She felt different in my arms. Softer in some places, harder in others. The swell of her pregnant belly pressed between us, a physical reminder of everything I’d missed, everything I’d sacrificed in the name of building a future I wasn’t sure we’d ever have. But she also feltright. Like coming home after a war. Like finding solid ground after months of drowning. Like the missing piece of myself I’d left behind when I walked away.
Her tears soaked through my shirt, hot and desperate, and I tightened my arms around her, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other splayed across her back. I could feel her heartbeat against my chest, rapid and erratic, matching the chaotic rhythm of my own.
“I’m here,” I murmured, the words barely audible. “I’m here, and I’m not leaving. Not again. Never again.”
I didn’t know if she believed me. Didn’t know if I’d earned the right to make promises anymore. But I said it anyway because it was the only truth I had left to offer.
We stood there in the middle of the living room, in the house I’d bought for her, in the home she’d built without me, holding each other like we were the only two people left in the world. Danika played quietly in the corner, her four-year-old wisdom telling her to give us this moment, this fragile attempt at reconciliation.
Melissa’s sobs eventually quieted to shaky breaths, her grip on my jacket loosening slightly but not letting go. She didn’t pull away, didn’t look up at me, just stayed pressed against my chest like she was afraid I might disappear if she let go. And maybe I would have. Maybe if she’d pushed me away, if she’d told me to leave and never come back, I would have respected that choice. Would have walked out of this house and out of her life and let her build the future she deserved with someone who hadn’t failed her so completely.
But she didn’t push me away.
She held on.
And in that moment, with her tears soaking through my shirt and her pregnant belly pressed against mine and the weight of six months of absence crushing down on both of us, I allowed myself to hope.
Hope that maybe this wasn’t the end.
That maybe it was a beginning.
That maybe love could survive even the worst betrayals, the longest silences, the most impossible choices. That maybe we could find our way back to each other, even after everything.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her, different now, changed by time and pregnancy andthe life she’d built without me, but stillher. Still the woman I’d fallen for in North Carolina, the woman I’d left behind to fight a war, the woman I’d come back for because living without her had proven impossible.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, because it was the only thing I knew how to say. “I’m so sorry, Melissa.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t forgive me, or condemn me, or tell me what came next. Instead, she removed herself from my embrace and walked out the front door, leaving me alone in the house I bought for her, slamming the door behind her.
Chapter Sixty
Melissa
The cab’s interior smelled like stale coffee and someone else’s perfume. Something floral and cloying that made my stomach turn. Or maybe that was just the nausea of running away from the one person I’d spent six months trying to forget.
“Where to?” the driver asked, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror.
I opened my mouth, but no destination came. My mind was blank, wiped clean by the overwhelming need to be anywhere but that house, anywhere but in Rowen’s presence, anywhere but trapped in the suffocating weight of everything I’d just felt in his arms.
“Just drive,” I managed, my voice hoarse from crying. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
He pulled away from the curb, and I watched the brownstone disappear behind me, that beautiful house that was supposed to be a promise, a future, a home. Instead, it had become a monument to abandonment. I’d furnished it myself, room by room, trying to build a life in the shell of someone else’s dream.
The city blurred past the window, buildings and people and cars all bleeding together into meaningless shapes. My hand rested on my belly, feeling the baby shift and settle, a reminder of everything I’d lost and everything I still had to protect.
I loved Rowen more than Travis.
The thought came unbidden, unwanted, devastating in its honesty.
I’d never admitted it before. Not even to myself. It felt like a betrayal of Travis’ memory, of his sacrifice, of everything he’d given up for me. He’d died to keep me safe, and here I was, several months later, acknowledging that the man I’d mourned wasn’t the man who’d broken my heart the most.
Travis had been my partner. The father of the child I was carrying. He’d loved me with a fierce, protective devotion that had cost him everything.
But Rowen... Rowen had been something else entirely. Something that went deeper than devotion, darker than protection. He’d seen every broken piece of me and hadn’t tried to fix them. He’d just held them, acknowledged them, made space for them to exist.
And then he left.
Months of silence. Months of wondering whether he was alive or dead, if he ever cared at all, if everything between us had been just another manipulation in Sinclair’s endless games. Months of building a life without him while my heart cried out for someone who proved he didn’t want to be found.
