Simple. Genuine. From the heart.
Show up and mean it.
Banks might claim to be useless at romance, but he’s not wrong about this. Tori doesn’t need grand gestures. She doesn’t need skywriting or jumbotrons or hot air balloons. She just needs to know I’m not going anywhere.
My phone buzzes again.
Tori:Also Maisie says to tell you she loves you. And that you’re “the best daddy in the whole world.” Direct quote.
My throat goes tight. I blink against the sudden sting in my eyes, standing on a Manhattan sidewalk like an idiot, completely undone by a secondhand message from my six-year-old.
Me:Tell her I love her too. And that she’s the best daughter in the whole world. Also a direct quote.
Tori:She’s reading over my shoulder and giggling. Now she’s doing a happy dance. It’s very cute. Hurry home.
Home.
I pocket my phone and head for the car, a smile stretching across my face that I couldn’t suppress if I tried.
I’ve got a woman who somehow turned my whole life upside down and made it better in the process. A daughter who thinks I’m the best daddy in the world. A future that looks nothing like I planned and everything like I never knew I wanted.
And I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving I deserve every bit of it.
Epilogue
Tori
Something’s going on.
I can tell because Maisie keeps giggling every time she looks at me, and Zayden has checked his phone approximately forty-seven times in the last hour. They’re both terrible at keeping secrets—a trait I find endlessly endearing—and whatever they’re hiding, it must be big.
“You’re being weird,” I tell him as he sets the table for dinner. “Both of you.”
“We’re not being weird,” Maisie says, way too fast. “We’re being normal. This is normal.”
“Totally normal,” Zayden agrees, avoiding my gaze. “Just a regular Friday dinner.”
“Uh-huh.”
I let it go because the clinic’s grand opening is tomorrow, and I’m too tired to interrogate them properly. The past month has been a blur of paperwork, equipment deliveries, and marketing meetings, and I still can’t quite believe it’s real or that it happened so quickly. But a lease on a perfect building was available, and I jumped at the chance. My name on the door. My business. Mine.
Dinner is spaghetti—Maisie’s favorite—and we eat at the table like we always do now. The three of us. This little family we’ve somehow become.
“Tori,” Maisie says, pushing a meatball around her plate. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Maze.”
She glances at Zayden, who gives her a tiny nod. My stomach flutters. Whatever this is, they’ve rehearsed it.
“Remember when we built the blanket fort?” she asks. “And I told you my secret?”
My throat tightens. “I remember.”
“About how I used to wish for someone to do mom stuff with me?”
“Yeah, honey. I remember.”
She sets down her fork and looks at me with those big brown eyes—so serious and earnest it makes my chest ache.
