"What are you smiling at?" Daniel slid onto the bed and pulled Anna into his arms once she set her phone aside.
"Nothing," she said lightly. "Just teasing soone." She wrapped her arms around him, the smile still lingering on her lips.
Daniel didn’t question it. He simply held her closer. A strange lightness settled in his chest—so unfamiliar, so fragile—that he didn’t mind staying awake, letting himself sink into the quiet comfort of her presence.
"What are you thinking?" Anna’s voice drew him out of his thoughts. She tilted her head up, watching him with curious eyes.
"You," he answered without hesitation.
Anna blinked and slowly pulled back. "?" A small frown creased her brows. "But I’m right here with you. What could you possibly be thinking about ?"
Daniel looked at her as though she were sothing precious—sothing he couldn’t afford to lose.
"I was thinking about how you could forgive so easily," he said softly. "After everything you went through because of ."
He had apologized. He had begged for forgiveness. And yet, sowhere deep inside, a part of him still didn’t believe he deserved it.
"I feel like I don’t deserve you," he admitted, his voice heavy with honesty. "And maybe I’m selfish for saying this—but I don’t think I could survive without you."
Pain flickered in his eyes, tangled with a love so intense it made Anna’s chest ache.
In her past life, she had never seen this side of him.
All she rembered was his distance. His anger. His constant absence.
But now—watching him bare himself so openly—she couldn’t help but wonder how different everything might have been if Daniel had just let her see his heart back then.
Especially now that she knew the truth. That he had loved her in her past life too. And had never found the courage to say it.
"After I died... what happened to you?" Anna asked softly.
The room went still.
Daniel didn’t answer imdiately. For the first ti since she’d spoken, she saw it—the flicker in his eyes. Pain, sharp and unguarded, slipping through before he could hide it.
"I gave up living," he said quietly.
Anna’s breath caught.
It wasn’t the words alone that shattered her—it was the way he said them. Flat. Honest. As if he were stating a fact that had long since stopped hurting because it had consud him entirely.
His voice brushed against the rawest chords of her heart, and sohow, without him explaining further, she already understood.
"I woke up every day because my body forced to," Daniel continued, his gaze fixed sowhere past her, past the room. "But surviving... that was a battle. Every single day."
He swallowed, his jaw tightening.
"You haunted ," he admitted. "Your voice, your face, the way you used to look at like I was your whole world. I couldn’t escape it. I didn’t want to."
Anna’s hands trembled as she reached for him, but he kept speaking, as if stopping would break whatever fragile hold he had on himself.
"I never left the room you stayed in," he said. "Not for days. Maybe weeks. I don’t even rember anymore." A bitter smile curved his lips. "I slept on the floor. I begged you to co back. I cried like a madman, talking to empty air, promising you everything I was too cowardly to give you when you were alive."
His voice cracked.
"I kept telling you to open your eyes. To look at just once. To see how much I loved you. How much I regretted every mont I wasted, every silence I chose over you."
Tears blurred Anna’s vision.
Daniel finally looked at her then, his eyes red, hollow, and devastatingly sincere.
"And when they showed the ultrasound..." His breath shuddered. "I died. Over and over again."
He clenched his fists, as though the mory still burned.
"That tiny heartbeat. Our child." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I kept thinking—if you were here, you’d be smiling. You’d be holding my hand. You’d be scolding for looking so terrified." A broken laugh escaped him. "Instead, I stood there alone, realizing I had lost you... and still managed to lose you again."
Anna pressed her palm to her mouth, her sobs silent but violent.
"I couldn’t take it," Daniel confessed. "Your absence was everywhere. In the house. In the air. In my chest." He paused, then said the words she felt more than heard. "I tried to end it once."
Her heart stopped.
"I didn’t want to survive a world where you didn’t exist," he said simply. "I thought... maybe if I followed you, I could finally say everything I was too late to say."
His gaze softened, guilt flooding his features.
"My aunt found ," he added. "Pulled back when I didn’t want to co back." He exhaled slowly. "And after that... I just existed. Breathing. Functioning. But living?" He shook his head. "That ended with you."
Anna broke then.
She wrapped herself around him, holding him as if she could shield him from the past, from the pain he had carried alone for so long.
Daniel buried his face in her hair, his arms tightening around her like he was afraid she would disappear again.
"I’m here now," she whispered through her tears. "I’m here."
"I know," Daniel said quietly as he slowly pulled back, just enough to look at her. "That’s why I can’t let you go, Anna."
His hands remained on her arms, steady yet trembling, as if letting go even an inch might cost him everything.
"When you asked for the divorce..." His voice faltered for the briefest second. "I finally understood why my chest felt like it was being torn apart. Why breathing suddenly beca... suffocating." He swallowed hard. "My heart knew. It rembered what that kind of pain felt like. And it knew it wouldn’t survive it a second ti."
Daniel had never spoken like this before. Every word he said peeled back layers Anna hadn’t even known existed.
"I wasn’t afraid of losing a marriage," he continued, eyes dark with emotion. "I was terrified of losing you. Of waking up in that sa empty world again—where every breath feels borrowed and every day feels like punishnt."
He let out a slow, uneven breath.
"I thought I was being selfish," he admitted. "Clinging to you because I couldn’t bear the thought of another life without you. But the truth is... my heart has already lived through your absence once. It nearly destroyed ." His gaze softened. "I can’t go through that again."
The weight of his confession settled heavily between them.
For the first ti, Anna truly saw it.
Not just his regret. Not just his guilt.
But his pain. And his love—existing side by side, inseparable.
She had spent both her lives believing she had loved alone. That her feelings were one-sided. That the man beside her had only ever reserved his heart for Kathrine.
In her mind, Kathrine had always been the one he loved. The one whose return had restored his heartbeat. The one who mattered.
But standing here now, listening to him bare his soul so completely, Anna realized how wrong she had been.
Daniel hadn’t found his heartbeat when Kathrine returned.
He had lost it when Anna died.
And sohow—against all odds—he had found it again only when she stood before him now, breathing, alive, choosing him despite everything.
"I will never leave you again, Daniel," she hugged back, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
"Never again."
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