21. Talia
Talia
The third headline replays the same clip before I have the strength to close the page.
Morning light spills across my kitchen in thin gold lines, catching on the edge of Flynn’s cereal bowl, the half-empty mug of coffee gone cold beside my laptop, and the tiny wooden airplane pieces scattered across the floor at my feet.
The house is quiet in a way it hasn’t been for days.
No cameras outside the windows, no voices drifting up from the sidewalk, and no phone ringing every thirty seconds.
Only Declan’s voice coming from my laptop.
Again.
I should stop watching.
I told myself I was only checking the headlines because I needed to know what Flynn might hear, what Rebecca might already be fielding before she’d even finished her first cup of coffee. That was the responsible explanation. The professional one.
It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still sitting here with my hands wrapped around a cold mug while the man I walked away from yesterday tells the world the truth I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud.
The clip starts with Sloane.
She stands beside him, steady as she walks the room through what happened.
The false posts. The repeated phrases. The timeline that makes it impossible to pretend the rumors spread by accident.
I watch her do what she does best, turning chaos into something people can follow, and something tight pulls low in my chest because part of me knows I should have trusted this.
I should have trusted her. I should have trusted that the people standing beside Declan were not trying to erase me from the story.
Then Declan steps forward, and despite telling myself I won’t get pulled in again, I still find myself holding my breath.
He doesn’t read from the papers in front of him. I notice that first, probably because I know how much men like Declan rely on prepared words when the stakes are high. Prepared words are safe. They’ve been reviewed, approved, sanded down until nothing sharp remains.
But he slides the statement aside and looks directly into the cameras like he understands that every safe sentence in the world would sound like another lie if he hides behind it now.
The video freezes for a heartbeat, leaving Declan's face suspended on the screen.
I shouldn't notice the exhaustion around his eyes.
I definitely shouldn't want to brush it away.
Flynn hums softly under the table, completely absorbed in the airplane wing he’s trying to attach to the body. He’s spread the pieces across the kitchen floor because apparently “real engineers need space,” and after the last few days, I don’t have the heart to argue.
Every so often, he asks for tape, or help finding a screw, or whether planes can have two colors if both colors are “important.” I answer each question automatically, like my body knows what to do even if my attention is somewhere else entirely.
Like on the man speaking from a podium across town.
“I’m also Flynn Wynn’s father,” Declan says.
My fingers tighten around the mug. He doesn't hide behind carefully chosen language or vague references meant to satisfy the press. He simply says it.
Flynn is my son.
He says it clearly, carefully, as if he knows the sentence belongs first to Flynn and not to the room full of people waiting to use it.
The comments beneath the clip move too fast to read.
Some are kind. Some are not. Some people have already decided the story is romantic.
Others have decided it’s calculated. Strangers are arguing over my life with the confidence only strangers seem capable of having, and for once, I don’t have the energy to hate them all individually.
I close the comments and listen to Declan instead.
He tells them about the reporters outside my home and Flynn’s school. He tells them Crossridge moved us because a child deserved to be protected. He tells them I didn’t create the scandal, didn't exploit it, and didn't ask to become part of a story written by people who never cared about the truth.
The words are careful, but they don’t feel polished. They feel like him, which makes it hurt.
Yesterday morning, when his phone wouldn’t stop vibrating and mine kept filling with headlines, I let all of it drown out the man standing in front of me.
I told myself I was protecting Flynn. Maybe I was.
But I was protecting myself too. Because believing Declan meant giving him the power to disappoint me in a way I’m not sure I could survive twice.
The clip ends, and another article loads automatically beneath it.
The headline changes. The photos change.
Even the angle shifts slightly. But every version ends the same way.
His apology, his promise to make things right, and the quiet understanding that some things can’t be fixed with a single statement.
By the time I reach the fifth article, I recognize the pattern.
Every outlet has its own angle. Crossridge fights back.
Founder confirms son. PR director exposes coordinated smear.
Board backs Ward. Privacy concerns grow after child targeted.
Different words. Different photos. The same story, told over and over again.
But they all end the same way.
With Declan standing behind that podium, choosing the truth even though it cost him the only protection men like him are usually taught to trust.
Control.
I scroll back to the article I keep pretending I’m not looking for. The quote is halfway down. It’s not in the embedded clip, or even in the main recap.
Someone must have heard it after the cameras cut, or someone close enough to the room caught the words before they disappeared into the silence.
It’s love. It always was.
I read the sentence several times.
The words are so simple they almost don’t look powerful on the screen. No grand speech. No polished declaration. No ring, no flowers, no sweeping promise made in front of an audience waiting to applaud. Just five words spoken into an empty room by a man who thought no one was listening.
My throat tightens.
“It’s love,” I whisper.
The kitchen doesn’t change.
The sunlight stays where it is. The coffee remains cold. Flynn continues fitting two pieces of the airplane together beneath the table, muttering to himself about the pieces fitting. Nothing magical happens because I say the words out loud.
Still, something inside me shifts.
Not enough to fix everything, but enough to make me wonder whether I have been so busy protecting myself from another loss that I stopped noticing what was standing in front of me.
Flynn looks up from the floor.
“What did you say?”
I close the laptop halfway before he can see Declan’s face frozen on the screen. “Nothing, sweetheart.”
He studies me for a moment with a seriousness that always makes me uneasy. Flynn notices more than people expect him to. His hair is still damp from his bath, curling slightly at the ends, and there’s a smear of blue paint near his wrist from the airplane wing he insisted needed “sky parts.”
“Is he coming home now?”
The question is so quiet I almost miss it.
I look down at him, at the airplane pieces scattered around his knees, at the little boy who has somehow accepted more impossible things in a week than most adults could manage in a year. He doesn’t sound scared. He doesn’t even sound sad.
Just curious.
Like Declan coming home is something we just need to figure out between breakfast and paint drying.
My first instinct is to tell him Declan doesn't live here. That this house has always been ours. That we're still trying to figure out what comes next.
But none of those answers feels entirely true anymore, and the words stay trapped behind my teeth because I realize I don’t know which part of the sentence would be true.
Home has always been easy before. Home was this kitchen, this table, Flynn’s drawings on the refrigerator, the couch cushion that never sits straight because he uses it as a runway. Home was the life I built because I had no choice but to make it safe.
Now Declan is part of that definition too. Not completely, and not without complications, but enough that I can't dismiss Flynn's question as easily as I want to.
“I don’t know,” I say softly.
Flynn frowns down at the airplane, turning one wing in his hand. “But he said he’s my dad.”
“He is.”
“And dads come home?”
The question nearly breaks me.
I slide out of the chair and lower myself onto the floor beside him, careful not to scatter the tiny screws near his knee. He watches me with wide, patient eyes, waiting for an answer I should be able to give because mothers are supposed to know how the world works.
I don’t, especially not this part.
“Sometimes families look different than we expect,” I say carefully. “And sometimes grown-ups have to figure out how to be a family in a way that’s good for everyone.”
He considers that.
“Is he figuring?”
A laugh slips out of me, soft and unexpected. “Yes. I think he’s figuring very hard.”
Flynn nods, apparently satisfied. “He should ask me. I know stuff.”
“I know you do.”
“I know airplanes need wings.”
“That’s important.”
“And tape.”
“Also important.”
“And people need to not yell when pieces don’t fit the first time.”
I look at him.
He isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s pressing the wing into place with careful fingers, his mouth pursed in concentration, completely unaware that he has just summarized my entire life in one sentence about model airplanes.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice quieter now. “People do need to remember that.”
The wing slips. He huffs, but he doesn’t throw it. Instead, he tries again.
I watch him for a moment, this little boy who has every reason to be confused and yet somehow still believes things can be repaired if everyone is patient enough to keep trying.
Maybe that’s what I lost yesterday. Not trust exactly.
Hope. The fragile kind that requires more courage than suspicion ever has.
My phone buzzes on the table above us, and I freeze. Flynn doesn't even look up, completely absorbed in lining up the airplane wing for another attempt. For one foolish second, I let myself believe it's Declan. When I reach for the phone, Rebecca's name fills the screen instead.
I let it ring twice before answering.
“Hey.”
“Oh, thank God,” she says, and the relief in her voice makes guilt prickle behind my eyes. “I’ve been trying not to bombard you, but I needed to hear your voice. Are you okay?”
I look at the laptop, still half-open, Declan’s paused image visible through the narrow gap.
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca is quiet for a second. “Fair.”
That one word almost makes me cry.
“I saw the broadcast,” she says carefully.
“So did I.”
“He did well.”
I close my eyes. Of course Rebecca would say it plainly. She has never been sentimental enough to soften the truth just because it might hurt.
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“What did it do to you?”
I lean back against the cabinet, watching Flynn successfully press the wing into place this time. He makes a triumphant little sound under his breath, and something in my chest aches with the tenderness of it.
“It made me realize I may have been wrong about what I was afraid of.”
Rebecca doesn't rush to fill the silence. She simply waits, giving me the space to find the words on my own. I appreciate that more than I can say.
“I thought I was afraid he would choose Crossridge over us,” I continue, because saying it to someone who isn’t Declan somehow makes it easier. “But I think maybe I was afraid he wouldn’t. Because if he really chooses us, then I have to stop treating him like someone who’s already halfway gone.”
Rebecca exhales softly. “That sounds terrifying.”
“It is.”
“It also sounds honest.”
I laugh under my breath. “I hate when you do that.”
“Be wise and emotionally inconvenient?”
“Exactly.”
“You hired me for both.”
“You hired me.”
“Details.”
The familiar rhythm of the exchange steadies me more than I expect. It reminds me there was a version of my life before the headlines, one with work and deadlines and Rebecca’s dry humor cutting through panic before it could swallow me whole.
“Do you need anything from me?” she asks.
I look back at the laptop.
“No,” I say, surprising myself with how true it feels. “I think I know what I need to do.”
Rebecca doesn’t ask if I’m sure. She knows me better than that.
“Then do it before you talk yourself out of it.”
When the call ends, I set the phone beside the laptop and sit there for a moment, listening to the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the tiny scrape of Flynn’s airplane pieces against the floor.
The house feels ordinary again, but not in the same way it did before.
Something is different. Maybe not enough for certainty. Maybe certainty isn’t the point.
Maybe showing up never starts with certainty. Maybe it starts with choosing not to hide.
Flynn crawls closer and holds up the airplane. One wing is slightly crooked. The paint is uneven. A bit of glue has dried where it shouldn’t, and the tail piece tilts just enough that the whole thing looks like it might fly in circles if it ever left the ground.
“It’s almost done,” he says proudly.
I smile. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not perfect.”
“No,” I say, brushing a thumb gently over the painted wing. “But most good things aren’t.”
He seems to think about that before setting the airplane carefully in my lap.
“Can Declan see it?”
I look at the little plane, then at the laptop with its half-open screen, then at my phone sitting silent beside it.
For the first time all morning, the silence doesn’t feel like something I need to protect myself with. It feels like something I need to break. I reach for my phone. My hand trembles slightly, but I don’t put it down.
There are a dozen things I could say. I could apologize. I could ask where he is. I could tell him I watched the broadcast, that I heard every word, that I finally understand the difference between a man managing a crisis and a man telling the truth because silence costs too much.
Instead, I open our thread and stare at the last message I never answered. Then I look at Flynn. He’s watching me now, the airplane forgotten between us.
“Are you calling him?”
I swallow.
“I think I should.”
“Because he’s coming home?”
The word still scares me. Maybe it always will. But fear has made too many decisions for me already. I look down at the phone, then at my son, before my gaze returns to the little airplane resting crooked and bright in my lap.
“Maybe,” I whisper, the words barely louder than the morning around us. “Maybe it’s my turn to show up.”