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Cian’s car waited at the curb. He opened the passenger door, and the simple courtesy hurt more than it should have. Nolan had opened doors only when people were watching, turning gentleness into performance and every polished gesture into evidence of a decency he didn’t possess. Cian did it on an empty street without looking around to see who noticed.

I lowered myself into the seat. He closed the door with care, walked around the front of the car, and slid behind the wheel.

Neither of us spoke as he pulled away from Duncan’s house. Streetlights passed over his face in measured intervals, revealing familiar features that felt strange only because I finally understood where some of my own had come from. I had his eyes. I could see it now that I knew to look—though mine had spent years learning to hide fear, while his showed every emotion he was trying not to give me.

His hands rested on the steering wheel, broad and scarred, and memory rearranged itself around them: those same hands lifting me onto his shoulders when I was five, teaching me how to hold a baseball bat, carrying boxes into my college dorm while Nolan complained about the stairs. Cian had been present in nearly every safe memory I had of a father figure. I had simply been taught to call that love something else.

“What do I call you now?” I asked.

The question slipped out before I knew whether I wanted an answer. Cian’s grip tightened around the wheel for half a second, but he kept his eyes on the road.

“Whatever you want.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have the right to give.” He glanced at me, then returned his attention to the windshield. “I’ve been Cian your whole life. Finding out I’m your father doesn’t mean I get to demand a new name from you.”

Your father. The words landed softly, but they broke something open all the same.

“You called me your daughter upstairs.”

“You are my daughter.”

“But I’m supposed to keep calling you my uncle because no one can know.”

His jaw tightened. “I’m sorry.”

The apology was too small, and he seemed to know it. He didn’t explain, justify, or remind me why secrecy mattered. He let the inadequate words sit between us, another truth neither of us could make gentler.

I turned toward the window. Families moved behind the lit glass we passed, their ordinary lives briefly visible from the street. In one kitchen, a man washed dishes while a little girl dried them beside him. In another room, a father lifted a toddler high enough to touch a paper decoration taped to the window.

I wondered how many moments like that Cian had imagined with me. Then I wondered whether Salvatore had imagined them with Henry, and grief tightened around my throat.

“You’ve always been there,” I whispered.

Cian drew a slow breath. “I tried to be.”

“You were at every birthday.”

“Every one your mother invited me to.”

“My school plays.”

“You were a truly terrible tree in second grade.”

A sound caught in my throat—half laugh, half sob. I remembered standing under hot stage lights with cardboard branches strapped to my arms, scanning the audience until I found Cian waving beside Uncle Sal. Nolan came after the curtain closed and complained that children’s theater had stolen an evening he could have spent working.

“And my games. Even when I spent the whole time on the bench.”

“You were the best damn benchwarmer in New York.”

This time, the laugh escaped—a small, broken breath that hurt on its way out. Cian smiled, but the streetlights caught the wetness in his eyes.

“You were already acting like my father,” I said. “How did no one see it?”

“Maybe because I was afraid to look too closely.” His voice roughened. “I loved you the first time I held you. I told myself it was because you were Caity’s little girl and Sal’s niece, but there were moments when I wondered. Your mother denied it, and I let myself believe her because believing her was easier than facing what I might have lost.”

“You should have asked.”