#Chapter 197: The Declaration

ELENA I'd been thinking about it for days. The memory walk. The venue. The speech Derek never gave—those words he'd carried in a locked drawer for six years, words that could have changed everything if he'd been brave enough to say them. The way he'd looked at Aiden in the living room that night, like our son was the most precious thing in the world, and the way his hand had stayed on Aiden's back even in sleep, as if some part of him was still afraid the boy might disappear. I'd spent six years building walls. Telling myself I was fine alone, that I didn't need him, that the bond was just biology—just fate pulling strings—and I was stronger than that. But the truth—the truth I'd been avoiding—was simpler than any of the stories I'd told myself. I loved him. I'd been fighting it for months, cataloguing his failures, tallying his debts, building a case against my own heart like a prosecutor determined to win even when the evidence was pointing the other way. But standing in