10. Declan #2
This is worse. This is wanting so badly it feels like my skeleton is trying to crawl out of my skin. This is years of nothing suddenly replaced by everything, all at once, and she's thirty feet away inside a bookstore with a baby that should have been ours and someone else who gets to—
I can't finish the thought.
Can't stand here anymore either.
My feet move. One step, then another, carrying me down Locust in the opposite direction because I made her a promise and breaking it now would be just one more way I've failed her.
She asked me to let her go and I did.
Seeing her now doesn't change that.
Doesn't change the fact that she built something beautiful without me and I'm still here, hollow and empty, going through motions that stopped mattering years ago.
The next thing I'm aware of is Stellan's front door under my palm. No memory of getting in the car. No memory of driving here. Just this sudden, jarring awareness that I'm standing in my brother's foyer with my hand on wood grain and my chest heaving like I've been running.
The house is quiet. Not empty—Stellan's car was in the driveway, some expensive thing he bought last month because the old expensive thing bored him. But quiet in that way that means he's home and alone and probably working in his office.
My legs don't want to hold me. The walls seem closer than they should be, pressing in, stealing air I can't catch anyway.
"Declan?"
Stellan's voice comes from somewhere above me. The stairs. He's on the stairs, descending with that careful deliberation he uses when he's assessing a threat.
I try to answer but nothing comes out. Just this ragged sound that might be breathing or might be my entire body trying to turn inside out.
"Jesus Christ." His footsteps quicken. Then his hand is on my shoulder, steady and grounding in a way I haven't let him be in years. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
"I saw her." The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. "I saw—"
I can't finish. Can't make my mouth form the rest of the sentence because saying it makes it real and real means I have to actually process what I just witnessed on Locust Street.
Stellan's hand tightens on my shoulder. He steers me toward the living room, patient and firm like I'm a suspect he's walking to an interrogation room. "Sit down before you fall down."
The couch catches me. Expensive leather that feels perfectly worn in. Stellan likes nice things, but he makes them feel like they are part of a real life. Not for show. Not like my empty house.
He sits across from me, forearms on his knees, watching me with those steel-gray eyes that miss nothing. "Are you having a heart attack?"
"I saw Zola." I also might be having a heart attack. "She's here. In Philadelphia. She was on Locust and she—she had a baby, Stellan. A fucking baby strapped to her chest and she was smiling at it like—"
The words jam up somewhere between my lungs and my mouth. I press my palms against my eyes because if I don't, something inside me is going to shatter and I don't know if I'll survive it.
"I know."
My hands drop. "What?"
Stellan's face gives nothing away. Never does. But there's something in his posture, the set of his shoulders, that tells me this isn't news to him. "I know she's in Philadelphia. I know about the baby. I know about the bookstore."
The world tilts sideways. "How—how long have you—"
"I always kept tabs on her. I just got a bit more involved since she came back." He leans back, fingers steepled in front of him like he's considering some business problem instead of discussing the woman who destroyed me. "Which was a year ago. Give or take."
A year.
An entire year Zola's been here and Stellan knew and said nothing.
"You told me to let her go." My voice sounds distant, disconnected from my body. "You said I couldn't force her to be with me. You made me promise not to look for her."
"I did." No apology in his tone. Just flat acknowledgment. "Because that's what she asked for. It was better for both of you."
"But you didn't."
Something flickers across his face. Might be guilt. Might be nothing. "I told you to let her go. I never said I would."
"Why?" The question comes out raw. "Why would you—"
"Because somebody had to make sure she was safe.
" Stellan's jaw tightens. "She means the world to you, and I couldn't let something happen to her.
And you couldn't watch over her." He shakes his head.
"You were barely functioning. You shut down after she left.
Completely shut down. Stopped eating unless I forced you.
Stopped sleeping. You just—disappeared inside yourself and let Uncle Vittorio run your entire life because you didn't have anything left worth protecting. "
I want to argue but I can't because he's right. I did all of that. Became a ghost wearing my own skin.
"I thought if I let you know she was okay, it would be worse," he continues. "You'd want details. You'd want to find her. And she asked you not to, so I kept it to myself and just—watched. Made sure nobody fucked with her. Made sure she was safe."
"The baby." I force the words out even though they taste like acid. "Whose—who did she—"
"Not hers." Stellan's expression shifts into something almost gentle. Almost. "Well, hers now. But not biologically. Nia's."
The name hits me like a bullet. "Nia?"
"She died two weeks ago. Cancer." He says it clinically, matter-of-fact.
But all I can think about is how much it must have devastated Zola, and I wasn't even there.
"Left Zola the baby—Maeve, her name is Maeve—and the bookstore Nia opened years back.
Zola moved back here when Nia got sick. Before that she was in New York. "
New York. Eight years in New York. Two hours away and I never knew.
"Nia's dead." I can't process it. Can't fit this information into my brain because Nia was always there, always Zola's person, the one constant she had besides me. "And Zola has her baby."
"Yeah." Stellan watches me carefully, like I might detonate. Maybe I will. "She's been raising her alone. Running the bookstore. Quit her job at The Cracked Cask, which is where she's been for the last year."
The details pile up, each one another reminder of how much of her life I've missed. How much she built without me.
"Have you talked to her? You've been watching her. You must have—"
"I didn't talk to her." He cuts me off, sharp. "But…I did talk to Nia. Before she died. When I knew Zola was back in Philly, I thought it was best to find out where her head was at."
My breath catches. "What did she tell you?"
Stellan's quiet for a long moment. Then: "That Zola didn't leave because she stopped loving you."
The words punch straight through whatever defenses I have left.
"She left because she thought she was destroying your life.
" His voice stays even, clinical. "She couldn't have kids.
Uncle wanted you to marry someone else. She thought staying meant forcing you to give up everything—the family, your future, all of it.
Thought she was being selfish by holding on when you deserved better. "
"That's not—" I can't breathe. Can't make my lungs work. "She wrote me a letter. She said we wanted different things. That we were never right for each other."
"She lied." Stellan says it like it's obvious. Like I should have known. "She lied because she thought that's what you needed to hear to actually let her go. She thought if she told you the truth—that she was leaving to protect you—you'd never stop trying to find her."
The apartment walls feel very close. Everything feels close.
The whole world shrinking down to this one terrible truth: Zola left because she loved me.
Left because she thought I deserved something better than what she could give me.
Spent years thinking she'd done the right thing while I bled out slowly thinking she didn't want me anymore.