I'm rocking Maeve against my chest when the door chimes again.
Declan walks in, and I immediately feel sick.
He's smiling—this soft, genuine expression that would have melted me yesterday. Now it just makes me want to scream.
"Hey." He starts toward the counter. "Sorry I didn't make it back this morning. There was something I had to?—"
"Your wife came by."
He stops cold. The smile vanishes.
"Zola—"
"Yourwife, Declan." My voice shakes with fury. "The one you somehow forgot to mention. She was very informative. Wanted to make sure I understood the situation."
"It's not what you think." He takes a step closer, hands raised like he's approaching something dangerous. "Just let me explain?—"
"I don't want to hear it." But I can't move, can't run, because Maeve's in my arms and she's looking between us with confused eyes like she knows something's wrong.
"I need you to listen." His voice is careful, measured. "Bianca and I—it's not a real marriage. I agreed to marry her when my uncle was on his deathbed because he asked me to, but it doesn't mean anything. We don't—I've never?—"
"Stop." I can't breathe. Can't process what he's saying through the roaring in my ears. "Just stop."
"I need you to understand." He's pleading now, desperation creeping into his tone. "The entire time I thought you didn't want me. I thought you'd moved on, built a life without me. I did what my uncle asked because I didn't care anymore about anything, because nothing mattered if I couldn't have you. But it's not real, Zola. None of it is real except what I feel for you."
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him so badly it physically hurts. But I spent so long protecting myself from this exact feeling, and now here I am anyway—standing in the wreckage of something I should never have let happen.
"You're married," I repeat, because it's the only fact that matters. "You have a wife."
"On paper. That's all."
Except she's pregnant.I can't bring myself to say it, can't acknowledge the cruel irony of it—that he married someone whocan give him exactly what I can't. That I left to spare him this burden, and he found it anyway with someone else.
He steps closer. "Zola, it's?—"
"I was so close." My voice breaks. "So close to actually listening to you. To believing we could have a chance. I thought—" I have to stop, have to breathe through the pain crushing my chest. "I thought I wouldn't be ruining your life. But evidently I was wrong."
"You're not ruining anything." He's moving toward me now, hands outstretched. "Zola, please, just listen?—"
"Get out."
"No. Not until you hear me?—"
"GET OUT!" The scream tears out of me, raw and broken. Maeve startles in my arms, her face crumpling, and then she's wailing—this high, terrified sound that cuts straight through me.
Declan stops, stricken. He's looking at Maeve like leaving her is physically painful, like walking away from us both might actually kill him.
But he does it anyway.
He turns and walks out, the door chiming cheerfully behind him, and I'm left standing there with a screaming baby and a shattered heart and the crushing realization that I was right when I left.
I was always going to ruin his life. And he was always going to break my heart.
Maeve won't stop crying.
I try everything—bouncing her, singing to her, offering her bottle even though she just ate. Nothing works. She's worked herself into hysterics, her face red and tear-streaked, and I can't calm her down because I can't calm myself down.
My hands shake as I fumble for my phone. I scroll through contacts with blurred vision until I find Naomi's name.
