Chapter 221: I Asked My Father*

LOUISE’S POV

Her voice is hoarse, but the words come out clearly now.

Mateo turns his head toward the far end of the valley. There is a faint light somewhere behind them, high above the black slopes. It is pale and distant, a small glow that seems to promise warmth and rest.

Louise looks at it with desperate longing.

There.

That is where they should go. That is where Mateo should go.

He should walk toward that light, leave this place behind, and return to whatever peaceful home waits for good men like him. He has suffered enough.

He has spent eleven years lying in a hospital bed, trapped inside a body that could no longer answer the world. He has lost his savings, his business, his home, and the future he once dreamed of building with a woman he loved.

He has lost so much. He should not have to lose his peace, too.

Louise tightens her grip on his hand. "Mateo."

He looks at her.

"You should go." She points toward the distant glow. "Look. There is light."

Her voice begins to shake. "You can go there. You can leave this place."

He says nothing.

"You don’t belong here." Louise takes a step toward the light, trying to pull him with her. "Please. You can go home."

The words hurt as soon as she says them.

Home.

She has never known where Mateo’s home is now. She has never known whether the man she loved spent his final years dreaming of the little apartment they once shared or whether his memories of her faded long before his heart stopped beating.

But she wants him to have a home. She wants him to have rest. She wants him to have the kind of peace that he spent his life trying to give other people.

"You have to go," she whispers. Her fingers tighten around his. "I don’t want you to stay here because of me."

Mateo watches her for a long moment. Then he turns away from the light. He begins walking in the opposite direction, deeper into the valley.

Louise stares at him. For a moment, she cannot understand what she is seeing. Then she realizes what he is doing.

"No." She pulls back. "Mateo, no."

He keeps walking, holding her hand. She digs her heels into the ground. "Stop!"

He turns to look at her. Louise is crying again.

"You’re going the wrong way." She points toward the light. "It’s there. You can see it. It’s right there."

Mateo looks at the glow, then back at her.

And his expression is so full of love that Louise feels something inside her break open.

"Louise, my daughter."

Everything stops.

The screams, the shifting shadows, the hands reaching from the blackness. Even the sound of her own breathing seems to disappear.

Louise stares at him. His daughter. He called her his daughter. Not his little flower. Not his special girl.

His daughter.

The words sink into her slowly, reaching places inside her that she thought had been empty for years. She had dreamed of hearing those words when she was six.

She had prayed for them in the little bed beside the window, her hands clasped beneath her chin. She had imagined Mateo signing the papers that would make him her father in the eyes of the law.

She had imagined standing beside him while someone told them they were a family. She had imagined taking his hand and walking away from Alice.

But the papers never came.

The life she dreamed of never happened.

And now, in this valley, in a place where nothing looks like home and everything hurts, Mateo is standing before her and calling her his daughter.

Louise’s lips part, but she cannot speak. She does not know how.

All those years, she has wanted to belong to someone. She has wanted someone to choose her without needing her to earn it. Someone who would not look at her and see a burden, a mistake, or a tool. Someone who would look at her and say that she was his.

And Mateo has done it. He has called her his daughter.

She looks at him through her tears. "I..." Her voice breaks.

Mateo steps closer. "We will face your darkness together."

Louise shakes her head. "You don’t understand."

"I understand that you are afraid." He says it gently. "I understand that there are things you have done that hurt you to remember."

His thumb brushes over her knuckles. "And I understand that you are trying to send me away because you think you must face them alone."

Louise looks down. She cannot deny it. "I don’t want you to suffer because of me."

Mateo’s expression softens. "My little flower, look at me."

She raises her eyes.

"I have been away from you for a very long time." His voice trembles. "Far too long."

Louise’s face crumples.

"I looked for you," she whispers.

"I know."

"I came to see you."

"I know, my girl."

"I kept talking to you even when you wouldn’t answer." A tear slips down her cheek. "I thought you would wake up one day."

Mateo closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, there are fresh tears shining in them. "I know."

Louise begins to shake. "I wanted you to come back."

He lifts her hand and presses it against his cheek. "I know."

"I didn’t have anyone." The confession escapes her before she can stop it. "I had no one."

Mateo draws her into his arms.

This time, she does not fight him. She falls against him with a broken sound, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding him as tightly as she can.

"I know, my daughter." His voice is rough now. "I am sorry."

Louise clings to him.

For years, she has told herself that she does not need anyone. She has made herself believe that needing someone is weakness, that love is a debt waiting to be collected, that every kind act hides a price.

She has learned to take what she wants before someone else can take it from her. She has learned to hurt people before they can hurt her. She has learned to live without asking for tenderness.

But she has never stopped wanting it.

Not really.