Chapter 78 Back in the Country
Elena's POV
Eight months later, my life fit into the quiet rhythm of breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
That was how I measured time now—not by board meetings or hostile emails or Damian’s moods, but by the soft rise and fall of my daughter’s chest against mine.
She slept curled into me, warm and impossibly small, her tiny fist wrapped around my finger like she had decided—without consulting anyone—that I was hers forever.
I hadn’t named her yet.
I told people I was taking my time. That I wanted to feel her before naming her. The truth was simpler and messier: naming her would make everything final. Permanent. And permanence still scared me.
Outside the window, the city I’d escaped to glowed with late-afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t home—not really—but it had been a refuge. A place where nobody knew my past, my scandals, a man who had married someone else while I carried his child.
A place where I learned how to disappear.
Brian had made sure I never disappeared completely.
He sat across the room now, balancing a bottle on his knee while scrolling through his phone, his movements careful, practiced. He’d been like this from the beginning—steady, unflinching, present. The kind of presence that didn’t ask questions when I wasn’t ready to answer them.
“You’re staring,” he said without looking up.
“I’m memorizing her,” I replied softly.
He smiled. “You’ve got time.”
Missy appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “She’s right,” she said. “But also—she’s going to change. Take pictures.”
Missy had been an unexpected miracle. Brian’s girlfriend, yes—but more than that, she’d slipped into my life like a sister I never knew I needed. She loved my baby with a quiet ferocity that didn’t threaten me or overstep. She helped without making it feel like charity.
She crouched beside me now, brushing a finger against my daughter’s cheek. “She looks like you,” she said. “The eyes.”
I swallowed.
Because everyone said that.
No one ever said she looked like him.
I didn’t know if that was kindness or coincidence.
Rachael had given birth too.
I knew because Brian had told me—hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. A girl. Healthy. Born into a marriage that looked perfect from the outside.
Damian still didn’t know.
He didn't know I've had the baby already—he didn’t even know my baby at all.
He didn’t know her name.
Didn’t know her face.
Didn’t know whether she cried loudly or slept easily or liked being held.
Sometimes, late at night, that knowledge pressed on my chest until I couldn’t breathe.
Other nights, it felt like justice.
I didn’t let myself linger there.
Because eight months had taught me something vital: survival required forward motion. You couldn’t heal by staring backward.
So when I decided it was time to go home, it wasn’t impulsive.
It was deliberate.
Calculated.
Final.
I didn’t return to the apartment.
That place held too many ghosts—his footsteps, Rachael’s laughter echoing through walls, the night everything cracked beyond repair. Instead, I bought a house.
Quiet.
Private.
Large enough for just me and my daughter.
Far enough from Damian that I wouldn’t accidentally run into him at a café or an elevator or a boardroom and feel my chest split open all over again.
If not for work, I didn’t want him in my life.
So I removed myself.
Legally. Completely.
I sent my lawyer.
Documents. Access codes. Transfer of authority.
I stepped away from the company we built together like it had never been my spine, my bloodstream, my entire identity.
Damian tried to reach me.
At first, it was emails. Polite. Professional. Concerned.
Then calls.
Then messages that grew shorter. Sharper.
He showed up at offices I no longer worked in. Demanded answers my lawyer wasn’t authorized to give.
He knew me well enough to understand what it meant.
My business was my life.
For me to withdraw meant I was done.
And that terrified him.
But terror didn’t stop him from sleeping beside another woman.
Didn’t stop him from wearing a wedding ring.
Didn’t stop him from believing—still—that the child I carried belonged to someone else.
I kept my silence.
Not because I was cruel.
Because I was tired.
The flight home was quiet.
My daughter slept through most of it, tucked against my chest, her breath warm and steady. I watched clouds pass beneath us and wondered how many miles it took to sever a life from another completely.
When we landed, the air felt heavier. Familiar. Like memory.
I didn’t announce my return.
No press.
No board meetings.
No reunion dinners.
Just keys turning in a lock that belonged to me.
The house smelled new. Clean. Unclaimed.
I walked through each room slowly, my daughter cradled against my shoulder, and I whispered, “This is ours.”
For the first time in months, I believed it.
Things were going well, I had completely sworn off love and men, until.....