Chapter Six #3
Amelie stared at him as if the world had shifted beneath her feet. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Grant reached for her hand slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t. Her fingers trembled when he wrapped them in his.
“I need you to understand something,” he said.
“If you had told me that night, I would have been scared and shocked. Hell, I probably would have looked like a complete idiot for at least five full minutes.” A faint, broken smile touched her mouth through the tears, and he held onto that tiny sign of hope like a lifeline.
“But I would have chosen you and our babies.”
A sob slipped from her, and Grant couldn’t stop himself from pulling her back into his arms. She went willingly, leaning against him as though she had been holding herself upright for twelve years and had finally run out of strength.
Grant held her tightly, his cheek resting against her hair as grief and love tangled together inside him until he could barely tell where one ended and the other began.
Every protective instinct he had was at war with the ache in his chest. Part of him wanted to continue talking.
But another part wanted to carry her somewhere safe, wrap her in every blanket he could find, and tell her they would figure the rest out later.
But later had already cost them precious time, and Grant knew they couldn’t keep hiding behind silence anymore.
He slowly loosened his hold, though he kept one hand over hers because letting go completely felt wrong.
“Where did you go?” he asked. “Because I swear to you I looked everywhere and even hired people to help me find you.”
Amelie’s fingers tightened around his, and when she looked up, guilt washed across her face in a way he hated seeing.
“My design teacher helped me,” she said softly.
“She knew something was wrong even though I didn’t tell her everything at first. She had connections in Norway and arranged for me to apprentice under Magnus DuPont.
He was one of the biggest names in Scandinavian jewelry design at the time.
I stayed with my teacher until I left. She had a brother who knew people, and they helped me change my last name.
” She drew in an unsteady breath, the snow and Christmas lights reflecting in her tear-filled eyes.
“Magnus gave me a job, a place to learn, and eventually a new last name. When I started designing professionally, I used DuPont because it became like family to me. Later, when Lumi became its own brand, it was easier to disappear behind that name.”
Grant listened without interrupting, even when it hurt to hear everything.
He understood her fear and the need to survive.
He understood making the only decision that felt available when every other option seemed impossible.
What hurt was knowing she had gone through all of that alone while carrying his children.
“After the boys were born,” she continued, her voice growing thinner, “I tried to contact you. I called the number I had, but it no longer worked. I thought maybe you had changed it because you didn’t want me reaching you.”
Grant shook his head immediately. “No. Like I said, my number was compromised during a deployment. Everything got changed.”
Her lips parted as if that one explanation knocked loose another piece of the past. “I didn’t know that.
” She looked away toward the village, her expression crumbling beneath the weight of everything they had both misunderstood.
“I sent a letter too. I sent it to your parents’ house because I didn’t know where else to send it.
I thought maybe they’d get them to you.” A tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it away quickly, almost angrily.
“When I never heard back, I thought that was my answer.”
Grant closed his eyes. “My parents moved about a year and a half after my brother’s wedding. I never got it. And I know for a fact that if my parents had received it, they would have given it to me,” he said.
“Part of me always wondered if something went wrong. If maybe you never got it. Back then, I was alone with two newborns, exhausted and terrified, and I was trying to build a life in a country that wasn’t mine. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Grant wanted to say a hundred things. That he would have come. That he would have crossed oceans. That no mission, no deployment, no career in the world would have kept him from her and their boys if he had known.
But she had already heard him say that, and this time he thought maybe she needed him to hear her instead.
So, he stayed quiet while she told him how scared she had been, how her teacher had helped when she could, how Magnus had given her a chance when she had no idea how she was going to raise one baby, let alone two.
She told him about the long nights when both boys cried at the same time, and she cried right along with them.
She told him about learning to design with one baby strapped to her chest and the other asleep beside her desk.
She told him about building Lumi piece by piece, client by client, while raising Tyler and Trevor in a world that slowly became theirs.
And then her voice softened in a way that nearly undid him.
“I swear to you that I never kept you a secret from them,” she said.
“I need you to know that. I always talked about you. I told them you were brave, stubborn, and funny. I told them you loved football and that you were the reason I knew what a false start was. I told them you were a Navy SEAL. I told them that if they ever wanted to contact you, I would never stop them.”
A fragile smile touched her mouth. “I still do. They’ve asked more questions as they’ve gotten older, and I’ve answered what I could. I never wanted them to hate you.”
Grant’s throat tightened until breathing felt difficult. The boys had told him pieces of that, but hearing it from her was different.
She could have painted him as the villain. She could have let their sons grow up believing he had abandoned them. Instead, she had given them the best of him even while believing he might not have wanted the life she had built.
“They have so much of you in them,” she continued, her smile growing through the tears.
“Tyler has your fearless streak. He charges at life like consequences are something that happens to other people. Trevor watches everything. He sees things people don’t expect him to see, and half the time he knows what I’m thinking before I say it.
They both have your eyes, your stubbornness, your love of football, and unfortunately, your ability to argue like attorneys when they want something badly enough. ”
Despite the emotion pressing against his chest, Grant laughed. “I noticed that last part.”
He brushed his thumb over her knuckles.
“Mel, I need you to understand that the moment they told me that I was their dad, I fell in love with them. There wasn’t a second of doubt.
They were standing there looking nervous, and all I could think was that I had two sons.
Twin boys I didn’t know existed. Two boys who had my eyes and your heart and somehow found me in a ski lodge in Switzerland, like fate had finally gotten tired of waiting for us to figure it out. ”
“I am sad,” he admitted, because lying would help neither of them.
“I’m sad I missed their first steps. Their first words.
Their first birthdays. I’m sad I wasn’t there when they were sick or scared or needed someone to teach them how to throw a football.
” His voice thickened, and he had to pause before continuing.
“But hearing what happened, I understand why you did what you did. I hate it. God, I hate every piece of it. I hate that you were alone. I hate that my words hurt you. I hate that your letter never reached me. But I’m not angry at you. ”