Chapter 100: Guilt
James Marquez sat in his car, staring through the windshield, not seeing anything.
The café was behind him now. The bitter taste of Ella’s words still lingered like ash on his tongue. He could still hear her voice—cutting and clear, so much fire packed into such a small, trembling frame.
She didn’t flinch.
Not once.
Not when he used her name like it was still his to use. Not when he offered her peace laced with manipulation. Not when he tried to play the father card, or the businessman card, or whatever pathetic hybrid he’d turned into after everything fell apart.
She hadn’t just changed—she had grown teeth.
And all James could do now was sit in the driver’s seat and remember what it was like when she still looked at him like he mattered.
She was seven the first time she ever called him James.
He’d come home late—another fight with her mother, another lie he’d spun to cover up the money he had borrowed, or the woman he had been texting behind closed doors.
Ella had been sitting on the top step in her pajamas, a stuffed animal clutched tight to her chest. Her face was blotchy from crying, her little knees pulled into her chest like a shield.
"You missed dinner," she’d said, voice too flat for a child.