Page 54 of One Last Chance

“I didn’t know what to do,” she goes on, her hot breath and tears soaking into my shoulder. “I didn’t wan-want it t-to be true. I knew Mom wouldn’t…wouldn’t love me anymore.” Her voice breaks, thin limbs holding onto me trembling so much I begin to worry. She hyperventilates so I rub my hand over her back, whispering a soft ‘shhh’ until she calms down a little.

My eyes burn, too. I feel and want to do so much at once. All of it is overwhelming.

“And I couldn’t tell y-you because I made you so m-miserable and was so horrible to you.”

“Oh, Sweetpea…”

She suddenly pulls away, brows drawn together. Her eyes briefly dart toward Dayton, who still stands back. “He n-neverhurt me, Dad.Never. I…I made it all up. I don’t know why, I was just so… I was so… Please,pleaseforgive me,” she begs me with such urgency, such pain behind her voice that I can’t help myself from crying anymore.

“I know, baby. I know,” I whisper, petting her soaked, burning cheek. Oh, how I missed doing that. How I missed being someone she comes to for comfort and safety.

“There’s nothing you could ever do to make me hate you. Ever.”

Mina sniffs. “I’ve b-been so horrible to you. I ruined everything, how can you—”

I can’t help but smile, clearly confusing her. “I knew you’d come back to your real self, eventually. I know who you are, Mina. You’re my sweetpea. No matter what. You see what you did now, and I’ll do what we can to help you and…fix this, okay?”

Nodding rapidly, Mina comes in to hug me again.

The moment feels like an amalgamation of more than a year of this corroding, dull pain constantly residing inside my heart. All that time of worry, of being burdened by not knowing how to reach her, how to understand her…

It’s finally all lifting off of my shoulders.

We stay like that for a while, surrounded by blissful silence. When the time is right, I pull away, quickly wiping off my tears, and Mina does too, a faint smile finally passing over her lips. I help her dry her cheeks with the back of my hand and then finally stand up.

“Alright, umm…” Putting my hands on my hips, I glance at Dayton and then back down at her. “How about you go into your room for a bit while I speak with Dayton? You can tell me why you aren’t at your mom’s and explain all the details when I come up, yeah?”

The way Mina looks at me, then darts her eyes to Dayton and smiles, makes me feel all warm. There’s this mischievousexpression poking from behind that mask she’s worn for so long that reminds me of the old her, and I love seeing it more than anything.

“Okay,” she mutters, heading to the stairs. I feel her stop on the top, and when I turn to her, she’s mouthing ‘thank you’ to Dayton.

The quiet click of her door closing passes through the open room and it’s just the two of us and a painful, torturous, gut-wrenching silence.

Dayton stands there leaning against the back of the couch, hands in his lap. He blinks nervously, barely meeting my eyes. He looks as anxious and freaked out about everything as I am, which makes me feel slightly better.

“You have no idea how grateful I am to you for taking care of her.” I step toward him, drawing in the scent of his pheromones. My body reacts as if it’s been deprived of something essential to survival for too long. The closer I get, the more I want to take. I want to touch his hand and wrap my own around him.

He smiles, even if his face is still cautiously neutral. “You don’t need to thank me.”

“I do. And…I need to apologize.” I’m a single step away from him. As much as I long to breach that gap, it feels like I don’t have the right, so I lean against the couch too, setting my hands firmly over my knees.

Oh, he smells heavenly.He smells like comfort. Like a lazy lounging in bed on Sunday, the sheets warmed up by the morning sun. He smells like the equilibrium I’ve desperately been chasing these past months.

“I’m so sorry for not believing you, Dayton,” I whisper, eyeing his hand. It is so damn tempting. I just want to reach out and hold him.

He tilts his head slightly. “I know you believed me. I’m not…”

“Yes, but I didn’t…I didn’t stand up for you. Everything inside me wanted to tell you to stay. I knew you never would’ve hurt her, and I thought I would do anything not to lose you, but right at that moment—”

Dayton turns his torso toward me and places his hand on top of mine. Heat sharply rises into my cheeks, and tears suddenly threaten to break through again.

“You didn’t, because it has to be your priority to protect your children before anything else. I knew that. I figured it…it would have been best to leave without making it harder for you, but I think that deep down, I…” He pauses, blankly staring somewhere next to me.

After a moment, he closes his mouth, exhaling through his nose, before meeting my eyes.

“I think a part of me just wanted to run and self-sabotage like I always do. My whole life, I’ve felt inadequate and unworthy in this one way, and I let it consume me at times,” he says. I don’t understand what he means, so I frown in confusion. Anything about him has never been inadequate in the slightest. “You’re the first person who’s ever been attracted to my pheromones, Rowland,” he admits, his voice shrinking in the end.

I nearly laugh in disbelief. “What? Your scent is unusual, but—”

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