He left me when I refused to end my pregnancy. Five years later, he saw my twins at a mall, and his mother’s two-million-dollar lie finally came crashing down.
“Wait.”
Mara stopped, but she did not turn around.
“Are they mine?” he asked.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
People continued passing between them, unaware they were walking through the wreckage of five lost years.
Mara slowly faced him again.
Her expression was calm.
But that calm frightened him more than anger would have.
“No,” she said. “They are mine.”
The boy on her left frowned.
“Mommy, why is he looking at us like that?”
Damien swallowed hard.
His voice cracked.
“Because I didn’t know.”
Mara gave a short, cold laugh.
“You never asked.”
The words cut through him.
He looked at the boys again. One wore a tiny dinosaur backpack. The other carried a paper bag from a bookstore. They were real. Alive. Breathing.
