Asher
My obsession with Sayla had never wavered. Not once. But now I had purpose. That purpose was to ensure my girl was never hurt again. She hadn’t hesitated to call me Daddy outside the house. In public. What had begun as a healing measure had become so much more for both of us.
Fuck.
I was a bastard.
I gently placed a kiss on her head, brushing my chin against Pandora, and held onto her as she slept in my arms.
One day my Princess would rule the world.
My world.
And I couldn’t wait.
?
?
?
Her eyes fluttered open an hour or two later. She stretched out with a smile and placed her hand on my jaw.
“You’re still here,” she murmured, her voice still heavy with sleep.
“Of course I am,” I said, leaning in to kiss her flushed cheek. “I’m a very good Daddy.”
She patted my cheek.
“Yes, you are,” she sighed. “Thank you for my frog.”
I glanced across the room to her dresser. She really loved the dainty figurine.
“I saw it online. It’s my way of making it up to you.”
“For?”
“For making you think I was a frog breeder.”
She shook her head.
“I still can’t believe I accepted your request. Frog Master.”
I smiled at the disgust in her voice.
“Feeling better?”
She nodded but her eyes looked haunted. Serious.
“I don’t know how to reach out to my family. I cut them all off because—” she stopped abruptly and swallowed.
“Why don’t you write them a letter?”
“An email?”
I was so old.
“An actual paper letter. You can say what you need to and add some artistic touches with your glittery pens to lighten the load.”
Her brow cleared and her eyes slowly brightened.
“That’s actually a great idea.”
Of course it was.
“Stick some of those holographic stickers on if you want.”
She sat up. Pandora on her lap.
“Yes. No one can get angry at that kind of effort and decor.”
I didn’t say anything to her, but I suspected they would be more concerned than angry.
?
?
?
Sayla didn’t knock. She simply barged into my office like a whirlwind. I cleared some space for her before she reached my desk. She was armed with stationery—three different letter sets by the look of it, a full sheet of holographic stickers and enough glittery pens to fill a small classroom.
After yesterday’s conversation, she was ready to finally contact her family—to make them aware of what a nasty fuck my son was.
I switched from my monitor to keeping an eye on her.
Sometimes she wrote with a flurry, words tumbling onto the page faster than she could second-guess them.
Other times she paused and stared into space, pen hovering, somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Those pauses were the ones that cost her.
I could see it in the set of her shoulders—the weight of two years pressing down each time she stopped moving.
But every time she reached for a colouring pen or peeled a sticker carefully from the sheet to decorate her words, something shifted. A small smile. A quiet satisfaction. The letters were hard—but the stickers were hers. A way of saying I am still here without having to write it.
I turned back to my screen and let her have the silence.
If everything around her remained calm—if I could keep Gabriel contained and the world at a manageable distance—then she might be ready for therapy. Not the crisis kind. The kind that helped a person rebuild rather than simply survive.
She deserved to do more than survive.