Eventually she says my name.
“Bron.”
I shake my head gently.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Try to fix it.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“It’s fine,” I say softly.
The word feels strange coming out of my mouth.
But it’s the closest thing to the truth I have right now.
I turn toward the end of the corridor.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Anywhere that isn’t here.”
“Bron—”
I pause.
Then glance back over my shoulder.
“Take care of him,” I say quietly.
Her brow furrows.
“I already am.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “I noticed.”
Then I start walking.
Because suddenly the walls of the compound feel too small to contain the realization that somewhere in this building there’s a two-year-old kid with my eyes who has spent his entire life not knowing who his father is.
And the man he might eventually meet?
That man has a lot of thinking to do about whether he deserves the title.
CHAPTER 21
TILDA
Bron does not avoid me.
That would almost be easier to deal with.
Avoidance would mean anger, or resentment, or the kind of explosive emotion I spent two years bracing myself for the moment he learned the truth. I would have known how to navigate that. I understand anger. I understand shouting matches and slammed doors and the messy emotional debris that follows two stubborn people colliding headfirst.
What he gives me instead is distance.
