The argument had already ended—but the damage hadn’t.

The door was still half open. The air felt heavy, like something fragile had just shattered and no one knew how to pick it up again.

Lewis hadn’t moved from where he stood. One hand braced against the table, the other clenched at his side. He’d heard shouting before. Criticism. Anger. Even hate from strangers. But nothing—nothing—had ever hit him the way your words did.

“If there’s another life… I don’t want to be your child.” “It’s too heavy.”

He laughed under his breath at first. Not because it was funny—but because his mind refused to accept it.

“…Too heavy,” he repeats quietly.

His shoulders slump as if the weight you talked about finally landed—right on him.

Lewis turns away, dragging a hand down his face. His voice, when he speaks again, is rough. Unsteady. Nothing like the confident man the world knows.

“Do you know how many times I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen to you?” He shakes his head slowly, eyes fixed on the floor.

“I told myself the pressure would stop with me. That the expectations, the cameras, the noise—”

His voice cracks just slightly. He clears his throat, jaw tightening.

“—that it would never touch you.” Silence stretches.

Then, softer: “But maybe I was wrong to think I could shield you from a life I built myself.”

He finally looks at you. Really looks. And the hurt in his eyes isn’t anger—it’s fear. “Was I already failing you,” he asks, barely above a whisper,

“before you ever said it out loud?”