Chapter 24
Marshall
Ipaced my rental place the next afternoon, staring at the gifts I’d bought for Wren every time I passed by the dining room table.
The table was full.
Emma had pitched a fit over those gifts, but I’d gotten them anyway.
Twenty-six gifts total.
Thirteen for every one of her birthdays I’d missed, and thirteen for every Christmas I’d missed in my daughter’s life.
I thought it was a logical number.
Since I already knew that my daughter had a gift for technology, I’d gotten her things that would challenge her brain.
The rest of the stuff I’d picked up because Emma had mentioned that they were some of Wren’s favorite things.
I wasn’t trying to buy her affection.
I’d just picked up a gift for every occasion I regretted missing in her life so far.
I glanced at my watch for the millionth time in the last thirty minutes.
Emma had picked up Wren around lunchtime.
She’d said she was going to feed Wren and bring her over as soon as they got settled into the cottage.
The three of us were going to walk to town and get an ice cream. The ice cream shop had been around for decades. Emma and I had gone there together, and I had to admit that they had the best soft serve ice cream cones I’d ever tasted.
It’s just a damn ice cream. It’s not a big deal.
While my rational mind tried to make me see some reason, my irrational mind was winning this particular battle.
What if she didn’t like me?
What if my injured leg and significant limp bothered her?
What if she resented the fact that I hadn’t been around for the last thirteen years?
Hell, she didn’t even know what I looked like.
Emma and I had never taken pictures in Virginia Beach, so she hadn’t even seen a photo of me.
I might be her biological father, but I was going to be a complete stranger to Wren.
I grimaced and stopped prowling around the house when the doorbell finally rang.
You can’t expect to be a father to her right now. Just try to be her friend.
I was determined to be exactly that when I opened the door.
However, those expectations flew out of my head the moment I saw Emma and Wren on my doorstep.
Emma had told me that Wren had experienced a significant growth spurt recently.
She wasn’t as tall as her mother, but she was only a few inches shorter.
The moment I locked eyes with my daughter I felt like those solemn gray eyes so much like my own were looking into my fucking soul.
Wren was like a female mirror image of me, and I felt completely gut punched.
Yeah, I’d seen her picture, but I’d had no idea exactly how I’d feel looking back at her in person.
This was my child, and every protective instinct in my body suddenly flared to life.
Her brown hair barely touched her shoulders, and my daughter wasn’t smiling like her mother was at the moment.
She looked at me like she was trying to figure me out, and I was silent because I had no idea what to say.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that, our eyes locked, our gazes steady, but I frowned as I saw her bottom lip start to tremble.
“Dad?” she said uncertainly.
The moment that word came out of my daughter’s mouth, I knew I was completely fucked.
“Wren?” I said huskily.
Without another word, Wren launched her smaller body toward me, and I caught her as she landed against my chest.
I closed my eyes and simply held my girl.
I hadn’t expected this kind of reception, but I was damn grateful for it.
She’d accepted me in a nanosecond like she’d instantly recognized me as her father.
I sure as hell had never had someone who just accepted who I was in a heartbeat and thoroughly embraced it.
I wasn’t used to it.
It wasn’t normal for me.
But I savored every second of that enthusiastic hug from my child.
It was humbling for me, and I wasn’t a humble guy.
I felt like my heart was about to explode by the time she finally stepped back.
“We look so much alike,” Wren observed as she looked me over thoroughly and finally smiled.
“You definitely have your mother’s smile and some of her features,” I said as I let the two of them step inside.
Emma looked beautiful in her summer top and shorts.
Wren was dressed in a pair of jeans and cropped T-shirt.
We seated ourselves in the living room.
Wren sat on the couch beside me and turned to look at me again like she couldn’t stop staring.
I was pretty certain that I was probably still staring at her in awe like an idiot.
I cleared my throat before I spoke. “Before we say anything else, I want you to know that I would have been there for you and your mom if I’d known about you, Wren.”
She cocked her head in an adorable way that made me want to hug her all over again.
“I know about all that,” she said dismissively.
“I don’t care. You didn’t know, and it wasn’t your fault.
You know now and you’re here. Mom said you’re intellectually gifted like me.
I want to know about your life. What things are like for you in California.
I want to know about what it was like to be a SEAL commander.
I guess I just want to know everything.”
And just like that…Wren blew off everything I’d missed out on in the past and focused on the present.
Hell, maybe that was easier to do when you were a kid.
Honestly, that action was so much like her mother that it shouldn’t have surprised me.
“I’m not going to promise that I’ll be a perfect father in the future. I’ve never had a child, so I have zero practice at being a parent,” I warned her. “But I’ll always be there if you need me.”
She shrugged. “Being there is enough. I probably won’t be an ideal daughter, either. I’ve never had a dad. But I’d like to. Maybe you can help me feel more normal even though I’m gifted.”
I had to swallow the enormous lump in my throat before I spoke. “I probably never thought of my intelligence as a gift. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t think differently than other people my age.”
“I think some people think I’m odd,” Wren said without an ounce of rancor about that fact.
“You’re not odd,” I said defensively. “You’re smart. You’ll appreciate that a lot more as you get older. If people can’t appreciate that your mind just works a little differently, that’s their issue. There’s not a single thing wrong with you, Wren.”
She smiled at me and my heart melted. “I know. Mom always makes sure that I know that I’m just unique.
I used to think that was bad because I didn’t fit in, but I don’t feel that way so much anymore.
I met some other kids in San Diego last summer that are gifted, so I know I’m not the only kid in the world who doesn’t always fit in. ”
“Did you see them this summer?” Emma asked.
Wren nodded enthusiastically. “They’re all in a specific program at school for gifted kids, so they all hang out together. I like being with them. I feel like we’re all part of the same tribe.”
“We don’t have those programs at our local school,” Emma told me regretfully. “I wish we did.”
“I like my friends here,” Wren said. “We just don’t think the same way. Some of them are starting to get obsessed with boys. I’d usually rather talk about solving some of the major social issues we have in the world right now.”
I grinned because she said that like the very thought of boys was absolutely disgusting to her.
Hell, she was at that age when some girls had enormous crushes on the opposite sex.
Personally, I was damn glad she wasn’t showing that much interest in the opposite sex yet.
In my eyes, Wren was still a child.
I wasn’t sure it was preferable for a kid to be thinking about poverty, racism, and food insecurity, but it was probably better than being obsessed with boys.
“I bought you a few things,” I told Wren.
“A few things?” Emma said drily. “You bought her a ridiculous amount of gifts.”
“Twenty-six,” I confirmed.
Wren looked at me for a moment before she said, “Thirteen and thirteen. One for each Christmas and birthday that we weren’t together.”
“Exactly,” I confirmed.
Okay, it was a little unnerving that my kid understood my logic so well, but she was my daughter, and her brain obviously worked similarly to mine.
“It makes sense,” Wren told me. “But you didn’t have to do that. You didn’t know about me then.”
“I wanted to,” I said simply.
“What are they?” she asked with the excitement of a kid in her voice.
Wren was pretty unique.
As Emma had mentioned, she still had the emotional development of girls her age, but an intelligence that was probably scary to most people.
But I wasn’t most people.
I was her father, and I understood her perfectly.
I nodded my head toward the dining room. “They’re all on the table in the dining room.”
Wren looked at her mother. “Can I go for a few minutes?”
Emma nodded. “You’re going to need more than a few minutes to open all of that stuff.”
Wren shot me a huge smile as she leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll be back.”
My gut wrenched as my girl wandered off to the dining room.
Christ! So this was what it was like to have a daughter.
I knew I was going to worry about her welfare and her happiness for the rest of my fucking life, and I’d only known her for a matter of minutes.
It was going to be pure hell, but I knew I didn’t want to miss a single moment of that torture in the future.