Chapter 87

• After hanging up, he began to walk again, his mind a swirling tempest of fears and suspicions. Each step felt heavy, the weight of uncertainty pulling him down. Images of the child, an innocent bystander in this tangled web, swam in his head. What kind of life was Charlotte providing for them? Did she truly have to conceal this aspect of herself from him? What kind of pull had it been for her to keep it a secret, even from someone who had once been her closest confidant? Some he believed she trusted in? Or did walking away really break the trust they had between each other?
• Damien found a bench and sat down, the cold surface grounding him. His thoughts drifted back to Charlotte’s face, the way it had twisted in a mixture of fear and determination when he had confronted her. There had been an urgency behind her eyes, an unspoken promise that she wouldn’t divulge more than necessary. But why? Did she think he wouldn’t understand? Or was she simply protecting herself and her child from a world that had once been volatile and precarious?
• He had never truly considered that being a parent would change someone fundamentally. Was this the same woman who had once shared dreams and visions of different realities with him? In the quiet of the night, surrounded by the soft rustle of leaves, he allowed his mind to wander to what this child might mean for her—perhaps the child was her lifeline, an embodiment of love she had longed for while shackled by the constraints of her past, living in a world he had unknowingly pushed her away from.