Chapter 1: Realization

Flashback: 2023

California. 3:45 a.m.

A modest studio apartment in Pasadena. The world outside was asleep—bathed in quiet, broken only by the occasional passing car and the steady tick of the ceiling fan above. The room was dim, soaked in a soft, amber hue from a streetlamp just beyond the window.

Alexis blinked awake, her body stirring against the cool sheets of a king-sized bed. Her breathing was shallow, heart unsettled by a sharp, mechanical noise slicing through the silence.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Not hers.

She rolled toward the edge of the bed and saw the faint light of a screen pulsing from beneath a rumpled gray T-shirt on the floor. The sound kept going—persistent, urgent.

The phone wasn't hers. It was his.

Steve.

Lying beside her, Steve Adams breathed steadily, still wrapped in sleep. His arm was sprawled across the bed, close to where her waist had been, his face turned toward her on the pillow. His sandy blonde hair was tousled, his mouth slightly parted. He looked harmless. Familiar.

He was only five years older than her—an easy age gap to overlook in academia, especially when his confidence read like charm and his flirtation had felt, at first, like electricity. She had told herself she was being careful, told herself that nothing about this felt wrong.

And yet, something had woken her.

She slipped out of bed, quietly retrieving the phone. Her eyes narrowed against the brightness of the screen.

New Message – Yllana.

Steve, your daughter is gravely ill. If you still have it in you to care for her, please book a flight immediately.

Alexis froze.

Her breath hitched. Her fingers tightened around the device.

Daughter?

No. No, that had to be a mistake. A misunderstanding. Some bitter ex, maybe. Or a friend dramatizing something for attention. He would've told her, surely. They'd shared too much for something this... foundational to have been hidden. Wouldn't he?

Still, the words stared back at her, black letters on a white background that seemed colder the longer she looked.

She told herself it was probably a crazed woman from his past—someone desperate for attention. Or maybe a wrong number. Maybe he meant to tell her. He was just waiting for the right time. There was always a reason.

Always an excuse.

She barely noticed her body had gone still—tense, upright, as though frozen in the dim light of the room.

Behind her, Steve stirred.

A low sound escaped him as he shifted, his hand reaching instinctively across the bed. Searching for her. Wanting to pull her in, like he always did in the early hours when words didn't matter.

But Alexis moved away.

Still clutching his phone in her hand.

Steve's eyes opened slowly, squinting into the darkness. "Lex...?" he murmured, voice thick with sleep.

She didn't answer right away. She stood by the edge of the bed, her silhouette outlined by the soft orange glow behind her. He blinked harder, trying to sit up.

"What's going on?"

Her voice was flat, cool, but not loud. "You have a message."

He frowned, groggy. "From who?"

Alexis turned her head slightly, just enough for him to see the expression on her face—confused, searching, wounded.

She read the name like it was a diagnosis.

"Yllana."

Steve's face changed. Not much—but enough.

And in that breath, Alexis knew. The rationalizations she'd rehearsed collapsed one by one like paper held to flame.

Steve sat up fully now, his expression sharpening as the haze of sleep gave way to reality. He rubbed his face, groaning softly, but his eyes stayed fixed on the phone in Alexis's hand.

"Why... why did you check my phone?"

The question was quiet, almost casual—but it struck her like a slap.

Alexis turned slowly to face him, eyes wide with disbelief. "That's your question right now?"

Steve pushed a hand through his hair, frustration flickering at the edges of his voice. "It's not—I'm just saying, I don't go through your phone. You don't just pick up someone's messages in the middle of the night."

She laughed. A bitter, sharp sound. "Steve, your phone wouldn't stop beeping. I thought maybe it was work—an emergency."

She held up the device like it had betrayed her. "And it was an emergency, wasn't it? Your daughter is gravely ill, Steve. Your daughter."

He looked away for a second, exhaling hard. "I was going to tell you."

"When?" Her voice cracked, emotion starting to rise in her chest. "When were you going to tell me? Before or after I found out from a stranger's text message?"

"She's not a stranger," he muttered under his breath.

Alexis's breath caught.

"Oh. So Yllana isn't a stranger. Good to know."

Steve shifted uncomfortably, but didn't answer. That was answer enough.

Alexis stepped back from the bed, the space between them now a wall she couldn't climb over even if she tried. "You looked me in the eye and made me believe there were no loose ends. You let me fall for you, and you left this—this whole other life out of the picture like it was irrelevant."

"It's not like that," he said, standing now too. "It's complicated."

"Everything is complicated, Steve!" she snapped. "But you don't lie by omission to make it easier. You don't invite someone into your bed, your life, your trust, and then forget to mention you have a child."

He looked like he wanted to defend himself, to fight back—but the weight of the truth hung too heavy now.

The illusion was already shattered.

Alexis swallowed hard, trying to steady the sting behind her eyes. "How old is she?"

Steve hesitated. "She's six."

She flinched.

Six. That meant Alexis had been in this man's life for over a year without ever knowing about someone who had called him 'dad' since toddlerhood. There was no excuse big enough to make that vanish.

The silence swelled between them.

Alexis set the phone down on the dresser, her hands trembling slightly.

"I don't care what kind of past you have, Steve. I care that you didn't think I deserved the truth."

Then, more quietly, more honestly:

"I would've understood. You just never gave me the chance to."

And with that, she turned her back to him.

Steve stood up in one abrupt motion, the sheets falling around his waist, his voice rising with panic as Alexis reached for her coat hanging by the door.

"Alexis, wait—where are you going?"

She didn't answer at first, fumbling with the sleeves of her coat, her hands shaking too much to slip them in properly. She couldn't look at him—not yet. Her breath was coming faster, her chest heaving from the storm building inside her.

"Can we just talk?" he said, stepping toward her, bare feet on hardwood. "Please. Just for a second."

Alexis spun to face him, her hair swinging over her shoulder, her eyes glassy but burning. "Talk? Now you want to talk?"

Steve flinched.

"I'm not someone who ruins families," she said, her voice sharper than she intended. "I don't get involved with men who lie to me, who have wives or daughters or broken promises trailing behind them like it's nothing."

"Alexis—there is no wife, I swear to you. Yllana and I—we haven't been together in years. We barely talk."

"But you do have a child," she shot back, her tone cracking. "You have a little girl, Steve. A daughter who's sick, and I had to find out about her from a text message at four in the damn morning."

His mouth opened, then closed, as if every excuse dried up on his tongue.

"You think I would've stayed if I'd known you were hiding a child?" she continued. "You think I'd keep sleeping beside you, smiling at you, trusting you—when your own daughter doesn't even know my name?"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want to lose you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper now. "I was afraid."

Alexis scoffed bitterly, swallowing down the ache in her throat. "You were afraid of the truth. But you weren't afraid to let me live in a lie."

She grabbed her bag from the hook near his bedroom door. The sound of the zipper closing was final.

Steve stepped forward again, reaching out, desperate. "Lex—please."

But Alexis moved back, shaking her head slowly.

"You need to be there for your daughter. That little girl doesn't need to lose a father because he's busy playing house with someone who had no idea she existed."

She looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time since the message. There was hurt on his face, yes. But more than that, there was guilt.

"You made me the other woman without telling me I was," she said quietly. "And I won't be that."

She had just stepped into the hallway when it happened.

The sharp tug came without warning.

Steve's hand clamped around her wrist, yanking her back with far more force than necessary. Alexis stumbled, her body jerking toward him as the bag on her shoulder slipped down and nearly fell. Her breath caught—not just from the sudden movement, but from the pain.

"Steve—!" she gasped, trying to wrench her arm free.

"You're not going to walk away from me, Alexis," he snapped, eyes no longer soft, no longer pleading. There was something different now—something tighter around his mouth. Something hard in his eyes.

His grip was too tight. Her skin burned where his fingers dug into her.

"I'm not done talking to you," he said, voice low but edged in steel. "You don't get to decide how this ends."

Her eyes widened. Not from fear—not yet—but from sheer disbelief.

"Let go of me," she said firmly.

"Not until you listen."

"I did listen," she spat back. "I listened to the lies you told by staying silent. I listened to the excuses. I even listened to you say you didn't want to lose me—after I found out you've been hiding a child."

She tried to pull away again, but his grip only tightened, fingers pressing into her wrist like iron.

"Steve—you're hurting me."

But instead of letting go, he held on tighter.

His fingers dug deeper into her wrist, the pressure sharp now, unmistakable. Alexis's breath hitched. Her entire body went still.

She stared at him, stunned.

He wasn't letting go.

His eyes—once the warm, clever blue that had made her believe he was safe—were now narrowed, shadowed by something colder, something she couldn't recognize. There was no tenderness in his face now. Only frustration. Fear. Control.

"You're not going to walk away from me, Alexis," he said through clenched teeth, the words low and sharp like a warning.

Panic began to thrum in her chest. She tried again to pull her arm back, twisting slightly, but he held firm. His grip wasn't just tight—it was possessive. Demanding.

She had never seen him like this.

Not toward her.

He had always been gentle. Affectionate. The kind of man who held her hand like it meant something, who made slow breakfasts on Sundays and looked at her like she was the only person in the room.

But this? This was a stranger. This was someone she didn't know. And in that moment, Alexis realized she wasn't just upset anymore.

She was afraid.

"Steve, let go." Her voice cracked, louder this time, on the verge of breaking.

Still, he didn't.

He took a half-step closer, his body crowding the narrow space between her and the open door. His breath was fast, ragged, and he was shaking his head—like if he just denied reality hard enough, he could undo it.

"You're not going to throw this away," he said. "You don't get to quit on us because of something you don't understand."

Alexis looked down at her wrist, where his grip was turning her skin an angry red.

Her heart pounded in her ears. She couldn't hear anything else.

"Steve," she said again, this time not with anger—but with something colder. Clearer. "Let. Go."

It took another breath. Another second of awful, suspended silence.

Then he dropped her arm.

She recoiled instinctively, cradling her wrist against her chest. The skin there throbbed—already bruising beneath the surface, though the pain hadn't fully arrived yet.

She stared at him, eyes wide, a mix of disbelief and sorrow.

"You just showed me who you really are," she said, voice soft, trembling.

Steve looked stunned. His mouth opened like he wanted to speak, to explain, but nothing came.

Alexis backed away slowly, refusing to turn her back on him this time—not until she reached the hallway.

Then she stepped through the door and shut it behind her.

This time, the click of the door closing wasn't quiet.

It was final.