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Kaia’s POV
Adam gave me the most extravagant wedding I could have imagined. The kind of event tabloids whispered about and the old me could never have dreamed of.
Then I got pregnant. A boy.
It was a surprise–at my age, I didn’t think it was still possible. But there he was. Soft, beautiful, with Adam’s eyes and my quiet.
When he turned one, Adam threw a massive birthday party. Everyone came. Even the Renners.
Adam let them in.
Asher had aged even more since I last saw him. His shoulders were hunched, and his eyes had dimmed.
Noah came in a wheelchair. Jace looked like hell–wasted and worn.
They didn’t speak to me. They just left a small gift near the table. The card said, ‘May you have the most wonderful, most perfect life.‘
I didn’t bring it home. I left it sitting near the trash bin.
Because some gifts, when they come too late, aren’t gifts at all. They’re apologies dressed in paper. And I wasn’t interested in apologies anymore.
…
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+15 Bonus
He asked if I wanted to go.
And I did.
Not for closure or love. But because he had once been my
brother.
The hospital was dim, quiet. Machines hummed in rhythm, ticking down the last fragments of his life.
He looked so small in that bed, so unlike the boy who
used to quietly patch up my knees when I fell.
I stepped into the room.
He turned his head. “Kaia,” he whispered. “You came?”
I nodded. “I did.”
He looked so old. Older than I remembered–even older than he had at my son’s birthday party, and that was just months ago.
Time hadn’t taken him gently. Illness never does.
