Chapter 74 74
Kate's POV
He stood up again. Took a step back, then another. Ran his hands over his face, breathing hard.
“Don’t do this to me,” he said, almost pleading. “Don’t take away the chance for me to know.”
“There is no chance,” I answered, my voice steady for the first time. “There isn’t. Go back to your life, Elliot. Go back to Emma. Go back to university. Go back to being young. Because I can’t keep being your Mrs. Ellis anymore. I’m not that woman.”
He went still. The sun hit him full in the face, but he didn’t blink. He just looked at me—long, intense—like he wanted to burn me into his memory one last time.
Then he turned and walked toward the car.
I stayed seated on the bench, hands on my belly, feeling the baby move slowly, as if it knew it had just been saved from something it couldn’t understand. The tears kept falling, but they weren’t from panic anymore. They were relief. And sorrow. And a sadness so deep I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to get up from that bench.
I knew it wasn’t fair to Elliot, that keeping him in this uncertainty was like slowly twisting a knife in his chest, but I couldn’t let that possibility tie him to me forever.
I walked toward him with heavy legs, the belly pulling with every step, while I watched him sitting in the car, head down, hands clenched on the wheel like he wanted to snap it.
I opened the driver’s door and took his right hand—cold and rigid between my fingers.
“Elliot, look at me,” I said softly, the way you’d talk to a lost child. He lifted his gaze, eyes red, full of a contained rage that hurt to see. “You can’t be a father. You’re barely in college, you don’t work, you’re just starting to really live your life, to figure out who you are without anyone’s shadow. I’m twice your age, I’m a married woman, with a marriage I rebuilt through effort. I would never ruin your life by letting you become a father at this age, under these conditions. Imagine: Your mother wouldn’t approve, fighting with your mother, with the whole world, over a child you didn’t plan. It would be a burden that would break you before you could become the man you want to be. A child with me would tie you to a life that isn’t yours, to responsibilities that would steal the years when you should be traveling, laughing with friends, falling in love with someone your age, without complications. In five years, or less, when my wrinkles start showing, when my body changes more with age, when my hips no longer seem sexy to you and the exhaustion of motherhood makes me less attractive, you’ll feel grateful that I made you see the truth now, before it’s too late.” My words came out trembling, like I was explaining a simple lesson to a baby, even though saying them hurt.
Elliot got out of the car in one sharp movement, body tense, and stepped close.
He whispered cold and dark, voice low like a growl dragged from deep in his chest, almost breathless, as if the words hurt coming out:
“That child and you are mine.”
He paused—just the barest second—tilting his head so his breath brushed my ear, hot and controlled.
“It’s not a threat, Katherine. It’s a certainty. I’ll do whatever it takes… whatever it takes… to get you both back. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to accept it, it doesn’t matter how many times you tell me I’m a kid, that I’m too young, that this is impossible. It doesn’t matter if I have to wait years, if I have to destroy your marriage little by little, if I have to become the shadow that follows you every time you leave the house, if I have to learn to be patient until the child is old enough to wonder who his real father is. It doesn’t matter if I have to pretend I accept your decision, that I’m leaving, that I’m disappearing… because I won’t disappear. I’ll be there. Always. At every ultrasound you do alone, on every night Andrew sleeps soundly and you wake up thinking of me, every time you look that child in the eyes and see mine. Because you will see it. You’ll see it in the way he smiles, in how he furrows his brow when something frustrates him, in the way he looks at you when you say no. And then you’ll know. You’ll know it wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a slip. It was me who left something inside you that Andrew will never be able to erase.”
He pulled back just enough for me to see his eyes. There was no wild rage. No tears. Just an icy, absolute calm, as if he’d already calculated every future step and knew that sooner or later we’d end up at the same conclusion.
“And when that day comes,” he continued, voice even lower, almost a whisper that slipped into me like slow poison, “when you can’t keep lying to yourself anymore, when the child looks at me and knows I’m his father without anyone having to say it… then I’ll come back. Not to ask for forgiveness. Not to beg. I’ll come back to claim what has always been mine. You. Him. The family you tried to build with another man.”
He released my hand slowly, like he no longer needed to touch me to keep me there. He took a step back, but his eyes never left mine.
“You don’t have to believe me now. You don’t have to answer. You can go home, lie next to Andrew, stroke your belly and tell yourself everything’s fine. You can block me again, change your number, move to another city if you want. You can do whatever it takes to convince me this ends here.” A tiny, almost sad smile crossed his lips. “But it doesn’t end. Because inside you I already carry something you can’t give back. And that… that isn’t negotiable.”
For the first time since I saw him at my door, I understood I wasn’t running from a stalker. I was running from a man who had already decided I was his. And that the child was too.