Page 24 of The One Who Changed Everything

CHAPTER 12

Evan

Isat there in my apartment, the kind of place that echoed with its own emptiness. The walls were bare except for a clock that ticked away the silence. In that quiet, I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that I had a daughter—a girl named Sophia whose life had been humming along without me.

"Unbelievable," I muttered to myself, raking a hand through my hair. Anger bubbled up inside me, but it wasn't the hot, fleeting kind. It was heavy, the sort that settles in your bones. Betrayal gnawed at my insides like a relentless pest, and loss... well, the loss was a gaping hole where years of memories should have been.

Fourteen years. I’d been going along with my life for fourteen years, making decisions with no idea that she was out there.

The streetlamp outside cast a soft glow through the blinds, throwing stripes of light and shadow across the room. It felt like I was sitting in a cage, bars of light trapping me in my turmoil. I couldn't stay seated; it was like the chair itself was made of thorns—every second I spent in it was another prick of pain, another sting of what I'd missed.

Standing up, I shuffled over to the side of my bed. It wasn’t every day you found out you were a father. And definitely notevery day you found out you were a father to a teenager. I let out a half-hearted chuckle at the thought—humor, after all, was my awkward shield against the world's sucker punches.

Kneeling down beside the bed wasn't something I did often enough, but tonight, I needed something more profound than a long run or a sitcom rerun. I closed my eyes, the darkness behind my lids less suffocating than the one filling my room. I just found out about my daughter, and I was feeling all sorts of things I couldn’t even name right then. Maybe God could help me figure out how to be there for her. How to be what she needed when I didn't even know she existed until that day. A sigh escaped me, a surrender of sorts to the chaos inside.

Opening my eyes, I let the dim light wash over me, hoping that with it came the peace I sought—the clarity to navigate this new chapter of my life. With a deep breath, I leaned back on my heels, the determination settling in. Sophia was out there, and I was going to be part of her life. Somehow.

"Lord," I began, the word slipping out into the stillness of my apartment. It felt odd talking to the God who never changed when everything tangible in my life had just shifted on its axis.

"Look, I know I've made plenty of mistakes, but this... this is something else." The words tumbled out as I grappled with the gnawing feeling of unworthiness. My voice broke a bit—I wasn't used to laying my heart out like this, even in private. "I'm angry, yeah, but it's more than that.” I was hurting. That was the emotion I didn’t want to name, even in my solitude. Sadness felt weak somehow. Anger was safer.

The silence seemed to listen, patient and nonjudgmental.

"Help me get past this bitterness, will You? Because deep down, I think I want to be a part of her life. To be the dad she never had." A shiver ran through me, not from cold but from the fear that maybe I didn't deserve this second chance. "I want to do right by her, somehow."

My plea hung in the air, mingling with the dust motes dancing in the streetlamp's glow. I stayed there a moment longer, seeking solace in the quiet before slowly rising, feeling marginally steadier on my feet as I collapsed into bed.

At the firehouse the following day, the scent of stale coffee lingered like a stubborn fog. I sat at the worn-out table, the cup in my hand more a prop than anything else. The warmth seeped into my fingers, a small comfort against the turmoil that had taken up residence in my chest.

"Hey, Mercer." Nathan's voice cut through my reverie as he pulled up a chair across from me. His eyes were keen, filled with concern that was characteristic of him. He was one of the few guys in the station who had kids.

I grimaced. Turned out we had something in common now.

"Morning," I responded, my tone flat. Even to my own ears, I sounded like a man who'd barely slept, thoughts chasing each other in circles all night.

"Rough night?" he asked, the chair groaning under his weight as he settled in.

"Something like that," I admitted, forcing a half-smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. I took a sip of coffee, letting the bitterness jolt my senses.

Nathan leaned forward, elbows on the table, creating a bridge between us with his steady gaze. "You know you can talk to me, right?"

"Yeah, I know." The gratitude for his presence was genuine, even if I wasn't sure I was ready to spill the whole story.

Nathan's chair scraped against the linoleum as he scooted closer, his brow furrowed in a way that told me he was all in for whatever I had to share.

"I found out… I’m a dad. I have a daughter." The words tumbled out before I could overthink them.

"Wow," he said quickly, clearly taken aback. "That's… wow.”

"Feels like I've been sucker-punched." I ran a hand through my hair, the short strands offering no real resistance.

“Soo… Are you going back to Chicago?”

I shook my head, a short laugh escaping. “That’s the thing. She’s in Minden.”

He frowned. “You’ve only been here like, what, five months?”

“She’s thirteen years old. And her mom never told me about her."

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