He looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost. Like he couldn’t quite believe I was real.
I looked at him as if he’d just risen from the dead.
Danika was chattering excitedly, her small hands framing his face as she babbled about the pigeons and the park and how much she’d missed him. He held her carefully. His attention split between her joy and my frozen form, his expression unreadable.
The world narrowed to just the two of us, Rowen’s steady gaze, and the thundering of my heartbeat in my ears. I should have moved. Should have said something. Should have doneanythingother than stand here like a statue, one hand pressed protectively over my swollen belly, the other hanging uselessly at my side.
But I couldn’t.
Because seeing him here, now, after everything, after I’d finally accepted that he was never coming back, after I’d built this fragile peace with my new reality, I felt like the ground had just opened up beneath my feet.
He stood slowly, Danika still in his arms, and took a step toward me. Just one step. But it was enough to break whatever spell had frozen me in place.
“Melissa.” My name on his lips was rough, uncertain, like he wasn’t sure he had the right to say it anymore.
The sound of his voice. God, hisvoice, after six months of silence, nearly brought me to my knees. I wanted to scream at him. Wanted to demand to know where he’d been, why he’d left, why he’d made me promises he couldn’t keep. Wanted to tell him about the nights I’d cried myself to sleep, about the mornings I’d woken up reaching for him, about the way I’d had to learn to live with the constant ache of his absence.
But I also wanted to run to him. Wanted to throw myself into his arms and feel the solid reality of him against me. Wanted to bury my face in his chest and breathe him in and convince myself this wasn’t another dream that would dissolve when I opened my eyes.
Instead, I just stood there, my hand still pressed against my belly, feeling the baby kick as if in response to the chaos of my emotions.
His gaze dropped to my stomach, and something flickered across his face: surprise, maybe, or recognition, or something else I couldn’t name. His jaw tightened, his grip on Danika shifting slightly as he processed what he was seeing.
“You look beautiful.”
“I look pregnant.”
Dante moved then, positioning himself slightly between us, his protective instincts kicking in even though he had to knowthis was inevitable. Had to know that Rowen’s return would shatter whatever fragile equilibrium I’d built.
“Rowen,” Dante said, his tone carefully neutral. “Welcome back. You are back, right? ’Cause if you’re not, then I’m begging you. Leave now. Mellie can’t take much more.”
Rowen’s eyes never left mine. “I’m never leaving her again.”
Five words. Simple. Direct. Loaded with six months of wanting. Danika squirmed in his arms, oblivious to the tension crackling through the air. “Unka Row, Mama got me a new room and there’s a baby coming and—”
“Danika,” I managed, my voice shaking. “Come here, sweetheart.”
She looked between us, her four-year-old intuition picking up on something even if she couldn’t name it. Reluctantly, she let Rowen set her down, then ran to me, pressing herself against my legs.
I rested my hand on her head, needing the anchor of her presence to keep myself grounded.
Rowen took another step forward, and I saw it then—the exhaustion in the lines around his eyes, the weight he was carrying, the evidence of whatever war he’d been fighting for the last six months. He looked like a man who’d been through hell and somehow made it back.
But he’d made it back.
After everything, after all the silence and absence and broken promises, he’d come back.
“Melissa,” he said again, and this time there was something raw in his voice. Something that sounded like desperation. “Please. I need to explain.”
The baby kicked hard, as if reminding me of everything at stake. Of the life I’d built. Of the peace I’d found. Of the future I planned, that didn’t include him. But God help me, looking at him now, seeing the man I’d never been able to stop lovingstanding in front of me, real and solid andhere, yet... I wasn’t sure any of that mattered anymore.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Rowen
I said nothing as she turned away from me, the crisp air stinging my skin and stealing my breath. The faint rustle of leaves underfoot mingled with the city’s distant hum of muffled horns and blurred footsteps, yet all of it seemed dim compared to the ache in my chest.
The words I’d rehearsed for half a year, all the explanations, the justifications, the desperate apologies, all died in my throat as I watched her walk away. Her hand cradled her swollen belly. Danika pressed close, and with every step, the chill seemed to seep deeper into me, the distance between us stretching into something impossible.
