Love Fades With Bygone Days Chapter 08
After that, he drove all over the city, searching for me.
Central Park, where we’d first made it official.
The cafe where we’d had our first real date.
The beach in the Hamptons where he had proposed.
He showed my picture to strangers, asking if they’d seen me.
No one had.
It was as if I had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
Late that night, he finally returned to the apartment.
The moment he walked in, Alessia rushed to him, grabbing his arm.
“Did you find her?”
Tomas opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
He couldn’t say it.
He couldn’t tell her that he had searched all night and found nothing.
Leo stood off to the side, oblivious.
He didn’t understand why his parents had been acting so strange since they got home.
He reached out a small hand toward his father.
“Daddy…”
Tomas flinched back as if burned.
“Don’t touch me!”
Leo recoiled, his eyes wide with fear.
Tomas stared at his son, his expression a storm of conflicting emotions, until only raw anger remained.
“Esme was right,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet.
“You never should have been born.”
“You were a mistake.”
Leo burst into tears.
Alessia froze, staring at Tomas in horror.
But he seemed to hear none of it.
His mind was reeling, flashing back through the last eight years.
He saw me living with him in that tiny, rundown apartment, enduring days that felt like they had no end.
He remembered me crying on the phone, begging him to come back.
Before, he had never thought it was that serious.
He had always believed he could have both.
Only now did he realize that was impossible.
