The Don Waste My Child Chapter 08

The Don Waste My Child Chapter 08

News trickled back to me in fragments.

Kane let himself be crucified online. His parents weren’t speaking to him. Ivy was fired. Someone told me he looked like a ghost—a man alone in a house too big for one person.

His friends called. “Willow—he’s not doing well. Drinking. Won’t talk to anyone.”

I’d deleted every number. Every chat. The last message I left him was two words: “We’re done.”

On the other end, Kane was drunk. Slurring my name until the words dissolved into tears. “Lili. Please. Don’t leave me. Lili—I miss you.”

His friend took the phone back. Sighed. “Willow. He screwed up. I know. But you two have history. He knows he was wrong—I’ve never seen him like this. Is a stranger really worth tearing apart everything you built?”

“Worth it.” My voice didn’t waver. “And tell me—did this happen over something small? Did I leave him over nothing?”

Silence on the line.

“No. I’m not coming. No. I don’t want you anymore.” I hung up.

……

The days passed. Night into morning. Again and again.

My mother looked out the window one afternoon. “Lili. He’s here again.”

He came every day. Stood outside. Waited. I wouldn’t see him. So he stayed until he couldn’t stay anymore—then came back the next morning.

My mother shook her head. “Should’ve done this sooner.”

Then the rain came. Hard. Relentless. He was still there. Holding an umbrella that did nothing. Soaked through.

She couldn’t take it anymore. Let him in. Made him drink ginger tea.

“Say what you need to say. Then leave.”

Water dripped from his brow, from his lashes. He sat there, dripping onto the floor.

“Sorry, Lili.”

Everything always circled back to Ivy.

“When she joined—she was slow. But she worked hard. Stayed late. Eventually, she could handle things on her own. I trusted her. I thought of her as a friend.”

“The divorce destroyed her. I criticized her at work. Next thing I knew—she’d swallowed a bottle of pills. The doctors said if they’d been any later—”

“I went to see her. She cried. I’d never seen anyone cry like that. Like the whole world had collapsed.”

“She said my criticism was the last straw. The thing that broke her.”

“I felt sorry for her. And guilty. So I promised to help.”

Once. Twice. Then too many times to count.

“She’d say she couldn’t go on—and I’d panic. What if this time she meant it? So I kept showing up. Kept saying yes. It became a habit. Like her life was the only thing that mattered. And everything else was small.”

“I didn’t see that helping had crossed into something else. Every time I put her first, I was pushing you further away.”

Until the day I looked at him in that mall. That look—flat, distant—the way you’d glance at a stranger.

It hit him like a bullet.

He’d given so much of himself away to someone else that there was nothing left for me.

“The wedding. The day you fell.” His jaw tightened. “I was terrified. I didn’t know you were pregnant. I just wanted to slow you down so Ivy could have the bouquet. I didn’t know it would—”

“I couldn’t face it. That I was the one who did this to you. In the waiting room outside the OR—my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. And instead of facing you—I ran.”

“You wouldn’t look at me after you woke up. And I was afraid you’d speak. So I made myself cold. I made myself busy. I thought if I stayed away—it hadn’t really happened.”

“That’s why I said yes to Ivy’s ridiculous request. Pretend to be her boyfriend. I needed somewhere to hide. I used her to avoid you. Because I was too much of a coward.”

“I kept telling you—the baby’s gone, just let it go. I wasn’t saying it to you. I was saying it to myself. If I could convince myself it was small—maybe you wouldn’t hate me.”

“I was wrong, Lili. About everything.”

He was still wet. Rain dripping onto the floor. But his eyes were wetter.

I didn’t move.

I had cried too. Multiple times. No one had caught my tears. I didn’t need to catch his.

“I can’t even ask you to forgive me.”

I studied the water pooling at his feet. “I won’t forgive you. You already know the reasons.”

“The only thing I regret is not leaving you the first time. The first time you showed me Ivy mattered more. I should have walked away then. I wouldn’t have had to bleed this much.”

Silence.

“Are you done? Then go. Don’t come back. I don’t want to see you again.”

The settlement had already been paid. Everything the law said he owed me—paid in full. Nothing left to tie us together.

I didn’t just leave him. I made sure he couldn’t follow.

My family—the family I’d never told Kane about—finally stepped in. The Lin family doesn’t operate in Chicago. We operate above it.

Shipping. Real estate. The kind of money that doesn’t make noise but moves mountains.

He chose Ivy instead. Fine.

I made one call to my father.

Within a week, three of Kane’s suppliers dropped their contracts. Two of his properties got tied up in zoning disputes. His lawyers—the best in Chicago—suddenly found themselves conflicted out of every case that touched the Mortti Family.

Reyna called me, laughing. “Kane is losing his mind. He’s screaming at everyone, trying to figure out who’s behind it. He has no idea it’s you.”

Good.

Let him feel what it’s like to be powerless. Let him know what it’s like when someone bigger decides your fate without asking.

……

He drove home. Parked.

In the yard, the pear tree was in full bloom. When he’d first seen this house, the name of the tree was my name. That was why he bought it.

He hadn’t noticed the seasons changing. But now—spring had arrived without him.

Before he’d left, he’d asked: “Your things. Do you want them?”

“No. Throw them all away.”

He kept them. Keeping them was the last way he could pretend I was still there.

He walked through the house—slow, cataloguing what he’d lost. And then he found the drawer.

His heart stopped. Then raced. His hands shook.

An envelope. Inside—a pregnancy test. A letter.

“Kane. Congratulations. You’re going to be a father.”

“Surprised? I was too. A little lost. A little terrified. But then I thought—you and me—we could do this. We could be good parents. So I let myself get excited.”

“I hope we walk this road together. Take care of me, okay? I’ll take care of you too.”

He read it. Again. And again. His fingers traced every word.

If none of this had happened—if he had read this letter when I’d meant him to—what would he have felt?

He couldn’t picture it. He couldn’t picture me, standing in front of him, holding this letter out, smiling.

Outside, the rain kept falling. The pear blossoms shook on their branches—white petals dropping, blanketing the wet ground.

He sat in the empty house. Put his face in his hands.

And wept.

The pear tree blooms again in spring.

But the one who was supposed to be here—

isn’t coming back.