Dua Lipa and the Secret Love

4/6

I woke in the dead of night, feeling the icy emptiness beside me on the bed. In that instant, reality struck hard: M.S. wasn't there. My heart pounded, and fear surged through me—a deep-seated dread that he might have left, a possibility I couldn't bear to imagine. Calling his name, I stumbled from the bed, the shadows of the early morning deepening my unease.

When I finally reached the living room, I saw him. There was M.S., seated on the sofa, cloaked in a melancholy darkness, holding our photo album. The book lay tenderly in his hands, as if he were clinging to something precious, something that was starting to slip away. The pages lay open to our dearest memories, each image a fragment of our shared story.

My daughter, drawn by the sound of my voice, appeared in the room, still dazed and confused. "What happened, Mum?" she asked, trying to understand. I replied quickly, masking my worry, "I just got frightened... your father wasn't in bed."

She looked at me with silent understanding, and then, instinctively, we both turned our gazes to M.S. There he sat, his face a mix of joy and confusion, as if he was glad to see us yet lost, struggling to grasp something that, cruelly, was slipping away like sand through his fingers.

My daughter, with the calm courage she'd inherited from her father, broke the silence. "Shall we look at the photos together, Dad?" she asked with a sweetness that only intensified the weight of the moment. M.S. raised his eyes to us, and in that gaze, I saw a blend of relief and bewilderment—thankful for our presence, yet somehow unable to fully touch the memories that once bound us.

And so, as we settled beside him, holding his hands, the weight of reality bore down on me with crushing force. The question I'd been avoiding echoed in my mind, insistent and unsettling: *What have I done to the timeline?*

However much I'd tried to ignore it, something in the past had changed—something subtle yet powerful enough to threaten our life together, our history, and the very identity M.S. held dear. Could it be that I was now paying the price for daring to defy time?

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We prepared a strong coffee that morning, each detail of the kitchen wrapped in a strange stillness, as if even the air were aware of what was about to unfold. Today was the day we would use the technology the doctor had given us—the key to the past, the path to try to fix the spiral of disorder we had found ourselves in. As I stirred the coffee, thoughts swirled in my mind: *Is it possible? Is there still time to save everything we've built?*

But there was one certainty that held me up, something I'd learned from M.S. throughout our journey together: true failure is not trying. I knew that, no matter how unlikely it seemed, I had to try, at least to understand how we had arrived at this point.

As soon as M.S. left the room, my daughter approached, her gaze hesitant but determined. "Mum," she said softly, handing me an envelope, "the man from the lab asked me to give this to you."

I felt the weight of the letter in my hands, as if the paper contained all the answers—or perhaps all the doubts—that had remained hidden until now. For a moment, the air thickened, and something deep within me whispered that the words in that letter could wound me, could unearth truths I wasn't ready to face. After all, the director of the time lab knew more than he let on, and this letter seemed like some kind of preparation—a warning he felt I needed to read before our journey.

I looked at my daughter, who held a steady expression, but her eyes, still filled with youth and hope, shone with a quiet strength. She seemed to want to say more, but chose silence, as if she knew the answers I was seeking were right there, trapped within that paper, waiting for the moment I was ready to open it.