She didn’t look back.
Not once.
I stood frozen in Central Park, as a late crisp winter breeze swirled around my feet. The air was brisk, carrying the scent of damp earth, as the city moved on around me. Voices distant, tires hissing on wet asphalt, as if nothing had changed. As if I hadn’t just lost everything.
“Go after her,” Dante said quietly beside me, his voice sharp as the cold, cutting through the roar in my ears. “If you don’t, you’ll lose her forever.”
His words hit me hard, like a punch to the chest, forcing me to breathe.
I turned to Dante, her steadfast protector and friend while I’d been drowning in blood, power, and the relentless drive to build a future. His face was unreadable, but in his gaze I saw the coldclarity of a man who understood love and loss. Or maybe it was just recognition.
“Go. Before it’s too late.” No anger, only certainty, like the bite of wind against my skin.
I didn’t wait for him to say it again. The muffled city sounds faded as I stepped forward, driven by desperate hope and regret. My feet were moving before my brain caught up, my body responding to some primal instinct that overrode every rational thought as I ran through Central Park, dodging tourists and joggers and people who had no idea that my entire world was walking away from me with every passing second.
I caught sight of her ahead. Her dark hair catching the afternoon light, Danika’s small hand clutched in hers. They were heading toward the street, toward a cab that would take them away, toward a life that had learned to exist without me.
“Melissa!” Her name tore from my throat, raw and desperate.
She didn’t stop.
I pushed harder, my lungs burning and my heart hammering against my ribs as if it were trying to break free. The city blurred around me, buildings and cars and faces all bleeding together into meaningless background noise. There was only her. Only the woman I’d left behind to fight a war I’d convinced myself was necessary.
She reached the sidewalk, and I saw her flag down a cab.
Fuck.
I closed the distance just as she opened the door, my hand catching the frame before she could climb inside. “Melissa, please.”
“Let go.” Her voice was ice. Absolute zero. The kind of cold that burned.
“I need to talk to you.”
“You had six months to talk to me, Rowen.” She still wouldn’t look at me; her attention was focused on getting Danika settledin the backseat. “Six months of silence. You don’t get to show up now and demand my time.”
“I’m not demanding. I’m asking.” My voice cracked on the words. “Please. Just... let me explain.”
She finally turned to face me, and the look in her eyes nearly brought me to my knees. It wasn’t anger. Anger, I could have handled. It was something worse. Something that looked like resignation. Like she’d already mourned me and moved on.
“There’s nothing to explain,” she hissed. “You made your choice. I made mine.”
The cab driver cleared his throat impatiently, and Melissa moved to climb in.
I did the only thing I could think of. I followed.
“What are you?” she started, but I was already sliding into the seat beside her, pulling the door shut behind me.
“Where to?” the driver asked, clearly uncomfortable with whatever domestic drama he’d just been pulled into.
Melissa stared at me for a long moment, her jaw tight, her eyes blazing with something that might have been fury, or might have been pain, or both. Then she rattled off an address.Theaddress, the one I’d memorized six months ago when I’d signed the deed over to her.
The drive felt like an eternity and an instant all at once. Danika chattered quietly between us, oblivious to the tension crackling through the air like electricity before a storm. Melissa kept her gaze fixed on the passing city, her hand resting on her belly, her entire body angled away from me.
I wanted to reach out to her. Wanted to close the distance between us, pull her into my arms, and make her understand that every second of the last six months had been about getting back to her. But I knew better. I knew that touching her now would be a violation of whatever fragile truce was keeping her from throwing me out of the cab entirely.
So I sat there in silence, my hands clenched into fists on my thighs, and tried to figure out what the hell I was going to say when we got there.
The house looked different in the daylight. Warmer, somehow. More real. The brownstone façade glowed in the afternoon sun, the small front garden showing signs of recent care: flowers planted, leaves raked, a life being lived within those walls.
