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  “You don’t know that—”

  “Yes, I do. And so do you.” Raising my eyebrows, I waited for him to acknowledge me.

  It took him a minute, but when he did, a breath rushed out of his mouth. “I wouldn’t have given a damn. If I had to choose football or you, I would have chosen you. I would have chosen you every day since.” He rolled his jaw a few times. “That wasn’t your call to make, Ryan. You should have told me. You should have at least given me the choice.”

  “But I didn’t. I was young and scared and alone and I made the choice I did with the knowledge I had.” Tipping my head back, I gazed at the sky. No stars out tonight. Not that I was expecting to find any. “I know I didn’t make the right choice. I know that now, years later. But that’s the thing about hindsight—you don’t realize you screwed up until after the fact.”

  Beside me, Grant tensed.

  “I’m not trying to defend my actions. I’m trying to explain them. Trying to paint the picture of what was going through my head when I made those choices.”

  Grant nodded, almost indiscernibly, but enough I at least knew he was listening. “I wasn’t there for you. I wasn’t there for her.” The heel of his shoe tapped the curb a few times. “I should have known. I should have figured out what happened. I should have gone after you. Found you. I should have been there.” A low rumble vibrated from deep in his chest. “I wasn’t there for you two.”

  My hand dropped to his knee and curled around it lightly. He didn’t flinch from my touch. He didn’t slink away from it like he had last week when I’d told him about Charlie.

  “That’s not your fault, Grant. That’s mine. All mine.” I felt him start to relax. A little. One muscle at a time unwound until he didn’t feel like a steel wall hovering beside me, but instead the man I remembered. “I know you would have been there for us. I know that.”

  His head lifted, his eyes roaming the mess of toys in the bed of his truck. “But does she?”

  One-half of my mouth curled up. “She will.” Patting his knee, I stood. “Come on. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  His head tipped back at me, a flash of panic racing through his eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Lucky for you, our daughter doesn’t have any trouble saying everything and anything. All you have to do is lend a listening ear and she’s happy.”

  “Ryan—”

  “Grant, she’s your daughter. You’ll figure it out.” I held my hand out for him and waited. “I know you will.”

  I need you to.

  Looking over his shoulder, his eyes fell on the closed door. For a moment, he looked scared. Terrified. Then he inhaled and took my hand. He tipped his chin toward his truck bed, half of his face creasing as he inspected the cyclone of toys. “So? Which one?”

  Giving his hand a tug, I led him to the door. “You’re all the present she’ll want. Believe me.” Then I saw something barely poking out from the bottom of the toy pile. Wrestling it free, I lifted it in front of him. “But maybe this with the New York Storm’s Grant Turner’s signature on it?”

  His brows pulled together like he was trying to gauge if I was serious. When I waved the football at him, he rolled his eyes and pulled a Sharpie from his back pocket.

  “So as a kid in The Clink, you never left home without your brass knuckles, and now as a man in New York City, you never leave home without your black Sharpie?” I teased as he signed his name with a measured meticulousness I doubted he signed the bulk of his autographs with.

  He gave me a look and finished signing his name. “I can’t believe the first gift I’m about to give my little girl is an autographed football.”

  Setting my hand on the doorknob, I started to open the door. “She loves football. Just like her dad.”

  When I opened the door and stepped inside, I heard Grant suck in a heavy breath. His hand in mine tensed, but he followed me into the living room, closing the door behind him.

  “Mom! Have you seen my solar system jammies?” Charlie’s voice rolled down the hall right before she emerged from it. She had a ring of spaghetti sauce dried around her mouth and a streak of it down her overalls. Probably from the giant meatball falling off her fork.

  It took her all of a half second to realize someone was lingering behind me, but when she did, her little mouth fell open and she came to a standstill. Grant’s hand gripped mine so tightly, I was confident he was cutting off the blood flow to it.

  “Oh my gosh.” Charlie blinked a few times like she was making sure what she was seeing was real. “Oh my gosh . . .” She repeated that a few times before she managed one small shuffle forward. “You’re . . . you’re . . .” Another shuffle forward, her eyes getting bigger with every second.

  Coming around beside me, Grant slowly crouched, so he was almost at Charlie’s eye level. I had to bite my cheek to keep a sob from sneaking out because I’d been imagining this moment for years, not sure if it would ever happen.

  “You’re . . .” Charlie lifted her arm, pointing at Grant.

  He nodded, a smile moving into place. “Grant Turner.”

  Charlie whipped her head back and forth, sending her ponytail flying. Grant’s head tipped, waiting as Charlie scooted a few feet closer.

  When she was right in front of him, she took a minute to study his face. Then she smiled. “You’re my dad.”

  Charlie didn’t see it—she didn’t know him the way I did—but those three words broke the Midas of a man crouching before her. I saw it in his eyes. I saw it in the resolve that settled into his brow. I saw it when his throat moved as he swallowed back emotion. This little girl had just become a permanent part of his life. He’d just learned he was a father, but right there, broken in half the way he was, I knew he loved her as much as I did. Would do anything to keep her safe. Give anything to make her happy. Would be there for whatever came.

  That was when I cried. Not a stray tear or two, but an entire river of them. Charlie would be okay. Grant would be okay. The two people I loved most in the world would have each other for the rest of their lives.

  That was all I needed to know to get me through the rest of mine.

  “HOW’S OUR DESSERT guest doing in there?” I called from the kitchen as I started the process of cleaning up after Charlie’s sundae-making efforts. Puddles of ice cream and crumbles of toppings were scattered all around the kitchen, from the floor to the fridge handle.

  “I think he’s going to want seconds!” Charlie hollered over the sounds of spoons clinking against one bowl.

  “Yeah, definitely going to want seconds,” Grant announced above the familiar sound playing on the television. The sound of a football game.

  Back in Oregon, I used to record Grant’s late games if Charlie was in bed. She’d watched them again and again, until I swore the kid had every last play memorized. Where most kids her age grew up watching SpongeBob, Charlie grew up watching football.

  “Why didn’t you become a QB?” Charlie asked Grant as she crunched on something, probably the half bag of chocolate chips she’d dumped on top of the sundae mountain.

  Grant huffed. “Guys who grow up privileged and have daddies who take ‘em out back and throw the ball around with them every night become quarterbacks,” he answered, right before they both made a sound that suggested some player on the screen had just taken a massive hit. “They’re the opposite of me. It’s the boys who had to get fast and strong to survive who become tight ends.”

  “Kind of like Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory?” Charlie asked.

  Grant was quiet for a minute, probably amazed by the brain Charlie had. Moments like those hit me on a daily basis.

  “Yeah, kind of like that,” he said. “You get big, you get tough, you get fast to survive where I come from.”

  “That’s where Mommy’s from too. She told me that’s how you met.”

  Grant was silent, likely reliving the same memory of our first meeting as I was. It wasn’t a meet-cute fraught with warm
feelings and nostalgia. It was marred by terror and screams and blood. Our first meeting wasn’t a good memory, but Grant had saved me from a million more bad memories by shoving into that room the way he did, when he had.

  “That’s right. That’s where your mom and me met.” His voice gave him away. He was in that dark, filthy room again as much as I was.

  “Yeah, but Mommy’s small. Like, I’ll probably be taller than her by my next birthday.”

  I gave up on my cleaning efforts to lean against the doorway and be that fly on the wall as my daughter and her father got to know each other. The mess would be waiting for me tomorrow, but this moment was fleeting.

  “What day is your birthday?” Grant asked slowly, unsurely.

  My traitor eyes got watery again as I realized how many of these questions there’d be. The simple ones any parent who’d watched their child grow up would know.

  “August 21st, silly. Didn’t you know that?” Charlie giggled.

  “That’s right. August 21st, the best day of the year. How could I have forgotten that?”

  That made her giggle again, before they both got back to the game.

  “Mommy and me watch your games all the time. You’re my favorite player, you know.”

  I slid a little around the corner so I could peek my head out at the two of them stretched out on the couch. Grant’s feet were kicked up on the coffee table, and Charlie was curled beside him, both of them spooning sundae out of the salad bowl Charlie had elected to make it in. From the moment Charlie had laid eyes on him, she hadn’t let him out of arm’s reach. It was almost ten and way past her bedtime, but tonight was special. Getting acquainted with one’s father warranted a ruined bedtime.

  “Well, that’s a relief. Because Lipinski and I would have to have words if I found out he was your favorite player.”

  “Quarterbacks are just a bunch of whiny attention-seekers,” Charlie announced without blinking, digging her spoon back into the bowl as she kept her eyes glued to the game she’d watched at least fifty times. It was one of her favorites—Grant’s rookie year playing for the Boston Americans, he’d managed to bring in a touchdown with two guys practically hanging off of him. I’d recorded a bunch of his games onto DVD for her, thinking she’d watch them once and move on. I should have known better.

  “Well, not all of them.” When Charlie’s head swiveled toward Grant, he lifted his hand. “Just most of them.”

  I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

  “I’m glad you got traded to the Storm a few years ago. I didn’t really like the Americans, but since my dad was on the team, I kind of had to.”

  Charlie spilled some ice cream down her planet jammies. Of course. Because the kid couldn’t keep an article of clothing clean for longer than ten minutes. When Grant noticed, he picked up a napkin and reached over to wipe it up. For a minute, he stalled, like he wasn’t sure if it was okay, but then he pushed past it and wiped the ice cream smear off of Charlie’s jammie top.

  She didn’t seem to notice. She seemed as at ease with him as she was with me.

  “Well, thank you for your loyalty. As difficult as it must have been for you,” he teased.

  Charlie shrugged in a don’t-mention-it type of way. “You know, in the first game you played with the Storm, the camera zoomed in real close to your hands to show how you’d managed to hang onto a ball most players would have fumbled, and that was when Mom showed me I have the same kind of pinkies as you.”

  Grant’s forehead creased. “Pinkies?”

  “Pinkies. As in your little finger.” Charlie lifted one of her pinkies in the air.

  Grant studied it a moment before lifting his in front of hers. He’d probably never even noticed how his pinkies were crooked, both of them bowing in toward his ring fingers. But I had. I’d memorized everything there was to know about that man.

  Like he was seeing his pinkies for the first time, his gaze went back and forth between his and Charlie’s.

  “Neat, right?”

  As Grant continued to stare at Charlie’s fingers, he nodded. “Very neat.”

  While she got back to the game and the ice cream, he kept staring at Charlie. I could tell he wanted to touch her, to pull her to him or pull her under his arm, but he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry.” His throat bobbed.

  Charlie shrugged. “I like my pinkies. I don’t mind that they’re crooked.”

  Grant’s hand brushed across his mouth, warring with a smile as much as he was with tears from the looks of it. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here before.”

  Charlie turned her head toward him, twisting around so she was angled toward him. “It’s okay. Mom explained to me how sometimes families can’t always be together, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love each other.”

  I had to step back into the kitchen and lean into the wall for support. She remembered. I’d told her that years ago, when she first asked me about where her daddy was. She remembered. Families can’t always be together, but they can always love each other.

  Their love is always with us, a part of us, wherever we go.

  “That’s true.” Grant’s voice was thick with emotion. Charlie was really giving his tough guy exterior a walloping. “I wasn’t here, but I loved you and your mom every single day.”

  The spoon scraping sounds came to a pause.

  “You still love me?” Charlie asked.

  Grant was silent for a moment. “Very much.”

  “And Mommy?” she asked next, as innocently as she’d asked her previous question. She was immune to the double-edge of love’s sword, oblivious to Grant’s and my history. To her, we were a family.

  Grant’s voice drifted into the kitchen, surrounding me. “Very much.”

  “WHAT HAVE YOU been feeding this kid?” Grant whispered as I pulled back the blankets so he could slide Charlie into bed. “I’ve dealt with defensive lineman daintier than this.”

  “I feed her monster-sized sundaes every night, of course. And she gets the giant gene from her dad’s side.” I stepped back to give him room to set her down.

  Charlie had crashed hard sometime after eleven, once she’d ridden out the high from her sugar rush. She and Grant had been in the middle of a debate about who the best football player of all time was, and he’d been in the middle of backing up his choice when she’d passed out. Her body smashed up against his, her head lolling onto his shoulder, snoring and everything.

  It had been too precious of a moment, and I’d grabbed my phone to snap a quick photo. The first photo of Charlie with her dad. I compared it to what some fathers had as their first photo with their child, infant in hand, seconds old, and a fresh surge of guilt and remorse settled into my veins.

  I hadn’t just denied Grant a relationship with his daughter—I’d denied Charlie a relationship with her father.

  Yes, I’d told her who her father was, and yes, I’d told her that he loved her very much and that one day, we might all be together, but that wasn’t a drop in the ocean of memories and experiences children who grew up with fathers had.

  Not a drop.

  I’d made a choice as a scared seventeen-year-old who didn’t want to get her older boyfriend in trouble and be the potential reason for resentment and disappointment. If I could do it all again, I wasn’t sure if I’d make the same decision or a different one. Neither choice would have been an easy one.

  I’d made the decision, but it was the three of us who had to suffer the consequences of it.

  I watched Grant place Charlie into bed like she was capable of shattering from a sudden movement. I watched him carefully tuck her in, the sheet first, followed by the comforter. I watched him hover beside the bed, staring at her like she was the most miraculous thing he’d ever witnessed.

  I watched a father fall in total and utter awe of his child.

  “She’s the best,” he whispered, stepping back beside me.

  “No argument from me.” I nudged him as I headed for the door. “S
he likes her nightlight on and that ratty, old one-eyed bear tucked in with her.” I indicated the well-loved bear on the dresser before I moved into the hall.

  I’d had seven years of tucking her in. He was owed this one all on his own. It was important he learned the routine.

  Giving him a minute, I went into the living room to start cleaning up. Between the two of them, they’d managed to polish off the entire sundae, and Charlie had made sure to offer Grant a juice box when she’d gotten one for herself. He’d graciously accepted it and, surprisingly, sucked it all down, which I discovered when I picked it up to toss it away.

  “So? How are you holding up?” I asked when he emerged from the hall.

  He took the bowl from my hands and carried it to the sink. “Extremely well considering I just found out I have a daughter and discovered the real reason my girlfriend ran out on me all those years ago.”

  After clipping the bag of mini-marshmallows, I tucked it back into the cupboard. Holy sugar apocalypse. “You’re a natural.”

  Something on the small dining room table caught Grant’s eye. He wandered over to it and thumbed through the papers and books sprawled out. “Are you reading this or is Charlie?” He held up a library copy of White Fang.

  “That’s your daughter’s weekly reading assignment,” I answered.

  “This is the other stuff she’s working on?” He skimmed through some math worksheets and writing exercises. When he got to a particularly impressive-looking division worksheet, his brows lifted.

  “It turns out you and I create really intelligent offspring. Kind of crazy, right?” Grabbing a file with last week’s lesson plans, I set it in front of him.