Chapter 3 - THE HIGH COST OF PRIDE
Graham stayed in the hallway for an hour,
refusing to leave until I spoke to him again.
He watched through the doorway as I bathed the children,
his face a mask of longing and regret.
He saw the exhaustion in my movements,
the way I moved with a practiced rhythm to handle three toddlers at once.
When the kids were finally asleep,
I walked out to him,
clutching a cup of cold coffee.
“You can't just stay here,
Graham,”
I said,
sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.
“I have a life here,
a quiet one.”
“A life I built without you.”
He sat on the floor across from me,
discarding his expensive coat.
“I know,”
he replied,
looking around at the modest furniture.
“I’ve been a fool,
Emily.”
“A calculated,
ambitious fool.”
“I thought the company was my legacy,”
“but I was looking at buildings when I should have been looking at you.”
I looked at him,
trying to find the man I had loved in Harvard Square.
He was still there,
buried under layers of corporate ice.
“What about Vanessa?”
I asked,
the memory of the blonde woman at the airport stinging.
“She is the daughter of my father’s business partner,”
he explained.
“My father wanted us to marry to merge the firms.”
“I never touched her,
Emily.”
“I spent every night for eighteen months thinking of you.”
“But you didn't call,”
I reminded him.
“Not once.”
“I thought you hated me,”
he whispered.
“I thought if I stayed away,
you could find someone who could actually be there.”
“I didn't know there were three of them.”
The weight of his words hung in the air.
The triplets were the physical proof of what we had once been.
“Noah looks exactly like you,”
I said,
my voice softening.
Graham looked up,
a small,
painful smile appearing.
“He does.”
“He has my father’s stubborn chin.”
“And Lily has your eyes,”
he added.
“The way she looked at me with that cracker...”
He put his head in his hands,
his shoulders shaking silently.
For the first time,
May you like
I didn't see the billionaire.
I only saw a father who was mourning the time he had lost.
