Chapter 18 - Nate
eighteen
nate
"Dad?" Paige looked up from her elaborate Lego city. "Who was that?"
"Tasha. She's coming over for dinner."
Paige's face lit up like Christmas morning. "Really? Can we show her my new book? And can we make s'mores? Oh, and I want to show her how I finally got the bridge to stay up!"
"Sure, kiddo. We'll do whatever makes her happy." I ruffled her hair. "She had a hard day at work, so let's make sure she has a good time here, okay?"
Paige nodded solemnly. At eleven, she was already developing the same protective instincts I had. "Like when you have the dreams and need quiet time?"
Sometimes my daughter's emotional intelligence caught me off guard. "Sort of like that, yeah."
By the time Tasha's car pulled into the driveway forty-five minutes later, Paige had reorganized her entire Lego display and I'd ordered pizza from the place that made Tasha's favorite margherita.
Through the front window, I watched her sit in her car for a long moment before getting out, like she was gathering herself.
When I opened the door, she looked perfectly normal.
Professional smile in place, shoulders squared, every inch the competent ER nurse I worked with every day.
But you could see the cracks if you knew where to look—the slight tightness around her eyes, the way her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.
"Hey there," I said softly, stepping aside to let her in.
"TASHA!" Paige bounded into the hallway, launching herself at Tasha with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever.
Tasha caught her in a hug, and I watched her hold on just a beat too long, her arms tightening around Paige's small frame like she needed the contact.
"Hey, kiddo," Tasha said, her voice steadier now. "I hear you've been doing some engineering today."
"Want to see? I built an entire city! With a working drawbridge!" Paige grabbed Tasha's hand, tugging her toward the living room.
For the next three hours, Tasha threw herself into being with us with an intensity that would have seemed normal to anyone who didn't know her well.
She admired every detail of Paige's Lego city.
She helped us build an even more elaborate bridge.
She laughed at Paige's jokes and listened with rapt attention to a detailed explanation of why certain structural elements were more stable than others.
But I noticed the way she kept reaching out to touch Paige—smoothing her hair, adjusting her sleeve, letting her hand linger on Paige's shoulder. I noticed how she watched me interact with my daughter, something almost hungry in her expression.
During dinner, Paige regaled us with stories from school, and Tasha hung on every word like it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever heard. When Paige got pizza sauce on her chin, Tasha was there with a napkin before I could even reach for one.
"Can we watch a movie?" Paige asked as we finished eating. "The new one I got from the library?"
"What movie?" I asked.
"'The Princess Bride.' Mrs. Davidson said it was a classic and I needed to see it immediately or I was deprived."
Tasha laughed, the first genuinely relaxed sound I'd heard from her all evening. "Mrs. Davidson is absolutely right. That's practically required viewing."
We settled on the couch, Paige between us, her head gradually migrating to rest against Tasha's shoulder as the movie progressed. Tasha's arm came around her automatically, and I watched something in her expression soften.
By the time Westley was storming the castle, Paige was fast asleep, her breathing deep and even. Tasha looked down at her with such tenderness it made my chest tight.
"I should put her to bed," I whispered.
Tasha nodded, carefully extricating herself so I could scoop Paige up. My daughter was getting too big for me to carry easily, but I managed to get her to her room and tucked into bed without waking her.
When I came back to the living room, I found Tasha curled into the corner of the couch, knees drawn up, staring at nothing. The facade had finally cracked.
"Hey," I said softly, settling beside her. "You want to talk about it?"
She shook her head, then seemed to change her mind. "Tell me a story about you and Paige," she said quietly. "Something good. Something... normal."
"Okay, hmmm." I said, shifting so she could lean against me if she wanted to. "Let me tell you about nursing school."
She nestled into my side, her head finding the hollow of my shoulder.
"Paige was barely six months old when I started," I began. "Single dad, living on GI Bill money and whatever I could make working weekends at a clinic. I was terrified I wouldn't be able to handle both."
"But you did."
"Barely. The first semester, I had to bring her to class twice because my babysitter fell through.
I was sure they'd kick me out of the program.
" I smoothed Tasha's hair absently. "The first time, she was maybe eight months old, and I had this English class with a strict attendance policy.
One absence dropped your grade a full letter. "
"With a baby!?"
"Right? It was aimed at frat boys who wanted to sleep off hangovers, not single parents dealing with sick babysitters.
But they wouldn't make exceptions." I felt the old frustration rise up.
"So I brought her in her carrier, all swaddled up, praying she'd sleep through the lecture.
And she did—didn't make a peep for ninety minutes. "
"Good girl," Tasha murmured against my chest.
"The professor barely noticed. But afterward, this smug graduate assistant held me back and told me I wasn't 'taking the class seriously' and that I 'shouldn't be here' if I couldn't arrange proper childcare. Then he marked me absent anyway."
"What a dick."
I laughed softly. "I almost failed that class.
Had to do extra credit just to scrape by with a C.
" I paused, remembering. "But you know what?
My nursing professors were completely different.
When they found out about Paige, they went out of their way to help.
Professor Martinez used to bounce her on her knee while I took exams. Dr. Kim kept a Pack 'n Play in her office. "
"They understood."
"They understood that sometimes life doesn't wait for convenient timing. That being a parent doesn't make you less capable—it makes you more determined." I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I wouldn't have made it through without them."
"Tell me another one."
I studied Tasha's face in the dim light from the TV. Whatever she'd seen today, she obviously needed to remember that good things existed.
"Another one?" I asked. "Another one. Ahhh.
.. hmmm... oh, I know! Let me tell you about Paige's singing phase.
When she was about four, maybe five, she went through this phase where she had to sing constantly.
Not normal kids' songs, mind you. Educational songs.
Scientific songs." I chuckled at the memory.
"Tell me if this surprises you, because this one is burned into my memory forever. "
I cleared my throat and began to sing in a soft, but deliberately overdramatic, sing-song voice:
"When there's water vapor in the air,
it condenses, forming clouds!
Saturation, condensation,
bring about the cloud formation,
when there's water vapor in the air!"
Tasha burst out laughing, the sound bright and genuine. "Oh my God, that is one thousand percent Paige. Where did she even learn that?"
"I don't even know. Some educational TV show. She must have heard it once and decided it was her new favorite song. She'd sing it in the grocery store, in the car, during bath time. The other parents at the playground thought I was raising some kind of tiny meteorologist."
"That's so adorable," Tasha said, still chuckling. "I can picture her little serious face, belting out cloud formation facts."
"She was so proud of herself too. Like she was sharing the most important information in the world." I smiled at the memory. "One time, she—"
I stopped. Tasha's laughter had shifted, becoming something else entirely. Her shoulders were shaking, but the sound coming from her throat wasn't amusement anymore. She was crying. Not the controlled tears of someone trying to hold it together, but deep, wrenching sobs that shook her entire body.
"Hey," I said softly, pulling her closer. "Hey, hey, hey. Sweetheart! What happened? What's wrong?"
"I can't," she gasped. "I can't stop seeing her face. This little girl, fifteen months old, and someone... someone hurt her, Nate. Someone she trusted. Someone her mother trusted."
My blood went cold. I didn't need details. I'd seen enough cases in the ER to know exactly what she was talking about.
"Oh, Tasha. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you had to see that."
"She was so little. So innocent. And her mother..." Tasha's sobs intensified. "The sound she made when we told her. I've never heard anything like it. Like her whole world just ended."
I held her tighter, my own throat closing up. "Yeah. Yeah. I've been there, too." A pause. "Did they get the bastard that did it?"
"I don't know. The police were called. CPS took the baby." She looked up at me with red, swollen eyes. "How could someone do that? How could anyone look at a child and think..."
"I don't know, hon," I said honestly. "Some people are just broken in ways that can't be fixed."
"I keep thinking about you with Paige," she continued, her voice raw. "The way you protect her. The way you love her. And I can't understand how someone could take that trust, that innocence, and destroy it."
I thought about all the ways I tried to keep Paige safe. The careful vetting of babysitters. The self-defense classes I was already planning for when she got older. The way I still checked on her every night before I went to bed, just to make sure she was breathing.
"I grew up without that," Tasha said quietly. "My parents... they weren't monsters. They weren't abusive. But they were never really there, you know? My dad was always working. My mom thought emotions were inconvenient. I learned early not to need too much from anyone."
"Tasha—"
"But watching you with Paige, seeing how you are with her... it's like seeing something I never knew existed. This fierce, unconditional protection. This safety." Fresh tears started. "And today I saw what happens when that safety gets stolen. When someone destroys it."
I didn't know what to say. How do you comfort someone who's just witnessed one of humanity's worst failures? How do you restore faith in goodness when evil has shown its face so clearly?
"You saved her," I said finally. "That little girl? You saved her. You got her away from the person who was hurting her."
"But we were too late. The damage is already done."
"The physical damage, maybe. But you gave her a chance at healing. At safety. That matters, Tasha. That matters a lot more than you know."
She was quiet for a long moment, her breathing gradually evening out. "I think I'm falling in love with you," she said suddenly. "With both of you. And it terrifies me because I don't know how to trust that it's real. That it won't disappear."
My heart stopped. Not because of the confession—I'd been falling in love with her too, had been for weeks—but because of the raw vulnerability in her voice. The fear.
"It's real," I said softly. "Whatever this is between us, it's real."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're here. Because when your world got turned upside down today, you came to us.
Because you held my daughter like she was precious.
Because you're crying over a baby you'll never see again.
" I tilted her chin up so she could see my face.
"Because I've spent eleven years building walls to keep people out, and somehow you've gotten past every single one. "
She hugged me then, desperate and needy, and I poured everything I had into hugging her back. All my own fears about letting someone in. All my gratitude that she'd chosen us. All my determination to be the safe harbor she'd never had.
We might have stayed like that all night, but a small voice from the hallway interrupted us.
"Tasha? I had a bad dream."
Paige stood in the doorway in her space-themed pajamas, hair mussed from sleep, looking young and vulnerable.
Without hesitation, Tasha was off the couch and crossing to her. "Oh, sweetheart, come here." She gathered Paige into her arms, and my daughter melted into the embrace like she'd been waiting for it her whole life.
"Want to tell me about it?" Tasha asked, leading Paige back to the couch.
"There were these scary men trying to get into our house, and Dad wasn't here, and I couldn't find him anywhere."
I started to get up, but Tasha was already settling onto the couch with Paige in her lap, stroking her hair with the kind of instinctive tenderness that couldn't be faked.
"That does sound scary," Tasha said softly. "But you know what? Your dad would never let anything happen to you. He'd fight off a hundred scary men before he'd let anyone hurt you."
"I know," Paige said, snuggling closer. "But in the dream, I couldn't find him."
"Well, he's right here now. And so am I. You're safe, baby girl."
I watched them together—Tasha holding my daughter, Paige trusting her completely—and felt something fundamental shift in my chest. This wasn't just about Tasha and me anymore. This was about family. The kind of family I'd never dared to hope we could have.
"Can I stay with you guys until I fall asleep?" Paige asked.
"Of course," Tasha and I said at the same time.
We rearranged ourselves on the couch, Paige curled between us, her head on Tasha's chest, my arm around both of them. I watched Tasha hum softly, some lullaby I didn't recognize, her hand making gentle circles on Paige's back.
Within minutes, Paige was asleep again, but none of us moved. We stayed there in the soft glow of the TV, holding each other, holding onto this moment of peace after a day that had shown us how fragile safety could be.
"Thank you," Tasha whispered.
"For what?"
"For letting me come here. For giving me this." She looked down at Paige, then back at me. "For showing me what love is supposed to look like."
I pressed a kiss to her temple, breathing in the scent of her hair, the warmth of her skin. "Thank you for trusting us with it."
Outside, the world continued to turn, filled with its mixture of beauty and horror. But inside our living room, wrapped around each other in the darkness, we had created something perfect and safe and real.