It defied reason, medicine, everything he believed in.
Yet the memory of those small, trembling, impossibly warm hands replayed again and again.
He told himself it was shock.
Or adrenaline.
Or coincidence.
But deep down, something whispered a truth he wasn’t ready to face.
What he felt wasn’t physical.
It was something he’d buried long before his legs stopped working.
Elena knocked softly near midnight.
“Dad… Mara said you fell. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he murmured.
“You’re lying.”
Silence stretched between them.
“I just don’t want to talk,” he said quietly.
She studied him, searching for the father she once knew.
“I still need you,” she whispered before leaving.
Her words lingered long after the door closed.
Alone again, Adrien felt something unfamiliar.
Not fear. Not anger.
Longing.
A crack in the wall he’d built to survive grief.
The next morning, Adrien did something no one expected.
He asked to be taken back to that street.
No explanation. Just a firm:
“Take me there.”
When the car stopped, he saw the boy immediately.
Leo was helping Señora Rosa carry heavy buckets of water to her flower stand, smiling as if the world had never hurt him.
Something twisted painfully in Adrien’s chest.