Chapter 1My Son Died While He Welcomed Yours

Five years. Five years since Rhys Harrington and I lost our son, Leo, in a car accident.

He was across the country, escorting his mistress for the birth of their child, and didn’t even attend Leo’s funeral.

Now, after years of silence and survival, I found him again. In the cemetery.

I was holding a mini-cake, ready to spend a quiet afternoon talking to my son. Instead, I saw Rhys setting a limited-edition sports car—the one Leo always wanted—at the headstone.

Beside him, a small boy burrowed into his side.

“Daddy, do you think big brother will like the gift I picked out?”

* * *

The autumn air carried a sharp, desolate chill through the cemetery.

Rhys bent down, patiently zipping the boy’s jacket all the way up. That was the careful, solicitous kind of fatherly love my Leo never knew.

The boy noticed the mini-cake I held, which had a tiny race car drawn on the frosting. He peered up at me, his eyes wide with curiosity.

“Auntie, it’s my brother’s birthday today. Are you here to celebrate him, too?”

I turned my head, pretending not to hear. I used a moist wipe to clean the dust from the photo on the headstone, then placed a small candle on the cake. My Leo. His life frozen at five years old.

The boy looked at the cake, then up at Rhys, and finally back to me. Silently, he picked up the sports car he’d brought and placed it next to the tombstone.

A haze of disorientation washed over me.

The boy—tall for his age, with deep, perceptive eyes—shared a strong resemblance to Leo. They both carried the dominant Harrington genes. If I didn’t know exactly who his mother was, I might have been tempted to pull him into my arms, a desperate, flawed solace for the wave of grief that constantly crashed back over me.

The cold wind sliced in from all directions. I tried several times to light the candle, but my hand was shaking too badly.

Rhys reached out naturally, taking the lighter from my grasp. For a fleeting second, our skin touched. The proximity of his scent, his body heat, the things I once clung to, now made my stomach churn with pure revulsion.

I snatched the lighter back, my movement violent enough to make him stumble a few steps.

The boy cried out defensively, shielding his father. “You shouldn’t push people! You need to apologize to my Daddy.”