So damn real.
Thiswas what I wanted.
And it wasn’t just Theo, though God knew I wanted him more than I’d wanted anything in a long time. No, this was huge—so much more than any one man. This was a sense of belonging, of being part of something bigger than just myself, a feeling I hadn’t known in so very, very long and could feel it just out of reach, standing there, grinning and waving . . . at me.
I waved back and climbed into my truck, my heart feeling both full and achingly empty as I drove away. My eyes didn’t leave the rearview mirror until both father and daughter faded from view.
Chapter 13
Theo
Saturday morning felt like a gift from the universe. For once, I’d managed to sleep until nearly eight o’clock without Debbie bouncing on my bed demanding pancakes or cartoons or immediate attention to whatever crisis her five-year-old brain had conjured overnight.
Instead, I woke to the sound of her singing softly to herself in the next room, something about princess dragons and magical pasta makers that made me smile before I was fully conscious.
“Morning, Button Bee,” I called through the wall.
She squealed and shouted back, “Daddy! You’re awake! Can we make the really good pancakes? The ones with the chocolate chips that look like tiny smiles?”
I stretched and checked the clock. Eight-fifteen. Practically a noonday sleep-in by single father standards.
“Sure, kiddo. Give me five minutes to become human.”
Twenty minutes later, we were in the kitchen, flour dusting the counters and Debbie perched on her step stool beside me, carefully measuring chocolate chips into the batter. Shewas wearing her favorite pajamas—the ones with the dinosaurs riding bicycles—and her hair stuck up at angles that rivaled my own morning disaster.
“One for the bowl, one for me,” she chanted, dropping chocolate chips with scientific precision. “One for the bowl, one for me.”
“At this rate, we’re going to have chocolate chip pancakes with a side of Debbie-flavored batter,” I said, but I was smiling as I said it.
She giggled and popped another chip in her mouth. “Daddy-flavored. I’m not in the batter.”
“Keep eating those chips, and I might have to dump you in.”
She giggled again, then popped another chip into her already stuffed mouth.
We cooked together in comfortable chaos, her chattering about her dreams (which apparently involved riding a unicorn to the grocery store) while I tried not to burn the pancakes or get too distracted by the comfortable warmth of her presence. These moments—just the two of us, no schedules or obligations—were what I treasured most about our life together.
But today felt different.
Heavier.
More important.
Because I had something I needed to talk to her about, something that had been building in my chest since the first day I held her as a baby and our new reality settled about my shoulders like a cozy, ridiculously heavy chain-mail blanket.
Since Julia’s comment about most dads staying for dessert—and my recognition of the sorrow and longing in her voice when she spoke the words.
Since the realization that my feelings for a certain delivery man were becoming too big to ignore.
We ate our pancakes at the kitchen table, syrup sticky on our fingers, while Debbie told me about her plans to build a fort that could house at least seventeen stuffed animals.
It was normal Saturday morning conversation.
Safe territory.
But I couldn’t put this off forever.
“Baby Girl,” I said when she’d finished eating and was using her finger to collect the last drops of syrup from her plate. “I need to talk to you about something important.”
