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C H A P T E R - O N E

Alyssa Torres could tell you every second of what happened when Renee Royce showed up outside of Molly's that night.

She could feel her heart beating, she could feel how hard it became for her to swallow. She felt her heart breaking.

She watched as Kelly Severide looked between the two women, obviously distraught. The woman standing next to him was the woman that he so dearly loved. The woman in front of him was carrying his baby and he couldn't ignore her - his father had treated him so poorly that he couldn't abandon his unborn child.

Alyssa felt the pieces of her heart split more as realization set in. Kelly couldn't not be a part of the child's life. And now Alyssa couldn't breathe. She turned on her heel, trying to swallow down the tears and not let them well in her eyes.

"Alyssa!" Kelly calls as he follows her down the sidewalk. But he wasn't quick enough. She had already flagged down a cab and it was speeding away before he could catch up to her.

She didn't know what happened with Kelly and Renee Royce after that. She didn't care. She didn't feel embarrassed as she broke into sobs in the backseat of the cab. Ten years of hidden feelings, and pure bliss for the last few months of them together, and it was gone. Because Renee Royce had shown up. And Kelly Severide had previously slept with her. And now they were having a kid together.

When Kelly Severide returned to his and Alyssa's apartment after telling Renee that he'd meet her at her apartment later, he found it empty - Alyssa wasn't there. Nr most of Alyssa's clothes. He knew that she wouldn't have stayed - that she was emotionally going through so much that she couldn't face him.

So he texted his girlfriend. With Sunny sitting on his lap, obviously knowing something was wrong since Alyssa wasn't there. The puppy was whimpering, burying his head into Kelly's side.

"I know, buddy, I miss her too," the man mumbles, stroking the puppy's fur.

He told her to take as much time as she needed, that it was a lot to handle but that they needed to talk.

But when he got a call from Derek Magana at the next shift asking if Alyssa would be showing up to work, he knew something was wrong. No matter what she was feeling right now, she wouldn't have missed work.

He called her, spammed her phone with text messages, calls, voice mails. He had Leslie Shay call her, he had Gabby Dawson, Antonio Dawson, Sammy Torres Liam King, practically everyone from both firehouses call the woman. But she answered none of them.

The man talked to Liam King and Sammy Torres before the three men decided to file a missing persons. But it was taken down a day later.

And then he received a call.

"Alyssa Torres is currently in Fallujah on an army mission," was what the man had said after introducing himself as a lieutenant in the army.

She'd left. Literally left. The country. The fucking continent. Because he was going to give up everything to make it work so his child had a decent family.

But Kelly couldn't find it in him to blame her. It had been sprung on her and she had already been through so much that she had obviously panicked.

But he missed her, so fucking much. Her spot in the bed had been replaced with Renee Royce and Kelly knew he hated it. But deep down, he knew that his unborn baby deserved more than separated parents.

It was obvious that Leslie Shay was pissed at him. For letting Alyssa escape from his life so easily. And he was pissed at himself. The woman that he loved was back in the fucking army because he had slept with Renee Royce because he couldn't admit how he felt for the female lieutenant.

Renee had noticed something was wrong and she was doing everything in her power to keep the attention on her and the unborn baby. She would bring up baby names, where the nursery would be, if the baby would have his last name or hers.

One of the biggest things that pissed Kelly off was when he came back from a shift only to find a box by the front door and what sounded like more boxes being thrown around from the bedroom.

He ran up the stairs, pushing open the bedroom door to find Renee in Alyssa's closet, pulling clothes off of hangers and tossing them into boxes.