Page 91 of Come Back for Me
Fuck, this is breaking my heart. I love her, and I don’t want to cause her pain, but at the same time, I’m glad we’re telling her.
“No, baby, but you don’t have to stop loving him. I don’t know when you’ll see him again, but he can always be in your heart.”
I think about what he said to Ellie and have to force back my demand that Hadley not even give him that much.
She’s kindness and everything good in this world, and he is nothing but poison.
I’m glad he was so willing to give them away because I’m more than willing to keep them.
“Hadley,” I say with my heart in my throat, “I don’t want to confuse you or make you sad. You don’t have to call me dad or anything until you want to, and if you never do, I’ll always be Connor to you. If I had known you were mine, I would’ve found you right away, but I will be as much a part of your life as you want me to be, and nothing has to change for us until you’re ready for it.”
She looks up at me, her eyes filled with confusion. “You’re my dad?”
“I am, and I really am happy that you’re my daughter.”
Hadley drops Ellie’s hold and walks over to me. Her little hands frame my face, and she smiles. “I wanted you to be my daddy too.”
With that, my entire world shifts, and I swear that I could fucking cry.
* * *
“I’m not tired,” Hadley complains.
“If you don’t go to bed now, you’ll never get up for school.” Ellie doesn’t allow her any room to negotiate. “Go brush your teeth.”
There’s a part of me that wants to ask Ellie to let her stay home. After a day like we had, surely, we can pretend the world around us doesn’t exist for just a bit longer.
“Go on, Squirt,” I say, backing up Ellie because I may want to keep Hadley home, but I’m not a fool.
The look of appreciation on her face tells me I did well, and I want to do well. I want to be the partner who supports her, which means I can’t always be the good guy.
If Dempsey and Miller could see me now . . .
Here I am, Mr. Domestic and happy as fuck dealing with it. I never understood it before—how a kid could change your whole world. I watched Liam literally go from bachelor of the year to a family man in just a few months. I thought maybe Natalie had some kind of golden pussy or something, but I was a fucking tool. It was love.
It was finding that another human was so important that you were willing to forget all your stupid rules. Ellie is the piece of my heart I didn’t know was missing. She’s brought me to my knees, and I don’t care if I can’t ever stand again. For her, I’d stay here, at her feet as long as I have her here.
Hadley mopes to the bathroom, and a second later, I hear the water run as she starts her bedtime routine.
“What are you thinking?” Ellie asks as she comes up to me, wrapping her arms around my waist in a display of affection she usually only leaves for once Hadley is asleep.
“That I love you.”
She smiles at that, her eyes filling with love and a little bit of apprehension. I can’t wait for the day when I don’t see the second part. “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
I say it without pause, and I’ll say it a million times over again until she believes it. She’ll never know what it means that she said it to me without prompt.
Ellie leans up on her toes and gives me a soft kiss. “I love you too, Connor, and today was . . . well, it was everything. She took it better than I could’ve ever imagined, and it feels as if the world is smiling down on us.”
“Because it is. We deserve to be happy, and I think we’ve both had enough shit to last us a lifetime.”
“I agree, and hopefully”—she kisses me again, and her eyes darken just a bit—“we have some more happy tonight.”
“How happy?”
Ellie shrugs. “We’ll see.”
