PART 2
“Maya!”
Her name tore out of me before I could stop it.
People turned. A woman near the fountain glanced over her shoulder. A cyclist swerved slightly, annoyed by the sudden sound. Camille’s voice cut off mid-sentence beside me, and for the first time all afternoon, she noticed I was no longer walking with her.
“Adrian?” she said carefully. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer.
Maya was already moving fast through the edge of the crowd, both hands locked around the stroller handle, her shoulders tense in a way I remembered too well. She had always carried fear quietly. Not dramatically. Not with tears or trembling hands. Maya’s fear lived in the set of her jaw, in the way she made herself smaller, in the way she calculated every exit before anyone else realized there was danger.
And now she was running from me.
With three children.
My children.
The thought hit again so hard my knees almost weakened.
“Adrian,” Camille said, sharper this time. “Who is that woman?”
I took one step forward.
Camille grabbed my arm.
Her fingers tightened around the sleeve of my jacket, and the diamond on her hand flashed between us like a warning.
“Don’t,” she said.
I looked at her then, really looked at her. Camille Hart was beautiful in the polished, practiced way of women who had grown up understanding cameras, expectations, and legacy. Her blonde hair was tucked neatly behind one ear. Her dress was expensive. Her smile, usually perfect, had vanished.
There was confusion in her eyes.
And fear.
Not fear of Maya.
Fear of what I had just seen.
I pulled my arm away.
“I need to talk to her.”
“Here?” Camille whispered. “In public? Adrian, you’re acting insane.”
“Camille, please.”
The word please did something to her. Her lips parted slightly. Maybe she had never heard me use it like that before—not as strategy, not as politeness, but as desperation.
Maya glanced back once.
Just once.
The little girl with my eyes was looking over the side of the stroller, one small hand gripping the edge, her curls bouncing as Maya hurried them toward Michigan Avenue.
I moved.
Not a sprint. Not at first. Some part of me still knew better than to create a scene in the middle of Grant Park. But every step was faster than the last, the noise of the city blurring into one long breath around me.
“Maya!”
She didn’t stop.
One of the toddlers began to fuss.
The boy with the watchful eyes twisted in his seat and stared at me with the same quiet suspicion I had worn as a child in rooms full of men pretending to be family.
That look pierced me deeper than anything.
He didn’t know me.
None of them knew me.
I was a stranger chasing their mother through a park.
The realization slowed me.
“Maya,” I called again, softer this time. “Please. I won’t come closer. Just stop.”
She froze near the curb.
Traffic moved beyond her in shining lines of metal and glass. A bus sighed at the stop. Someone laughed too loudly nearby. The city continued as if my life had not just split open.
Maya did not turn around.
Her back rose and fell with uneven breaths.
I stopped several feet behind her.
My hands hung uselessly at my sides.
For a man raised to command rooms, negotiate with enemies, and make impossible decisions before breakfast, I had never felt so completely powerless.
“Maya,” I said, “are they mine?”
Her shoulders tightened.
That was answer enough.
Still, she gave me words.
