POV Jocelyn

My feet hit the ER floor with a slap loud enough to echo. I didn’t even realize I was barefoot until I stumbled into the security scanner and the cold tile bit into my soles like ice.

“Mia Hartwell!” I screamed at the front desk, breath jagged, throat raw. “She’s six. Leukemia. They said she was brought here—where the hell is she?”

The nurse behind the plexiglass tried to calm me down, but I couldn’t hear her.

My ears were full of blood and panic and the sound of my daughter’s name repeating on a loop in my head like a prayer I didn’t know how to finish.

A security guard stepped closer, hand near his belt like I might collapse or explode. I ignored him completely.

Then Helena came into view through the chaos, sitting on one of the hard plastic benches near the trauma wing, clutching Mia’s sketchbook to her chest like it could fix something, anything.

Her eyes were rimmed red. Her hands shook like mine used to during night feeds, back when Mia still fit into the crook of my arm like a secret I hadn’t told the world yet.

“Where is she?” I choked out, barely recognizing my own voice.

“Still with the doctors,” Helena managed. “They won’t let me in.”

My knees nearly buckled, but I grabbed the counter to stay upright. The laminate was cool under my palms, grounding me, but the ground itself felt like it was tilting sideways.

I could still smell the shampoo in Mia’s hair from last night’s bath. Still hear her voice asking if she could bring her tiger plush in her backpack.

Still remember the way she clung to my sleeve at drop-off and said, “Don’t be late, okay?”

Now she was behind glass and I couldn’t reach her.

Then, behind me, I felt it.

A shift. A pull in the air, like gravity had rearranged itself.

Zayden.

I didn’t need to turn around to know it was him.

His presence walked into the room before his body did—cold, sharp, electric. He moved like someone possessed, like something bigger than him was dragging his feet forward and he had no choice but to follow.

He didn’t say my name. Didn’t speak at all. His gaze locked onto mine, then drifted past me—through the hallway window where Mia lay on the hospital bed, too still, too pale.

An oxygen mask covered half her face. Tubes tangled around her like ivy. I saw her chest rise, then fall—slow and shallow, like the air itself was too heavy.

Something inside Zayden broke.

He moved without hesitation, beelining to the chart station posted beside the glass.

He yanked the clipboard off the hook like it had insulted him personally. His eyes scanned it once. Then again. Slower.

Mia Hartwell.
Mother: Jocelyn Hartwell.
Father: Not listed.

He stared at the words like they’d slapped him and I knew then that he knew.

His hand tightened around the clipboard so hard I thought it would snap. He turned toward me, face pale, but not with fear—but with realization.

“Is she mine?” His voice wasn’t loud. But it cracked like thunder anyway.

I couldn’t move. My body locked. My voice caught as I wanted to run.

He stepped closer, eyes burning with something wild. “Answer me.”

The words hit me like a lash.

I wanted to speak. I did. But guilt swelled up inside me, choking off every excuse, every defense, every cowardly explanation I’d ever rehearsed.

Tears spilled down my cheeks without permission. My voice came out in a rasp.

“Yes.”

Just one word. One breath. And it detonated everything.

Zayden stumbled back like I’d struck him. Like my truth had knocked the air from his lungs. His mouth moved, but nothing came out at first.

He looked at me the way you look at something broken beyond repair.

“You stole six years from me.” His voice was lower now. Deader. “Six goddamn years.”

I took a step forward, reaching for something I couldn’t name.

“Zayden, I didn’t—”

He held up a hand. Not to hit. Not to threaten. Just to stop me. To keep distance.

“I could’ve held her. Raised her. Protected her. And instead—” He broke off, jaw locking hard enough to make his temple twitch. “Instead, I’ve been walking past my own child like she was a stranger.”

I wanted to tell him I was scared.

That the man I met seven years ago wasn’t the same man standing in front of me now. That back then, all I saw was power and shadows and danger.

That I thought I was doing what was best—for Mia, for me, even for him.

But none of it would’ve changed the hurt in his eyes. None of it could give him those years back.

He stared at me for one final beat. And then he turned. Walked away. Not fast. Not slow. Just steady.

Gone again. But this time, not because I’d run.

Because he chose to.

I didn’t even notice when my knees gave out. The cold tiles caught me like a slap. I didn’t feel the sting. Didn’t feel Helena’s arms as she wrapped around me or the weight of the sketchbook now pressed between us.

She helped me up without a word.

I sat in the stiff hospital chair beside her like a hollowed-out shell.

“I ruined everything,” I whispered. “Every last thing.”

“No,” Helena said softly, curling beside me like a warm shield. “You did what you had to do.”

I stared down the hallway he’d walked out of, feeling that old ache hollow me out like it had never left.

Helena’s voice dropped to a whisper as she smoothed my hair back.

“But he needed to know.”