It's moments like these that I regret not keeping my son back when I was in Seattle. Knowing what I know now, that Brooks had been my guardian angel of sorts, I wish I would have kept him. I wouldn't have missed all his milestones, the first of his firsts. His first word or his first step. The first time he cooed or laughed. All of those things I had given away to someone else because I didn't want to be in the exact situation I am currently in.

If I would've kept him maybe I could've been a happier version of myself. Yes, I may have been a single mom and stressed, but I would've had Wolf. Who knows what I would've named him if I had been the one to be able to give him a name. As a girl I had always thought I would name my son or daughter something unique. So I suppose in the end it had all worked out.

But had it?

His laugh as he plays has me smiling at him even though my thoughts are dreary. This is my time, the only time, that I am allowed to be around him. After dinner, before he goes to bed, is all I get. My father cooly reminds me every now and again that I should be happy to have any time with him at all. I had given him away, my son, like he meant nothing to me. I was a bad mother. To him, I am still undeserving of the love my child shows me. By giving love and devotion back to my family, albeit fake love and devotion, I was starting to earn a marginal amount of forgiveness from them.

Wolfie is running up to Tristan now with a big smile, arms wide as his hands flail about, alerting the man he wants to be picked up. Tristan does so happily, placing my little one in his arms and spinning him around making airplane noises. This is something Wolfie loves but the action makes my heart ache, thinking about how Torey was robbed of being a parent, just as I have been.

My mother and father have matched me up with the man in front of me, the one currently doting on my son. A son who looks very much like his father. A father who is still very much alive. One I haven't seen in months. I haven't seen Torey for about as long as I had seen him when he came to find me in Seattle. Before that it had been two whole years. In our relationship we've spent as much time together as we have apart.

"Agn! Agn!" My son says, meaning he wants Tristan to do the airplane again after he'd set him down back on wobbly legs. "Peaseeee Trissssan?" Those big blue eyes bat up the man and Tristan is done for. My son is just like his father and he doesn't even know the man. He gets whatever he wants.

When Torey and I had been back in the safehouse, had Wolfie sleeping in between us, it had been surreal. I had dreamt of that moment time and time again, even before knowing what my son would look like. He'd been in my imagination much the way he is now but with his father and I, living some sort of happy life together. All of us together as a family, Torey playing the part that Tristan currently is.

I miss Torey so much it hurts. I miss the way that, even when things were at their very worst, Brooks could be the most comforting of shoulders. He was solid as a rock and unwavering with his loyalty and love, made me feel more secure than any one ever has.

Tristan was neither of those men but he is like them in very key ways that was unnerving at times. It did lessen the ache every now and again though, which I let happen. I let Tristan mean something more than nothing to me because I had to. Trying to fake falling in love with someone was hard to do if there was nothing there at all.

There were occasions, such as this one, when Tristan was being a father figure to Wolfie, that I felt guilty. I know if Torey saw the happy smiles our son gives this man, the hugs he gives him every now and again, he would be furious. It was a part that both Tristan and I had agreed to play with one another. I do believe he plays his better than I do mine as I find myself having to pull myself out of melancholia day in and out. But somehow I manage and when we are not under the watchful eyes of my parents, or that of other guards, we are not all happy smiles at one another.

"Come on, let's hand you off to your mother." I blink myself back to reality as Tristan comes up with a very sleepy looking Wolf. "I think it's time we put the little guy to bed." Wolf makes a disgruntled sort of noise which has Tristan giving him a throaty chuckle.

"Is my beautiful boy sleepy?" He pouts, looking away from both Tristan and I. "Come here." I hold my arms out and grab ahold of him. He finds the crook of my neck and makes more of an unintelligible argument.

"That one is going to be a handful." He musses his hair playfully.

"Don't I know it." He's already a miniature Torey. "Handful is putting it mildly." Tristan opens the door for me but I'm met with my mother. She's stopped accompanying me and Tristan during my time with him. Our act of the beginning of a happy family seemed to have worked over these past few weeks.

"Let me take him to bed this evening."

"But mama..."

"Just let me change him and then you can tuck him in." Her eyes are pleading and so much of me wants to refuse but I don't. With a smile I hand him off to her wanting to do anything but. She starts cooing to him and baby talking to him as she walks away, leaving me standing there with empty arms.

I want to cry but I don't. I can't cry here because someone might see me and I'm supposed to be happy. Tears are reserved for bedtime. Most of my nights are spent much of the same way— crying until I fall asleep. It reminds me of a very dark period of my life where I felt like I had nothing and no one, nothing to live for. But I have everything to live for now and he'd just been whisked away from me.

"Hey, you'll still be able to say goodnight to him at least." I glare up at him. He lowers his voice slightly because there are guards standing nearby. "It's better than what you were given a few weeks back when they stopped letting you see him." I purse my lips but he just holds out his hand, offering it to me. "Although that dress looks amazing on you, it does not look comfortable. Why don't we go get you changed into something else while we wait to say goodnight?" With a sigh I snatch his hand and let him lead me to my room, feeling the guards eyes on us the entire way.

✩✩✩

A loud alarm blaring has me jolting awake and jumping out of my bed. I hear a ton of commotion going on outside of my room and not a second later is Tristan busting through my door. He's looking around the room as if scanning for someone. How anyone would even be able to get in here without anyone noticing I have no idea. My room, prison, has no windows or doors except the one he'd just came through.

"What's going on?!?" I shout out loudly trying to be heard over the alarm.

"There's another attack happening." Hope flares through me. "I wouldn't look so excited." His face turns grim. "It was a setup. Whoever was coming to get you..." He shakes his head and looks away from me but I walk over to him and get right in his face.

"What do you mean?" He just shakes his head, looking grave. I push his chest again and hard. "What the fuck do you mean by that, Tristan?!" Even though it's a scream I can barely hear myself.

"What I mean by that is they will be lucky to get out alive." Get out? Meaning someone had gotten in. My thoughts immediately fly to Brooks and a sob escapes me. Not only Brooks. What if Torey was here too. Oh God. What if his whole family is here? My legs give out and if it weren't for Tristan I'd be in a heap on the floor.

"Hey hey, Daniela, come on. You're stronger than this, get it together."

"Get it together? Together?!? How could you ask me to get it together when that is all I have pretended to be!" I push out of his arms and fist my hands in my hair, the sound if the siren driving me mad. "I think I'm going to lose my fucking mind." The sound. The situation. Everything that is my life right now. All of it. It's driving me to a slow insanity.

"Stop it." His hands wrap around mine, trying to pull them out of my locks. "It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay, Daniela." When the door to my room flies open, revealing my father, Tristan immediately wraps his arms around me. "Pull yourself together. You have to for Wolf." The mention of him has my hands falling away from my head and wrapping around Tristan. It's a show for my father and from the look on his face he's buying it.

The alarm turns off which has my father saying, "keep her in here, keep her safe."

"Sir." When my father leaves Tristan unwraps his arms from around me. "I know this probably isn't the best time but I need to tell you something your father talked to me about tonight."

"What is it?" He cups the back of his neck and looks at the floor. "It can't be as bad as what's currently going on right now, Tristan. Just tell me what it is."

"Your father asked me if I wanted to marry you."

"That isn't really news, Tris. We both know what my parents want us to do. It's what we've been playing at for the last month."

"We have done a damn good job of that apparently."

"Okay... So?"

His hazel eyes find mine with, "he wants me to actually propose to you, Daniela. He expects you to say yes because of the way we've been with one another." From what my father had said to me previously, about thinking Tristan would make a perfect father and husband, this isn't much of a surprise to me. His answer though, that would be.

"What did you say?"

"The only thing I could say. I said yes." And there would only be one response I would be able to give to him when he proposed. I would have to accept. I would have to say yes. Because if I didn't then they would know everything is a lie. "I'm sorry." He genuinely looks it too.

"It's not your fault."

"I know. It doesn't change the fact that I still am." For everything that Tristan is to my father, the line of work that he is in, he's a good guy. One that might become my husband.

A/N:
Happy Monday!

How does everyone feel about Tristan and Dani's possible engagement?