20. James
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James
The text came through at eleven-thirty at night.
Haley: Can you call me when you get this?
Eight words. No context. My chest went tight before I finished reading them.
I called immediately. She answered on the first ring.
“James.” Her voice was wrong. Too quiet. In a way that meant she was barely holding herself together.
“What happened?” That was all I could manage without bombarding her with questions.
“Caleb came to my apartment.”
I was reaching for my keys before she finished the sentence.
“When?”
“Earlier tonight. He found me, James. He followed you to find me.” Her breath hitched. “He said he’s been tracking where you go. That’s how he got my address.”
My hand stopped halfway to the door. My own brother had used me to hunt down the woman I loved and the child she was protecting. He had turned me into a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to their door.
“Are you okay? Is Lily okay?”
“We’re fine. Security threw him out. But - he’s going to try to get his rights restored.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “He wants to take her from me.”
“He can’t do that.”
“My lawyer said the same thing. He has resources. He can drag this out for years, make my life hell, drain every cent I have fighting him in court.” She was starting to spiral.
I could hear it in her voice, the panic building underneath the forced calm.
“I don’t know if I can survive that, James. Financially or emotionally.”
“You won’t have to.” I grabbed my jacket and headed for the parking garage. “I’m coming over.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“I’m already in the car.” The engine turned over and I pulled out onto the empty street. “I’ll be there before two. Keep the door unlocked for me.”
She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice cracked wide open.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just try to breathe until I get there.”
The highway stretched out empty ahead of me, nothing but darkness and the occasional pair of headlights passing in the other direction. I was going to make Caleb regret ever showing up at her door.
Because I would find him. And when I did, we were going to have a conversation that left marks.
Haley buzzed me into the building at quarter past one. When she opened her apartment door, she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Red-rimmed eyes. Hair pulled back in a messy knot. An oversized sweater hanging off one shoulder.
She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
“You actually came.” She stepped back to let me in, her voice barely above a whisper. “I half expected you to talk yourself out of it somewhere around the halfway point.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s the middle of the night and you have your own life and this isn’t your problem to solve.”
“Haley.” I closed the door behind me and turned to face her. “You have never been a problem. And anything that threatens you or Lily is absolutely my business.”
Her face crumpled.
The composure she had been clinging to shattered, and suddenly she was crying. Really crying. Her whole body was shaking with the force of it.
I crossed the room and pulled her into my arms without thinking, holding her against my chest while she sobbed into my shirt.
She smelled fucking amazing. And despite the state of everything, my dick didn’t get the message. I counted to five, willing myself to not get hard for the woman I’d been sporting a hard-on for, for years.
“I’m so scared.” The words came out muffled against my shoulder. “He’s going to take her from me. I’m going to lose my baby.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.” She pulled back to look at me, her face wet with tears. “You don’t know what they’re capable of. Diane has been trying to destroy me since the day I married into that family. This is exactly the kind of fight she’s been waiting for.”
“And she’s going to lose it.” I cupped her face in my hands, wiping her tears with my thumbs. “Listen to me. You have nothing to worry about. Anyone with eyes will look at this situation and see exactly who deserves to raise that little girl. And it’s not Caleb.”
“What if the judge doesn’t see it that way?”
“They will. Because Caleb has never been a father.” I held her gaze, willing her to believe me. “No amount of therapy or redemption talk is going to erase it.”
She let out a shaky breath. “You really believe that?”
“I know it. Because you raised that little girl for three years. You put her first in everything you do, even when it costs you.” My thumbs traced slow circles on her cheekbones. “No court in this country is going to look at that and decide she belongs with the man who threw her away.”
We stood there for a long time, her body slowly relaxing against mine, her breathing evening out. I could feel her heartbeat through her sweater.
I would have held her like that all night if she needed me to.
Eventually she pulled back, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I’m sorry. I completely ruined your shirt.”
“I don’t care about the shirt.”
“You should. It looks expensive.”
“It’s just clothes, Haley.”
She laughed at that, watery and weak but still better than the crying. “You always know exactly what to say to make me feel like less of a disaster.”
“You’re not a disaster. You’re a mother who just had her worst fear show up at her door. That would shake anyone.”
She looked up at me with those red-rimmed eyes, her face still blotchy from crying, and I felt my heart twist in my chest.
“Will you stay?” She asked it quietly, like she expected me to say no. “I know it’s a lot. But I really don’t want to be alone right now, and Lily’s going to be so excited to see you in the morning.”
“I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”
She set me up on the couch with a pillow and a blanket that smelled like fabric softener.
I lay there in the dark listening to the sounds of her apartment settling around me, running through everything I knew about custody law and parental rights and the specific ways I was going to destroy my brother if he tried to follow through on his threats.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew, there was a small body launching itself onto my chest.
“Uncle James!” Lily’s face was inches from mine, her eyes bright with excitement. “You’re here! Mommy said you were here but I thought she was making it up because you don’t live here but you’re actually here!”
“I’m here.” I sat up and pulled her into my lap, her tiny arms wrapping around my neck. “Good morning to you too, troublemaker.”
“Are you staying forever?” she asked, and there was a pang in my chest.
I would give anything to be with her forever, and with her mother.
“Not forever. But I’m here today.”
“Can we go to the park?” She pulled back to look at me with an expression of absolute seriousness. “Mommy said maybe park if I ate all my breakfast and I ate all my breakfast, even the banana, so we have to go now.”
I looked up and found Haley standing in the doorway, a cup of coffee in each hand and a tired smile on her face.
“She really did eat everything.” Haley walked over and handed me one of the mugs. “Including the banana, which she usually hides under her napkin and thinks I don’t notice.”
“I don’t hide the banana.” Lily crossed her arms with exaggerated indignation. “I save it for later.”
“Under your napkin?”
“It’s a special saving place.”
I laughed and swung her off my lap. “If you ate the whole breakfast, then I think you’ve definitely earned a park trip. What do you say, Mom?”
Haley’s eyes softened at the word. “I think the park sounds perfect.”
The park was a fifteen-minute drive from her apartment, a sprawling green space with a playground and a small pond and paths that wound through clusters of old oak trees. Lily was out of the car before I even had the engine off, her legs pumping as she sprinted toward the swings.
“Slow down!” Haley called after her. “Stay where I can see you!”
“I’m right here!” Lily shouted back, already climbing onto a swing. “Push me, James! Push me high!”
We spent the morning chasing her around the playground, pushing her on the swings, catching her at the bottom of the slide. She laughed the entire time, that full-body sound that only children can make, pure and uncomplicated and completely free.
I watched Haley watch her daughter, and I felt my chest ache with wanting. Not just this moment. All of it. The mornings and the park trips and the bedtime stories. The scraped knees and the bad dreams and the mundane Tuesday afternoons.
I wanted to be part of their lives in a way that terrified me.
“You’re staring.” Haley caught me looking and raised an eyebrow. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
Before I could figure out how to answer that question, the sky opened up.
One second it was overcast. The next, rain was hammering down in sheets, drenching us instantly. Lily shrieked and Haley grabbed her hand and started running toward the parking lot.
“Come on!” She was laughing, her hair already plastered to her face. “Run!”
We sprinted across the grass with Lily between us, all three of us laughing like idiots while the rain pounded down on our heads. By the time we reached the car we were soaked through to the skin. I unlocked the doors and Haley bundled Lily into her car seat while I climbed behind the wheel.
The doors slammed shut and suddenly it was quiet. Just the three of us and the sound of rain hammering against the windshield.
“That came out of nowhere.” Haley was still laughing, pushing wet hair out of her eyes. “The forecast said partly cloudy.”
“The forecast lied.”
“Clearly.” She twisted around to check on Lily. “You okay back there, baby?”
No answer. Lily’s head was already drooping, her eyes fluttering closed. The excitement and the running and the rain had knocked her out completely.
“She’s done.” Haley turned back around with a smile. “Fast asleep.”
We sat there in the quiet, watching rain stream down the glass. Neither of us made any move to start the car or break the silence.
Then a small voice mumbled from the backseat, thick with sleep.
“Dada. Juice.”
Haley spun around so fast I heard her neck crack. “What did you say, baby?”
Lily’s eyes were barely open, her voice slurred. “Juice.”
“No, before that. What did you call-” Haley’s voice caught. “James, baby. That’s James. Not Dada.”
Lily blinked slowly, processing through the fog of sleep. “James,” she repeated, the word heavy. Then her eyes closed and she was out again, her breathing settling into a steady rhythm.
Haley turned back to face the front.
I was staring at the windshield. My jaw was clenched so tight it ached. I could feel the pressure building behind my eyes, the burn of tears I couldn’t stop.
Dada. She had called me Dada.
“Has she ever asked-” My voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.
“No.” Haley cut me off before I could finish. “This is the first time she’s said it. To anyone.”
She paused, and I could hear her struggling to find words. “Fuck, James. I’m so sorry. You don’t need this. You don’t need a three-year-old calling you Dada when you’re just trying to be a good uncle. This is my mess, not yours.”
“No, Haley.” I turned to look at her, and I didn’t bother hiding the tears anymore. “I’m not upset about what she called me.”
Fuck. There were no words to explain what I was feeling. It meant the fucking world to me if Lily thought of me that way. But-
“I’m upset because that child deserves the fucking world.
She deserves someone who shows up. Someone who wants to be there.
Not someone who walks away from her.” My voice cracked on the last word.
“And that bastard brother of mine can’t see straight.
He has no idea what he threw away. He’ll never understand what he’s missing. ”
Haley reached over and put her hand on my sleeve.
She left it there.
We sat in the parked car while the rain hammered down around us, neither of us speaking. Her hand stayed warm against my arm through the damp fabric.
I had loved Lily since the moment I first held her in that hospital room three years ago.
But I had never let myself imagine being anything more.
But sitting here now, with that word still echoing through my head, I couldn’t stop the questions from flooding in.
What if I let myself get closer and then everything fell apart? What if Haley met someone else, someone better suited to be a father figure? What if I let that little girl start thinking of me as her dad and then I failed her somehow, disappeared from her life the way Caleb had?
I couldn’t do that to her. She had already lost one father before she was old enough to understand what a father was. I couldn’t let her attach to me only to break her heart down the road.
But I couldn’t imagine walking away either.