Chapter 25
Isaac
I am mesmerised by my Luna wiping the floor with Chloe. If I didn’t know with absolute surety that if I just slam the door on the wicked witch’s face and try to kiss her, I would end up with a knee to the balls, I would try it.
For weeks after the birth, it felt like someone had switched Luna with a stranger. And instead of addressing the issues we had, I told myself she only needed time to come back to me.
Seeing her on the bathroom floor that day was a wakeup call like no other.
Listening to her now, it feels like my Luna is back. Over the last few weeks, I have done everything I mapped out for when Amelie was born, but never did. And the way my wife has opened up in response to what I should have done all along just breaks my heart.
Luna can fight her own battles, but she needs to know that I always have her back.
I stare at Chloe, and not for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m looking at a stranger.
She is not the little girl next door with scraped knees and crooked pigtails, trailing after me and the boys during summer holidays.
She is not the awkward teenager Mum kept pushing towards me with a pointed look after her, Isaac. She is just like Sophie.
Not the crying girl wrapped in my blanket that morning at uni while guilt tore a chunk out of me.
That girl—the innocent one, the vulnerable one, the one I thought I had failed—starts peeling away right in front of me. And underneath it, all I can see is selfishness.
Calculation.
Greed.
Taking and taking until there’s nothing left of the people who care about her. In a moment of clarity, I know the only reason she wants me is because I have no interest in her like that.
An uncontrollable rage settles over me.
I don’t realise I am doing it until I am already in front of Luna. I don’t trust Chloe near my wife at all.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Fae next door has completely abandoned the pretence of gardening. She is frozen beside the same rosebush she’s been hovering over for the last ten minutes.
Across the road, Will’s kitchen window is wide open despite the cold. Usually, that would bother me. Today, I couldn’t care less.
Chloe takes a shaky breath. “Can we please talk inside?”
“No.”
The word is instant.
Her eyes widen at my tone.
“No,” I repeat. “You will not pollute my home.”
I watch as she does an imitation of a goldfish. Even angry, I usually stop before I cross the line. Not today.
Luna tries to come around me, but I hold her still. The soft skin of her arms feels like heaven.
I glance back at my wife briefly. Her hair is messy from carrying Amelie. There’s milk and something I don’t look too closely at on the towel over her shoulder. She looks exhausted and beautiful, and I just want to carry her upstairs and hold her in our bed.
“Luna has worked too hard to get where she is,” I say quietly. “I will not let you disrupt her peace again.”
Chloe’s face crumples. The crocodile tears start to flow like an open tap.
“Isaac, I didn’t mean—”
“Why do you do this?” I ask.
My own voice sounds calm to my ears, even though I am so, so angry.
“Why do you keep fucking things up for people who cared about you?”
She recoils like I hit her.
“For my mum?” I continue. “For me?” A bitter laugh leaves me. “God, Chloe … You knew exactly what I was thinking back then, didn’t you?” Her face changes slightly. “And you played the victim so well.”
“No—”
“All this time,” I cut her off, “I thought I was the problem. I thought I’d hurt you.”
The disgust I feel nearly chokes me.
“At least, if we’d actually slept together, the guilt would’ve made sense.”
“Isaac—”
The words I have suppressed and pushed down until I thought I couldn't breathe burst out. And once I got started, there was no stemming the tide. About how she trapped me, about how she cheated, about how she almost ruined my entire career and life. It was cathartic.
“My first mistake,” I say coldly, “was agreeing to help you after your breakup because Mum asked me to.”
I laugh again, sharp and humourless.
“I remember thinking she was insane. Why should I be the one helping my ex?” My eyes lock onto hers. “But you knew exactly how to manipulate my mother, and through her, manipulate me.”
“That’s not fair—”
“I’m not your puppet anymore. Or hers.”
She swallows thickly. “Those messages”—here comes the blackmail—“mean nothing,” I cut in immediately. “Just noise. And Luna has seen every single one of them, so don’t even try spinning this into something else.”
Chloe pales.
For a long moment, I just stare at her. And beneath my anger, beneath my disgust, there is confusion.
Genuine confusion.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask, because I want to know.
“You have amazing parents who adore you. My mum loves you more than she loves me.” I shake my head slowly. “So why?” I ask. “Why try to take Luna from me?”
My voice is shaking because I came so close to losing it all.
“What have I ever done to you?”
She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.
And suddenly, I realise there will never be an answer that makes sense to me. I feel tired.
“I need you to leave,” I hear myself say. “And don’t come back.”
A stubborn look crosses her face. Chloe always needs to have what she is refused.
“I mean it,” I continue, my voice so cold it barely sounds like mine.
It feels like my veins are full of ice instead of blood.
“If you see us somewhere? Cross the road and keep walking.” I take another deep breath to stay calm.
“You stay away from me. You stay away from Luna.” My jaw clenches hard enough to ache.
“And you stay the hell away from my child.”
I hope the words are enough to crush whatever hope she walked here carrying. For a second, she just stands here, breathing unevenly, mascara slightly smudged beneath her eyes.
Then she looks past me, at Luna.
I watch as her eyes narrow into slits.
“You stole my life,” she says suddenly.
I can’t believe I am hearing this.
“That baby should have been mine.”
I turn my head to see how Luna is doing. She seems a little amused. That only triggers Chloe.
Her eyes are a little wild around the edges. She takes half a step forward, like she doesn’t even realise she’s doing it.
“I should’ve had this,” she says, her voice cracking. “You took everything from me.”
A chill crawls up my spine. I move fully in front of Luna without thinking, completely blocking Chloe’s view of my family.
I hear Luna mumble that I am no fun.
I am genuinely afraid of what Chloe might become if she keeps feeding whatever this is inside her head.
“I’ll come back when you’ve calmed her down,” she is saying, desperately trying to regain control. “We can fix this. Isaac, we can still—”
“See this?” I ask, pointing at the wall next to the door.
She blinks.
“What?”
“The black thing.”
Confused, she glances sideways.
“The peephole?” she asks automatically.
“No,” I say, slowly, like I genuinely doubt her intelligence now. “That’s a Ring camera.”
I point at it again.
“That records audio. Video. Everything. I had it put in a week before Luna gave birth.”
Her face turns pale.
“Yeah,” I continue coldly. “Read my lips.” I lean forward slightly, enunciating each word with brutal clarity. “Re-strain-ing or-der.”
Fae has outright stopped pretending to garden now. She looks like she needs popcorn.
I don’t care.
“There is no version of my life,” I say, each word glacial, “where you and I end up together.”
Chloe flinches like she’s been physically struck.
“No version,” I repeat. “Not in uni. Not now. Not twenty years from now.”
Her breathing is ragged now.
“I don’t love you,” I say. “I was never in love with you.”
That one hurts her. Good.
“Have some self-respect,” I tell her with what I hope is enough steel in my voice. “And get gone.”
For a second, Chloe just stands here, staring at me like she’s waiting for me to tell her I am joking.
But I am no longer the idiot she could pull around with tears and obligation and my mother’s disappointment. I know it, but Luna needs to hear it as well.
And Chloe finally sees that I am not changing my mind as I step back, forcing my wife to back up and close the door gently.
Through the little screen on the door, I watch as she turns blindly and walks away down the pavement.
Fae suddenly becomes very interested in pruning again.
I hear Will’s kitchen window slam shut.
And I just stand here, breathing hard, hoping it is finally over.
Luna is giving me a very strange look over her shoulder. Then she whispers, with a smile that makes me straighten up, “Too bad we are not fucking, because if we were, I would take you upstairs and ride you till your eyes cross.”