CHAPTER 9: Cracks in the Facade

He looked less put together than usual. His hair slightly tousled. Shirt wrinkled. Eyes tired.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

She raised a brow. “So you decided to show up at my door at nearly 10 at night?”

“I figured if I called, you wouldn’t answer.”

“You figured right.”

Silence stretched between them. The kind heavy with what was left unsaid.

“May I come in?” he asked.

She hesitated. Then stepped aside.

James walked in, glancing around like he hadn’t just spent four hours here earlier.

Melinda crossed her arms and stood near the kitchen doorway. “So what is it?”

James turned to face her. “I need you to know something. I meant it when I said I wasn’t leaving their lives. But this isn’t just about them anymore.”

Her stomach twisted. “James”

“No, hear me out.” His voice was low but steady. “You made a choice that night to walk away and raise them alone. You didn’t even tell me. I get it. I don’t agree with it but I get it.”

Melinda’s jaw tensed.

“But now that I’ve met them…” he stepped closer, gaze fixed on hers, “there’s no going back. I don’t want to miss birthdays, report cards, dance recitals, or soccer games. I want to be here.”

“And I told you,” she shot back, “that this doesn’t mean you get to show up and play father of the year after missing six years.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness, Mel. I’m asking for a chance.”

She hated how her name sounded in his mouth like a song she once loved but now couldn’t bear to hear.

“Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep thinking about that mistake?” Her voice cracked. “How hard it was to work two jobs while my babies asked why they didn’t have a daddy like the cartoons? I made peace with the consequences. I built a life from the wreckage. You don’t get to walk in and rewrite history.”

“I don’t want to rewrite it,” he said gently. “I just want to be part of what comes next.”

Her throat felt raw. The walls she’d built over the years were trembling and she hated how easily he made them sway.

She turned away. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“You don’t have to. Not yet,” James said, his voice near her ear now. “But trust me with them. With time. With effort. I’ll earn it.”

Her eyes burned. She kept her back to him, fists clenched.

“You said earlier that I did all this on my own,” she whispered. “And I did. So don’t come in here acting like a savior.”

“I don’t see you as someone who needs saving, Melinda,” he said, “I see you as someone I never stopped wanting.”

That silenced her.

She slowly turned, and their eyes met heat and history crashing in the space between them.

For a moment, they said nothing. Just breathed the same air. Let the years of regret and longing sit there, heavy and undeniable.

Then she pulled back slightly.

“You need to go,” she said softly.

James nodded, his expression unreadable. “I’ll see the twins tomorrow?”

“They go to school at 8. I’ll leave your name with the front desk.”

“Thank you,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Goodnight, Melinda.”

And just like that, he was gone again.

But this time, the space he left behind wasn’t filled with silence.

It was filled with dangerous hope.

Melinda hadn’t meant to wait by the window that morning.

She told herself it was a coincidence. That she just happened to be sipping coffee at exactly 7:55 a.m., standing behind the sheer curtain, peeking through a gap wide enough to watch the street.

Then the sleek black Range Rover pulled up.

And her breath hitched.

Elijah and Elena, with their tiny backpacks and even tinier sneakers, were already bouncing at the front door James had promised he’d walk them into school today.

And he kept his word.

She watched him step out, dressed like he didn’t know what “casual” meant fitted black slacks, a navy blue button-down rolled at the sleeves, and that stupidly expensive watch that probably cost more than her yearly rent. But what hit her more than his look was the way he looked at them. Like they were the only thing in his universe.

Melinda didn’t know if that warmed her or scared her.

Because if he loved them like that… what would happen if he left again?

Later that day, Melinda arrived at the downtown office for a rare freelance opportunity a consulting gig that paid triple her normal rate. She hadn’t been expecting much from the interview. She was just proud she’d made it through the week without another panic attack.

The glass doors to the firm slid open with a mechanical hiss. The receptionist smiled politely.

“You must be Ms. Jameson. Mr. Locke is waiting for you.”

Locke.

She froze for just a second.

The last name echoed.

No couldn’t be. Could it?

She followed the assistant through a hallway lined with art and accolades, heart pounding a little too fast. Then the door opened.

And there he was.

There was something about James that made people pause mid-sentence. He didn’t demand attention, he commanded it. The moment he stepped into a room, silence wasn’t requested; it happened naturally, as if the air itself adjusted to his presence. Not just because he was wealthy, or because the O’Connor name opened every door it was the way he carried himself. Controlled. Deliberate. Effortlessly lethal in a bespoke Tom Ford suit and the kind of stare that stripped you bare.

James Liam O’Connor was a man carved from shadow and silver. Tall, with an athlete’s build and shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of entire empires, he moved with quiet confidence like a storm that didn’t need to announce itself to be felt. His voice, low and deliberate, had the strange effect of calming you and setting your nerves on fire at the same time. People hung on his words not because he was loud but because he rarely wasted them.

His charisma wasn’t loud or charming in the traditional sense it was colder, more dangerous. Magnetic in the way fire was to moths: beautiful, untouchable, and deadly if you got too close.

The media called him ruthless. His competitors called him a genius. But behind the veiled compliments and whispered envy was the truth James O’Connor was a man who didn’t trust easily, didn’t love easily, and had locked his heart behind bulletproof glass long before Melinda ever came back into his life.

But there were cracks now. Hairline fractures in the armor he’d spent a lifetime perfecting. And they showed not when he spoke but when he didn’t. In the quiet moments where his gaze lingered too long on the twins. In the way his jaw clenched when Melinda walked away. In the ache that lingered behind those sharp blue eyes eyes that, even in silence, told a story he wasn’t ready to say out loud. Not yet.

And still, even with his walls, even with his flaws, there was no denying one truth: James O’Connor was the kind of man who made you feel like the world spun differently when he looked at you.

And when he loved... he did so like it was war.