But he hadn’t come back. Six months, and not a word. Not a message. Not even a sign that he was thinking of me, that I was anything more than a memory he’d left behind when he walked out that door.
Maybe Braesal had been right. Maybe love didn’t last. Maybe power was the only thing that endured, and I’d been a fool to believe otherwise.
“I’m not waiting,” I said finally, but my words felt like a lie even as I spoke them.
Dante didn’t argue. He just reached over and squeezed my hand, his grip warm and solid and real.
Danika had lost interest in the baby and was squirming to get down, already eyeing a group of children playing near the fountain. “Can I go play, Mama? Please?”
“Stay where we can see you,” I said, the automatic caution of new motherhood. “And be careful.”
She was off before I finished speaking, a blur of energy and innocence racing toward the other children.
I watched her go, my hand still resting on my belly, feeling the steady rhythm of life growing inside me. Two children. Two lives depending on me. Two reasons to keep going, to keep choosing survival over surrender.
It should have been enough.
Itwasenough. But in the quiet spaces between heartbeats, in the moments when I let my guard down, I still heard his voice. Still felt the echo of what we’d had, what we’d lost, what might have been if the world had been different.
I will come back to you.
That promise haunted me. Not because I believed it anymore, but because I wanted to. Because some stubborn, foolish part of me still hoped that maybe, somehow, he’d find a way. Even though I knew better. Even though I’d learned that hope was just another word for heartbreak.
The baby kicked again, stronger this time, and I pressed my hand more firmly against my stomach, grounding myself in the present. In the reality of this life I was building. In the children who needed me to be whole, even when I felt shattered.
“You’re going to be okay,” Dante whispered. “You know that, right?”
I looked at him, at the genuine concern in his eyes, and managed a smile that felt almost real. “I know.”
And I did know. I would be okay. I would survive this, just like I’d survived everything else. I would raise these children and build a life and find some version of happiness that didn’t require the man I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I would be okay. But as I sat there in the dappled sunlight, watching Danika play and feeling the baby move inside me, I couldn’t help but wonder if “okay” was really enough. If survival was the same as living. If moving forward meant leaving behind the part of my heart that still cried out for him in the darkness.
Then Danika screamed.
Not a frightened scream, something else. Something that made my blood freeze and my heart stop, and every nerve in my body come alive with a recognition I didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Unka ROW!”
Dante was already moving, his body responding before his mind could catch up. He took three long strides toward Danika, then stopped dead in his tracks, his entire frame going rigid.
I was on my feet before I realized I’d moved, the weight of my pregnant belly making me clumsy as I pushed myself up from the bench. My hand instinctively went to my stomach, steadying myself as I stumbled forward, my eyes searching frantically for Danika.
And then I saw him.
No.
The word formed in my mind but never made it to my lips. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the man standing twenty feet away, Danika already running toward him with her arms outstretched.
Rowen.
He was here. He washere. After six months of silence, months of wondering and waiting and trying to convince myselfI’d moved on, he was standing in Central Park like he’d never left, like he hadn’t torn my heart out and walked away without a word.
He looked different. Harder, maybe. The sharp angles of his face seemed more pronounced, his jaw tight with tension even as he kneeled to catch Danika when she launched herself into his arms. His hair was longer, pushed back from his face in a way that made him look older, more dangerous. He wore dark jeans and a black jacket, nothing flashy, nothing that would draw attention, but he commanded the space around him anyway, that same magnetic presence that had always made it impossible to look away.
But it was his eyes that stopped me cold.
Those storm-gray eyes that had haunted my dreams for six months found mine across the distance, and the impact was physical. A punch to the chest. A knife to the gut. A collision of everything I’d tried to bury and everything I’d never been able to let go.
