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“Answer me!” I roar, shocking us both. In my periphery, people stop to gawk.

I don’t care about a single one of them.

Her hands lift to cover her face, to smother her sob.

I’m at a crossroads. My arms ache to pull her close. My hands want to grip her and shake.

I fist my hands, crossing them over my chest so that I don’t do anything foolish. Don’t pull her close and smother her in my hurt. My rage. My love…

My desperation to fucking understand.

“Will you do it, Holt?” Her bloodshot eyes connect with mine desperately. “Will you save him?” She shuffles closer, desperate hands pulling at my crossed arms. “Please, Holt. Save my baby.”

Our baby.

The thought cuts through something inside me. Something that has a lifetime of what could have been spilling into the shards of the man I’ve become.

“He’s my son.” It’s the first time I say the words. She flinches, but there’s hope in her eyes. “I’ll do anything for him.”

Her relief cuts me to the core. She thought I wouldn’t save my son…

“Thank you.”

Something cold begins to assemble between us. Block after block of ice stacking one after the other. I feel hollow inside.

She looks broken.

“Don’t thank me, Faye. Tell me why.”

“I…”

My temper boils over again. I bite out a touch too loud, “Just tell me why, goddammit!”

She meets my rage with her own. “Because you would have chosen us!”

The ice blocks pause their stacking. The space between us simply freezes, dragging us back fourteen years to where a piece of both of us have remained prisoner to our shelved story.

My ears are ringing again.

She repeats quieter, “I didn’t tell you because if I had, you would have come back.”

“No.” I shake my head. “You could have come to Toronto like we planned.”

A tear squeezes from her eye. “I couldn’t do it alone.”

“I would have been there, Faye! I would have taken care of you. Both of you.”

“No.” She shakes her head this time, tears falling in rivers I ache to stop even now. “You were starting a big new career. All your dreams were coming true⁠—”

I can’t help myself this time. I reach out to hold her face between my hands, my thumbs brushing away her tears even as more fall. I tell her desperately, “You were my dream, too.”

She squeezes her eyes shut before they open to connect with mine again. I don’t release her as she tells me, “I couldn’t move to Toronto and have a baby alone, Holt. I needed my mom, my dad. I needed friends and I needed—I needed someone who wasn’t going to be chasing a dream as big as yours. I needed someone who was going to be there. Owen needed people in his life, Holt.”

“I would have been there,” I argue weakly.

She smiles a sad, shaky smile. “When you could be, maybe. But we both know the truth, Holt. I would have been alone. And we would have struggled financially, physically, and emotionally. Babies aren’t easy and we were so young. Too young—and you lived in this massive world where you were just starting out.”

“I would have chosen you. If you’d given me the chance, I would have chosen you and him, Faye.”