ARIA

We returned to the room quietly and Kael helped me from the wheelchair to the bed without being asked.

He didn’t make a production out of it; he just stepped in close, his hands careful and sure as they supported my weight.

His palms were warm through the thin fabric of my sleeves. Once I was settled, he sat in vinyl chair beside me, leaning back and looking straight at the opposite wall.

His jaw was set, a tight, hard line. I didn’t look away from him; I just watched the side of his face, watching the way the dim light caught the edge of his cheekbone.

The silence was heavy. It wasn’t a bad kind of silence, exactly. It didn’t feel cold or hostile. It was just full of everything we hadn’t said since we left his father hanging.

I was the one to break it. I couldn’t just sit there watching him stare at a blank piece of drywall.

"You’re angry," I said. My voice sounded small in the quiet room, rough around the edges from lack of use. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

He looked at me then, his dark eyes turning slowly toward mine. He almost smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Instead of answering, he leaned over the edge of the mattress, his jacket rustling slightly, and kissed my forehead. His lips were cool against my skin.

"Don’t worry about it," he said softly, pulling back just enough to look down at me.

I looked at him the way that statement deserved to be looked at.. with absolute disbelief. I didn’t blink.

"Kael."

"Aria—" He started, his voice dropping an octave, warning me off.

"I saw your face out there," I said, cutting him off before he could build up that wall he always retreated behind.

"That’s the most hurt I’ve ever seen you look. I know what you look like when you’re just mad, and this wasn’t that. So no, I’m not going to not worry about it. That’s not how this works with us."

He went quiet. He didn’t deny it, he didn’t pull away, and he didn’t give me some brushed-off excuse. That lack of denial meant more than any actual answer he could have given me. It was an admission in itself.

I shifted slightly on the stiff hospital mattress, trying to find a position that didn’t pinch, getting more comfortable against the flat pillow. I kept my eyes fixed on his face, refusing to let him look back at the wall.

"I know your father is, and I’m being generous here, a genuinely terrible person," I said, letting the words drop plainly between us.

The corner of his mouth moved at that. It was just a tiny twitch, almost against his will, but it was there.

"I know he’s done things to you that you don’t just get over," I continued, my voice steady. "I know it’s not simple, and I know it’s not clean. I’m not sitting here about to tell you that you should forgive him, or that he had good intentions, because he didn’t. That’s your choice and no one else’s, and he has absolutely earned your resentment a hundred times over. You have every right to never speak to him again."

Kael was watching me now, completely still. He wasn’t fidgeting or checking his phone. He was just listening, taking in every word like he was trying to weigh them in his hands.

"But I also know," I said, dropping my tone a little softer, letting the harshness fade out of it, "that part of you still wants it. Not to forgive everything. Not to pretend any of the past didn’t happen, or that he didn’t hurt you."

I paused, looking down at my own hands on the blanket, searching for the right words that wouldn’t sound like they belonged in a textbook.

"A connection. The kind that was supposed to be there from the very beginning and never was. A father and a son who actually know each other, without all the corporate nonsense and the anger."

I looked back up to watch his face. "That part of you doesn’t just go away or die just because you’ve decided not to listen to it anymore."

He didn’t say anything. The monitor gave a slow, regular beep in the corner.

But his eyes said everything. Something deep in them went soft and a little bare, stripping away the polished, untouchable mask he wore for the rest of the world.

It was the look he got when he felt completely seen, and I knew I’d hit the exact thing he kept in the furthest back corner of his mind, the thing he locked away and never took out into the light.

"Love isn’t always a straight line," I said, my fingers picking at a loose thread on the hospital blanket. "Sometimes it’s just a mess. A big, jagged, makes no sense on paper kind of mess. And just because it looks broken doesn’t mean it isn’t real."

He let out a slow, heavy breath through his nose, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch.

"You know," I said, trying to lighten the weight in the air just a little bit, "kind of like how a highly functioning ex-military CEO with serious emotional walls apparently fell in love with the woman he fired."

Kael looked at me, his eyebrows raising slightly.

"That’s different," he said.

"Is it though."

He almost smiled again. A real one this time, small and reluctant, the tension finally leaving his mouth. "Are you done?"

"Almost." I looked at him, and any trace of a joke left my face. My voice settled back into something serious and heavy. "I’m not telling you what to do with him, Kael. I just don’t want you to make the same mistake I made."

He knew exactly what I meant. The room seemed to grow even quieter, the air holding still. I didn’t have to say it plainly for him to understand. My father. All the things I never said to him, all the arguments I avoided, all the words I kept behind clenched teeth for years because I thought he was dead to me.

I thought there was no need, and then one day the clock just ran out and there wasn’t. How I had only figured out what I actually felt, how much I actually cared, when it was already too late to do anything with the information.

How grief feels entirely different when it’s mixed up with all the things you left unsaid, leaving you to argue with a ghost.

Kael looked at me with that kind of expression he got when he understood something completely without needing it explained in words. The silence between us changed again, turning soft and comfortable instead of heavy and strained.

He stood up from the vinyl chair, the metal legs scraping quietly against the floor, peeling off his coat and kicking his shoes off.

And then he did something that probably should not have made my heart do what it did, which was race like I was a teenager. He bent down and picked me up right off the pillows like I didn’t weigh anything at all, his arms sliding under my knees and my back.

He carried me the three short steps to the middle of the bed properly, adjusting the pillows with one hand while holding me with the other, then pulling the thick, heavy blanket all the way up to my chin.

He climbed in beside me, settling me against his side, his large arm wrapping around my shoulders and pulling me flush against him. My head fit right into the hollow of his chest.

He pressed his lips to the top of my hair, holding the kiss there for a long moment.

"Right now," he said, his voice rumbling against my ear, "you’re what I’m thinking about. You and our baby."

I smiled against the dark fabric of his shirt, the smell of his cologne and the cold night air still clinging to him. I felt a sudden, familiar heat crawl up the back of my neck in that embarrassing way it always did with him, even now, even after everything we’d been through.

"That was almost sweet," I muttered, my voice muffled by his chest.

"Don’t push it."

I laughed, the sound small and quiet against his ribs, and his arm tightened around me, holding me a little closer.

Outside the big square window, the city was doing whatever cities do at night, cars moving down the avenue, streetlights blinking, everything indifferent and bright and ongoing.

But in here, it was just warm and quiet and him, and I let myself close my eyes and just stay right there for a while, listening to the steady beat of his heart.