Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Hero

For one perfect second, I forgot.
I forgot the club.
I forgot the court.
I forgot the years spent hating her because it was easier than missing her.
I forgot Hayden.
I forgot Jo.
I forgot Eleanora sleeping miles away from all the damage her parents had made before she was even old enough to understand it.
For one perfect second, there was only warmth.
Bare skin.
Soft breathing.
The weight of Emily's leg tangled with mine beneath the sheets.
Her hair was everywhere. Across my pillow, over my chest, tickling my jaw every time she shifted in her sleep. One of her hands rested over my heart like she had put it there to keep me from leaving again.
Or maybe to stop herself.
I lay completely still, afraid that if I moved too quickly, the universe would remember this wasn't allowed and rip her away from me.
Then she sighed.
Not the sharp, guarded sound she made when she was trying to survive me.
A soft one.
A peaceful one.
The kind of sound I hadn't heard from her since we were too young to know how badly love could rot when people stopped telling the truth.
My chest tightened until it hurt.
Emily.
In my bed.
Again.
I turned my head slowly, looking down at her face. Her lashes rested against her cheeks, her lips slightly parted, her skin still flushed from sleep. She looked younger like this. Not innocent. Too much had happened for that. But softer. Like the world hadn't got its hands on her yet.
Like I hadn't.
My fingers moved before I could stop them, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.
She leaned into the touch.
My heart broke clean in half.
Because I loved her.
Still.
After everything.
After the lies, the courtrooms, the screaming, the years of silence, the papers that decided I was more fit to raise our daughter than she was. After watching her stand beside another man last night like he was the one she went home to.
Which, technically, he was.
Until she came here.
I closed my eyes.
Fuck.
That one word brought everything back.
The office.
The zip.
The way she turned around and looked at me like she hated me for still being able to make her feel something.
The argument that followed.
The tears neither of us wanted to admit were there.
The hallway.
The service lift.
Her hand gripping mine so tightly it hurt.
My hotel room door barely closing before her mouth was on mine and my last good intention died somewhere between her saying, this changes nothing, and me answering, it already did.
I should have stopped.
She should have stopped.
Neither of us did.
Now morning had come, bright and cruel through the curtains, and Emily was asleep in my bed while her boyfriend was probably wondering why she hadn't come home.
And Jo—
My phone buzzed on the bedside table.
I ignored it.
Emily shifted closer, her forehead pressing against my shoulder.
I held my breath.
Another buzz.
Then another.
Then another.
A call came through.
The vibration was louder this time, rattling against the wood like a warning.
Emily stirred.
I reached over carefully, trying not to wake her, but the second I saw Anna's name flashing across the screen, my stomach twisted.
Six missed calls.
Anna.
Jen.
My agent.
My director.
Jo.
Mum.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
Then a notification dropped down.
BREAKING NEWS!
My blood went cold.
I sat up too fast.
Emily woke with a gasp, dragging the sheet to her chest as though the room was full of strangers.
"What?" she breathed, still half asleep. "Hero, what is it?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
The headline stared back at me, black letters carving through the quiet morning.
AFTER FRANCHISE LEADING MAN IS A FATHER!
For a second, none of the words underneath made sense.
Then they did.
My name.
Emily's name.
Eleanora.
The pregnancy.
The court case.
The adoption.
Jo.
My life picked apart, twisted, and fed to the world before I had even managed to put my clothes back on.
Emily watched my face change.
Then she reached for the phone.
I didn't want to give it to her.
That was how I knew I had to.
Her eyes moved over the screen.
Line by line.
Word by word.
I watched the colour drain from her face.
"No," she whispered.
I sat up fully, the sheet falling to my waist. "Emily—"
"No."
Her voice cracked this time.
She shoved the phone back at me and scrambled out of the bed, clutching the sheet around herself like it could protect her from the entire world.
"No, no, no."
"Emme, breathe."
"Don't call me that."
She backed away from me, eyes wild, hair falling over her shoulders.
The same shoulders my mouth had been on hours ago.
The thought made shame crawl up my spine.
"They put her name in there?" Emily asked.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
I looked back down at the article, scanning quickly even though every sentence made me want to put my fist through a wall.
"No. They say our daughter. They don't name Eleanora."
Emily pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
For a second, I thought she might be sick.
I got out of bed and reached for my boxers from the floor, dragging them on quickly.
"This wasn't supposed to get out," she said.
"I know."
"No, Hero, you don't know." Her voice rose. "You got what you wanted. You got her. You got the court to agree with you. You got to take her home and be the hero dad who stepped up. I was the girl who wanted to give her away."
I flinched.
"That's not what this is."
"That is exactly what this is!" she shouted, tears shining in her eyes now. "That is what everyone will see. That is what they will call me."
I stepped closer. "I won't let them."
She laughed then, sharp and broken. "You won't let them? Since when have you been able to stop anything once it starts?"
My phone rang again.
The director.
I stared at the name.
Emily saw it too.
"Answer it," she said bitterly. "I'm sure he's already got a plan."
I declined the call.
It rang again instantly.
This time, a message appeared.
Do not make any statement. We control this. You and Jo need to be seen together today.
Emily read it over my shoulder.
The silence that followed was worse than her shouting.
"You and Jo," she said quietly.
"It's PR."
"She wants it to be real."
My jaw tightened. "That's not fair."
"She does." Emily looked at me then, and the hurt in her eyes was old and new all at once. "I saw her last night. She looks at you like she's waiting for you to notice she's already yours."
"She isn't."
"But she wants to be."
I didn't answer fast enough.
Emily's face closed.
I hated myself.
"Nothing is happening with Jo," I said.
"But you're letting the world think it is."
"My director is making me."
"Making you?" she repeated, almost laughing. "Poor Hero. Still being dragged around by what everyone else wants from him."
"That's not what this is."
"Isn't it?" She clutched the sheet tighter. "They want you single but taken. Available but loyal. Romantic enough to sell tickets, mysterious enough to keep people talking. And you let them build her into your love story because it was easier than admitting you already had one you ruined."
The words hit hard because they were true.
Every interview where I smiled through a question about Jo.
Every photoshoot where they placed her hand on my chest.
Every instruction from the studio to keep the chemistry alive.
I had told myself it didn't matter because it wasn't real.
But maybe that was the problem.
Jo had started hoping it could be.
The world believed it already was.
And Emily was standing in my hotel room wrapped in a sheet after spending the night in my bed.
My phone buzzed again.
This time, it was Jo.
Emily's eyes dropped to the screen.
"Don't," I said.
She lifted her chin. "I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to."
She turned away, gathering her dress from the floor.
The movement split me open.
Because I knew what came next.
She would leave.
She would go back to Hayden, or Mimi, or wherever she hid when the world got too loud.
She would put clothes and anger between us.
Then she would pretend last night was nothing.
Again.
"Emily."
"Don't."
"Look at me."
"No."
I crossed the room and caught her wrist.
She froze.
I loosened my grip immediately, my thumb brushing over her pulse.
It was racing.
So was mine.
"Last night wasn't nothing."
Her eyes closed.
"Don't do that," she whispered.
"Do what?"
"Say things now. When everything is already ruined. When I'm half-naked in your hotel room and there's an article online telling the world I tried to abandon my own child."
"You were scared."
Her eyes opened.
The room went still.
I swallowed.
"You were scared," I said again, quieter. "And I was angry. I was so angry I couldn't see anything else. I heard adoption and all I could think was that you didn't want her. That you didn't want any part of me. But maybe..."
My voice cracked.
I hated that.
"Maybe I needed you to be the villain because if you weren't, then I had to admit how badly we both broke."
Emily stared at me like she didn't know what to do with the words.
Then her face crumpled for half a second before she forced it back into place.
"I can't do this with you."
"Yes, you can."
"No, Hero. I can't." She pulled her wrist free. "Because when I do this with you, I lose everything."
"You haven't lost me."
Her laugh was almost silent.
"That's the cruelest thing you've ever said."
The knock at the door made both of us jump.
"Hero?" Anna's voice called from the other side. "Open the door. Now."
Emily looked around the room in panic.
Her dress was still undone.
Her heels were by the door.
My shirt was on the lamp.
There was no hiding what this looked like.
Another knock.
Harder.
"Hero, I swear to God, if you are in there with who I think you're in there with, you need to open this door before your director comes up here with half the studio behind him."
Emily's eyes widened.
"Your director is here?"
I moved towards the door. "Stay behind me."
"I don't need you to protect me."
"I know," I said. "I'm doing it anyway."
She hated that.
I saw it in her face.
She hated it because part of her wanted to let me.
I opened the door only enough to step into the gap.
Anna stood there, furious and pale, phone clutched in her hand.
Behind her were Jen, my agent, and my director.
And Jo.
Jo's eyes moved past my bare shoulder.
To the messy bed.
To the dress on the floor.
To the strip of Emily's bare leg visible from behind the wall.
Her face changed.
Not dramatically.
That would have been easier.
No, Jo simply went very still.
Like someone had put a hand through her chest and asked her not to bleed.
My director pushed forward.
"Tell me she isn't in there."
I said nothing.
His jaw tightened.
"Hero."
I stepped fully into the doorway, blocking their view.
"She's in there."
Jo looked down.
Anna muttered, "Jesus Christ."
My director stared at me like I had personally set fire to the franchise.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?"
I looked back over my shoulder.
Emily stood in the middle of my room, wrapped in the white hotel sheet, eyes red but chin raised. She looked terrified. She looked guilty. She looked beautiful.
She looked like every mistake I had ever made and every reason I would make them again.
Then I looked at Jo.
At the woman the world wanted me to love.
At the woman who maybe really did love me.
Then at my director.
The man who thought he owned my image, my silence, my choices.
My phone buzzed again in my hand.
A message from Mum.
Eleanora is awake. Call me now.
Everything else disappeared.
The article.
The room.
The scandal.
Jo's heartbreak.
Emily's fear.
My director's rage.
Only one thing mattered.
Our daughter.
I looked at Emily.
Her eyes were already on the message.
For the first time that morning, she didn't look away.
"She's awake," Emily whispered.
I nodded.
Something passed between us then.
Not forgiveness.
Not peace.
Something older.
Something stronger.
Parenthood.
I turned back to the hallway.
"My daughter comes first," I said.
My director's eyes narrowed. "Your career comes first until I say otherwise."
The room went deathly quiet.
Emily inhaled sharply behind me.
Jo looked up.
Anna stopped breathing.
And I smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because finally, after years of letting everyone else decide what parts of me were allowed to exist, something inside me snapped clean through.
"No," I said.
My director blinked.
I stepped back into the room and held my hand out to Emily.
She stared at it.
So did everyone else.
After a long second, she took it.
Her fingers were cold.
I held on anyway.
Then I looked my director dead in the eye.
"My daughter comes first. Emily comes with me. And if you ever try to use Jo to cover up my child again, I'll make sure the world knows exactly who told me to lie."
Jo's lips parted.
The hurt was still there.
But so was something else.
Respect, maybe.
Or relief.
My director's face went red. "You are making a very big mistake."
I looked down at Emily's hand in mine.
Then at the bed behind us.
Then at the article still glowing on my phone.
Maybe I was.
Maybe loving Emily had always been my biggest mistake.
But it was also the only truth I had never been able to kill.
"No," I said quietly.
"I'm done making the wrong ones."