Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
Mara
“Is there more?” I ask, hoping—ridiculously—that maybe I had an older sister I never knew about. Someone who came before me. Someone who could explain all of this.
No, that wouldn’t make sense, right? It’d have to be like an Irish twin. Nope. That doesn’t work either because no one could’ve been born on the same day as me unless . . .
This can’t be happening.
Alec doesn’t answer and doesn’t move because he’s been thinking this all along, hasn’t he?
The way the silence coils between us is enough to send cold, bone-deep fear slicing through my ribs.
I flip to the next page of the journal. There’s a tiny hospital bracelet taped to the page and a reddish lock of hair that’s too pale. The picture that my mother has in her house is there too. Same blanket, same . . . me.
My lungs seize.
This can’t be happening.
The words on the page swim. They melt, bleeding into one another like watercolors left out in the rain. My vision pulls sideways—tilting, sliding—until the floor might as well be an escalator heading nowhere.
“I—” My throat closes. The syllable gets stuck like gravel. I try to swallow, but it scrapes, dry and useless.
“Alec?”
He’s already moving, but everything is wrong. The air tilts. The room bends. My body goes from solid to disconnected in seconds—fingers prickling, arms foreign. My hands claw inward, curling against my will.
“I can’t—” My voice barely scrapes out. “I can’t breathe.”
My lungs collapse inward, not like they’re tightening—but like they’re missing. Gone. A hollowed space where something vital used to be. I gasp, but nothing catches. The oxygen doesn’t land. Panic makes my spine buzz, lights flash behind my eyes, and I think—I might be dying.
Then, Alec drops in front of me, his palms warm and framing my face, but I barely register him through the fog curling around the edges of my vision.
“Mara,” he says—quiet, steady, real. “Hey. Look at me.”
I try. Fuck, I try. But everything inside me is clawing, screaming. The journal. The bracelet. Her handwriting. My body doesn’t know where to put the grief.
“This isn’t—this can’t—she wasn’t—I wasn’t—”
“Mara, babe,” Alec says again, closer now. “Breathe with me. Come on. Right here.”
“I can’t, I can’t—” My whole-body shakes now. I want to run. I want to disappear. I want this to stop.
“You can. You’re here with me.” His forehead touches mine. His breath brushes across my cheek, calm and slow. “Just try. One breath. In through your nose.”
I drag in air—too fast, too shallow.
“Slower,” he whispers. “You’re okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
His hand finds mine and brings it to his chest. Tapping boom, boom, boom. Twice, thrice in a rhythm that somehow begins to bring me back.
“Feel that?” he murmurs. “That’s me. I’m right here. You’re with me.”
And I believe him.
Even if only for a moment.
He shifts, guiding my hands to his chest—right over his heart. The beat pounds beneath my fingers, not calm, not perfect, but real. Human. Like he’s saying, I’m here. Stay with me. And somehow, it cuts through the spiral, dragging me out of the freefall one heartbeat at a time.
“Let’s try to breathe again,” he whispers.
He counts we inhale and exhale together, even when my breathing stutters a little. Actually, my exhale shivers out of me.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe.”
Tears burn hot at the corners of my eyes. I squeeze them shut because looking at the page again will break me.
“She—she was my . . .” I gasp trying to breathe, to talk, to think, and to . . . “She had me. She left me. She—”
His arms come around me before the sob even leaves my chest. He pulls me into him, tight and careful, like he’s holding something fragile he refuses to let fall.
“I know,” he says, voice thick with something I’m too overwhelmed to name. “I know, baby. I’m here.”
I bury my face against his shoulder, the journal slipping from my fingers as the truth slams into me—a brutal, unforgiving punch to a part of me I didn’t even know was exposed. My whole-body trembles, not just from shock but from every old bruise inside me suddenly knocking against the surface.
“She didn’t want me,” I breathe, barely forming the words. They scrape out of me, fragile and trembling. “She didn’t want me, Alec.”
His arms tighten around me immediately, his own breath stuttering like he’s been hit too. “That’s not true,” he says, firm but soft. “That’s the last thing this means.”
“She hid me,” I choke out. “She kept me a secret—she didn’t tell anyone—she—”
“She protected you.” His hand moves up my back, slow, steadying, tracing the line of my spine like he’s trying to keep me from flying apart. “She was sixteen, Mara. There weren’t many choices back then. And Thomas—”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. I know what happened to Thomas. He died. He died before he even knew I existed, and she . . .
My fist tightens in Alec’s shirt like it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to this world. Like if I let go, I’ll fall straight through the earth.
Because that’s what it feels like.
Like dying.
My lungs seize. Every breath shrinks smaller than the one before it. My limbs go cold, useless, trembling. My body curls inward, as if it’s trying to shield itself from the impact of something already tearing through me.
All the grief I’ve spent my life outrunning slams into me at once—full force, no mercy. There’s no room to think, no place to hide. Just this blinding ache rising in my throat, my ribs caving in like a building under collapse, my vision blurring at the edges like the whole world is tilting.
A soft kiss brushes the side of my head. Barely pressure, barely a touch. But it hits with the force of someone telling me, You don’t have to fall alone. I’ll hold you until you can stand on your own.
I didn’t know how much I needed that until now, someone to be with me—him. Until this moment, while I’m shaking in his arms, where I finally let myself unravel.
“I’m sorry for all your losses,” he murmurs into my hair. “I can’t imagine how this feels, but you’re not alone. Not right now.”
“They could’ve told me,” I whisper. “They should’ve told me.”
Then another memory spikes through me—my father’s voice the night everything cracked.
She ruined everything.
My breath catches, jagged and painful.
“Is this why Dad said that?” My voice breaks. “Is this why he left? Because he found out I wasn’t his?”
“Mara—”
“He left Mom. He remarried. He has children he actually cares about.” Tears burn through my vision again.
“I kept waiting for holidays, wondering if he’d ask me to visit.
Wondering why it felt like I was always .
. . wrong.” A broken sob slips out before I can swallow it.
“That’s what he meant, Alec. He started his new family because I wasn’t really his. ”
Alec pulls me closer like I’m something he refuses to let the world hurt any further. “Tell me what I can do,” he murmurs. “Tell me how to help.”
“You can’t,” I whisper, shaking my head. “No one can.”
But even as I say it, something starts shifting inside me—sadness tightening into something hotter, more volatile. Anger, rising like a flame catching too fast, too strong.
Because they lied to me. They lied to me my whole life. They let me believe this constructed life that wasn’t real.
A spark catches in my lungs. Anger. Betrayal. A clarity that tastes like iron.
“Maybe . . .” My voice trembles, but now for a different reason. “Maybe I should call my mom.”
Alec doesn’t stop me. He just watches me with that quiet intensity that feels like it sees straight through my skin.
My hands are shaking so hard I almost drop the phone, but I dial anyway. Rage is the only thing keeping me upright now.
It rings once.
“Lina?” my mother answers, groggy. “Are you okay? Four in the morning is too early to call. They haven’t moved from Lisbon or Mara would’ve—”
“No. She—Lina—is not okay,” I say. My voice splits down the middle. “And we moved from Lisbon to Seattle two months ago—after the lawyer called with the news that your sister died.”
A gasp. A loud inhale. Then softly she asks, “Mara?”
“You lied to me,” I spit out. “How dare you—how could you not tell me?”
“About?” she asks, in that slippery tone she uses when she’s trying to figure out how much she can avoid admitting.
“Aunt Lina was my—”
“I’m your mother,” she cuts in fast, defensive, trembling. “She had you, yes, but I loved you. I raised you. I—” Her voice breaks. “When did she—when did Lina die?”
“Mom, why?” My voice cracks like something splitting open. “Why did you lie to me my whole life?”
“Thomas was missing,” she says, crying now. “Our parents would’ve . . . God, you don’t know what they would’ve done to her, to you. She was sixteen, Mara. Sixteen. And we didn’t know what would happen if the truth came out.”
I close my eyes as my tears spill again.
“I needed a baby,” she continues softly. “Your father wanted a family. I thought . . . I thought this solved everything.”
“It didn’t,” I whisper. “He never loved me.”
“He did,” she insists. “Until you got sick and he found out you weren’t his.
” Her breath stutters. “He thought I cheated. I couldn’t tell him the truth.
And after he left . . . Lina married Mario so we could pay for your treatments.
The only condition was that she left everything behind.
Her old life. The memories of him and, of course, you. It wasn’t convenient.”
“That’s bullshit,” I snap, voice shaking. “You let her give away her own child.”
“Mara,” she sobs. “She would’ve done anything for you. Anything. You were her little girl even when I forbade her to ever tell you the truth.”
I sink onto the couch, the room tilting around me like it can’t hold all these revelations at once.
On the other side of the line, my mother cries.
Next to me, Alec’s hand finds mine again—not to pull me up, not to hold me together, not to fix anything.
Just to be there.
And somehow, through all the wreckage, that might be the only thing keeping me from breaking entirely.