Page 8 of Broken Destiny

It took me a long time to understand why that morning stayed with me.

It wasn't because you left.

It was because that was the night I started falling in love with you.

Love, Cole

A broken sob escaped me.

I pressed the note against my chest and closed my eyes.

2

JIYA

The ground outside was a white blanket with the first snowfall in November. I walked downstairs to the kitchen and saw my children. Watching them play in the living room, their laughter drifting through the house like music, I silently thanked God for the strength he had given me to survive these past months.

The pain of losing Cole had taken root in my chest. Some days it felt like a dull ache. Other days, it surged through me. Realizing how he must have felt when he had lost his wife and daughter years ago made my heart twist with a new kind of understanding. Back then, when we were still strangers, I had only seen his grief from the outside. I hadn’t truly known the silent battles he fought every day inside him, just to keep moving forward.

I wished I had known and understood sooner.

Had I urged Cole to go to the doctor earlier, maybe he would be here with us today.I should have forced him.I should have given him an ultimatum.Occasional guilt roosted over me when I sat at the docks—my favourite place, the place where so many of our memories lived. I had watched countless sunsets and sunrises with him there, the skypainted in shades of gold and crimson as we stood side by side, our hands laced together.

The children and Geeta had joined us on many of those evenings. Lucas would run along the wooden planks, chasing seagulls, while Emma clung to my leg, giggling at the sound of the waves. Those moments had felt ordinary at the time, yet now they glowed in my memory like treasured photographs—irreplaceable pieces of a life that had slipped through my fingers too quickly.

I had noticed his symptoms.

So had his brother.

I had told him to visit the doctor, sometimes demanding an explanation for his reluctance, my voice firm, my worry barely hidden beneath the surface. But he would always win the argument somehow, disarming me with that stubborn smile and convincing me that everything was fine when it clearly was not.

The ache and grief never truly faded, even after we learned the end was inevitable. The moment the doctors confirmed his cancer, the future I had carefully imagined with him shattered. The life I had planned, the house we were supposed to move into as a family, the laughter that would have filled those rooms, the quiet evenings we would have shared… everything vanished overnight.

He had proposed to me with hope, promising a future filled with love, stability, and belonging. I had believed in that future with my whole heart.

Then the diagnosis came, and everything changed.

The house we had chosen together was cancelled, the deposit returned as though our dreams could be refunded just as easily. The wedding, which was supposed to take place in October, was preponed to April, a fragile attempt to hold onto hope while fear crept silently into every corner of our lives. In the end, the life I had dreamed of with him slipped away, leaving me standing alone with the children once again.

Did I not deserve happiness?

Did I not deserve love?

Did I not deserve a partner—someone to love, someone to cherish, someone to grow old with?

Over the past couple of months, I’d kept myself busy with work and the children, filling my days with responsibilities so I wouldn’t have time to dwell on the silence Cole had left behind. At first, the idea of working in Liam’s company had felt ridiculous. I had made a promise to Cole, yet I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to keep it.

I knew nothing about construction. Nothing about permits, blueprints, inspections, or the endless technical details that seemed to define that world. Doubt followed me everywhere during those first few weeks, whispering that I didn’t belong there, that I was stepping into territory far beyond my abilities.

I felt like a stranger trying to navigate a foreign language.

“No, this is wrong,” the twenty-year-old intern had said during one of my early visits to the office. “You need to first acquire permits and licenses before checking out the health and safety requirements of a project, but only after you’ve finalized a location.”

“But Matt,” I replied, scratching the back of my neck and shaking my head, “it doesn’t make sense to me. Isn’t health and safety supposed to come before everything else?”

I’d been ready to give up multiple times. I couldn’t understand how this business worked. I hadn’t studied for it. It wasn’t my major in university.

I loved food.