Chapter 280 Fill something again

Chapter 280 Fill something again
Fabian went still beside me, his gaze still fixed forward, out over the dark water. He set his phone down slowly and let his head fall back against the glass door behind us, saying nothing, asking nothing of me. I was grateful for that more than I could have explained.

“I want to get better,” I continued, my voice beginning to shake apart. “I want to feel better. But I don’t know how, Fabian. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is the child we would have had. You and me. I see Nicolai taking them from me, and I get angry all over again. I hate myself for it. I want to punish myself for it. But more than anything, I want to go back and change things. I should have run the second I saw him with that gun. I shouldn’t have been so delusional, thinking I could actually beat him. I killed him — so what? He killed me first. He killed us first. And right when I thought I could finally start over, he found one more thing to take from me.” 

My voice broke further, tears spilling faster now. “I shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in my own head that I missed what my body was trying to tell me. I didn’t—” I shook my head, unable to finish the thought cleanly. “I didn’t even know I was carrying your child, Fabian. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

I broke apart completely after that, sobbing, shaking, the ache tearing through every part of me at once. Fabian said nothing. He simply pulled me into his arms and let me cling to him like my life depended on it, and I clung back just as hard, wondering, not for the first time, how he could possibly still want me after everything I’d cost him.

I cried until there was nothing left in me to cry with. Through all of it, Fabian never once told me it wasn’t my fault, not the way he had earlier through that bathroom door. He seemed to understand, somehow, that nothing he said tonight would hold against the weight of what I was feeling, that this was something I would eventually have to arrive at myself, in my own time, on my own terms.

By the time the sobbing finally slowed, my body kept spasming in aftershocks, small and involuntary, and I wiped uselessly at my eyes and nose with the back of my hand. 

Fabian cradled my face between his palms, staring down at me with a sorrow so deep it nearly undid me all over again, but underneath it, something else lingered too, something that startled me. Pride.

I blinked at him, confused.

“You did it,” he murmured softly.
I didn’t understand what he meant, and I was too exhausted to hide the confusion on my face. “I am so proud of you, little fairy,” he said, his voice thick with feeling. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” He pulled me into another hug, tighter this time, pressing soft kisses along my hairline and cheeks, and I held onto him too, relieved beyond words to feel myself finally returning to my own body after everything.

When he finally pulled back, he reached into his pocket and produced a small business card, holding it out for me to see. I glanced at it, uncomprehending, as he spoke.

“Over the past week, I’ve been seeing a 
therapist.”
My eyes went wide. He only grinned at my reaction, unsurprised. “Yeah. I didn’t want to keep carrying my father’s ghosts around like they were mine to inherit, baby. I refuse to become him — not for one single second. And I can’t be the man you and Lila deserve if I’m still dragging old wounds around behind me, pretending they’ve healed just because enough time’s passed. So I started going. For you. For her. For the version of myself I actually want to be standing next to you when we’re old and gray and none of this matters anymore.”

I stared at him, stunned. He’d gone to therapy. For me. For us.
“I think you should talk to someone too,” he continued gently, before I could fully process the first revelation. “Not in place of me. Alongside me.”

“I talk to you,” I said, my voice still raw.

He shook his head, a soft, knowing smile pulling at his mouth. “I don’t count, baby. Not for this. You need someone whose only job is to sit with you and help you untangle everything you’ve survived, without loving you so much it colors every word they say to you. Someone who isn’t afraid of upsetting you, or making you cry, because that’s literally what they’re trained for. I love you too much to be objective about any of this. You need someone who can be.”

I sat with that for a long moment, something in me shifting slowly into place.

I had survived so much in my life already, more than most people could carry in three lifetimes, let alone one. I’d been abused as a child, then run away with nothing and no one to my name. I’d raised Lila while barely more than a child myself, scraping together whatever work I could find, some of it far too dangerous for a girl my age to have touched. I’d been nearly sold to the highest bidder like inventory. Nearly shot. Kidnapped and dressed up and forced to smile prettily while someone decided my worth. I’d been made to watch the one man I loved live an entire life hating me, engineered cruelty dressed up as fate. 

And now this, stabbed, pregnant without knowing it, and then not pregnant at all, and somewhere in the middle of all that horror, I had taken a life for the first time with my own two hands.