Chapter Nineteen

Jules' POV

I knew the moment I opened the door.

I knew from the way he stood — not the confident, unhurried way he used to stand, like the world could wait — but like a man bracing for something. Like a man who had sat up all night doing the math and had arrived at an answer that had broken something open in him and he was trying to hold the pieces together long enough to get through this conversation.

He had been crying. Not now — now he was controlled, the way he always was when it counted — but recently. I could see it in the set of his eyes, in the slight rawness at the edges. Adam Casey, who I had never once in all the time I'd known him seen lose composure completely, had at some point in the last few hours sat somewhere and cried.

Good, some small, mean part of me thought.

And then, immediately: no. Stop.

I stepped back from the door. Let him in but only into the entryway, not further — Eli was in the kitchen with Madeline, having cereal, and I was not doing this anywhere near my son. I pulled the kitchen door mostly closed. Then I turned and crossed my arms and waited.

"Henry died last night," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"He told me things." He looked at me directly. That was something I had always had to respect about him even when I wanted to hate him for it — he didn't flinch from direct eye contact. He thought you deserved to see his face when he said the hard thing. "He told me everything. The photographs. What he did. How he did it." A pause. "He told me you came to the city to tell me about the baby."

The kitchen door was mostly closed. Through it, faintly, I could hear the small clinking sounds of Eli eating cereal — the way he always dragged the spoon around the edge of the bowl — and Madeline's voice, low, talking to him about something inconsequential.

"Eli has a father," I said. My voice was level. I had decided, somewhere between Cooper's text at midnight and now, what I was going to say. I had rehearsed it. I was ready. "He's mine. He's been mine for three years and he doesn't need anything or anyone disrupting what we've built here."

Adam absorbed this without looking away. "Jules —"

"You made your choice," I said. "You made it before I even knocked on your door. You had signed the papers already. I drove twelve hours to tell you something and you had already decided." I kept my voice very quiet because Eli was on the other side of that door. "I don't say that to punish you. I say it because I need you to understand that when I walked away from your apartment building that night, I walked away completely. I had to. I had someone else to think about."

He stood very still.

"He doesn't know you," I said. "He knows your name because he told it to you himself last night, and that's all he knows. He is happy. He is safe. He is — he is so good, Adam." My voice nearly broke on that. I pressed it flat. "And I will not let anyone come in and unsettle that, not even —" I stopped. "Not even you."

Adam looked at the kitchen door. Just for a second. Something in his face that I couldn't catalogue and didn't want to.

"Does he ask about his father?" His voice was quiet.

I didn't answer that.

"Jules." He looked at me again. "I'm not asking to disrupt anything. I'm not asking for rights or schedules or — I'm not threatening anything. I'm standing in your hallway with nothing. I just—" He stopped. Started again. "I just need you to know that I know. And I'm sorry. I'm so —" He pressed his lips together. "I know that word means nothing. I know there is no version of it that is enough. I just need you to know I know what happened. And what I cost you."

The cereal sounds from the kitchen.

Eli saying something to Madeline. Her laugh.

"If you come near him," I said, "I will get a restraining order. I will take him somewhere you can't find us, and this time I will be smarter about it." I held his gaze. "Do you understand me?"

He nodded. He looked, for just a moment, like the man in the barn loft — not the CEO, not the person Henry had made him into for that terrible stretch of months. Just Adam, stripped down to something quiet and genuine and wrecked.

"I understand," he said.

"Good." I reached for the door. "Goodbye, Adam."

I closed it.

I stood in the entryway for thirty seconds. Then I went to the kitchen.

Eli was on his knees on the chair, leaning over his cereal bowl at an angle that violated several laws of physics. Madeline was pretending to read her book. Neither of them said anything.

I sat down at the table.

Eli looked up. He had milk on his chin. He regarded me with those enormous eyes.

"You okay, Mommy?"

"Yes, baby." I reached over and wiped the milk off his chin with my thumb. "Finish your cereal."

He went back to the bowl. Madeline turned a page she hadn't read.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. A notification.

I pulled it out under the table.

A news alert — a name I recognized. Elena Voss. A byline from a city column. I clicked it.

It was a society item, a photo from a charity event, Elena in a silver dress looking like nothing had ever gone wrong in her life. But the second photo in the carousel stopped me cold — a screengrab, apparently from someone's social media, grainy.

Adam and Elena. His apartment building. Last week.

They were still together.

I put the phone face-down on the table.

"Madeline," I said.

"Yep."

"He's still with her."

A pause. "Okay."

"Okay," I said.

I picked up my coffee. I held it with both hands. I stared at the kitchen wall.

Good. That settled it. That made it simple.

I told myself that for the rest of the day.

I almost believed it by evening.