I hesitated again. “A little of both.”
His chair creaked as he straightened. “Physically?”
I lifted my eyes and said softly, “It was an accident. He told me it was. He kicked a football too hard during practice, and it hit me. I fractured my arm, but it healed fine.”
He stared at me. Then dragged a hand down his face. “My son is ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Yeah, he is.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, almost a smile. “And yet you’re still with him.”
“Because he’s not like that anymore,” I said. “He’s… soft now. Clingy.” I laughed again, shaking my head. “He smiles all the time. Laughs a lot. He’s… home. He’s at peace. It’s nice seeing him like that.”
John leaned back, eyes gentler than I expected. “I’d pay everything I have to see my son happy,” he said quietly. “Thank you for making him so.”
My chest warmed, and I smiled at him across the table. “He makes me happy, too.”
He leaned back again, studying me for another long second. And then… he relaxed. I watched it happen. His shoulders dropped. His hands stopped flexing. Some of the hardness in his jaw eased.
Just like that.
Like being in a room with someone who wasn’t afraid of him, let him exhale for the first time all day.
Dinner came on quiet feet, a woman setting out plates, tea, something roasted and simple instead of ridiculous and gold-leafed. We sat across from each other at a table that could fit twenty and ate as if it was normal.
He didn’t talk to me as if I were a kid. But he also didn’t talk to me like I was an investor.
He just… talked.
About Joshua as a baby. About Sofia’s laugh. About the company. About how he keeps thinking he’ll hear footsteps upstairs and realises again, and again, and again, it’s just him in this castle.
It hurt to hear.
But also… it didn’t make me angry at him the way I thought it would. It just made me sad for both of them.
After dinner, he walked me back toward the front together, and he paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame, like he didn’t actually want to open it yet.
He turned to me.
“Come to dinner again sometime,” he said quietly.
I blinked. “Oh.”
“I mean that,” he added, and there was a softness in his face I hadn’t seen before. “I don’t…say that to people.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “O-Okay. I will.”
That same almost-smile tugged at his mouth. “Thank you, Aurora.”
He nodded to the driver. The driver, the same man from earlier, stepped forward and opened the door for me. I slipped into the backseat again, clutching my phone. The door shut. We pulled away from the castle.
For a minute, it was quiet. The city lights rolled back toward us. I exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours.
Then, from the front, the driver said, warm and low, “Miss?”
I looked up. “Mm?”
“Come back,” he said. “He wasn’t just being polite.”
