Chapter 7 - Unfinished Chapters
“I was passing by,” Matthew said, taking a slow step closer to the bed, his hands clasped tightly behind his back as if restraining himself from reaching out and touching her face. “Or perhaps, after all these years, fate finally decided to drag me where I was supposed to be.”
Anne looked away, biting her lower lip. Her pride, hardened by two decades of raising Sarah alone without a single dime of outside help, flared up despite her weakness.
“I don’t need your pity, Matthew,” she said, her voice shaking with quiet pride. “And I certainly don’t need your charity. Whatever hospital bills you paid, I will work off every single cent. I have my tailoring business, I have my savings—”
“Anne, stop,” Matthew interrupted gently, his tone firm yet laden with an agonizing tenderness. He walked right up to the side of the bed, kneeling down so he was eye-level with her. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, Anne turned her amber eyes back to his.
“When I walked out of that apartment twenty years ago,” Matthew said, his voice cracking slightly, “I thought I was chasing success. I thought building an empire meant I had won. But standing out there in that hallway today, watching your five-year-old daughter—our daughter—walk up to a stranger with a cardboard box full of dolls, willing to trade everything she owned in the world just to buy you another day of life...”
He swallowed hard, a tear finally breaking free.
“I realized I was the poorest man alive. You didn't just raise a brilliant, brave little girl, Anne. You raised a soul ten times stronger than mine.”
Anne stared at him, the walls of resentment she had built over a lifetime crumbling under the raw, unfiltered truth in his eyes. She looked down at Sarah, who was now sleepily rubbing her eyes, leaning against Matthew’s shoulder as if he had always been there.
“She has your stubbornness,” Anne whispered with a watery smile.
May you like
“And your heart,” Matthew replied softly. He reached out, his warm, steady hand finally covering her cold fingers resting on the sheet. “Let me stay, Anne. Let us take care of you. Not out of guilt, but because I spent twenty years looking for home, and I finally found it in this room.”
Anne didn't pull her hand away. Instead, her fingers curled slightly around his, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle that had been scattered across the world for two decades.
