Not to win her. Not to compete with Marcus. Just because the silence was killing me, and I’d rather lose her honestly than keep her as a lie.
The truth was the only thing I had left to give. What she did with it was up to her.
But I was done disappearing.
I got out of the truck and walked to the carriage house.
The night was cool, the first real hint of autumn in the air. Stars were coming out, scattered across the sky like promises.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow I’d tell her.
Tonight, I’d try to find words big enough for everything I felt. I’d loved her for months—maybe years, if I was honest with myself.
It was time she knew.
I unlocked the carriage house door and stepped inside. The smell of wood and dust and possibility wrapped around me like something familiar.
The next day, everything would change.
I just had to find the courage to let it.
CHAPTER 14
Owen
I wason the porch the next morning when I heard Marcus’s voice through the kitchen window.
I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. The old windows didn’t close properly—never had. Sound carried through the gaps and drifted out into the cool morning air.
“Eleven years, Grace.” His voice was smooth. Reasonable. The tone of a man making a closing argument. “You owe us a chance to be a family. A real family—mother, father, child. Not whatever this arrangement is.”
My hands stilled on the railing.
“Owen’s been helpful, I’m sure. But he’s been hovering. It’s confusing you. Making you think you need him when you have me.”
Hovering. There it was again. That word, the one that reduced sixteen years to an inconvenience.
“When we’re together—really together—you’ll see.” Marcus’s voice softened into something that was probably meant to sound loving. “This is better. This is right. The three of us, a real family. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”
I waited for Grace to respond.
Silence.
Just silence.
I stood on the porch, hands gripping the railing I’d rebuilt myself, and listened to the quiet where Grace’s voice should have been.
Something inside me went still.
Not angry. I was past anger. Past the hot, sharp feeling that rose in my chest every time Marcus saidour babyor touched Grace’s shoulder.
This was different. Something settled into my bones like a truth that had always been there, just waiting to be recognized.
Marcus was calling me a distraction. A confusion. Something in the way of the family he wanted to build.
And Grace—Grace hadn’t said a word in my defense.
