CHAPTER 254 — Where Love Learns to Keep Watch

(Ayden’s POV)

She was discharged, and we came home late that night.

The apartment was silent—that particular kind of silence that lingers after a storm. I carried her from the car to the bedroom as if the whole world might shatter if I made one wrong move. Not because Milagros couldn’t walk, but because I needed to feel her close, light in my arms, protected.

Mine.

On that short walk, I felt something new: fear mixed with a responsibility that d