Then his eyes found mine.Something quiet, unspoken, and fragile passed between us.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning,” I replied, my voice softer than I intended.
Breakfast blurred into noise and movement.Pancakes stacked high.Syrup spilled.Morgan insisting on wearing her new sweater immediately.Michelle announcing, loudly, that she opened her gifts one at a time “like a big girl.”
Creed sat at the table with them, sleeves pushed up, laughter slipping free when Michelle attempted to pour her own juice and nearly flooded the glass.
He paid genuine attention to the girls.The same way he had at the gala, standing at the edge of something luminous and dangerous, like he wasn’t sure whether stepping fully into it would cost him more than he knew how to give.
My throat tightened.
After breakfast, the girls sprawled on the rug, surrounded by torn paper and toys, assembling something with pieces already scattered everywhere.
Creed crouched beside them, helping Morgan snap a piece into place while Michelle narrated every move like a sportscaster.
“Mister,” she said suddenly, tilting her head, curls bouncing as she studied him.
He looked up.“Yes, sweetheart?”
Michelle hesitated, just a beat.Then she asked, simply the way children do when something feels obvious, and they don’t know it shouldn’t.
“Are you going to be our new daddy?”
The world stopped.
I felt it happen—felt the air shift, felt time pull taut.
Creed froze.Not visibly.But I saw it in the way his shoulders locked.In the way his hand stilled mid-motion.In the way something deep behind his eyes closed—hard.
Morgan looked up too now, curiosity bright.“Yes, because you’re always here.”
The room felt too quiet.Too full.
Aunt Ruth shifted near the fireplace, setting her mug down carefully, ready to intervene, but I was already moving.
“Morgan,” I said gently, forcing calm into my voice even as my chest tightened.“Sweetheart, that’s not how it works.”
“But he takes care of us,” Michelle pressed, earnest, unguarded.“That’s what daddies do.”
I felt it then.
The fracture.
Not loud.
Just a clean, devastating crack along a fault line that had already been there.
Creed stood.“I should go,” he said quietly, already reaching for his coat.
“No—” I started.
“I have somewhere I need to be,” he added, his voice controlled, distant—the same tone he used when something mattered too much.
The girls protested.Aunt Ruth stood.I followed him to the door, heart hammering.
“Creed—”
