“Mom?”
No answer.
Ethan moved in front of her.
The room smelled of bleach, wet carpet, and medicine.
The bed was unmade. A lamp lay broken on the floor. A plastic cup had spilled water across the nightstand. A woman’s coat hung over a chair.
And on the bed, pale as paper, was Olivia Bennett.
For a moment, Ethan could not move.
She was thinner. Much thinner. Her dark hair had streaks of gray. Her cheekbones were sharp, her lips cracked. But even after twelve years, he knew her.
His Olivia.
The woman he had loved with the kind of certainty young men think can survive anything.
Lucy screamed.
“Mom!”
She rushed to the bed, grabbing Olivia’s hand.
Olivia’s eyes opened halfway.
“Lucy?”
“I got him,” Lucy sobbed. “I got Dad.”
Olivia turned her head.
When she saw Ethan, her expression broke.
Not surprise.
Relief.
Then shame.
“Ethan,” she whispered.
He came to the bedside slowly, every step heavy with things unsaid.
“Olivia.”
Her eyes filled.
“I’m sorry.”
He wanted to ask a hundred questions. He wanted to demand the truth. He wanted to know why she had let him mourn a living woman and hate a child he never knew.
But she looked like she could disappear between one breath and the next.
So he took her other hand.
“Don’t talk. Help is coming.”
She shook her head weakly.
“No. Listen.”
Lucy cried harder.
“Mom, please.”
Olivia squeezed her daughter’s fingers.
“He has to know.”
Ethan leaned closer.
“Know what?”
Olivia’s gaze moved to the door, terrified even now.
“Victoria came to me after our fight.”
Ethan stopped breathing.
“She told me your family would destroy me if I tried to keep the baby. She said you knew. She said you didn’t want a scandal. She had a document with your signature.”
“I never signed anything.”
“I know that now.” Olivia’s tears slid into her hair. “But back then, I was twenty-three, pregnant, scared, and alone. Then she showed me pictures.”
“What pictures?”
“You. At the hospital.”
Ethan frowned.
“I was never—”
“You were unconscious after the car accident.”