~Aaron's POV
When I got home that evening after the meeting with Katherine, the house felt unusually quiet. I dropped my car key on the table and loosened my tie slowly while trying to calm the thoughts running through my head, but nothing seemed to work.
I could not stop thinking about what I had seen earlier that day.
Katherine.
After five long years, she suddenly appeared in front of me again, and it felt like time had stopped for a moment.
I had imagined that meeting many times in my mind over the years, but the reality felt very different from what I expected. She looked healthy, calm, and even stronger than the girl I remembered from the past.
But she was not alone.
She was with another man.
Mathew.
The memory of seeing them together made something painful twist inside my chest again. I did not know exactly why the sight bothered me so much, but the jealousy was there whether I wanted to admit it or not.
I slowly walked across the living room and sat down on the couch while rubbing my forehead.
Then my mind drifted back to five years ago.
I had just returned from a long business trip that had lasted almost three weeks, and I was excited to see Katherine again. During that time, we had spoken on the phone several times, and everything had seemed normal.
But when I walked into the house that day, my aunt was waiting for me in the living room with a strange look on her face.
At first, I thought something terrible had happened.
And in a way, something had.
She told me that Katherine was pregnant.
The words alone were shocking enough, but the next sentence broke something inside me.
She said the baby was not mine.
I remember standing there for several seconds without saying anything because my mind simply refused to accept what I was hearing.
I loved Katherine.
I trusted her.
So hearing that she was pregnant by another man felt impossible to believe.
But then my aunt showed me the messages and the pictures she had gathered as proof. According to her, Katherine had been seeing someone else while I was away on my trip.
I remember the pain that hit me in that moment.
I had never cried like that before.
I felt betrayed, confused, and completely lost at the same time.
Even now, I could still remember sitting alone in my room that night while the tears refused to stop. My chest hurt so badly that it felt difficult to breathe, and every time I tried to calm myself, another memory of Katherine would appear in my mind.
Part of me wanted to confront Katherine immediately and demand an explanation.
But another part of me felt too broken to face her.
In the end, I chose the easier path.
I walked away.
I left without asking questions. At the time, I believed that I was protecting myself from more pain because I thought that if I faced her and heard the truth directly, it might destroy me completely.
But now, five years later, I was not sure if that decision had been the right one.
During those years, I tried many times to forget her, and I buried myself in work and business trips while pretending that the past no longer mattered.
Yet the truth was that she never completely left my mind.
Sometimes a small thing would remind me of her, like a song we once listened to together, or a restaurant we used to visit, and the memories would come back before I could stop them.
Seeing her again today at Mathew's company had shocked me more than I expected.
For a moment, I almost did not recognize her, but the moment our eyes met, I knew it was really her.
Time had changed her a little, but there were still many things that looked exactly the same.
The way she held herself.
The way her eyes moved when she was nervous.
And strangely, despite everything that had happened in the past, I also felt relieved.
Relieved that she was alive, that she looked healthy, and that life had not destroyed her the way I once feared it might have.
For years, I wondered where she went and how she was living, but I never dared to search for her because I believed she had chosen another life with another man.
But then I saw the children.
Two little kids were standing beside her.
And that was when everything inside my head became even more confusing.
Because those children looked like me.
At first, I thought it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, because I was already emotional after seeing Katherine again.
But the more I looked at them, the stronger the feeling became.
The boy had the same shape of eyes that I saw in the mirror every morning, and the girl had a smile that looked strangely familiar.
The resemblance was so strong that it made my heart start pounding immediately. The moment I noticed it, I felt a strange shock move through my body, and it became harder to think clearly.
Their eyes looked so familiar that it made me uncomfortable. The boy had the same sharp look that I had seen in my own reflection many times, and the girl had a softness in her gaze that reminded me of the way my mother used to describe my eyes when I was younger.
Their facial features were also very similar to mine, and the more I thought about it, the more those small details began to trouble me.
Even the shape of their smiles looked painfully familiar, and that was the part that stayed in my mind the most. When they smiled, something inside me reacted in a way that I could not easily explain.
When Katherine told me that I was not their father, I did not argue with her directly because the situation already felt too tense, and I did not want to make things worse in front of the children.
But the truth was that I did not believe it completely.
Anyone with eyes could see the resemblance, and the thought kept repeating itself in my mind again and again.
Even a doctor would probably say the same thing without needing a DNA test, because sometimes the similarities between people could be that obvious.
I stood up from the couch and began pacing slowly around the living room while trying to make sense of everything that had happened earlier that day.
My thoughts were moving so fast that it felt impossible to focus on just one idea, and every time I tried to calm myself, but it wasn't working. I keep seeing her.
That was when the front door suddenly opened.
Amanda walked inside carrying several large shopping bags, and it looked like she had spent the entire afternoon buying things again because the bags were filled with different brands and boxes.
She noticed me immediately when she stepped into the living room, and she smiled as if nothing unusual was happening.
"Hello, sweetheart," she said with a smile.