“I ruined the one thing that mattered,” I whispered. “The one thing that was mine to protect. Mine to care for. And I broke her heart in the worst way possible. God, I don’t even know how badly. She’d never make me pay for it. That’s the worst part. She’s… kind. She’s always been kind. And I left her to pick up the pieces alone.”
My breath stuttered, a wet sound catching in my throat. “I can tell by the way her friends look at me. The way people whisper when she walks into a room. I’m just now seeing how bad it was. I left instead of taking responsibility. I left her with all of it.”
Tears slipped down my face before I realized they were there.
“I’m the most irresponsible, selfish person in every room I walk into,” I gasped. “It’s like, I’m a tumor. Something rotten that hurts the people that are the closest to it.”
My vision tunneled, my shoulders shook. I bent forward, trying to swallow the sobs rising up too fast.
Dr. Alvarez quietly handed me napkins.
I took them with trembling fingers, wiping my face like a child. Mortified. She didn’t speak. Didn’t fill the silence. Just sat with me, letting the room hold the weight I’d been carrying.
Eventually, when my breathing evened out, she said softly, “When did these feelings start? Were they with you even before you came home?”
I nodded without looking up. “…yeah. But I could bury them back then. Now they’re all I think about.”
She leaned forward. “Ethan, today you took a step most people never take, you said the truth out loud. You accepted your guilt. And you’re going to be a parent now. Lily needs you to be whole. But you need you to be whole too, have you gone to therapy before.”
A tired exhale escaped me. “No.”
“You’ve been pushing everything down for years,” she said gently. “You haven’t opened up to anyone close to you. Not really. Therapy works, if you let it.”
And God help me; relief broke through the exhaustion like a crack of light.
“I… I do feel better,” I admitted quietly. “Not good. But… like I’m not suffocating quite as hard.”
“That’s a start,” she said simply.
A good therapist knows when to stop. She stood, letting the session end before I unraveled again.
When I stepped back into the waiting room, Dad didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. I’d been crying up a storm in there, and if there was a God with even a passing interest in me, I hoped He’d also taken into account Dad’s selective hearing and spared him the worst of it.
Lily had fallen asleep curled on his chest, her mouth parted, her little hand gripping his shirt. He shifted, careful not to wake her, and carried her out to the car.
We drove home in silence.
Not because there was nothing to say.
But because with my father, silence had always been our default.
And for the first time in a very, very long time.
I felt calm.
Chapter 30
Ethan
The house was dark when we came home. Lily had fallen asleep half on my father’s shoulder, her arms limp around his neck, her face pressed into the worn collar of his jacket. She didn’t stir when he eased her upstairs. Exhaustion had taken her completely.
I stood in the hallway, feeling like my bones weighed a hundred pounds each.
The therapy session still clung to me. My chest felt tender, scraped thin on the inside.
Dad came back down the stairs slowly, rubbing a hand along the banister. His steps were steady, he looked thoughtful, a little tired. He didn’t say anything, just walked past me into the kitchen.
Mom was there already, stirring something on the stove. Probably dinner. She always made food when she was stressed. The kitchen light haloed around her, reflecting off her glasses. When she turned and saw Dad, she smiled, warm and familiar.
