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“Maggie is only familiar with the pain of losing a child, not the empty pain that comes from never being able to carry one. No, that pain was especially reserved for your Aunt Joe.”

I watch her, my heart tightening as I see the pain flash in her gray eyes. It is the kind of hurt that comes from a deep, broken wish—a longing so intense it carves itself into your soul. The pain of wanting something you can never have, of watching that dream slip away, leaving nothing but an unfillable hole where it used to be.

“I’ve let you avoid me for so long because I knew you’d come to me when you were ready because this isn’t a conversation you can just force on someone.” Aunt Joe gets a far away look in her eye. “You haven’t told Henry.” A statement, not a question. I shake my head in reply.

“I don’t know how,” I say, barely more than a breath. “The only thing that man has ever wanted was a family of his own. And I…I can’t be the one who takes that from him.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty—it’s full. Heavy. Like the air knows the truth before I even say it.

“I see it in his eyes when he talks about it. That quiet kind of hope. Not loud or demanding, but steady. Steady in a way I’ve never been. Like he’s already saving a place at the table for people who don’t even exist yet.”

I swallow hard, pressing the heel of my hand against my chest, like I can stop the ache from spreading.

“And I want to be enough—I do. But how do you stay with someone when you know you’ll always be the end of a dream they never got to live?”

My voice cracks, softer now.

“Loving him means wanting him to have everything…even if it’s not with me.”

“So you’re just fucking stupid, aren’t you?”

The words land sharp enough to make me blink. I glance up from my hands to find Aunt Joe staring me down, her gaze like iron—unflinching, unmoved, and burning with a fire I forgot she still had.

“That man,” she says, voice clipped and sharp like broken glass, “has spent the last ten years scraping by on whatever scraps you were brave enough to give him. A little softness here, a flicker of hope there.” Her eyes narrow, burning bright and fierce beneath the heavy weight of years spent waiting. “And still, you can’t see it. You’re too tangled up in your own broken to realize…”

She leans forward, her breath warm against my skin, her gaze piercing and unflinching. “You are the God damn dream.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Her words echo around the room, crashing into everything I’ve tried to hold steady.

She exhales, not tired—but like she’s been holding this in for too long. Then her hand finds mine, warm and calloused from a life that hasn’t been kind but never broke her.

“I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to really hear it,” she says, her thumb tracing slow, deliberate circles over my knuckles. The gentle pressure pulses beneath my skin, grounding me. “There were nights I didn’t think I’d make it. Nights where the silence of this house felt louder than any scream. Nights I ached in places no one could see, and if it weren’t for Frank—if it weren’t for the way that man loved me—I wouldn’t have survived.”

She stops, voice catching like a broken thread for the first time. Her breath trembles—shaky, ragged—like she’s holding back a storm.

“I couldn’t give him kids.” The words taste bitter, heavy, stuck deep in her throat. “I tried everything. Prayed till my hands bled. Begged like it was the last thing I’d ever do.” Her fists clench tight, nails digging into her palms. “When it didn’t happen, I thought it would tear us apart.”

But it didn’t.

She exhales, slow and raw, the kind of breath that’s been held for years. “Every damn morning, that man rolled over and looked at me like I was everything—like I was enough, and guess what?”

Her eyes burn with fierce, painful love.

“He made me fucking believe it too. Never once let me think my love was less, or that I was less—just because I couldn’t give him children.”

I blink, but the tears come anyway. Hot and slow. Shaking something loose in my chest.

“You think love has rules?” she asks gently. “That it only counts if it comes with babies and milestones and matching last names?” Her voice softens. “Love is what he gives you now, Lou. It’s what he’s been giving you—patient, quiet, steady. It’s not based on what you can’t give him. It’s who you are.”

She squeezes my hand.

“And don’t you dare tell me you’re afraid to take that love. Because if you were strong enough to choose Dallas—if you were brave enough to open that bruised heart of yours to that boy—then don’t you stand here and pretend you’re too broken for Henry.”

“You better than anyone I know understands that blood doesn’t make you fucking family.” Aunt Joe’s thumb presses into my skin, slow and steady, tracing soft circles that somehow both soothe and anchor me. Her touch is rough from years of hard work, but gentle now—like a lifeline.

“You carry all that pain,” she says, her voice low and steady, “but you don’t have to carry it by yourself. You never did.”

Her words hang in the air, heavy and warm, filling the quiet between us like the scent of worn leather and earth after rain.