Christina POV
Watching my son struggle was exhausting in a way I hadn’t expected at this stage of life.
If he couldn’t drop the habits that made Scarlett walk away, the road back was going to be long and ugly.
I had raised him to be decisive, to solve problems by moving through them, yet here he was living in my guest room like a man who’d forgotten how doors worked.
The generation gap was real—I knew that.
People his age spoke a different emotional language, carried different expectations about apology and repair.
What I could not understand was how a man as sharp as Jaxen could stand on one side of a simple truth and act as if Scarlett lived in an entirely parallel world.
Talk to her. Show up in small, consistent ways.
Stop treating her name like a line item on a contract.
