Daddy’s Little Christmas

Prologue

I should’ve known something was wrong the moment Nate asked me to meet him here.

The restaurant shimmered in a way that didn’t feel human—soft gold lighting, candles that flickered without melting, waiters who moved like they’d been trained not to disturb the air. Even the clink of silverware sounded expensive.

Nate had chosen the place, of course. It was way beyond my pay grade.

And honestly? I was relieved. Nate loved places where people turned their heads when he walked in—the kind of restaurants where he’d run into constituents, donors, someone who wanted something from him.

I hated that. Too many eyes, too many conversations, too much noise.

But this place, for all its shimmer, didn’t feel crowded.

It was private. Contained. A room where no one knew me and no one needed anything from him. A rare blessing.

He sat across from me in a navy suit that cost more than six months of my rent, dark hair slicked back just enough to say polished, not trying too hard. His tie was perfectly knotted. His cufflinks caught the candlelight when he shifted his hand.

He looked like a man ready to announce a campaign.

Public admiration fed him in a way I never fully understood. The way people’s eyes followed him, the way they leaned in when he spoke—he drank that in like oxygen. Nights like this, where no one recognized him, were the exception, not the norm.

That alone should’ve warned me.

The waiter poured water, recited the specials, and vanished. Nate picked up his menu and scanned it like a file he needed to approve. I traced a fingertip along the edge of my plate, trying to shake off the tightness low in my chest.

“So,” I said lightly, “what’s good here, Mr. Future Senator?”

He huffed a small laugh, the kind he used at fundraisers when donors made jokes he’d already heard six thousand times. “The halibut is reliable,” he said. “So is the filet. You’ll like either.”

Reliable. Dependable. Safe.

Words people used about him. Words he liked.

I looked at the menu even though I already knew I couldn’t afford any of this if I were paying. “I’ll go with the halibut,” I said. “It’s a fancy way of saying fish, right?”

Nate’s mouth twitched. “It’s not that fancy.”

The waiter returned. Nate ordered for both of us, wine included. I let him. This was his world—white tablecloths, quiet power, colleagues who shook his hand like they were already picturing him behind a podium.

Sometimes I tried to imagine myself in that world long-term.

Shaking hands at events. Smiling politely when someone said something that made my skin crawl.

Being “Rudy Callahan, partner of Councilman Nathan Burke,” not Rudy who wrote social media copy from his couch in sweatpants while a playlist hummed through too-loud headphones.

I loved that he had goals. Loved that he wanted to make change. I just never quite knew where I fit inside all that polish.

We made small talk while we waited—about his latest council meeting, about a colleague who’d said something stupid on a radio show. He never said it outright, but I could hear the subtext: this is why I have to be careful.

I told him about clients of mine, a rock band whose bassist had accidentally started a meme by falling off a stage mid-song. Nate smiled politely at that, then steered the conversation back to a bill he was tracking.

The wine came. Our food followed—my plate smelling of lemon and butter and something herbal I couldn’t name. For a few minutes we ate in relative silence.

It wasn’t a bad silence. Just… measured. Like everything else about Nate.

He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin, then folded it precisely on his lap. That was the first sign—the way his shoulders drew up just enough to look like he was bracing.

“Rudy,” he said softly, “we need to talk about the future.”

The word future landed heavy inside my chest. I set my fork down carefully, my palm suddenly slick against the cool metal.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice easy. “What about it?”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small velvet box.

My heart stopped.

He didn’t make any grand gesture. He just set the box on the table, neat and square between us.

Heat sprang behind my eyes. For a moment, everything else in the room dimmed—the clinking glasses, the murmur of other conversations, the low piano music.

Three years together.

Three years of schedules and campaigns and family holidays where I’d worn the right shirt and smiled at the right aunts and shaken hands with the right party donors.

Three years of not letting myself hope too loudly.

And now… this.

But Nate’s eyes didn’t shine. His jaw stayed tight. No nerves or wonder, no oh God, please say yes.

Just calm. Controlled. Prepared.

“I want us to build a life together that’s stable,” he said. “Mature. Respectable. Something that reflects well on both of us—and on the people who put their trust in me.”

On the voters, he meant.

On the party.

On the image.

The candle between us flickered.

“I think you know,” he continued, “there are certain behaviors that aren’t compatible with that.”

My throat tightened.

There it was.

He didn’t say the word. He never used it. But I heard it anyway.

Regression.

My mind flashed, uninvited, to the one night, two years ago, when everything had cracked open.

The night Mrs. Davis died was still carved into me.

She’d taken me in when I was twelve—after too many temporary homes, too many houses where I felt like furniture instead of family.

She and Mr. Davis had been the first people who looked at me like I was wanted.

When Mr. Davis passed away a few years later, she kept me with her without a second thought.

Even after I left for college, even after I built a life on my own, we never stopped being close.

Three months ago, she slipped on a rug in her kitchen, hit her head, and… died.

I held it together through the phone call from the hospital. Through arranging her service because there was no one else to do it. Through standing by her graveside with a small handful of friends who’d loved her, too.

It wasn’t until I went back to her house alone—to pack up the things she’d asked me to take someday—that it hit me.

Her favorite mug was still beside the sink.

Her crossword book was still open on the table.

The cardigan she wore every morning was still draped over the arm of her chair.

Seeing those pieces of her life, untouched and waiting… that was the moment something inside me cracked wide open.

I’d gone quiet. Smaller. Curled up on the living room rug with a blanket and one of the stupid stuffed bears she bought me as a teenager “because you never really got to be a kid, sweetheart,” and I’d just… stayed there. Soft-voiced. Needing someone.

Needing him.

Nate had come over, taken one look at me, and gone rigid.

He’d stayed, but he hadn’t touched me. Not really. His hands stayed tucked into his pockets. His voice went careful, distant. The next day, he’d brought it up.

“What I saw yesterday can’t happen again,” he’d said. “Not if you want people to take us seriously.”

It hadn’t happened again. Not once in the years since.

And still, here we were.

With a ring box between us and that single night sitting in judgment like something huge and unforgivable.

“Nate,” I said slowly, my voice rough, “that was one time. I was grieving.”

He inclined his head slightly. “I understand you were under emotional strain. But it revealed something… fundamental. And I need to know it won’t be a recurring issue.”

He took a sip of wine like we were just going over a bullet point in a meeting.

“I can’t expect voters, colleagues, or donors to respect me if there’s even a hint of…” He searched for a word and settled on, “instability.”

Instability.

I let my hands stay where they were, fingers resting on either side of my plate, because the urge to pull them into my lap and fold in on myself was so strong it scared me.

He went on, calm and relentless. “I need a partner who’s strong when things get difficult. Who doesn’t retreat into that space. Who doesn’t need to be soothed like—”

He cut himself off, but the unfinished word hung there anyway.

Like a child.

The room tilted just a little. I focused on a smear of sauce on my plate, on the cool weight of the fork under my fingers, on the low buzz of conversation around us.

“You’re asking me to cut off a piece of myself,” I managed.

“I’m asking you to grow up,” he corrected softly. “To be the man I know you can be. The man the world will take seriously.”

My chest hurt. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing right.

“What if that part of me is… how I cope?” I asked, the words tripping over each other. “What if it’s not something I can just… turn off?”

Nate’s expression didn’t change. “Then we have a problem.”

For a heartbeat, everything went silent.

I saw it so clearly then: the version of our future he wanted. The one where I smoothed out every soft, strange, inconvenient part of myself so I’d fit neatly beside him at every fundraiser, every town hall, every victory party.

A life built on me pretending.

If I agreed tonight, he’d open the box.

If I promised to be what he wanted—always strong, always composed, never needing too much—he’d probably slide the ring onto my finger and kiss me in this carefully lit restaurant, and people would clap, and maybe someone would take a picture, and everyone would think we were perfect.

The thought made my stomach twist.

“I can’t do that,” I whispered.

“You won’t,” he said instantly.

I shook my head. “No. I can’t.”

He watched me for a long moment, then nodded once, like he’d ended a negotiation that hadn’t gone in his favor. He picked up the box and slipped it back into his jacket.

The tiny click of the case disappearing felt louder than anything else in the room.

“That’s disappointing,” he said quietly.

I don’t know what I’d been hoping for. Maybe for him to argue. To reach for my hand. To say he loved me enough to try to understand.

He didn’t.

The chair scraped softly against the floor when I stood. My legs felt unsteady, but they held. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Nate straightened his cufflink. “You’re making a mistake, Rudy.”

“Maybe,” I said, my voice shaking. “But it’s mine to make.”

For a second, I hesitated. I waited. I let something in my chest hold still in case he said wait or don’t go or we’ll figure this out.

He said nothing.

That was my answer.

I turned and walked out.

The air outside was sharp enough to sting my lungs. The city lights blurred at the edges, but I kept my gaze fixed ahead and my shoulders squared. I would not cry on the sidewalk in front of his favorite restaurant.

My car was two blocks away in a parking garage. The walk there felt both endless and too short, my heels clicking on the pavement in an unsteady rhythm. Every step made the knot in my throat tighter.

In the elevator up to my level, the silence pressed in. I watched the numbers blink: 2, 3, 4. My reflection in the brushed metal doors looked pale and stunned.

When I slid behind the wheel, my hands shook on the steering wheel. I sat there for a minute, forehead resting against the cool leather, breathing slowly until I trusted myself enough to turn the key.

The drive home blurred into a tunnel of streetlights and red taillights. I kept the radio off. If a song about love or heartbreak came on, I wasn’t sure I’d survive the drive. I focused on the road, on my speed, on staying in my lane.

Hold it together.

Just until you get home.

Just until the door closes.

By the time I parked outside my building, my face hurt from clenching it so hard.

Thank God I’d never given up this place.

Nate had wanted me to move in fully, had hinted more than once that it was “the logical next step,” but something in me always held back.

I told myself it was because my lease wasn’t up—but maybe some deeper part of me knew this wasn’t forever.

That I needed somewhere to land if the ground under us cracked.

I locked the car, walked up the stairs to my apartment, and only when the door clicked shut behind me did everything snap.

The first sob ripped out of me before I even made it past the entryway.

I stumbled to the couch, dropping onto it like my legs had given out. My vision swam. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, but the tears kept coming—hot, messy, unstoppable.

Another sob choked out of me. I doubled over, shoulders shaking, tears soaking into my sleeves.

Minutes blurred. Or maybe longer. Time didn’t feel real—just waves of grief and anger and something smaller but sharper underneath, like a splinter of clarity working its way to the surface.

“He didn’t love me,” I said aloud, my voice raw and wrecked, just to hear the truth outside my head. “He loved the idea of me.”

He hadn’t asked me to marry him. Never even opened the box.

The truth hit me with a cold, nauseating clarity: this had never been a proposal.

It was a performance review. He was waiting—testing me.

Seeing if I’d choose him over myself. That realization cut me deeply.

The ring had never really been an offer.

It had been leverage. It was meant to say, change the part of you I can’t tolerate, and then maybe… maybe I’ll let you have this.

I pressed both palms to my eyes, breathing through the sting. This wasn’t the ending I wanted. And it wasn’t the one I deserved. When the sobs finally waned, I sat there, hollow and exhausted, staring at the dark rectangle of my TV.

I’d spent three years trying to fit myself into the version of Rudy Callahan that made sense in Nate’s world—polished, quiet, agreeable, never too soft, never too needy, never too much.

A version who didn’t really exist.

My breath wobbled. A fresh wave of tears built at the back of my throat. But this time, I didn’t let them fall. I sat up straighter. Pulled in a long, shaking breath.

My world had cracked open tonight, but for the first time in a long time, the pieces didn’t feel like something to hide. They felt like something to save.

If loving him meant erasing myself, then walking away was the first thing I’d done right in a long time.

I didn’t know what came next. Tonight, I hadn’t been chosen. I hadn’t been wanted. But for the first time in years, I wasn’t choosing someone else.

I was choosing me.