This Time I Win

Chapter5

I don't know how long I sat on that bench.

Time has become a strange thing. Minutes felt like hours. The sun was still high, but my body felt like it had lived through an entire lifetime already.

My dress was wrinkled. My hair had fallen out of its neat style. I probably looked like a woman who'd lost her mind.

A shadow fell across my face. I looked up slowly, expecting another angry taxi driver or someone telling me to move along. But instead, I saw a man. Older, maybe in his fifties, with kind eyes and a gentle expression.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

The question was so simple. So ordinary. But it broke something inside me. Nobody had asked me that in months. Not Damian. Not my mother-in-law. Not anyone who was supposed to care about me.

"Yes," I said, even though it was a lie.

"I'm okay."

He didn't look like he believed me, but he didn't push. He just stood there for a moment, studying my face like he was trying to figure out what was wrong.

"Is there a place you want to go?" he asked.

I thought about it. Where did I want to go? Away from here. Away from Damian. Away from Nora. Away from the penthouse that had become a cage. Away from everything that hurts. But I had nowhere to go.

I exhaled.

"Home," I said quietly.

"I want to go home."

The man nodded like he understood something I didn't say out loud.

"Come on," he said, gesturing toward the street.

"I'll take you."

He had a car parked nearby. A nice sedan, clean and comfortable.

He opened the passenger door for me, and I eased myself into the seat. My body ached.

Everything ached. He closed the door gently and went around to the driver's side.

As he pulled into traffic, he started talking about the country. About politics and weather and the kind of neutral topics that don't require me to think too hard or feel too much.

"Your place is beautiful," he said as we pulled up to the penthouse building.

He was looking at the architecture, the glass and stone gleaming in the afternoon sun.

"This is a nice area."

I looked at the building I'd lived in for three years. The building I'd thought was a home. It looks cold to me now. Like a monument to everything I'd gotten wrong.

But I smiled. For the first time since I'd found Damian and Nora in bed together, I smiled a real smile.

It wasn't a big smile. It wasn't genuine in the way smiles are supposed to be. But it was something.

A small moment when I wasn't drowning. For a moment, I wasn’t drowning. A stranger’s kindness pulled me just above the surface.

"Thank you," I said.

"For the ride. For listening."

The man smiled back.

"Of course. I'm glad you're home safe."

I reached into my purse and pulled out one of my business cards. My name, my title, my number.

"Call me," I said, handing it to him. "If you ever need anything. Anything at all."

The man took the card and looked at it. His eyes widened slightly when he saw my title. CEO. He looked at me differently then with respect.

With recognition that I wasn't just some lost woman on a bench. I was someone who'd built something.

"I will," he said.

"Thank you for this. Thank you for trusting me."

"Thank you for stopping," I replied.

He turned to leave. I watched him walk toward his car. Part of me wanted to call him back. To ask him to stay. To ask him to keep talking to me about nothing important while the world fell apart around me.

But I didn't.

He got into his car and started the engine. I waited until he'd driven out of the compound before I moved.

That's when I saw him.

Damian was standing on the balcony of our penthouse. His hands gripped the railing. His face was red.

His teeth pressed together so hard. I could see the muscles working from where I stood.

He'd been watching.

He'd seen the man drop me off. He'd seen me smile at him. He'd seen me hand him my business card. And he was furious.

His eyes met mine from the distance. He turned and walked back inside, and I knew, I just knew that the calm was over.

The consequences were coming.

I stood in the driveway for a long moment, my hand moving to my belly. The baby was still there. Still moving. Still alive. Waiting for me to figure out what came next.

I took a deep breath and started walking toward the penthouse door.

Whatever was waiting for me inside, I would face it. I had to. Because I'd just had a glimpse of kindness from a stranger. Proof that there were good people in the world.

Not everyone was like Damian.

Not everyone was like Nora.

And if there was even a small chance that I could create a life for my baby where he experienced kindness like that ever

y single day, then I would fight for it.

I pushed open the penthouse door and stepped inside.