around that.I made it fuel.I became… unstoppable to show him what he was missing.”
Her gaze flicks up to Callum’s face, then back down.“And now I find out he was legally forbidden from being present.”
Callum’s voice is steady.“That doesn’t erase the damage.”
“But it changes the shape of it,” Isla whispers.
“Yes.”
She flips to the final page.
