Always Mine

If "secret baby" makes you nervous, stay here for a moment.

This isn't the version where the hero finds out, then forgives her by the next chapter because love conquers all.

Raschad Carter finds out he has a five-year-old son, and he is angry. He spent his entire life making sure he would never be the man his father was. Then he met Simone, fell in love, and without giving him a choice, she made him into his father anyway.

He doesn't forgive her easily. What he does do is show up. Raschad is not the kind of man who runs from hard things, so he uproots his life to make sure he never misses another day of his son's existence. He is also not confused about his feelings. He knows he loves Simone. Never stopped. But she hurt him to his core. Twice. And that sits in his chest, rocking back and forth between grief and fury.

Simone Wade is a woman shaped by grief and abandonment who has spent years living with a secret she never meant to keep. But fear has a way of turning days into years, and "when the time is right" into never. Simone has spent every day carrying the weight of a choice she can't undo, her silence calcified into years before she understood the cage she'd built for herself.

Two people. Two wounds. One son who deserves both of his parents at their best.

They co-parent and pretend they are two people who have figured out how to be in the same room. But what they can't do, no matter how many lines they draw, is pretend this is over. It was never over. It was inevitable.

Love is not the question. The question is whether love can survive what some might call unforgivable. Whether a man can put down his pride and understand that pride isn't the same as protection. Whether a woman who has spent her life guarding herself from more pain can stop disappearing from her own life, and surrender to the man she hurt more than anyone in the world.