Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Hero

By the time the police finished taking my statement, my jaw had gone numb.
That was probably a bad sign.
So was the ache in my ribs every time I breathed in too deeply. So was the way my shoulder burned when I moved my arm. So was the blood that kept gathering at the split in my lip no matter how many times I pressed the cloth against it.
But none of it mattered.
Not really.
Not while Emily and Eleanora were upstairs.
Not while Hayden was in the back of a police car.
Not while Ava was still somewhere outside these walls, pulling strings, planting bombs, and waiting to see which one would go off first.
The officer closed his notebook.
"We'll be in touch regarding further statements. For now, Mr Marks is being taken into custody. Given the current lockdown restrictions, procedures are a little different, but we'll keep you updated."
I nodded.
"Is he being released tonight?"
"Unlikely, given the assault, the breach of property, and the concerns regarding the petrol. But I can't promise anything at this stage."
Of course he couldn't.
Nobody could promise anything anymore.
The whole country had shut its doors an hour ago, and somehow my life still felt too exposed.
"What about the press?" I asked.
"We'll keep officers positioned at the gates for as long as we can. The lockdown announcement may help clear some of them."
I almost laughed.
A global pandemic as crowd control.
Great.
The officer hesitated, glancing towards the stairs.
"Ms Dean was very clear that no images of the child are to be taken."
I looked at him.
"So am I."
He nodded. "We'll do what we can."
That phrase again.
Do what we can.
I was beginning to hate it.
He left me standing in the studio with blue lights flickering through the high windows and the smell of petrol still hanging faintly in the air.
Clara-Bellas was quiet now.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that came after violence had passed through a room and left everything standing but changed.
I looked at the wall behind reception.
Clara-Bellas.
Emily had built this.
Not with me.
Not because of me.
After me.
Maybe even against me.
She had taken all the discipline, all the grief, all the restless fire inside her and turned it into polished floors, mirrors, classes, dancers, opening nights, a whole world where people looked to her and saw someone capable.
And then today, the world had tried to drag her back to the version of herself she hated most.
The girl who panicked.
The girl who wanted adoption.
The girl who ran.
Except today, Emily Dean had stood behind a nursery door with our daughter in her arms and told Hayden no.
I pressed the cloth to my mouth again.
It came away red.
"Brilliant," I muttered.
A sound came from the stairs.
I turned, expecting Emily.
Instead, it was one of the officers carrying a clear evidence bag.
Inside it was the burner phone from the nursery.
The sight of it sent a cold line down my spine.
"We'll take this for analysis," he said.
"Good."
"And the photographs. The box. Items from the garage."
I nodded.
"Can I ask something?"
The officer paused.
"The baby clothes. The blanket." My throat tightened. "Were they damaged?"
His face softened slightly.
"No. They were placed inside the box. They'll need processing, but they didn't appear damaged."
I exhaled before I realised I'd been holding my breath.
"Thank you."
He nodded once and carried the evidence out through the studio door.
I waited until the sound of footsteps faded.
Then I turned and climbed the stairs.
Every step hurt.
My ribs complained. My shoulder throbbed. My jaw pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
But by the time I reached the flat, none of that was what made me stop.
Emily was sitting on the bedroom floor beside the travel cot.
Still.
Too still.
Her phone was in her hand.
Her face was white.
Not pale.
White.
The kind of white that made my body go cold before my brain had even formed the question.
"Emily?"
She didn't look up.
Eleanora slept inches away from her, one small hand resting near the mesh side of the cot. Emily had one finger through the gap, close enough that Eleanora's fingers brushed hers every now and again in sleep.
The sight should have softened me.
It would have, if Emily didn't look like someone had hollowed her out.
I crossed the room slowly.
"What happened?"
Her eyes lifted.
There was something in them I hadn't seen in years.
Not anger.
Not fear.
Betrayal.
Old betrayal, newly woken.
My stomach dropped.
"What?"
She held the phone out.
I took it.
The screen showed messages from an unknown number.
You always did like being saved by him.
My jaw clenched.
Then I read the next one.
Ask Hero about the day Ava lost the baby.
Everything stopped.
The air.
The pain.
The room.
The country outside.
My daughter sleeping.
Emily looking at me.
Everything.
No.
No, no, no.
Not that.
Not here.
Not now.
My hand tightened around her phone.
A third message sat beneath it.
He never told you everything, Emily Dean.
The phone blurred in my hand.
Emily stood slowly.
Not dramatically.
No shouting.
No tears.
That was worse.
"What baby?"
My mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Her face cracked.
Just a little.
Enough to kill me.
"What baby, Hero?"
I looked down at Eleanora.
Sleeping.
Soft.
Innocent.
Then back at Emily.
"I didn't know."
Her brows pulled together.
"What?"
"I didn't know until after."
"After what?"
I swallowed.
The room felt too small.
The nursery door was open across the hall, green walls visible in the dim light. Clouds and stars. The room Emily had hidden. The room I had never known existed.
And now Ava had opened another door.
One I had nailed shut so long ago I had almost convinced myself it wasn't there.
"Ava was pregnant," I said.
Emily's hand went to her stomach.
Not protective.
Instinctive.
Like the words had struck her body before her mind.
"When?"
"Before you and I were properly together."
Her eyes sharpened. "Properly?"
I flinched.
Wrong word.
Always the wrong word with us.
"In those early days," I said. "When everything was messy. When you knew about her. When we were trying to move past it."
Emily stared at me.
She did know about Ava.
She knew about the cheating. The overlap. The cowardice. The way I had kept Ava close because wanting Emily had terrified me.
We had fought over it until we were hoarse.
We had broken up for two weeks.
We had got back together because, apparently, even then neither of us knew how to stay away from a fire.
But she had not known this.
No one had.
Almost no one.
"Ava told me months later," I said.
Emily's voice came out flat. "Months later."
"Yes."
"After she lost it?"
I nodded.
Emily looked away.
Her jaw tightened.
"That's convenient."
"I know."
"No, Hero. That is not convenient. That is catastrophic."
"I know."
"Stop saying you know!"
Eleanora stirred.
Both of us froze.
Emily's hand flew to her mouth.
The baby made a soft grumbling sound, turned her face towards the rabbit, and settled again.
Emily closed her eyes for a second, forcing herself to breathe.
When she opened them, her voice was lower.
Dangerously low.
"You never told me."
"No."
"Why?"
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the answer was pathetic.
Cowardly.
Mine.
"Because you had already forgiven me for Ava."
Her face changed.
Hurt first.
Then understanding.
Then anger.
Real anger.
"You didn't want to ruin the forgiveness."
"No."
The honesty landed like a slap.
Emily backed up one step.
"You let me forgive half a betrayal."
"I didn't know when it happened."
"But you knew after."
"Yes."
"And you kept it from me."
"Yes."
She looked at me like she wanted to hate me.
Maybe she did.
Maybe she should.
I forced myself to keep talking before she could fill the silence with whatever Ava wanted her to believe.
"Ava told me she miscarried," I said. "She said she found out she was pregnant after I ended things properly. She said she was going to tell me, but then she lost it before she could."
Emily's face tightened.
"And you believed her?"
"I didn't know what to believe."
"That's not an answer."
"No," I said. "I didn't fully believe her."
Emily's eyes flashed.
"But you didn't tell me anyway."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because if she was lying, I didn't want to give her the power to hurt us again." My voice roughened. "And if she wasn't lying, then I had lost a child before I even knew it existed, and I had no idea what to do with that."
The words sat between us.
Ugly.
Small.
Human.
Emily's face changed.
Not forgiveness.
Not even softness.
But something in her anger faltered.
I hated that.
I would have preferred rage.
"I was nineteen," I said. "Stupid. Selfish. In love with you. Trying to convince myself I was not the kind of person who could do that much damage before my life had even started."
Emily looked down at Eleanora.
Our daughter slept on, unbothered by our old sins.
"How did she lose it?" Emily asked.
"I don't know."
"You didn't ask?"
"I did."
"And?"
"She wouldn't tell me anything real. She just said stress. Me. You. Us." I rubbed a hand over my face, wincing when it pulled at my lip. "She made it sound like I had chosen you and that had killed something."
Emily's throat moved.
"That is cruel."
"Yes."
"Was it true?"
"No."
The answer came fast.
Certain.
Maybe too certain for something I could never prove.
Emily noticed.
"You don't know that."
"I know I didn't make her lose a baby by loving you."
She swallowed.
"But there was a baby."
"I don't know."
Her brows pulled together. "You don't know?"
"She never showed me proof. No scan. No records. Nothing. She told me after it was gone, and then she disappeared for a while."
"And you just let it stay buried?"
"Yes."
"That's not like you."
I laughed once, hollow.
"Emily, most of my worst choices are exactly like me."
She looked down.
Her fingers twisted together.
I hated the way this was landing on her. Not as jealousy. Not as a fresh affair. That wound was old, already scarred. But this was different.
This was motherhood.
Loss.
Ava turning another child, maybe real, maybe not, into a weapon against the one sleeping beside us.
"Who else knew?" Emily asked.
"Mum knew something had happened. Not the details."
"Brandon?"
His name hit both of us.
Brandon.
Our best friend.
The boy whose name now sat in the middle of Eleanora's like a bridge between grief and love.
The boy Emily had married when he was dying because nothing about us had ever been simple enough for strangers to understand.
"No," I said quietly. "Not at first."
"At first?"
"I told him later."
Emily's eyes lifted.
"When?"
"After you found out about Ava. After you and I got back together. I told him because I was scared Ava would tell you and twist it. He told me if I didn't tell you, I was building the next bomb myself."
A sad, broken laugh left her.
"That sounds like him."
"Yeah."
"So why didn't you listen?"
My throat tightened.
"Because he got sick."
Emily closed her eyes.
There it was.
The thing we never managed to talk about without bleeding.
Brandon getting sick had rearranged everything.
Friendships.
Loyalties.
Timing.
Grief.
Love.
It had made every wrong choice feel both smaller and impossible to fix.
"I told myself it wasn't the time," I said. "Then there was never a right time. Then Ava stayed quiet. Then you and I became... us. Properly. Fully. And I thought if I told you after we had already survived her, it would only reopen something we had fought so hard to close."
Emily looked at me for a long moment.
"You made that choice for me."
"Yes."
"And then later, when I kept Eleanora from you, you acted like I invented betrayal."
The words struck exactly where she aimed them.
I looked down.
"Yes."
"Say more than yes."
I swallowed.
"You're right."
Her laugh cracked. "God, I hate when you do that."
"Agree with you?"
"No. Make it harder to be angry."
"You can be angry."
"I am."
"Good."
Her eyes flashed.
"Don't be noble at me."
"I'm not."
"You are. You stand there bleeding and bruised and saying I have permission to feel things like that makes up for years of deciding what I could survive."
I had no answer.
Because she was right.
Again.
Ava's baby - if there had been one - wasn't just my secret.
It was another version of the same wound.
Decisions made without the other.
Truths withheld because we were scared of what honesty would cost.
"I should have told you," I said.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"Yes."
The bluntness almost made me smile.
Almost.
Then her face changed.
Not softer.
Not forgiving.
Thinking.
"She's going to use this."
I nodded.
"I know."
"She wants me to think Eleanora is the second child you fought for. Or the replacement. Or proof that you only cared about our daughter because you lost hers."
My stomach twisted.
There it was.
Ava's angle.
Cruel.
Precise.
Already inside the room.
"I don't," I said.
Emily looked at me.
"I know that."
The relief was so sharp it hurt.
"You do?"
"Yes." Her voice dropped. "I know how you love Eleanora. Whatever Ava is trying to make this into, it isn't that."
My eyes burned.
I looked away.
Of all the things she could have doubted, she did not doubt that.
Not my love for our daughter.
"I don't know if Ava was pregnant," I said quietly. "And I hate saying that because if she was, then it sounds cruel. But I don't know. I only know she has used the idea of that baby every time she wanted to remind me I ruin things."
Emily's face hardened.
"And now she wants to use it on me."
"Yes."
Her phone buzzed again.
Both of us looked down.
Unknown number.
Another message.
He mourned mine. He stole yours. Ask him why one mother gets grief and the other gets court.
Emily's face went still.
My blood turned cold.
"That's not true," I said immediately.
But the words had already landed.
I saw them.
Saw the way they moved through her.
Not because she believed Ava fully.
Because Ava had found the exact fracture.
A mother who lost.
A mother who surrendered.
A man who grieved one and fought the other.
Emily's voice was barely audible.
"Did you mourn it?"
I closed my eyes.
"Yes."
She inhaled softly.
I opened my eyes.
"Not like she wanted me to," I said. "Not like a father who had known and dreamed and waited. I mourned the possibility. The guilt. The idea that something had happened and I hadn't even known enough to care before it was gone."
Emily looked at Eleanora.
"And with her?"
"With Eleanora?"
She nodded.
I looked at our daughter.
The baby who had been born without my name on the certificate.
The baby I had discovered after the fact.
The baby I had fought for with every ugly, frightened, furious part of me.
"With Eleanora, I had a face," I said. "A cry. A heartbeat under my hand. A daughter already here who needed someone to choose her out loud." My voice cracked. "I didn't steal her because you were her mother. I fought because she was alive and nobody was allowed to pretend she wasn't."
Emily's eyes filled.
"She wasn't nobody to me."
"I know that now."
Her face crumpled.
That was the wrong thing.
Or maybe the right thing.
I didn't know anymore.
"Do you?" she whispered.
"Yes."
She shook her head. "You saw the nursery today and suddenly decided I had feelings."
"No."
"You did."
"I saw the nursery and realised I had ignored them."
Silence.
That got through.
Maybe because it was worse.
I stepped closer, slow enough for her to stop me.
She didn't.
"I was so angry you didn't want her the way I did that I stopped asking what you did feel. If it wasn't enough to keep her with you, I treated it like nothing."
Emily wiped at her cheeks quickly.
"It wasn't enough."
"No," I said softly. "But it wasn't nothing."
Her mouth trembled.
Eleanora stirred in the cot.
A tiny sigh.
A little rustle against the sheet.
Both of us looked down.
She settled again.
The room exhaled with us.
Emily's phone buzzed again.
This time, I took it before she could read.
"Hero."
"No."
"She's texting me."
"She's torturing you."
I looked at the screen.
Another message.
Tell him I kept the hospital bracelet. Ask him if he wants to see what his first child looked like.
My throat closed.
Emily saw my face.
"What?"
I locked the phone.
"What did she say?"
"Nothing useful."
"Don't do that."
"I'm not reading it to you."
Her eyes sharpened. "You don't get to decide what I can survive."
That hit.
Hard.
I handed the phone back.
She read it.
I watched her face.
Something changed.
Not hurt.
Not shock.
Disgust.
"She's lying," Emily said.
I blinked.
"What?"
Emily's eyes stayed on the screen.
"She's lying."
"You don't know that."
"No, I don't know if there was a pregnancy. But this?" She lifted the phone. "This is performance. She wants you to ask. She wants you to picture it. She wants to make a baby into evidence of your cruelty."
Her voice went cold.
"She did the same with Eleanora."
I stared at her.
Emily looked up.
"I know what it sounds like when someone is using a child as a weapon. I've heard enough of it today."
The room tilted slightly.
Not from pain.
From the strange, fierce certainty in her voice.
"I should call her," I said.
"No."
"Emily-"
"No." She stepped closer. "You call her and she gets exactly what she wants. You bleeding for a ghost while your living daughter sleeps right there."
My mouth closed.
Her eyes were bright.
Angry.
Protective.
Of me?
Of Eleanora?
Of herself?
Maybe all three.
"We send it to Jen," she said. "To legal. To the police if needed. We do not feed Ava with your guilt."
We.
Again.
I nodded slowly.
"Okay."
Emily's shoulders dropped slightly, like she had expected me to fight.
I didn't have the energy.
Or maybe I trusted her.
The realisation hit softly.
Unexpected.
I trusted Emily with Ava because Emily knew exactly what it felt like to be turned into a story.
I held out my hand.
"Send it to Jen?"
She looked at the phone.
Then at me.
After a second, she nodded.
"Fine."
She forwarded the messages, her fingers shaking but steady enough to do it. Then she placed the phone face down on the bedside table like it was poisonous.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The silence was different this time.
Not easy.
Never easy.
But less sharp.
Emily sat back down on the floor beside the travel cot, knees drawn up, one arm resting on the mattress edge.
I lowered myself beside her with a hiss I failed to hide.
Her head snapped towards me.
"Your ribs."
"I'm fine."
"You are banned from that sentence."
"Yes, ma'am."
She glared.
Then softened.
Just enough.
"You need ice."
"I need about eight hours of sleep and a new face."
"I can offer frozen peas and the face you already ruined."
"I'll take it."
She stood and left the room.
For a moment, I was alone with Eleanora.
I leaned closer to the cot.
Her lips were parted slightly, cheeks flushed from crying and sleep. One curl stuck to her forehead.
"Your mum is scary," I whispered.
Eleanora slept.
"And right."
Still asleep.
"Really annoying combination."
Behind me, Emily said, "I heard that."
I turned.
She stood in the doorway holding a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel.
"Good," I said.
She came back and sat beside me, closer this time.
Not touching.
Almost.
She handed me the peas.
I pressed them to my ribs and instantly regretted every life choice that had led to cold vegetables on bruised bones.
"Jesus."
"Baby."
"You're enjoying this."
"A little."
I looked at her.
The corner of her mouth moved.
Not a smile exactly.
But alive.
I loved her so much it felt like injury.
Maybe because it was.
"Emily."
Her expression shifted.
"What?"
"I never loved Ava."
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know."
"I loved you then. I love you now."
Her breath caught.
Outside, somewhere below, a police radio crackled.
Eleanora slept between us.
The whole country sat locked behind doors, holding its breath.
Emily looked at me like I had placed something dangerous in her hands.
"You can't keep saying that."
"I only said it once today."
"Hero."
"I'm not asking you to say it back."
"I know. That's the problem."
I frowned.
She looked at Eleanora.
"When you ask, I can say no. When you don't ask, I have to sit with the fact that maybe I want to."
My heart stopped.
She closed her eyes like she hated herself for saying it.
I didn't move.
Didn't breathe too loudly.
Didn't ruin it.
Emily opened her eyes again.
"I'm angry with you."
"I know."
"And I don't forgive you for this. Not yet."
"I know."
"And Ava is not going to use this to push me out of this room."
My throat tightened.
"No."
"And I am not sleeping with you tonight just because we're sad and scared and locked in together."
I almost smiled.
"I didn't ask."
Her eyes narrowed. "You were thinking it."
"I am always thinking it."
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
Small.
Exhausted.
Beautiful.
Then she shook her head.
"You're impossible."
"You said that already."
"It keeps being true."
I smiled carefully around my split lip.
This time, it didn't hurt as much.
Emily leaned back against the bed, eyes on Eleanora.
"I need time."
"I can give you that."
"Can you?"
I followed her gaze to our daughter.
Then to the open nursery door across the hall.
Then back to Emily.
"I'll try."
She looked at me.
"Mum would say trying is what people say when they want credit for almost doing it."
I laughed properly then.
It hurt everywhere.
Worth it.
Emily's mouth softened.
For a few seconds, we sat beside each other on the bedroom floor while the strangest day of our lives pressed against the windows and doors.
Ava was still out there.
Jo's betrayal was still fresh.
Hayden was in custody.
My director would be plotting.
The press would keep shouting.
Lockdown had only just begun.
There was so much still waiting to hurt us.
But Emily didn't run.
And I told the truth.
And Eleanora Brandon Boo Dean Fiennes Tiffin slept beside us, one tiny hand curled around her rabbit, safe for one more moment.
For tonight, maybe that was enough.
Then Emily's phone buzzed again.
We both looked at it.
Unknown number.
One final message lit the screen.
You think she stayed because she loves you? Wait until the baby cries all night.
Emily stared at it.
So did I.
Then, without a word, she picked up the phone, blocked the number, and set it face down again.
My chest loosened.
She looked at me.
"What?"
I shook my head.
"Nothing."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Hero."
I smiled.
"You stayed."
She looked down at Eleanora.
Then back at me.
Her voice was quiet.
"For tonight."
I nodded.
"For tonight."
But when she reached through the cot mesh and let Eleanora's sleeping fingers curl around hers, I knew Ava had miscalculated.
Emily Dean might still be terrified.
She might still be angry.
She might still not know what kind of mother she could be.
But she had stayed through the worst day.
And tomorrow, when the baby cried, she would still be here.
Maybe not because she was ready.
Maybe not because she loved me.
Maybe not because she had forgiven herself.
But because something had started in that locked nursery.
Something small.
Something stubborn.
Something Ava could not touch.
And for the first time all day, I believed we might survive the morning.