Caleb
Itook the children to the beach.
Before leaving that morning, I had told Tatiana that I had an urgent meeting at the office. The lie had rolled off my tongue, but I didn’t question it. Some truths were harder to explain than deception, and this was one of them.
Once I reached the office, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, needing the comfort of something that didn’t remind me of boardrooms, expectations, or the wedding looming over my head like a deadline.
As I drove toward the beach, my thoughts circled back to Jiya and Harper and the night of the cocktail party when I had first seen her.
She was back in the city, and my stomach had hardened watching her standing with Harper in a deep conversation across the patio. They had looked too comfortable leaning toward each other, and I hated it because he was her ex.
The man she had loved before me.
The man who had cheated on her.
The same man Jiya and I had once fake-dated for so we could pretend to be a couple at his wedding.
I had been standing beside Tatiana at the party, trying to focus on the conversation around me, but my attention kept drifting back to Jiya and Harper.
Every time she laughed, my jaw hurt from clenching my teeth.
I was going to marry a beautiful, successful woman. I was in a committed relationship—or at least, that was what I kept telling myself. So why did seeing Jiya with Harper bother me so much, even after everything I believed she had done?
Then Tatiana mentioned arranging a dinner with them the following Friday, and the idea made my skin prickle.
My gaze drifted back to Jiya just in time to see her hand resting on Harper’s chest while they laughed together.
A surge of heat rushed through me before I could stop it.
Let them get back together. Why should I care?
The memory faded as I continued driving.
What I had planned and what actually happened were two different things now.
I had hoped that while the children played with Geeta, Jiya and I might finally have a conversation—an honest one.
I needed to hear what she had to say to me. I needed to know if there was anything left between us worth salvaging… or if everything we had shared had truly been built on lies.
The ocean came into view.
Salty air filled my lungs as I parked the car and stepped out, watching the children bounce beside me.
Geeta laid out a blanket on the sand and sat down while I walked Emma and Lucas toward the water, their small hands gripping mine.
“Are you guys having fun in the city?” I asked, glancing down at them.
“Yes,” Lucas and Emma answered together, their faces bright.
“What have you been up to?”
“I met Quinn, and we played with her dolls,” Emma said, jumping into the shallow water. “She has so many dolls.”
“I played with Noah,” Lucas added, splashing beside her.
I nodded, watching them laugh, their joy so effortless that it made my chest ache.
“Have you guys been hanging around with anyone else?” I asked, feeling a tingle at the base of my neck.
“Harper joined us for dinner twice,” Lucas said. “He stayed over last night.”
Spots flickered in my vision, and pain crept into my jaw.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“He came over last night to talk to Mama,” Lucas explained. “And in the morning, when I woke up, he was there. He left, and then he came back just before you did.”
A pulse throbbed along the side of my neck, and I flexed my fingers, cracking my knuckles.
Jiya was here to get back together with him.
Wasn't she?
Then why had she been calling me?
Why had she shown up at the cocktail party?
Why had she looked devastated when I walked away?
The questions hit me one after another, and I shoved them aside.
Harper had spent the night.
That was all I needed to know.
The message couldn't have been clearer.
To show me how easily she could replace me.
To humiliate me during the week of my wedding.
While I had been lying in bed the previous night thinking about her and her text message, she had been with Harper—the man who had betrayed her and cheated on her.
She had discarded me and broken off our relationship because she thought I had cheated on her.
Now here she was, ready to get back with Harper.
Images of the two of them came in flashes.
His hands on her.
Her lips on him.
Touching him.
Kissing him.
Their bodies moving together.
I shook my head, trying to push the images away.
Seeing her name flash across my phone had stirred emotions I couldn’t control.
Part of me had been furious that she showed up just days before my wedding.
Was she there to confuse me and torment me?
Another part of me had felt… relief, and I didn’t understand why.
I had felt as if she had come for me—in some twisted way—as if to confess her love or beg for forgiveness.
Or maybe she had come to find someone else, just as I had told her to.
“What’s wrong?” Tatiana had asked.
I turned around and shook my head after keeping my phone on the nightstand.
“I just remembered a meeting I have tomorrow.”
“Is it important?”
“No,” I finally said. “It’s not that important.”
“Then why do you look so upset?”
Multiple reasons… none of which I could reveal to her.
“I thought it was,” I said, pulling Tatiana into my arms to end the conversation. “But nothing is more important than our wedding.”
“It better not be,” she said.
I hadn’t known Harper was Tatiana’s family lawyer. I hadn’t seen him since his wedding, and suddenly there he was again—standing in my parents’ backyard, talking to Jiya as if he still belonged in her life.
Her phone buzzed.
“Sorry, honey, I have to leave now.”
“Is everything okay?”
She nodded.
“It’s quite late. Where are you going?” I asked.
“Just a plan with the girls,” Tatiana said, getting out of bed and hurrying to the bathroom. “Enjoying my last few days as a spinster.”
“All right.” I sighed. “Have a great time.”
Tatiana came out minutes later wearing a short, revealing purple dress.
“I’ll make it up to you tomorrow,” she said, smiling seductively. “I promise.”
I plastered a smile on my face while my mind kept working through the reasons for Jiya’s return to the city.
“Caleb.” Emma tugged gently at my shorts, pulling me back to the present. “Can we bwuild sandcastle?”
I looked down at her.
She stood there in a colourful swimsuit and a brown fisherman’s hat, her cheeks flushed from the sun.
How could something so beautiful come from a person I believed was so wicked?
Swallowing the bitterness rising inside me, I forced a smile and nodded. “Of course, we can.”
We walked over to the blanket where Geeta was sitting, and together we began building it. Lucas took the role of architect, carefully shaping towers.
Emma left Mia tucked safely beside Geeta on the blanket while she ran back and forth between the shoreline and the sandcastle.
Geeta snapped photo after photo on her phone, laughing as the children argued over whose design was better.
For a while, I allowed myself to forget everything else.
We spent the day running along the water, chasing waves, and digging in the sand until our hands were coated in grit. The children’s laughter filled the air, and I found myself laughing with them—really laughing—for the first time in weeks.
Later, we sat at a small beachside stand and shared hot dogs, cold colas, and a funnel cake dusted generously with powdered sugar.
“Slowly, guys,” I said, wiping their sticky faces with napkins, smearing away whipped cream and strawberry jam from their cheeks. “No one is taking it away from you.”
They giggled, their mouths full, completely unconcerned.
I watched them quietly, committing every detail to memory—the way Emma swung her legs under the table, the way Lucas wiped his hands on his shorts when he thought no one was looking.
I was going to miss them terribly.
I had wanted to spend one last stretch of time with them before everything changed, but I never got the chance to do that back in Cowichan Bay. This day felt like a gift, a small pocket of happiness before the inevitable goodbye. I held onto each moment, knowing it wouldn’t come again.
As the afternoon sun dipped lower in the sky, a thought took hold in my mind.
I couldn’t picture my life with Tatiana like this.
She hadn’t changed from the day I met her. She was elegant and perfectly suited for the world I lived in, but when I had watched her around children, there had always been distance in her eyes, as if she were observing rather than participating.
Jiya had been different.
She had knelt in the mud, wiped noses, kissed scraped knees, and laughed until her sides hurt. She had made chaos feel like home.
And somewhere along the way, I had started to believe that kind of life was possible for me too… with her and her children.
Now it felt like a dream I had woken up from too late.
How did everything that happened over the past weeks with Jiya and the children lead here… to so much pain and hurt?
Dropping the children back at the hotel that afternoon, I parked the car and stepped out slowly, the weight of the impending goodbye pressing down on me.
I walked around to their side and knelt in front of them.
“I’m gonna miss you both,” I said, pulling them into a tight embrace and kissing each of them on the cheek.
I meant every word.
In that second, I made a decision.
I wouldn’t continue working on the project anymore. I would hand it off to one of the managers at headquarters and remove myself completely. Distance was the only way to protect what remained of my sanity.
“Will you never come to see us again?” Lucas asked softly.
I swallowed hard before answering. “I don’t think it will be possible, buddy. You guys will go back to the Island, and I’ll be here with my family.”
“Come see us,” Emma said, reaching up to touch my face with her chubby little hands.
I wished I could promise her that I would. I wished I could lie. But I had already made too many promises in my life that I couldn’t keep.
“I can’t promise you,” I said. “But if I’m ever around the area, I’ll pop in.”
I hugged them again, holding on just a second longer, as if trying to imprint their presence into my memory.
Then I straightened and watched them walk into the hotel lobby, their small figures disappearing.
The glass doors slid shut behind them.
A hollow ache spread through my chest as I watched them disappear.
For the first time, it felt like goodbye.
The realization hit me with brutal force, stealing the air from my lungs and leaving me standing there, motionless, my heart broken into a million pieces.