And I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep pretending I could outpace it.
Chapter 16
Dani
After the call ended, the house felt too still.
Not empty. It was worse than that, because it heldhim. His voice lingered in the quiet, threading the corners like something unfinished. Even when the screen went dark, the image remained: Logan’s half-smile, the hotel lamp’s glow catching his face, exhaustion roughening his voice as he said my name.
I set the phone down, exhaled slowly, and glanced at Harper. She was curled beside me, cocooned in her blanket like it was the safest place in the world, her small hand gripping the edge of Logan’s jacket, knuckles faintly white even in sleep.
A soft smile pulled at my lips. “You really are your dad’s girl,” I whispered.
It had only been a week, but I was starting to understand something about Logan.
He ran his house like a well-oiled machine.
I saw it the first morning after he left. Breakfast at seven-thirty, shoes lined by the door like little soldiers. Backpacks packed the night before, lunch labeled and in the fridge. On the wall hung a color-coded calendar: dance in purple, school events in blue, doctor appointments circled twice. Even Harper’sstuffed animals followed a system—favorites on the bed, the rest tucked in a basket with button eyes out.
It made sense.
Logan was the kind of man who built safety out of structure. You could feel it in the muted competence of the space, in the way nothing felt rushed or forgotten. After losing his wife, order had become a means of survival.
At first, I followed it exactly.
Treating his routine like something fixed, something I wasn’t allowed to disrupt. Breakfast on time, teeth brushed for the full two minutes, and clothes laid out the night before. Homework was always checked before dinner, and I even resisted mismatched socks when Harper held them up with hopeful eyes.
“Please,” she said, batting her lashes. “Daddy won’t care.”
“Maybe not,” I told her gently. “But Daddy has rules.”
“Rules are boring.”
“Sometimes,” I admitted, biting back a smile.
But by the second day, something shifted.
Harper spilled juice across the table, and instead of rushing to fix it, we both froze for a second, watching it spread. Then we laughed, really laughed, the kind that filled the room and loosened something tight in my chest. We danced in the kitchen while toast popped, her socked feet sliding across the tile as she taught me a routine she insisted was “very advanced,” correcting me with exaggerated sighs that only made me laugh harder.
By the third day, the structure was still there, but it didn’t feel so rigid.
We still made it to school on time. Teeth were cleaned. Homework was done. But there were detours now—chalk rainbows on the sidewalk, five extra minutes that turned into ten, ice cream runs because it just ‘felt like an ice cream day.’ Pajamas lingered into late afternoons, but nothing unraveled.
If anything, the house felt warmer.
Wednesdays were the sacred dance days.
Harper took it seriously; her leotard was carefully chosen the night before, and her tights were folded. She twirled in the living room while I tied her hair, narrating every move she planned to perfect.
“I’m doing a new leap,” she said proudly. “Daddy says I’m brave.”
“You are,” I told her, securing the elastic. “And strong.”
At the studio, I sat outside Studio B, watching through the glass as she spotted me immediately, waving with both hands like she didn’t care who saw. I waved back without thinking, something soft and unfamiliar blooming in my chest.
“Is that your little girl?” a woman beside me asked.
My heart stuttered.
