CHAPTER 64
Brynn
Messini, Greece
Six Months Gone, Present Day
The sun hadn’t dipped yet, but the light had started changing, softer and longer, gold at the edges.
The breeze moved through the open windows, fluttering the hem of my dress against my legs as I typed at the small table by the front window.
One tab held a half-finished article. The other, a draft invoice I had opened three times and still not sent because apparently I had survived international surveillance, a fake identity, and six months of pregnancy, but billing an editor remained my breaking point.
The article was supposed to be about summer markets and hand-pressed fig paste.
I had no memory of offering to write it.
But the editor kept asking, and I needed the deposit to hit, so there I was, trying to make fig paste sound like a spiritual experience while my daughter pressed one small foot into the side of my stomach.
I rubbed the spot through my dress.
“You’re not helping.”
She kicked again.
Apparently, criticism was hereditary.
I’d left dinner early, partly because my back hurt, partly because I needed quiet. Marina and Leo had understood. They always did. Leo had offered to walk me back. I said no. Marina said she’d send bread anyway. That was their whole family philosophy, I think.
Respect boundaries.
Send carbohydrates.
It reminded me of Jameson, and a pang went through my chest.
I paused mid-sentence and reached for my tea.
Cold.
Of course.
The cottage was quiet except for the soft hum of insects outside and the occasional scrape of metal from the back wall.
Leo had come by twenty minutes earlier with a paper-wrapped loaf from Marina and noticed one of the shutters hanging crooked.
He was still outside fixing it because apparently no object in his vicinity was allowed to remain mildly defective.
I deleted a sentence about figs having a “sunlit complexity,” because no one deserved that, and started again.
Then came the knock.
Soft and distinct. A polite rhythm.
My fingers stilled over the keyboard.
For a second, I didn’t move.
No one here knocked.
Not during the day. Marina called my name as she came through the door. The village women announced themselves from the path, usually while carrying something they had already decided I needed. Even Leo had walked around to the back of the cottage instead of disturbing me when he arrived.
The sound should’ve been harmless.
Instead, every instinct I had spent six months trying to quiet came awake.
My pulse kicked once.
My gaze flicked to the drawer beside the table where I kept the pistol.
Then again.
I stood slowly, smoothing the front of my sundress as I crossed the room. Soft green cotton. Light against my skin. The fabric skimmed the curve of my stomach instead of hiding it.
Marina had said it made me look less tired, which was either kind or deeply optimistic.
At the door, I hesitated.
One breath.
Then I opened it.
The air changed.
Jameson stood on the other side.
For a second, my brain refused to give me the whole image.
It gave me pieces.
The hard line of his jaw.
The black button-down fit close across his shoulders, the sleeves rolled to his elbows and exposing the strong lines of his forearms.
A scar near his temple that hadn’t been there before.
His hands hanging at his sides like he didn’t trust them.
His eyes.
God.
His eyes locked on mine and didn’t move.
My breath caught so hard it hurt.
He looked thinner. Harder. Wrecked in a way that hadn’t softened him so much as honed everything that remained. His jaw was set so tight I saw the hinge twitch.
He looked like he had been shot and was still waiting to feel it.
A tear slipped down my cheek before I made a sound.
My body recognized him before the rest of me could figure out how to survive it.
“Jameson,” I whispered.
His face moved.
Barely.
Like hearing his name in my voice had cracked something under the surface.
I opened my mouth again.
To say what, I had no idea.
You’re alive.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t know.
I love you.
There’s something you need to know.
All of it crowded my throat at once.
A scrape of metal sounded from behind the cottage.
Jameson’s gaze shifted toward the sound.
Leo stepped around the corner with a screwdriver in one hand and the loose shutter hinge in the other. He slowed when he saw the stranger at my door, then looked at me.
Concern tightened Leo’s face.
Jameson noticed.
His attention returned to me, more focused, and dropped.
Not far.
Only to the bump I hadn’t realized I was cradling.
He stopped breathing.
I watched the realization hit him.
Not the impossible, miraculous understanding I had imagined in every version of this moment I was stupid enough to let myself picture.
Something worse.
Leo at my cottage.
Me carrying a child.
A life that appeared complete without him.
Hurt and betrayal moved across his face before I could stop either one.
He saw a life I had built without him and a child he had no reason to believe was his.
He stepped back.
Once.
Then again.
“Jameson,” I said quickly, reaching out.
My left hand lifted before I thought better of it.
His eyes dropped to the gesture and froze.
The ring caught the light.
His ring.
On my finger.
His whole face cracked.
Not softened.
Cracked.
Confusion moved through him like pain. Layered. Too much information with no shape to hold it.
“Please,” I said, my voice breaking. “Just give me one minute.”
He didn’t answer.
His eyes cut to Leo, then to the cottage, my stomach, the ring, and back to me.
All the wrong pieces arranged themselves into the worst possible story.
I crossed to Leo before Jameson could decide what any of them meant.
“Can you finish the shutter tomorrow?” I asked. “Please.”
Leo studied my face, then looked past me at Jameson.
Hesitation was clear in his expression, but he nodded. “Of course.”
I turned back.
Jameson was already heading down the path.
“Jameson, stop!”
His shoulders locked.
For one second, he kept moving.
Then he stopped with visible reluctance, one hand curling at his side as if staying required more restraint than leaving.
I stepped in front of him and grabbed his face with both hands.
Firm.
Not gentle.
His skin was warm beneath my palms. Stubble rough against my fingers.
Real.
Real enough that my knees threatened to give.
I pulled his gaze back to mine.
His eyes burned from the touch. From what he thought I had done. From everything.
“No,” I said. “Leo is a friend.”
His jaw flexed beneath my hand.
“He helped me. That’s all.”
Jameson’s gaze tried to pull toward him again.
I held his face tighter.
“Look at me.”
He did.
Barely, but he did.
I caught his hand before he could pull farther away and pressed it against the curve of my stomach.
He went rigid.
“This baby isn’t Leo’s.”
Something flickered across his face, too fast and too fragile to name.
His palm stayed beneath mine, warm and motionless through the thin fabric of my dress.
I swallowed against the sob rising in my throat.
“She’s yours.”
The world went silent.
Even the insects seemed to stop.
He stared at me, then at the curve beneath my dress, then back at me again, like the words had reached him but the meaning lagged behind, too enormous to process all at once.
“Mine?” His voice was thin.
Raw.
Disbelieving in a way that broke me because it sounded like hope was the cruelest thing anyone had ever offered him.
I nodded.
Tears slid down my face, and this time I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“She’s ours.”
His face changed.
Not all at once.
Jameson didn’t break like other people. He did it in pieces.
The jaw first, loosening by a fraction.
Then the breath.
Then the eyes.
Something terrible went out of them, and something worse came in.
Grief.
Wonder.
Hurt so deep it had nowhere to go.
He stared at my stomach like it was a live wire, a miracle, and a wound.
He eased his hand from beneath mine and lifted it toward his face. He wiped beneath one eye with the side of his thumb, the motion quick and almost impatient.
Then his gaze dropped again.
His hand hovered between us.
He looked at me.
Permission.
Even now.
Even shattered.
My chest caved. “Yes,” I whispered.
His palm settled back against the side of my stomach.
The second it touched me, she kicked.
A quick, firm push directly beneath his hand.
Jameson stopped breathing.
I watched him feel it.
His fingers spread over the curve as if he could hold the movement there. His mouth parted, but no sound came out.
“She does that when she thinks I’m ignoring her,” I said, because apparently I couldn’t stop being me even in the middle of emotional ruin.
A sound left him, caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
His mouth trembled once.
He looked away like he could hide it.
He couldn’t.
Not from me.
Not anymore.
I kept one hand against his face because if I let go, I was afraid he would vanish. Or I would. Or the whole impossible moment would split open and leave us standing in different worlds again.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
His eyes came back to mine.
“I swear to God, Jameson, I didn’t know if you were alive. Whitaker showed me the feed. I saw them shoot you. I saw you go down, and I ran because he said if I stayed, they’d finish it.”
His face hardened at Whitaker’s name, but he didn’t pull away. His palm remained against our daughter.
“I just had to hope you made it out.”
His eyes flashed with pain, understanding, and something like anger, but not at me.
I leaned into him until my forehead rested against his.
For a second, he stayed rigid.
Then his head lowered the rest of the way.
His breath shook against my mouth. Tears slipped freely down my face, catching between us, and when I opened my eyes, his were wet too.
Jameson didn’t look away.
Neither did I.
He looked down at the place where his hand lay.
“She’s a girl,” I whispered.
His expression shifted again.
Softer wasn’t the right word.
Nothing about him was soft yet.
But the devastation had opened enough room for wonder.
“A girl,” he repeated.
It was almost silent.
But I heard it.
His thumb moved once against the fabric, then slid over my hand and traced the ring.
“I found it,” I said. “In Poland. Before I left.”
His throat moved, and he nodded slowly.
“I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you.”
His eyes closed.
“I left because I did.”
My thumb moved slowly across his cheek, back and forth over the rough line of stubble.
“Come inside.”
His eyes searched mine as if part of him still expected the invitation to vanish, as if he didn’t trust doors anymore.
Finally, he nodded once.
Jameson Mercer, who had built systems that could erase people from the world, looked down at the curve beneath his hand like our daughter had rewritten him with one movement.
Then he stepped toward the cottage.
Toward us.