Chapter Fourty Five

Kyla

The air in the kitchen feels too still after his phone call.

Jake is standing by the counter, phone still in his hand, jaw tight, his shoulders hunched like he is carrying the weight of the world. The kids are outside chasing each other in the yard, their laughter floating in through the open window, but the sound doesn’t reach him.

It doesn’t reach me either.

Because I can feel it, the wall going back up.

He turns slightly, and I see the look in his eyes. Distant. Closed off. The same look he wore when he walked out of my life years ago. The same look that gutted me then and is gutting me all over again now.

“Jake,” I whisper, my fingers curling around the edge of the table for strength. “We need to talk.”

For a moment, he doesn’t answer. His throat works, his grip on the phone tightening, like he’s debating whether to listen or shut me out. Hope stirs in me fragile, trembling. Maybe this time he’ll stay, maybe this time he’ll hear me.

But then his gaze hardens, and with a shake of his head, he says, “Not now, Kyla.”

My stomach drops. “Jake”

“I mean it.” His voice is sharp, final. He sets the phone down with a thud that makes me flinch. “I need to go home. I need to check on my family.”

The word family cuts through me like a blade.

I swallow hard, but the ache lodges in my chest, spreading until it hurts to breathe.

His family.

Not me. Not Chanel. Not Elias. Not the life I’ve fought to build, alone, from the ashes of what he left behind.

No. His family is somewhere else.

I tell myself not to react, not to let him see how much that one word just broke me, but my body betrays me. My hands tremble. My vision blurs. My chest feels like it’s caving in.

And then, as if twisting the knife deeper, he adds softly, “My son needs me.”

I can’t hide the sound that escapes me then, a sharp, wounded inhale.

My son. Ethan. He was his son the actual son he raised. 

The name he never says but doesn’t have to. I’ve heard enough to know, to understand. And yet every time it’s spoken, it feels like someone is tearing open a wound inside me that’s never fully healed.

Because once upon a time, I thought we were his family. I thought my son, our son would be the one he showed up for. I thought love, however messy, however broken, might be enough to keep him here.

But instead, here I am, standing in this kitchen with syrup stained plates still on the table and my children playing in the yard, while the man who fathered at least one of them tells me his son needs him as if the ones laughing outside don’t exist.

I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold in the pieces of me that are splintering. “Of course,” I manage, my voice cracking in the middle. “Of course your son needs you.”

Jake looks at me then, his eyes softening for a split second. Regret flickers there, I see it. But just as quickly, it’s gone, replaced by that same guarded, unreadable mask.

“I will be back,” he says, and I hate how uncertain he sounds. “I just can’t leave him like this.”

I nod, because what else can I do? Beg him to stay? Ask him to choose between them and us? That wouldn’t just be selfish it would be cruel. I know what it feels like to be a child waiting for a father who never comes. I would never wish that on Ethan.

But god, it still hurts.

It hurts in a way that makes me want to scream, cry, break every dish in this kitchen just to release the pressure building inside me.

Because what about Chanel? What about Elias? Haven’t they needed him too? Haven’t I?

Haven’t we mattered?

My chest heaves with the weight of everything I can’t say. The truth I have buried so deep I can’t bring myself to unearth it now not when he is already halfway out the door in his mind.

So instead, I force a brittle smile, the kind that feels like glass on my lips. “Go,” I whisper. “Take care of your family.”

His jaw tenses, like he hears the unspoken sting in my words, but he doesn’t correct me. He doesn’t say you are my family too. He doesn’t say I’m not leaving you behind.

He just nods, grabs his jacket, and heads for the door.

The kids’ laughter grows louder as he steps outside to call them in. They run toward him, their little voices full of excitement, asking if he’s going to play with them again.

I stay in the kitchen, hidden behind the doorway, clutching my chest to keep from shattering completely.

Because I know the truth now, as sharp and merciless as a knife.

Jake may be here, but his heart, his loyalty, his home still belongs somewhere else.

And no matter how much I want it, no matter how much I ache for it, maybe it will never belong to me.