What do you say to the fact that I’ve been carrying the knowledge of it for years, watching Silas navigate life without ever knowing I knew what had been stolen from him?
Silas’s expression goes dark. Dangerous. The kind of darkness that makes even me nervous, and I’ve seen Silas at his worst. “When Aria had me, she told me she’d had her medical team reverse the vasectomy while I was unconscious.”
“I’m sorry,” Parker looks at him wide-eyed, “she did what?”
“What the fuck?” is all I can think to say out loud.
“She wanted to have children together,” he huffs, “fucking worst situationship I’ve ever been in.”
“You think?” I chuckle, “What’d you tell her?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to know the answer. Even though I can guess based on the look on his face.
“I told her I’d rather die,” Silas says flatly. “And in a sick way, I almost did. But—” He stops, and for the first time since he started talking, I see genuine emotion crack through that clinical mask. Vulnerability. Hope. Fear. All tangled together. “The doctors at Mooresville confirmed it. She really did have it reversed. They explained the procedure, showed me the scans.”
He pauses, and I can see him choosing his words carefully. “A vasectomy reversal reconnects the tubes that were cut. Success rates are high if it’s done within fifteen years of the original procedure. But even with a successful reversal, fertility isn’t guaranteed. The doctors said I’d probably need fertility treatments—hormone therapy to boost sperm production, possibly IUI or IVF to improve conception chances. But it’s possible now. If?—”
He looks at Parker, and the vulnerability in his expression is almost painful to witness. “If you wanted more kids. If that was something you—if we?—”
“Silas,” Parker breathes, and she’s off the couch before any of us can react, moving to him despite the way he tenses like he might tell her to back off. But she doesn’t stop, just kneels beside his recliner, her hands on his face, forcing him to look at her. “Are you telling me that Aria did one good thing in her miserable existence?”
“I don’t know ifgoodis the word I’d use,” Silas says roughly, his hands coming up to cover hers. “She did it for her own reasons. To trap me. To force me into the life she wanted. To bind me to her in a way I could never escape.”
“But the result is the same,” Parker says, and her voice is fierce now. “You can have biological children now. If you want them. If we—” She stops, swallows hard. “If we wanted that.”
The air in the room is electric. Charged with possibility and hope and fear all tangled together in a way that makes it hard to breathe.
“Do you?” Silas asks, and his voice is barely above a whisper. “Want more kids?”
Parker’s quiet for a long moment, her fingers still on his face, her sea-glass eyes searching his like she’s trying to read something written in a language she doesn’t quite understand yet.
“I don’t know,” she admits finally, and I can hear the honesty in it. “I never thought—I mean, Noah and Liam are everything. They’re enough. They’re more than enough. But?—”
She takes a shaky breath, and I watch her work through something complicated. “But if you wanted to try. If you wanted to have that experience, to have a child that’s biologically yours, to know what it feels like to be there from the beginning—” Her voice breaks. “I’d want that for you. For us. I’d want to give you that.”
“I don’t need biology to make them mine,” Silas says, and there’s absolute conviction in his voice. The kind of certainty that comes from the soul. “Noah and Liam are already mine in every way that matters. They’re my kids. My boys. I’d die for them. Kill for them. I already almost did both.”
He stops, and I watch him struggle with something. With wanting something he’s never let himself want before. “But—yeah. If you wanted more kids. If we all decided that’s something we wanted to do together. I’d—I’d want that too. I’d want to know what it’s like. To be there. To choose it. To not have it thrust on me but to actually want it.”
The silence that follows is profound. Heavy with the weight of possibilities we’re all processing.
I’m thinking about what this means. What it could mean. The four of us and the two boys we already have, and the possibility of more. Of building something even bigger than what we already are. Of Parker pregnant again, and this time all of us being there for it. All of us are choosing it together.
It’s terrifying and perfect.
“So we don’t need to open that file,” Parker says softly, gesturing to the screen where the unopened PDF still waits. “We already know what it says. Silas isn’t biologically related to Noah and Liam. But that doesn’t matter. It never mattered.”
“No,” Silas agrees, his voice rough with emotion he’s not bothering to hide anymore. “It never did.”
But I can see it in his eyes. The relief that he’s not biologically theirs—because some part of him still believes what his parents told him, that his genetics are poisoned, that he’d pass on damage to any child carrying his DNA. The grief that he’s not biologically theirs—because some part of him wants that connection, wants to see himself reflected in them the way they can see Cal in Noah’s eyes and Jace in Liam’s. The complicated tangle of emotions that comes from knowing you’re not biologically connected to the children you love, while simultaneously being grateful that you now have the option to create that connection if you choose.
It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s human.
Jace clears his throat, breaking the moment before it can get too heavy.
“For the record,” he says, his voice rough but steady, “Silas has been more of a father to those boys in two months than most men are in a lifetime. Biology doesn’t make you a parent. Showing up does. And you’ve shown up every single day. You’ve shown up for them in ways that matter.”
“We all have,” I add, because it’s true. “We’re all their fathers. All four of us. That’s what makes this work. That’s what matters.”
Parker’s crying again, and this time I think it’s pure relief. Relief that we’re all on the same page. Relief that this isn’t ending in disaster. Relief that somehow, against all odds, we’re actually building something that works.
