Ten years of lying

Chapter 02

Evelyn's POV 

 Miguel Hawkins.

He was older now, sharper somehow, but unmistakably him.

My heart slammed against my ribs and I was certain he could hear it from where he stood. 

I opened my mouth, and only a whisper escaped. "Miguel..."

He moved his head, and for one suspended second I let myself believe he remembered, that something in him recognized the woman standing in front of him.

Then he smiled, easy and polite, the smile of a stranger meeting another stranger for the very first time.

"Hello, Miss. I don't know if I have the wrong address, but is this Angelo Morgan's apartment?" he asked.

The disappointment that crashed through me was almost embarrassing one.

What had I expected?

 Tears?

A confession?

 This was exactly how men like him operated, men who built entire empires on the art of hiding what they didn't want the world to see.

 This was the same man who had taught himself to float because I refused to let him drown in that lake. 

The same man who braided ribbons into my hair on quiet summer nights and whispered stories until I fell asleep against his chest.

The same man whose child slept upstairs at this very moment, and he stood there asking for directions like I had never existed in his life at all.

"Hello, hello! Right on time." Angelo's voice broke through before I could respond, and he swept past me to press a kiss to my cheek before pulling Miguel into a hug.

"Look who's finally a man again," he said, slapping Miguel's shoulder, and they both laughed the easy laugh of old friends.

I forced my lips into a smile, though underneath it, was a hot and humiliating one.

 Ten years apart did not erase a face like mine from a memory like his.

He was choosing this.

He was choosing to look straight through me.

"Come, come," Angelo said, ushering us toward the dining room with the pride of a man who had no idea he was walking us both into a minefield. "Miguel, this is my fiancée, the woman I'll be making my wife very soon. Evelyn Hart."

The moment my name left his mouth, I watched it land on Miguel's face like a stone dropped into still water.

His eyes flickered, his jaw tightened just slightly, and for the briefest second the mask cracked wide enough for me to see the truth underneath it.

 He knew.

He had always known.

He extended his hand anyway, smooth as silk. "Hello, Mrs. Morgan," he said, teasing, and Angelo laughed loud enough to fill the entire room.

I forced my own laugh out, swallowing the urge to slap his hand away and walk out the door he'd just come through.

Angelo wouldn't understand it, and I couldn't afford for him to ask why.

"Oh, it's my pleasure," I said instead, "to have a Morgan written after my first name."

For a moment neither of us moved.

His hand held mine a bit longer than necessary, his grip was firm, and the silence between us stretched.

"Alright, let's eat," Angelo said, oblivious, clapping his hands together. "I'm starving."

We released each other's hands at the same instant, and I hated myself instantly for how much his touch had unsettled me, how my skin still remembered things my mind had tried so hard to forget.

"Baby," I said quickly, "I think I'll head upstairs."

"No, no, you have to stay," Angelo said, pulling out my chair. "Victoria, his fiancée, should be arriving soon."

The name hit me like a slap.

 My heart slammed so hard against my chest I thought the whole table might hear it.

 Victoria.

 The same woman whose existence had sent me running into a midnight storm a decade ago, the same woman who had unknowingly forced me to rebuild myself from nothing.

 It wasn't that I needed him to have left her.

It was that he had let me believe, for an entire summer, that no one else existed.

"Baby...?" I started again, my voice tighter than I wanted it to be.

 Miguel interrupted smoothly. "She won't be joining us."

Angelo's brows lifted. "What happened?"

Miguel's smile faltered, just barely. "We ended things."

I sat there absorbing the words, my mind spinning faster than I could control.

 So he had ended it. 

After everything, after the years I spent stitching myself back together from a wound he created, he had simply ended things, as though it cost him nothing at all.

"I'm sorry, man," Angelo said, reaching over to grip his shoulder.

Miguel shook his head, glancing briefly at me before looking away. "Don't be. You got yourself a beautiful woman, just don't end up like me. Hold onto her."

I nearly scoffed out loud.

Was he actually saying that to my face? 

Was this his twisted way of telling me he knew exactly who I was while making it painfully clear he wanted nothing more to do with me?

 Every word out of his mouth felt like a blade dressed up as a compliment, and I told myself that if I sat at this table one more minute, I would lose every ounce of composure I had left.

That was when something small and warm collided with my side.

I looked down and felt my stomach drop. "Ethan?"

"Sorry, Mom," he said, breathless. "I saw a cockroach by my window and I got scared."

"Go back upstairs," I said quickly. "I'm coming."

But laughter cut through the room before I could usher him away, and I turned to see Miguel grinning like he'd just won something invaluable.

 "No, let him stay," he said. "I like this one already. Sharp little thing."

Angelo beamed with pride as Ethan walked toward Miguel without hesitation, wrapping his small arms around him in a hug that lingered far longer than a greeting between strangers should.

 My pulse climbed into my throat.

 I stared at Angelo, silently begging the universe to keep the question forming in Miguel's mouth from ever being spoken.

"Is he yours?" Miguel asked, glancing up at Angelo.

"Yeah, of course," Angelo said without a flicker of doubt.

My face went numb.

 Angelo said it so easily, and so proudly, a man willing to claim a child he knew, deep down, could never have come from him. 

I stared at him, my throat tightening around words I couldn't say.

Then, Ethan's voice rang out, innocent and devastating all at once. "Mom, is this the lake man from your drawing?"

The room went still.

 Every sound seemed to vanish at once, swallowed by the silence pressing down on my chest.

 I felt the blood drain from my face as Miguel's head turned slowly, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and something far more dangerous.

"Lake man?" he asked.

Ethan nodded eagerly, completely unaware of the storm his small voice had just unleashed. "Yeah, the one Mom drew with the boat and the moon, you look like him"

Miguel's eyes lifted to mine, searching, calculating, piecing something together that I had spent ten years burying. "Can I see the drawing?" he asked quietly.

My heart hammered so hard I feared it might give me away before I ever opened my mouth.

 Somewhere upstairs, in a small wooden box Ethan didn't know was sacred, sat a drawing that ould unravel everything I had built. 

And there was no version of tonight where I walked away from this table without losing something I could never get back.