“I’m not proud of it. I know I’m not supposed to.” He shook his head.
“Mr. O’Sullivan,” Sydney scolded the man teasingly. “Talk about a helicopter parent.”
“It did once involve a literal helicopter. Don’t tell Sauda. But I couldn’t help it.” He sighed. “I always wanted her to be safe, but I couldn’t do theone thing that would have kept her safest—staying her father, staying near her.”
“You’re keeping the world safe.”
“And she was the sacrifice.”
“Do you regret having her?”
He looked at Sydney. “Never,” he said.
“Then you did what you had to do.”
“It’s okay, Syd,” he said quietly. “It is my fault, and I’ve owned that.”
“You’ve always kept me safe. You’re here, even now.”
“I’m not your father.”
“I know. But sometimes I feel like you are.” She smiled. “For better or worse.”
“More better than worse, I hope,” he replied. And Sydney saw him look hopefully at her. Her heart bled a little. What kind of life was this, to have a family you could never see, then to love a woman you could never be with? She thought of Winter, leaning against his balcony and letting the wind comb through his hair.
What kind of life was that? Could she bear it?
She looked back at Niall, at the closest thing she had to a father. She was going to miss him—but she didn’t have to quite yet. “You’re not a bad option, as far as dads go,” she said.
He snorted. “We’ll see what Quinn ends up saying about that.”
“You did the best you could.”
He hesitated, taking a few more bites of food, then looking around as if he didn’t know what else to do. “I wrote her a long letter,” he finally said in a low, gravelly voice. “Months ago.”
“Did she read it?”
He shook his head. “It’s still sitting in my desk drawer. I haven’t had the courage to send it yet.”
“What’s in it?” she decided to ask.
He prodded his plate with his chopsticks. “An apology,” he rumbled,grief clouding his words. “Of sorts. I told her everything I could, at least.”
Sydney swallowed, fighting back a tide of jealousy and bitterness, wondering what it would be like to get an apology from her own father. “You don’t want her to see it?” she said.
“I want her to see it more than anything.” He fell silent, then muttered, “Maybe I’m just a coward.”
Sydney forced down her own resentment. It wasn’t fair to Niall, her feeling this way. But she felt it, all the same. “You’re not a coward,” she said gently.
“I just…” He trailed off. “I’ll hand it to her in person. If she’ll see me.”
“I think she will.”
Niall looked afraid, and the sight made Sydney’s heart bleed. “And if she won’t?”
“Then give me the letter, for chrissakes, and I’ll hand it to her myself.”
Niall laughed, and Sydney stored the sound away in her memory, wishing she had a recorder on. “Deal,” he said.
