Danae’s POV
Eirwen sat beside me, her expression gentler now.
“You still have a life to live, Dana.
He won’t risk doing something in public.
Not after you’ve formally rejected him.”
I could still see his eyes at the hospital.
Wild amber, pain sharpening into fury.
I wasn’t ready to trust public manners to restrain what I’d seen in them.
“Where would we go?”
Even the question brought pressure into my chest.
“The new supermarket on Fifth.
Apparently their coffee beans are wonderful.”
She made it sound deliberately ordinary.
Coffee.
Groceries.
A short trip outside, rather than a test of whether the world was safe.
Fear argued with the restlessness of three days indoors.
The apartment had sheltered me, but the longer I stayed behind its doors, the larger everything outside seemed to become.
I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in her guest room.
“Thirty minutes,” I said at last.
“Give me that long to get ready.”
She beamed, squeezed my hand, and sprang from the bed.
“I’ll make toast.”
After she left, I noticed the small pepper-spray canister on the dresser.
It hadn’t been there yesterday.
She’d thought of that, too.
Gratitude tightened my throat.
In the wreckage of everything else, Eirwen kept finding practical ways to remind me I wasn’t alone.
The supermarket was lively without being crowded.
Every tall blond man sent a little jolt through me.
None was Galen.
Fifteen uneventful minutes passed.
Gradually, my shoulders loosened.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe he wouldn’t make a scene where everyone could see him.
“Not terrible, is it?” she asked among the produce.
I picked up an apple and examined its skin.
“No.
It’s actually good to be somewhere else.”
We collected bread, eggs, coffee, and enough snacks for the movie nights she’d declared essential to my recovery.
By the checkout, I was close to enjoying myself.
The weight on my chest hadn’t vanished, but for once it wasn’t all I could feel.
Outside, with the shopping bags in our hands, I risked wanting a little more of the day.
“Clothes next?
My treat.
A thank-you.”
Eirwen raised a brow.
“Save your money.
You don’t have to buy me anything.”
“I can manage one shirt.
Look, there’s a boutique right there.”
She seemed ready to agree.
Then her eyes widened at something beyond me.
Her hand closed around my arm and pulled me the other way.
I don’t like that place.”
The sudden strain in her voice made me turn.
Galen stood outside the boutique with his hand at Drusilla’s lower back.
A small boy held her hand beside them.
Amber eyes.
That distinctive hooked nose.
Galen’s face, unmistakably echoed in a child’s.
There was nothing abstract about the documents now.
The little boy stood only a short distance away, holding Drusilla’s hand as naturally as any child would hold his mother’s.
The pavement seemed to tilt.
Photographs hadn’t prepared me for the sight of them breathing and laughing together, an easy little family in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.
The boy looked up at Galen, delighted by something he’d said.
I remembered Drusilla’s phone wallpaper.
I’d seen that same child and accepted her explanation without question.
Her nephew.
Five years of loving a man whose other life had been there all along, sometimes right in front of my eyes.
“You’re right,” I said.
My voice sounded far away.
“Somewhere else.”
Eirwen tightened her hold and guided me toward the parking lot.
We were nearly at her car when the voice I’d been trying to escape reached us.
“Danae!”