Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Leila’s POV
I’d said I would never return to Manhattan—not if I had any say in the matter.
Well, here I was. Back. Against my own will, might I add.
The realtor had called a few days ago to remind me about the pending eviction notice for my father’s house—one I’d tossed into a cabinet weeks ago and completely forgotten about.
The notice was clear: pay up or pack up.
Since I couldn’t afford the former, I was here to do the latter.
To pack up the last pieces of my childhood and say goodbye to the only home I’d ever known.
Before leaving, I’d asked Valerie to stay with Ollie—and reminded her, gently but firmly, not to let Luca into the house or anywhere near Ollie.
I would’ve loved to keep it—my father’s house.
Not because I planned to return, or live here again—but for the memory of it.
I knew it sounded ironic, considering how much I had sworn never to come back to Manhattan.
But some things…some places…they hold too much sentimental weight to give up easily.
Even if they just sit untouched, collecting dust.
This house used to echo with joy. Laughter. Warmth. But in the months leading up to when I left, that joy had been stripped away, eroded by my father’s bad habits until the walls no longer felt like home.
As I stood before the worn-out building, memories hit me like waves crashing against the shore.
This house had held so many firsts—my first time walking, my first graduation, my first heartbreak, and my first time.
The night I lost my virginity was the night I knew there was no going back.
I was already in deep—hopelessly, foolishly in love with Luca Vaughn.
And terrified. Rightly so. If I’d known back then that he’d turn on me like a switchblade, believing the first ugly lie he heard, I would’ve tossed him out into the rain that very night.
I sighed, brushing away the ghost of that memory, and made my way through the overgrown bushes toward the front door when a voice called out from behind me.
“Is that you, Leila?”
I turned to see Mrs. Tilda Bloom inching down her walkway, pushing a wheeler attached to an oxygen tank, nasal tubes snaking across her face. Her features split into a smile when she saw me.
“It really is you! I caught your scent from my backyard while I was picking herbs for tea.”
I dropped my bags on the front porch and walked over, smiling. “It’s good to see you, Mrs. Bloom,” I said, wrapping her in a careful hug.
She had lived in the house across from ours for as long as I could remember.
Her husband passed when I was ten, and she’d lived alone ever since—no children, just her garden.
Every weekend, she brought over casseroles and jars of her signature herbal teas for my dad and me.
Like most people in this neighborhood, she was half wolf shifter, half human.
But her shifting abilities had waned around sixty, that threshold when shifting becomes harder, and for many, impossible.
Some still could, but most lost the gift entirely.
“Oh dear, I haven’t seen you in so long,” she beamed.
“That’s because I moved out of Manhattan.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you finally get married to that handsome fella who used to drop you off from work?”
I knew exactly who she meant. A bitter smile pulled at my lips. “No, Mrs. Bloom.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. He seemed like a good one. He even called in a few cleaners and artisans to fix up my house after I invited him in for tea one night and he caught sight of my leaking roof, broken pipes, and dented floorboards.”
I blinked. “He did?”
She nodded, her expression fond. “He’d just dropped you off that night, and I was out front. We got to talking. Lovely young man.”
I searched my memory, trying to recall the night she meant. Luca had always waved politely at her when he’d drop me off after our dates, but I hadn’t known he’d actually gone inside, let alone helped with renovations.
My thoughts floated to what happened at the park the other day.
The way Luca’s arm had wrapped around me, grounding and electrifying all at once.
How close we’d been. Too close. Close enough for everything I’d buried to surface all at once—memories, feelings, the ache I’d spent years silencing.
I hadn’t been able to shake it. Even now.
Mrs. Bloom reached for me, pulling me out of my thoughts as she touched a strand of my hair. “You finally grew it out. I always said you’d look prettier with your blonde hair falling down your shoulders.”
I chuckled. “You always had the best beauty tips for me.”
We shared a soft laugh, but her smile faded slightly. “I’m sorry about your father, Leila. He was a good man.”
I forced a small smile. “Thank you.”
“So, are you moving back in?”
“Oh, no,” I replied quickly. “I’m just here to pack up what’s left. Rent’s due and…I’m not renewing.”
I didn’t want to burden her with the details. No need to trade warmth for pity.
“Ah, shame,” she murmured. “I missed seeing you around.”
“I missed seeing you, too, Mrs. Bloom,” I said, and meant it.
A soft warmth settled in my chest after seeing Mrs. Bloom. But it vanished the second I stepped through the front door. The air inside the house was stale, still, quiet.
I remembered the last conversation I had with my father face-to-face.
It had ended in a fight. He’d stood right here in this living room, scolding me for what he called “fumbling the Alpha’s son”.
He didn’t care that I was hurting. He didn’t care that I’d been humiliated, dragged through the mud by gossip blogs and bitter headlines.
All he cared about was that I’d let a rich man go.
An Alpha. A man who could’ve changed our lives.
I hadn’t told him I was pregnant. I didn’t trust him not to blab. Or worse, try to use it to drag Luca back into our lives. When I told him I was leaving the pack and the city, he didn’t even ask where until days later.
After that, we barely spoke. He’d call when he needed money. I’d send what I could. He’d complain it wasn’t enough.
He knew about Ollie, and he’d met him a couple of times, but he never knew who his father was. He didn’t even care to ask. He just kept reminding me how reckless it was to have a child when I could barely take care of myself, much less him.
That was the tone of every single call. Until twelve months ago. A strange number rang my phone, and the voice told me they’d found my father dead, slumped on the sofa, pills and wine scattered at his feet. There was a letter, they said. But I never bothered to read it.
I planned the funeral from the Bronx. Paid for everything. But I didn’t go. A few weeks later, a mountain of bills showed up at my doorstep. And Blaze, too, with a threat of what could happen if I didn’t pay my father’s debts.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes sweeping across the dusty, empty living room. There was a lot to pack. I decided I’d take only what I needed and sell the rest.
Tying my hair up with a band, I slipped on a pair of gloves and got to work. I started with the easy spaces like the living room and the kitchen, before making my way to my old bedroom.
I tried not to get too wrapped up in the memories as I packed everything into boxes, but the more I saw—old notebooks, hairpins, photos, the faint marks on the wall where I used to stick up sketches—the harder it was to let go.
At one point, I paused to calculate what it would take to keep the house—rent here, rent in the Bronx, Ollie’s school fees, groceries, Blaze’s constant demands, the thousand little bills that never stopped stacking up.
Even without this place in the mix, I was barely staying afloat.
Adding a second rent would drown me. I couldn’t afford to think about what I wanted. I had to focus on what was possible.
A cloud of dust floated into the air as I pulled out a box from the wardrobe, the one I’d labeled “special”. Special, because I couldn’t bear to leave these things lying around. Special, because they carried weight. Memory. Meaning.
I undid the knot on the blue box, wrapped like a present, just the way I always kept it. I used to open it on days when I felt low. Somehow, it always lifted my mood.
Inside were mostly polaroids—photos from my eighth, eleventh, and thirteenth birthdays. The only birthdays I’d ever celebrated. It had always been a small crowd of my dad, my two school friends, Mrs. Bloom, and a girl who used to live down the road. But there was joy in those moments. Real joy.
I smiled at the picture of my eight-year-old self. I was missing a front tooth, thanks to a clumsy sidewalk trip that left me face-first in the gravel. I kept flipping through the pile of photos until I stumbled on one I had forgotten about.
It was a picture of Luca and me.
We’d spent the night on the rooftop of an old observatory. Yeah, it was a little crazy. But I’d been rambling about how I wanted to do something adventurous, and Luca—being Luca—just said, “Fuck it, let’s do it.”
We’d grabbed blankets, food—I even brought my old Polaroid camera—and climbed up to that abandoned observatory where we watched the stars and soaked in the lights of the city below.
It was there, on that rooftop, that we first talked about a future. A family. And for a moment, in the chill night air wrapped in his arms, I couldn’t imagine loving anyone the way I loved Luca—Mate bond or not.
I wasn’t the type to get swept up in Cinderella fantasies, but that night, I let myself believe.
And I loved every second of it.
I’d laughed more than I had in years. I was happy—maybe the happiest I’d ever been. We made love right there, under the stars, wild and passionate. Then, at six in the morning, we scrambled out like teenagers dodging a weed bust.
It was perfect.