✧ ❈ ✧White Silk And Second Chance✧ ❈ ✧

❈ ❈ Alessia Pov ❈ ❈

I couldn't stop thinking about what Jeffrey said.

❀Let me be in your life. In your son's life.❀

I replayed it in my head while I was alone, while I was feeding the baby, while I was pretending to watch the movies. Let me be here. Let me love you both.

The thing about desperation is that it doesn't announce itself. It creeps in slowly, so slowly you don't notice it's there until you're drowning in it.

By the third day at Jeffrey's place, I'd accepted that I was drowning.

Edward had cheated on me, lied to me and betrayed everything we built together, and I was supposed to just... what? Forgive him? Move on? Raise our son alone while he played the loving husband and father in the house with Stella and their baby?

I wasn't the one who had done anything wrong.

I hadn't cheated, lied. I'd given up everything—my independence, my sense of self—and for what? For a man who couldn't keep his dick in his pants?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized something that felt dangerous to think: I didn't love Edward anymore. I wasn't sure I ever had. I thought I had. I'd convinced myself I had. But real love didn't betray like that. Real love didn't disappear the moment things got hard.

Jeffrey was still here.

He was still cooking. Still leaving my favorite coffee on the nightstand. Still staying up at night so I could sleep. Still looking at my son like he was a miracle instead of a complication.

And he'd disappeared seven years ago without explanation, which meant whatever this was, it wasn't thoughtless. It wasn't casual.

On the fourth day, I asked him about it.

We were sitting on the couch—me, Jeffrey, and the baby sleeping between us—and the question just fell out of my mouth.

"Why did you leave?"

Jeffrey went still. "What?"

"Seven years ago. Why did you just disappear?"

He took a breath. "I got a scholarship. A really competitive one. The program was intense—sixteen-hour days, no time off, no distractions. I was twenty-two and stupid and I thought..." He paused. "I thought you'd be better off without me. That I was holding you back."

"So you just left?"

"I did. And I've regretted it every single day since."

I looked at him, this man who'd been the first person I loved, and I tried to find anger in myself. Some residual hurt from being abandoned. But all I felt was tired.

"I'm not going to cheat on you," I said. "I'm not going to leave you. I'm not going to pretend to love you and then blow up your entire life."

Jeffrey looked at me carefully. "Are you saying—"

"I'm saying give me time. But yes. Yes, I want to try this."

He reached over and took my hand. His palm was warm and solid and real in a way nothing had been for a long time.

"That's all I'm asking for," he said.

༺✿༻ ༺✿༻

The next morning, Jeffrey asked me to officially let him in.

We were in the kitchen, and he was making breakfast again—omelets this time, and he just asked.

"Will you let me be his father?" he said, flipping an omelet onto a plate. "Not legally. Not unless you want that. But in every way that matters. Let me be the person he calls dad."

I watched him move around the kitchen. Watched the way he checked on the baby in the bassinet every thirty seconds. Watched the way he lived—not like he was trying to impress anyone, but like he genuinely wanted to build something real.

"Okay," I said. "Yes."

He turned around, and the smile that spread across his face was so bright it hurt to look at.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He set the spatula down and came around the counter, pulled me into him, and kissed me. It wasn't desperate. It wasn't frantic. It was just... certain. Like he'd been waiting for permission all his life and now that he had it, he could finally stop holding back.

When he pulled away, he was still smiling.

"You won't regret this," he said.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," I said.

"I can keep this one." He touched my face. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure you're happy. You and him. That's the promise."

It was simple. Probably naive. But sitting there in his kitchen, with this baby in a bassinet nearby and his hands on my face, I chose to believe him.

I chose to let myself be loved. Even if it felt terrifying.