Chapter 874:

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She looked at him — at the man who held her past, her present, and now, apparently, her future in his hands. She thought of the hospital she couldn’t freely enter, of the son she couldn’t openly reach.

She didn’t feel victorious. She felt only the cold, hard weight of the coffee mug in her hands, and the even colder realization that the battle she had believed was lost last night had, in fact, only just begun.

And she was already a prisoner of war.

After dinner, Kane’s grandfather summoned Haleigh to the study.

His hair had gone completely white, but he seemed more vigorous than he had six years ago. Back then, the sky had been falling on the Barrett family, and as a man past eighty, he had been the one appointed to hold it up. Haleigh still remembered clearly the day he had found her, his voice carrying something close to a plea. “Haleigh, leave Kane. Give him room to breathe.” She had been pregnant at the time, and utterly unable to accept that he would ask such a thing of her.

“For these past few years, I’ve often wondered,” the old man began, his voice a long sigh that broke the heavy silence of the study. “Whether I was right or wrong, six years ago, to ask you to leave him.”

Haleigh shook her head. “It wasn’t that I left because you told me to. It was my own decision.”

“He’s been so unhappy,” the grandfather said, his gaze filled with a deep and lingering sorrow.

“But he got back on his feet, didn’t he?”

The old man was quiet for a moment before nodding slowly. “He no longer needs to see a psychiatrist.”

R𝗈𝗺𝘢nс𝗲 𝘯𝗼𝘷𝖾𝗹𝘀 𝗈ո 𝘨𝗮𝗹nоv𝘦𝘭s.со𝘮

A bitter smile touched Haleigh’s lips. Did that mean her leaving had been the right choice? After Seth’s accident, she had believed that by staying at Kane’s side — by enduring those dark days alongside him — he would pull through. Instead, he had grown thinner, developing anorexia and insomnia, his mental state deteriorating with each passing week. She had been at a complete loss until his grandfather came to her and explained that Kane’s psychiatric treatment was failing.

“What can I do?” she had asked desperately.

The old man had sighed. “If you truly want to help him, leave him — just for a while. Give him space to breathe.”

It was only later that she had learned the full truth: Kane, consumed by guilt over the deaths of Lottie and Seth, had begun to harm himself. A second attempt at hypnotherapy to help him forget the past had failed precisely because of her presence. The final breaking point came the day she found him standing on the edge of the rooftop of Sterling Tower. The weight of it all had nearly cost her the child she was carrying. It was then she had made her decision — and filed for divorce.

“If you two still love each other, you could begin again,” the grandfather said gently, drawing her back from the memories.

Haleigh shook her head. “We’re both doing fine now. There’s no reason to face that painful past again.”

“Is that so?”

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