CHAPTER 7: THE GREY EYES THAT KNEW

My daughter found his photo and didn’t say a single word. She just set her phone down on the kitchen table, the screen still glowing with those sharp grey eyes, and looked right at me.

That silence hit like a slap.

I stared back. The moment stretched… and stretched. My pulse hammered so loud I was sure she could hear it echoing between us.

“You must be hungry,” I said, my voice cracking just a little. “There’s food in the fridge.”

Isla held my gaze for two full seconds. Those grey eyes…steady, patient, way too knowing for sixteen, never blinked. They cut straight through every wall I’d tried to keep between us.

Then, without a word, she picked up her phone. The case clicked softly as she slipped it into her pocket. She turned, opened the fridge. The hinge creaked loud in the quiet kitchen, and a rush of cold air brushed my arms like a warning I couldn’t ignore.

She didn’t push, She never did. She had this quiet, heartbreaking way of standing just outside a closed door, waiting anyway. Whether I’d taught her that patience or she’d learned it from watching me all these years, it made my chest ache with how much I loved her.

At nine-thirty I said goodnight. I leaned in and kissed her forehead, her skin warm under my lips. “I’m tired,” I murmured.

She looked at me a second too long, her voice soft. “Okay, Mom. Sleep well.”

She knew I wouldn’t.

We both knew it.

---

I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark for what felt like forever. I wasn’t really thinking. Just sitting there frozen while something huge and heavy pressed against my ribs, making every breath feel thin and shaky.

The room stayed quiet except for the faint tick of the clock and my own uneven breathing.

Outside, the city hummed low and restless. Distant horns drifted up. Wind rattled the window glass. Down the hall, a thin line of yellow light still glowed under Isla’s door. She was still awake.

And I sat there knowing my daughter had his picture on her phone. Knowing those grey eyes she saw in the mirror every single day finally had a face. A name. She had put it all together.

I had always known this day would come.

I just thought I’d have more time.

---

The memory slammed into me without warning.

I was twenty again, standing in my tiny bathroom on an ordinary Tuesday morning, the tile cold under my bare feet. I held the pregnancy test I’d taken three times because the first two felt too big to be real.

Three lines. Same answer every time. What hit me first wasn’t fear. Fear came later, slow and vicious. First came this bright, overwhelming rush of joy that made my hands shake and my throat tighten.

I sank down onto the cold floor, clutching the test with both hands, the plastic edges digging into my palms, and thought, “He is going to be so happy.”

Not “what now.” Not “how will we manage.” Just that warm, shining certainty that I was about to tell the man I loved something that would light him up from the inside.

I had been so sure. I had trusted that feeling the same way I trusted him…completely, no questions asked. Because he had never given me a single reason not to.

Thirty-one-year-old me sat on the edge of that bed in the dark and pressed a shaking hand hard over my mouth. The salty taste of my own skin filled my tongue as I fought back the broken sound trying to claw its way out.

Because that twenty-year-old girl on the bathroom floor had no idea what kind of man she was giving her whole heart to. Three months later, she would find out the truth in the cruelest way possible.

Standing outside that church, sharp wind cutting through her thin coat, stomach already starting to show.

The organ music spilled out the open doors while she watched him, “her” Sebastian, slide a ring onto another woman’s finger like the last two years with her had never happened.

Like the baby growing inside her meant nothing. Like every look, every touch, every promise had all been one beautiful, calculated lie.

The betrayal still burned fresh, even after all this time. It wasn’t just the ring or the vows. It was the way he never once looked back. Never once stepped outside to find me standing there shattered, pregnant, and too proud to scream.

---

I barely slept that night. The sheets kept twisting around my legs, too warm, too tight. By six-thirty I was already dressed, forcing down coffee that burned my tongue while I pushed through the vendor revisions I’d left unfinished.

By eight I was in the car, the engine rumbling under me. By eight forty-five I was walking into my office, the bag strap digging into my shoulder, my mind racing three steps ahead.

I stopped dead in the doorway.

There on my desk sat a bouquet of white peonies. Their soft petals caught the morning light, lush and deliberate in a simple glass vase someone had brought because my office didn’t have one. No card, no note. Nothing.

Just the flowers, and that was all the answer I needed. Only one person in the world knew.

I had mentioned it once. We were walking past a flower stall, that sweet scent drifting in the air, and I’d slowed down without meaning to. He noticed and asked. I said, “White peonies. I don’t know why. They just look like something that means it.”

He bought me a bunch right then and there. That was Sebastian at twenty-three. No special occasion. No big gesture. Just real attention. Quick, sharp, and decisive.

I stood there staring at the bouquet, chest tight, throat burning, the faint sweet scent wrapping around me like a ghost I couldn’t shake.

The same man who had once made me feel truly seen now sent flowers like a quiet apology for the knife he’d left buried in my back.

My assistant appeared behind me, early as always, coffee in hand, her face already apologetic.

“A courier dropped them before I got in,” she said. “Found them outside the door. No card. I checked twice.”

“Thank you,” I managed, my voice cracking.

She hesitated. “Should I—”

“Leave them,” I cut in quickly. “It’s fine.”

She nodded and slipped away, her footsteps fading down the hall.

I stood alone in my office with sixteen years of history sitting on my desk in those fragile white petals. The girl on the bathroom floor who had been so damn sure.

The woman on the bed who still wouldn’t let herself make a sound. And the man who still remembered the only flower I had ever said I loved, right after he had destroyed everything else.

---

My hand shook as I picked up my phone, fingers slick against the cool screen. My heart pounded so hard it hurt, my breath coming short and shallow.

I found the number Ethan Cross had pressed into my hand that day in the corridor. For one long, suspended moment, I just stared at the digits.

Then I made the call.