Shattered Promises: His Secret Baby

Chapter 4: The Distance Between Us

Chapter 4: The Distance Between Us

Elena smoothed her dress down with shaky hands, her body still humming from the almost-encounter against the balcony railing. She stepped inside, heart pounding for an entirely different reason now. Marcus stood near the glass doors, one hand gripping the back of his neck, his broad shoulders rigid as he listened.

“Yes, Dad. I understand… No, I’m still in California… Tonight?” His voice dropped, clipped and professional in a way she hadn’t heard since their first night together. “London? Alright...”

He ended the call and stood motionless for a long moment, staring at the phone in his hand like it had betrayed him. When he finally turned, his expression softened the second his eyes landed on her.

“Elena…”

He crossed the room in three strides and pulled her into his arms without another word. She went willingly, pressing her face into his bare chest, inhaling the familiar scent of salt, sunscreen, and him. His heartbeat was steady but fast beneath her cheek.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. She already knew the answer. Tears swelled in her eyes, hot and unwelcome. She tried to blink them back, but one slipped free anyway.

Marcus held her tighter, one large hand cradling the back of her head. “My father,” he said, voice rough. “It’s... it's urgent. One of our biggest European investors is threatening to pull out of a multi-million-dollar merger at the last minute. Dad wants me there in person... says it’s time I learn how to handle these crises. He’s already arranged the private jet. We leave for London tonight.”

Elena swallowed hard, nodding against him even as her chest ached. She forced a small, brave smile. “It’s fine. I knew this bubble couldn’t last forever.”

But Marcus noticed everything. He always did. He pulled back just enough to look at her, his thumbs gently wiping away the tears that had escaped. His forehead rested against hers, their breaths mingling.

“Hey,” he murmured, voice low and tender. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. I see you, Elena.”

He pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead, then another to the tip of her nose, and finally to her lips—soft, reassuring, full of everything they didn’t have time to say properly.

“I’ll call every single day,” he promised. “I’ll text you the moment I land, and every chance I get after that. This isn’t the end of us. Not even close.”

“I love you,” she breathed, the words slipping out raw and honest.

Marcus’s grip tightened around her waist. “I love you too. God, I’m going to miss you like hell.” He kissed her again, deeper this time, pouring weeks of passion and new tenderness into it. “But I’ll never leave a gap between us. I swear it. We’ll make this work.”

They spent the next hour packing in quiet, stolen touches. Marcus drove her toward the bus station along the Pacific Coast Highway, the sun painting the ocean in brilliant shades of blue and gold. Palm trees swayed in the warm breeze as they passed surf shops and taco trucks in the small coastal town north of Los Angeles.

At the station, he tried to buy her ticket, but Elena gently stopped him, rising on her toes for one last, desperate kiss. She watched his sleek black rental disappear down the road, waving until she couldn’t see it anymore.

Then reality settled in.

She didn’t have enough money for the bus fare home.

So Elena started walking. The journey back to her childhood neighborhood in the inland suburbs stretched nearly two hours under the relentless sun. By the time she reached the faded stucco house, sweat clung to her skin and her heart felt bruised.

The familiar smell hit her the moment she opened the door—faint cigarette smoke mixed with her mother’s lavender air freshener, which never quite masked the bitterness underneath.

Her parents were already at it again.

“You think I don’t know, Richard?” her mother shouted from the kitchen. “That cheap perfume on your shirts? The late ‘meetings’?”

Her father’s voice boomed back. “For f**k’s sake, Maria, not this again. I’m providing for this family!”

Elena slipped upstairs quietly, closing her bedroom door against the noise. She dropped onto her narrow bed and stared at the ceiling with its faded high school posters. Three days ago she’d been screaming Marcus’s name in a luxury oceanfront suite while waves crashed below. Now this.

She pulled out her phone with trembling fingers and texted him: Just got home. Is it okay to call you, babe?

No reply came.

The days blurred. Elena worked part-time at a local café in town, serving iced lattes and avocado toast to tourists and remote workers under the relentless SoCal sun. In the evenings she wrote at the tiny desk in her room, trying to drown out the arguments downstairs.

One night, after her father stormed out following yet another screaming match and a shattered plate, Elena found her mother crying at the kitchen table, fresh bruises blooming along her arm.

“Mom…” Elena said quietly, grabbing an ice pack from the freezer. “You should stay inside for a few days. Until those fade.”

Her mother took the ice with trembling hands. “Why do you stay?” Elena asked.

“Love makes you stupid, baby,” her mom whispered. “And leaving feels scarier than the pain sometimes.” She looked at Elena with tired eyes. “Promise me something. Don’t marry a man who makes you cry. Don’t settle for someone who turns love into a battlefield.”

Elena nodded, but her thoughts drifted to Marcus—the way he held her, the promises he’d made on the balcony. Could distance change that?

That night she lay in bed, replaying every moment in the suite, when her phone finally buzzed. Four days of silence, and now his name lit up the screen.

They texted like lovers who’d been apart for years. The conversation quickly turned heated.

"God, I wish you were here with me in London," Marcus wrote. "I’d push you against the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city lights, slide that little dress up your hips, and f**k you slow and deep while you try not to moan too loud."

Elena’s breath hitched. Her hand slipped beneath her shorts as she read his next message, fingers circling her c**t with growing urgency.

Tell me what you’d do, he typed.

She fantasized wildly, rubbing herself harder, imagining his hands, his mouth, the way he filled her. Her orgasm hit fast and sharp, leaving her gasping his name into her pillow.

The next morning, another text came.

I’m coming back in three days. The deal is stabilizing. I need to see you.

Those three days felt like forever. But slowly, a smile returned to Elena’s face. She moved through her shifts at the café with lighter steps, the constant fighting downstairs fading into background noise.

Marcus was coming back. For now, that was enough.