Chapter 34

• Those weren’t just tears. They were soul-tears. The kind that escapes when pain has been caged up far too long. The kind of grief you only share with someone who’s seen your rawest self—and still stays. She was crying to her mother, pouring every ounce of her pain into words, and I stood there… utterly still. Listening. Not because I meant to. But because my heart couldn’t walk away.
• I heard her say she felt lost, alone, like a child herself—utterly unprepared to raise another. Every word she said pierced something inside me. And I knew then, as I listened from behind that cold, sterile door, that I’d never let her face this alone. Not now. Not ever.
• I took a breath and started to turn away quietly when I heard George call from behind me.