Page 245 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

I turn toward him immediately.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.”

When I look back at Julian, his face is controlled again, but barely.

He does not ask the question.

Not with Theo standing here.

That makes it worse.

Julian holds my gaze.

“We need to talk.”

My chest feels tight enough to crack.

“I know,” I say.

He steps back from the doorway.

I do not stop him.

I cannot.

Julian turns and walks toward the street.

I close the door behind him as the lock catches softly. I stay there with my hand still wrapped around the knob. Behind me, Theo shifts his project from one hand to the other.

“Mom?”

I close my eyes.

Everything I have spent seven years keeping separate has just collided at my front door.

Chapter Thirty-One

Julian

Imake it less than ten minutes from Sophie’s house before I turn toward the coast. The rental car moves through traffic almost automatically, but I barely register the streets around me.

My hands stay locked around the steering wheel, my jaw tight enough to ache, and every breath feels too shallow for the amount of pressure building in my chest. I keep seeing Theo standing in that doorway, not as a collection of details I can catalog and analyze, but simply as a child who exists inside a life Sophie built without me.

I try to force another explanation into place because I need one.

Maybe Sophie was with someone else after she left Philadelphia?

Maybe she met someone in California?

Maybe Theo’s age means less than I think it does?

Maybe I am taking coincidence and turning it into certainty because I am still too close to everything that happened between Sophie and me over the past several days?

The possibilities sound reasonable until I remember the hesitation before she answered me and the way her face changed when I asked how old he was.

That is the part I cannot explain away.

Traffic opens near the water, and I take the first turn that gives me access to the beach. I park without checking the sign, shut off the engine, and remain behind the wheel for several seconds before finally getting out. The air is cooler here, carrying salt and wind off the Pacific. I kick off my shoes when I reach the sand and leave them near the edge of the walkway before heading toward the water.