Then he noticed the car.
The Bentley.
The private driver.
The small gold wedding band on my finger.
His eyes hardened, but this time pain lived beneath it.
“You remarried.”
“Yes.”
The word cut him deeper than I expected.
“To whom?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“If those boys are mine, everything about this is my business.”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice.
“They are not a business acquisition, Blake. They are children.”
His face twitched.
For a second, I saw the old Blake—the man who had once held my hand beneath a hospital blanket while we waited for fertility results, whispering, “One day, Emma. One day we’ll have a house full of noise.”
We did.
He just hadn’t been there to hear it.
“Boys,” I said softly, “get in the car with Daniel. I’ll be right there.”
Noah didn’t move.
“Who is he?” he asked.
Blake stared at him.
The question seemed to pierce him more than anything I had said.
I forced myself to breathe.
“He’s someone I used to know.”
Noah studied Blake, then looked back at me. “He made you sad.”
Children see what adults try to hide.
I kissed his forehead. “Only for a minute.”
Lucas and Eli climbed into the car first. Noah hesitated, then followed, still watching Blake through the tinted window.
When the door shut, Blake and I stood alone beside the curb.
For five years, I had imagined this moment in a hundred different ways.
In some versions, I yelled.
In others, he begged.
In the worst ones, he laughed and denied them.
But I had never imagined his silence.
I had never imagined him looking so destroyed.
“Yes,” I said finally. “They’re yours.”
