It felt open.
Like room for whatever came next.
I pressed both hands over my belly.
“You’re going to know him,” I whispered to our child.
“Maybe not the way I wanted. But you’ll know who your father was.”
Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the windows.
I smiled through tears.
“And you will never grow up believing love has to be earned before you’re allowed to receive it.”
I looked toward the empty chair across from me.
For so long, people had assumed Russell rescued me because he was wealthy.
Maybe, in some ways, he did rescue me.
But not with his fortune.
He rescued the part of me that had forgotten what it felt like to be seen.
And in the end, that was exactly what he made sure I received.
Not simply his wealth.
Not simply his name.
But the certainty that someone had known every complicated truth about me—the frightened waitress, the practical woman who married for security, the wife who unexpectedly fell deeply in love—and had chosen me anyway.
