Her eyes hold mine. That clear green gaze that sees through every wall I've ever built.
"You want to know what I think?"
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"I think you're the only one who doesn't see what I see." Her thumbs stroke my cheekbones. "You know what a bad parent looks like, Nick. You lived it. And every single day, you make choices to be the opposite of that."
I start to shake my head, but she holds me still.
"I'm not finished." There's steel beneath the softness now. "Those kids in Chelsea, at the rec center. The ones in Key Largo at the sailing school you built. You don't just write checks. You show up. You see yourself in them, and you refuse to let them fallthe way you almost did. That's not a man who doesn't know how to be a father."
"That's different."
"Is it?" She tilts her head. "Because I think it's exactly the same. You're already showing our child who you are, Nick. You're showing our baby right now, with every choice you make."
The resistance in me wants to argue. It wants to list all the ways she's wrong, all the evidence that points to the damage being too deep. But her certainty is unshakeable. Her faith in me makes it harder to hold onto my own doubt.
"I'm scared too," she says. "You think I know how to do this? I’m still learning how to take care of me. As for my childhood, it was nothing close to perfect. I made mistakes I'm still paying for."
She's never put it to me that way before. The cost of her own survival. She carries it so well it’s easy for me to forget everything she went through to become the strong, resilient woman I love.
She touches my face. "I look at Tasha with Zoe and AJ, and I think, how does anyone make this look easy? How does anyone know what they're doing?" A small, rueful smile crosses her lips. "We're both terrified, Nick. That's probably how it's supposed to be."
I release a short breath, considering everything she’s saying. “I don’t like feeling I don’t have control of the situation.”
"I know you don’t, but here's the difference." Her hands slide from my face to my shoulders, her fingers pressing into the muscle there. "You already know what you won't do. You know what your child needs to be protected from because you lived without that protection. You'll spend your whole life making sure they never feel what you felt."
I want to believe her. Want it so badly the ache of it spreads through my chest.
Her gaze holds mine, more intense than I’ve ever seen it. "Our child is going to have a father who loves them completely. Who protects them fiercely. Who believes them when they speak."
Her voice catches on that last word, and I know she's thinking of the moment I told my own father what his father was doing to me. The moment he called me a liar and looked the other way.
"You will never be him, Nick. Neither one of them. You couldn't be if you tried."
The conviction in her voice is absolute. And something in me cracks open enough to let it in.
I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her, burying my face against her neck. She holds me back just as tightly, her fingers threading through my hair, her body warm and solid and real.
"I don't deserve you," I mutter against her skin.
"Yes, you do." I can hear the smile in her voice. "And that’s a good thing, because you're stuck with me anyway."
The tension in my chest releases another degree. Not gone entirely, but manageable now. Shared.
I lift my head, and she pulls back enough to meet my eyes. The steam has curled tendrils of hair around her face, and I brush one back, tucking it behind her ear.
"There's something else," I say, my voice quiet. "Last night. The Rennick thing." I force myself to hold her gaze. "You were right. It wasn't just about protecting you."
Her expression doesn't change, but I feel her attention sharpen.
"If they were willing to dig into your past, your mother, Martin Coyle, all of it, they'd dig into mine too. It's what these people do. They find the wound and they press until it bleeds."
My hands have tightened on her hips without my conscious decision. I make myself ease the grip before I bruise her delicate skin.
"My father. My grandfather. What was done to me." The words feel like glass in my throat. I take a breath, then blow it out slowly. “I've spent my entire life making sure I was protected. Building walls. Controlling what people see. The money, the power, the reputation. The shadow mogul, right? That’s what the press likes to call me. It's all armor. And the thought of having it stripped away, of standing naked in front of the world with my worst damage on display...Fuck."
"That's what drove the response," she says quietly. It's not a question.
