Chapter 5: Breakfast in a Frozen Palace
1676 Words
The dining room looked like something out of a magazine spread about how rich people lived.
Long table, dark wood that probably cost more than a car. Chairs upholstered in gray fabric that looked too pristine to actually sit on. A chandelier hanging overhead that caught the snow light from the windows and scattered it across the room in cold, glittering pieces. Everything is perfectly arranged, perfectly clean, perfectly lifeless.
No Christmas decorations here either. Not even a centerpiece. Just empty, expensive space.
A spread of breakfast foods covered one end of the table. Pastries, fruit, what looked like quiche, coffee in a silver carafe. Enough to feed ten people even though there were only three of us in this cavernous house.
Noah sat at the far end of the table, small and alone, pushing scrambled eggs around his plate without eating them. He’d changed into jeans and a sweater, his hair combed down flat in a way that looked freshly done and uncomfortable. When he saw me, his whole face lit up for just a second before he caught himself and looked down at his plate again.
That hurt more than it should have. That instant of joy followed by the immediate suppression of it, like he’d been taught that showing happiness was dangerous.
I’d seen that look before. In the mirror. Every time Marcus told me I was being too much, too loud, too emotional, too everything.
“Good morning, Noah,” I said, deliberately warm as I moved to the table.
He glanced up, gave me the tiniest smile, then looked toward the doorway where his father stood watching us like a hawk monitoring its prey.
Adrian’s expression didn’t change, but something in the air shifted. Tension crackling like static electricity before a storm.
“Sit,” he said to me. Not an invitation. A command.
I sat. But I chose the seat directly next to Noah instead of somewhere safely distant, and I watched Adrian’s jaw tighten in response. Good. If he was going to be cold and hostile, I might as well give him a reason.
Noah’s eyes went wide when I settled into the chair beside him. He looked at his father, then at me, then back at his eggs like he was trying to disappear into them.
“Is it okay if I sit here?” I asked him quietly, ignoring Adrian completely.
Noah nodded. Once. Quick.
“Thanks.” I reached for the coffee carafe and poured myself a fresh cup, then grabbed a croissant that looked like it had been baked by someone who took their pastries very seriously. “This food looks amazing. Did you help make it?”
He shook his head.
“No? Well, maybe tomorrow you can help me make something. Do you like pancakes?”
His eyes lit up again, and this time he couldn’t quite hide it. He nodded more enthusiastically, and his hands moved like he wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t come out.
“Noah doesn’t speak.”
Adrian’s voice cut through the room like a blade. He’d moved to the table without me noticing, taking his seat at the head, as far from both of us as possible while still being in the same room. His coffee sat in front of him, untouched, and his hands were flat on the table like he was physically holding himself down.
“He spoke to me this morning,” I said, keeping my voice light. Casual. Like this wasn’t a battle.
“No, he didn’t.”
“He told me his name.”
Something dangerous flashed across Adrian’s face. His knuckles went white where his hands pressed against the wood. “You’re mistaken.”
“I’m not.”
“Noah hasn’t spoken in months, Miss Hart. So either you’re lying, or you misheard something and convinced yourself it was speech.”
I turned to look at him fully, this cold, angry man who was so desperate to keep his son locked in silence that he’d rather call me a liar than accept that something had changed. “Why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
“I wouldn’t.” I glanced at Noah, who’d gone completely still, his eyes locked on his plate, his small body rigid with tension. My heart broke for him. “Noah, do you want to tell your dad what you told me?”
Noah’s head shook. Tiny. Terrified.
“See?” Adrian’s voice was a cold triumph. “You’re upsetting him.”
“I’m not the one upsetting him,” I shot back, and immediately regretted it when Noah flinched.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Adrian stared at me with something that might have been rage or might have been something worse, and I stared back because I refused to look away first, refused to back down, refused to pretend I didn’t see what was happening here.
A little boy who’d stopped speaking. A father who’d accepted it as permanent. A house with no warmth, no Christmas, no joy.
Something had broken in this family, and they’d both just learned to live in the pieces.
Finally, Adrian stood. “Noah, finish your breakfast.”
“He’s barely touched it,” I said.
“That’s not your concern.”
“Maybe it should be someone’s concern.”
“Excuse me?” His voice dropped to something dangerous and quiet, the kind of anger that didn’t need volume to be terrifying.
I should have stopped. Should have remembered I was a guest here, trapped by a storm, dependent on his hospitality. Should have done what I always did with Marcus and just shut up, backed down, made myself small enough to slip through the cracks of someone else’s anger.
But I looked at Noah, at his hunched shoulders and his untouched eggs and the way he was trying so hard to be invisible, and I couldn’t.
“I said maybe it should be someone’s concern that your son isn’t eating.” I kept my voice steady even though my heart was hammering. “That he sits at this huge table all alone. That he drew a picture of a family that includes a stranger because maybe he’s lonely.”
“You have no right to—”
“I know I don’t. I know I’m nobody here, just some random woman who crashed her car in your storm. But I have eyes, and I can see that something’s wrong, and pretending everything’s fine doesn’t make it fine.”
Adrian took a step toward me, and I forced myself not to move. Not to show fear even though every instinct screamed at me to run.
“My son,” he said, each word precisely enunciated like he was explaining something to an i***t, “is none of your business. My home is none of your business. And if you can’t respect that, storm or no storm, you can find somewhere else to stay.”
“Where?” I spread my hands, gesturing at the windows where snow still fell in thick sheets. “Where exactly would you like me to go? Back to my car? Out into the blizzard? Or are you going to physically throw me out into the cold like you threatened last night?”
His expression was pure ice. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Daddy, no.”
The words were so quiet I almost missed them. But they cut through the tension like a knife through silk, and both Adrian and I froze.
Noah was standing now, his small hands gripping the edge of the table, tears streaming down his face. Looking at his father with something that broke my heart into pieces.
“Please don’t make her leave,” Noah whispered, his voice shaking but real, so real. “Please, Daddy. Please.”
Adrian stared at his son like he was seeing a ghost. All the color drained from his face. His hands started to shake, just slightly, before he clenched them into fists.
“Noah,” he breathed, and his voice cracked on the name.
Noah was crying harder now, big hiccuping sobs that shook his whole little body. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t talk. I’m sorry I made Mommy leave. I’m sorry, but please don’t send Elise away too. Please.”
Oh god.
Oh god, this child thought his mother left because of him.
I moved without thinking, dropping to my knees beside Noah’s chair and pulling him into my arms. He came willingly, collapsing against me and sobbing into my shoulder while his whole body shook.
“Shh, sweetheart, no,” I whispered into his hair, holding him tight. “You didn’t make anyone leave. You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing that happened was your fault, do you hear me? Nothing.”
“Noah.” Adrian’s voice was strangled now, all the ice melted into something raw and broken. He moved toward us but stopped, his hands hovering like he didn’t know if he was allowed to touch his own son. “Noah, look at me.”
But Noah just clung to me harder, his fingers digging into my borrowed sweater, his tears soaking through the fabric. He was trying to say something else but the words were lost in sobs, and all I could do was hold him and rock him slightly and wish I could absorb all his pain into myself.
“I need—” Adrian’s voice broke completely. He tried again. “I need to hold him. Please.”
It wasn’t a demand this time. It was a plea. Raw and desperate and so full of pain that I almost started crying too.
I looked up at him, at this man who’d been nothing but cold since I arrived, and saw a father completely shattered by the sound of his son’s voice saying words he never wanted to hear.
“Come here,” I said softly, shifting Noah slightly. “Come hold your son.”
- Writer
