CHAPTER 19

ELENA

Sophia.

The name kept looping through my head, over and over, until I couldn't hear anything else. I couldn't move. I just stood there, staring at the woman walking away from me....her face, her hair, the particular way she carried herself. There was no mistaking it. My former best friend, the woman who'd smiled at me for years while quietly helping tear my life apart behind my back.

She hadn't recognized me. It took a second before I understood why... the ridiculous face paint Elias had insisted on earlier, some swirling design covering my entire face. Thank God for that, at least.

But something else had already pulled my attention past the relief.

Sophia stopped a few feet from a man standing near one of the food stalls, and my heart seized before I'd even properly registered why. From that distance I couldn't see his face clearly, but the build, the dark hair, the way he stood.... it was enough to twist my stomach into a knot.

It was Daniel.

I watched her close the distance to him. She smiled....not the practiced version she used to give me, but something real, the kind of smile I remembered from before I knew what she actually was. He smiled back and reached for her hand.

Then her other hand drifted to her stomach.

My breath caught somewhere in my chest and refused to move.

She was pregnant.

I stared at her stomach like my eyes might correct themselves if I looked long enough. They didn't. She stood there laughing, leaning into him, glowing in a way that made something in me go cold. Happy. Both of them, entirely happy, as though none of it had ever cost anyone anything. As though my life had never existed at all.

My vision blurred. A tear slid free before I could stop it, then another, faster than I could wipe them away.

"Elena?"

I couldn't turn around. I didn't want him seeing me like this.

"Elena." Closer now.

I finally lifted my eyes. Adrian stood right in front of me, worry written plainly across his face in a way that nearly undid me on its own. His hand came up slowly and brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb.

"You're crying."

I couldn't answer. He wiped another away, gentler this time.

"What's wrong?"

I glanced past him. Elias had come up beside us, his small face pinched with a confusion he clearly didn't know how to voice. He stepped closer and grabbed a fistful of my shirt, holding on like letting go might make me vanish.

Something in my chest cracked wide open. Neither of them understood a single thing about what had just happened, and both of them were terrified for me anyway.

I looked back at Adrian. He didn't push. He didn't demand answers I wasn't ready to give. He just waited, steady, like he had nowhere else to be.

"I...." My voice broke on the first attempt. I tried again. "Can we go home?"

His brow furrowed. "Of course."

"I don't feel well."

He didn't ask why. He didn't glance back toward whoever I'd been staring at. He simply nodded and reached for my hand.

"We're going home."

Something about the plainness of that sentence pulled another tear loose.

---

The drive back passed in complete silence. I kept my forehead nearly against the window, watching nothing in particular. Adrian didn't ask a single question the entire way. Beside me, Elias's small hand stayed wrapped around mine, unmoving.

I couldn't stop replaying it..... Sophia's smile, the hand on her stomach, Daniel walking beside her looking like he wouldn't want to be anywhere else, the two of them looking like they'd won something. Like I was the only person left standing in the wreckage they'd caused.

By the time we reached the house, my chest had gone unbearably tight. I barely waited for the car to stop before I was out and moving.

"Elena..."

I didn't stop. Straight upstairs, into my room, door shut and locked behind me.

Then I broke.

I slid down against the door until I hit the floor, a hand clamped over my mouth to muffle the sound tearing out of me. It didn't work. The sobs came anyway, one after another, until my chest ached with the effort of them. I cried for my son. For my parents. For the version of myself that had existed before any of this. For a future that had been stolen out from under me in pieces I hadn't even noticed going missing. For Daniel. For Sophia. For all of it at once.

I don't know how long I sat there before the knock came.

I ignored it. A second one followed.

"Elena?"

I closed my eyes and said nothing.

A third knock, softer this time. "Elena."

I pulled my knees up against my chest.

"I'm here," he said through the door, and let the words sit a moment before continuing. "I don't know what you saw out there. I don't know what happened to you today, and I don't need to." His voice had dropped low, careful. "You don't owe me an explanation for anything you're not ready to give."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, listening.

"But I want you to know something. We haven't known each other long. Still....in the time we have, I've learned enough to know you don't deserve whatever's hurting you right now." A pause. "And you don't have to sit with it by yourself."

I stood slowly, my hand finding the lock without quite deciding to move it.

"I'm right here. I'll stay right here as long as you need." Another pause, gentler still. "You can open the door when you're ready. If you're not ready yet, that's fine too."

I turned the lock and opened the door.

His expression shifted the instant he saw me... whatever composure he'd been holding onto dropped away entirely. Neither of us said anything. I just stepped forward and put my arms around him, and he caught me like he'd been braced for it the whole time.

I pressed my face into his chest and held on harder than I think I'd ever held onto anyone. His arms closed around me, solid and certain, and for the first time since everything had come apart, I let myself stop performing "fine".

I cried against him until there was nothing left to cry out.

And he didn't let go once.