Chapter 109: Hundred and Nine

I was still on the floor when Jacob bent down and snatched the birth certificate from the table. My chest heaved with shallow breaths, the remnants of my sobs still catching in my throat. I was there, crumpled up on the floor, staring up at him.

He wouldn’t look at me. I had nothing to say to him, even though I wanted to say something. But I didn’t have anything, so I waited for him to say it.

But I knew he wouldn’t.

At first, I didn’t understand what he was doing. I thought maybe he was going to look at it, maybe he wanted to put it away, to hide it.

But then he ripped it.

The sound of tearing paper was sharp, violent, final. My head jerked up.

“Jacob!” I scrambled toward him, but he tore it again, and then again, until the pieces fell to the floor, flying around with the little wind coming in from the window.

My vision blurred with tears. “What are you doing?” My voice cracked, part scream, part plea.

He stared at the pieces of paper in his fists, then let them fall to the ground. His jaw was set, his eyes cold and hard in a way I had never seen before. “I don’t accept it,” he said flatly. “I don’t accept him. Declan is not Noah’s father. He never will be.”

My stomach dropped, a sick heaviness settling inside me. “Jacob…” I whispered. I wanted to argue, to scream that this wasn’t something we could erase, that tearing paper didn’t change the truth. But the words tangled in my throat.

Jacob stepped back, dragging a hand down his face. “I won’t let him take Noah. I don’t care what he thinks he knows. He doesn’t matter. He’s not his family. I am.” His voice was sharp, but I heard the desperation hiding underneath.

I pressed my hands to my face, my sobs returning, harder this time. I could still see Declan’s eyes, wet with tears, when he had asked me why I hadn’t told him. His broken voice was echoing in my ears. And now here was Jacob, refusing to even acknowledge what I knew to be true.

I looked down at my shirt and realized it was streaked with blood, not mine, but Declan’s, from where his knuckles had split open against the wall. The sight undid me. I curled forward, clutching the fabric like it was an anchor, and cried until my ribs ached.

Jacob didn’t move to comfort me. He just stood there, breathing hard, staring at the torn pieces scattered like confetti across the floor.

For a long while, there was only silence. My muffled sobs. The faint ticking of the clock on the wall. The weight of everything that had just happened pressing down on us. I think neither of us wanted to acknowledge the other.

Finally, I heard him sigh, the sound heavy and tired. He walked to the cabinet and poured himself a drink, the clink of glass against bottle loud in the silence.

He took a long sip before turning back to me. His eyes softened, but only a little. “Do you have any idea how painful it was, standing there, watching you hold him like that?”

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, my throat raw. “Jacob…”

“You weren’t even looking at me,” he said, his voice cracking. “You weren’t here. You forgot that I existed, that I am anything to you. You were with him. You’ve always been with him.”

“That’s not true,” I said quickly, too quickly.

He shook his head, his laugh bitter. “Don’t lie to me, Willow. Not now. I think you never loved me. Not the way you loved him.”

My chest tightened. “I do love you.”

“No,” Jacob said quietly, almost gently, but with a finality that scared me. He swirled the whiskey in his glass, staring down into it. “You’ll never love me the way you love him. He’s like…” He paused, searching for the words, then gave a humorless smile. “He’s like a shadow over us. A ghost that won’t leave. He haunts everything. Every room we’ve ever been in, he’s there. Every smile you give me, he’s standing in the background. Every time I touch you, Willow, I know, you are thinking about him.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, to tell him he was wrong, but the words dried up on my tongue. Because in the deepest, quietest part of me, I knew he was right. Declan was everywhere. In my memories. In my regrets. In my son’s eyes.

“Jacob…” I whispered, but the sound of his name was hollow.

He finished his drink in one gulp and set the glass down hard on the counter. For a second, I thought he would say something else, that maybe we could salvage something from the wreckage of this night.

Instead, he picked up the glass again, poured himself another drink, and walked to the balcony.

The sliding door opened with a low creak, and the cool night air rushed in. He stepped outside, drink in hand, and leaned against the railing. He didn’t look back at me.

I stayed where I was, alone on the floor, surrounded by torn paper and drops of blood on the floor. My chest ached with sobs that refused to stop, my throat raw, my eyes burning.

The pieces of the birth certificate lay scattered around me like ashes. Proof of a life I had tried to bury, now impossible to deny.

I sat there until I had no tears left, until the silence pressed so heavy I thought it might crush me. Out on the balcony, Jacob stood like a statue, staring out into the night, the faint glow of his drink catching the light.

I walked to my room and got into bed.