Chapter 10
My daughter was born six weeks early during a thunderstorm.
Of course she was.
Apparently my children had inherited my flair for terrible timing.
I went into labor at Roman’s estate while he was arguing with a contractor about bulletproof glass.
My water broke across imported Italian marble.
Roman stared at the floor.
I stared at him.
“Say one thing about the marble.”
“I was going to say it improves the room.”
I doubled over.
“Oh, God.”
His face went white.
“Harry!”
Harry ran in.
“What?”
“Baby.”
Harry looked at me.
Then at Roman.
Then back at me.
“Right now?”
“No, Harry,” I snapped. “Next Thursday. I just enjoy screaming.”
Everything after that moved fast.
Hospital.
Monitors.
Hands.
Pain.
Fear.
The old terror returned the moment the doctor said fetal distress.
I stopped being thirty-two years old.
I became the woman beside a lake again.
Helpless.
Too late.
“No.”
Roman stood beside me.
“Claire.”
“No. No, I can’t do this. Owen needed me and I wasn’t there.”
“This isn’t Owen.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You couldn’t know.”
“I should have known.”
Roman took my face gently between his hands.
“Look at me.”
I did.
“You loved him every day he was alive.”
I sobbed.
“He died calling for me.”
“And that is Ethan’s shame. Not yours.”
The words hit somewhere deep.
A nurse told Roman to move.
He stepped away immediately.
Twenty-seven minutes later, my daughter was delivered by emergency surgery.
She weighed four pounds, eleven ounces.
She screamed.
I had never heard anything so beautiful.
I named her Emma Claire.
Not Owen.
She deserved her own name.
Roman visited the neonatal unit at every allowed hour.
He stood beside the incubator wearing a gown that looked absurd across his shoulders.
“She’s tiny,” he whispered.
“She can hear you.”
He bent closer.
“Hello, Emma.”
Her hand opened.
Roman put one finger near her palm.
She grabbed it.
He stopped breathing.
I watched the most feared man I had ever met become absolutely defenseless because five tiny fingers had closed around one of his.
That was when I knew.
Not that he would never hurt me.
Nobody can promise what another human being will become.
Ethan had taught me that.
I knew something more useful.
Roman respected boundaries when there was no audience.
He stayed when grief was ugly.
He could be wrong.
He could be arrogant.
He could terrify half the state.
But when I said no, he stopped.
When I said wait, he waited.
When I said I needed to make my own decision, he made room.
Trust after betrayal did not return like lightning.
May you like
It accumulated.
One small proof at a time.
