Todos los capítulos de I LEFT WHEN HIS EX CAME BACK WITH HIS SON: Capítulo 161 - Capítulo 170

CALEB Seven years, and I still remember the exact color of the sky the day she saved me. I was nothing then. A boy from the wrong side of town who'd wandered too close to Jameson and his friends, who'd decided I was worth an afternoon of their fists just because I existed in a place they thought belonged to them. I was ready for it. I'd learned, by then, that being ready was the only defense a boy like me was allowed. Then she appeared, Thalia Wentworth, granddaughter of the richest family in town, screaming something about dogs she didn't even own, and they ran like she actually meant it. I watched them go and thought, for the first time in my life, that maybe the world wasn't entirely rigged against people like me. I followed her after that. Not the way it sounds, I found reasons to be near her, to walk the same streets at the same hours, to be useful in the small ways a boy with nothing could be useful. I was nice to her because I meant it, and for fourteen days I let myself be

BRANDONThe door shut behind him, and I stood there a second longer than I meant to, replaying every second of it.I care about her.He'd said it too smooth. Like a line he'd practiced saying out loud until it stopped sounding like a lie even to himself.And underneath all of it, that scent, still clinging faintly to his collar when he'd leaned in to shake my hand on the way out. He smelled like a man who'd been close enough, recently enough, that it hadn't had time to fade.There'd been something else too, something I'd almost let slide past me while I was too busy focusing on the scent. When he'd turned to leave George's office, bending slightly to adjust his shoe, I'd caught a flash of it under his shoes. Cartoonish. A bandaid with some ridiculous pattern printed across it, the kind you'd expect on a child, not on a grown man.I hadn't thought much of it in the moment. Now it sat in my chest like a second confirmation, right alongside the scent, refusing to let me talk myself out

CHAPTER 166BRANDONWe were still a few cars back when Caleb's brake lights flared unevenly, his car drifting toward the shoulder before rolling to a stop, hazards blinking on a moment later."Something's wrong with his car," Reyes said, as I eased off the gas.I watched Caleb get out, circle to the front, lift the hood. Smoke, faint but visible, curling up into the streetlight."I’m pulling back," I said. "If he sees us sitting here, this is over."I turned down a side street and parked far enough away that the angle blocked our view of Caleb entirely. Which meant we'd also lost him. If he called someone, got a ride, walked off in some direction we couldn't predict, we'd have nothing.I sat there for a second, jaw tight, refusing to let this be the moment everything fell apart.Then it hit me.The PI. The same one I'd hired months ago to dig into Clara, back before any of this started, before Thalia vanished and my entire world narrowed down to this one search. I hadn't even closed t

THALIAThe doctor kept talking, but none of it landed properly.Words floated past me, scattered pieces I couldn't string together into anything that made sense. Exhausted. Stress levels through the roof. The fall was hard, harder than it should have been for a healthy man. Something about his head hitting a rock on the way down. My mind refused to hold onto any of it beyond the basic shape of what it meant: Brandon was hurt, and he was somewhere behind those doors I couldn't follow him through."Mrs. Langford?"I blinked, realizing the doctor had said something and was waiting for a response."I'm sorry, I didn't—" My voice cracked. "Can you say that again?"He softened, the way people do when they're used to delivering bad news gently. "His body had been running on empty for days. No proper sleep, barely any food, and then the physical shock of everything that happened tonight on top of it. When he collapsed, he hit his head against a rock on the way down, and that combined with ev

THALIAI stepped into the room, and the sight in front of me nearly knocked the breath out of me.He looked pale, almost white, his skin so drained of colour that for one horrible second I thought the worst had already happened. It was only the steady, stubborn beeping of the monitor beside him that kept me standing instead of collapsing right there in the doorway.I crossed the room slowly and sat down in the chair beside his bed, reaching for his hand. It felt cooler than I expected, heavier somehow, like even his hand had forgotten how to hold onto anything."Thank you," I whispered, squeezing gently. "Thank you for saving me, Brandon."My throat tightened around the words, and for a moment I just sat there, staring at his still face, waiting for something, anything, some small twitch to prove he could hear me.Nothing came."It's time to wake up now," I said, my voice cracking despite my best effort to keep it steady. "Let me thank you properly. Let me actually see your eyes when