Chapter 3
Sebastian
Single fatherhood is ninety per cent logistics, nine per cent caffeine, and one per cent praying your kid doesn’t tell the teacher you said “fuck” in traffic. So far, I’m batting a solid fifty-fifty.
“Daniels,” Reynolds calls across the office. “Tell me you finally replaced that dinosaur laptop of yours. The thing sounds like a lawnmower every time you log in.”
“Don’t knock the classics,” I shoot back, leaning over my desk.
“Not when it’s a HP from 2009,” Woody says, grinning around his coffee cup. “Pretty sure my microwave runs faster.”
Bradley smirks from his corner, eyes flicking between us like he’s pretending to be above the shit-talking. The man’s softened since Amelia. Hell, love looks good on him, but the old broody bastard still lurks under the surface.
“I’m waiting for the day the thing actually catches fire,” Stokes adds. “Then maybe you’ll get an upgrade.”
“Or maybe I’ll just steal Woody’s,” I say. “He won’t notice. He never closes his tabs anyway.”
Woody points at me. “Don’t touch my tabs.”
Across the room, Emma, our newest on the team, snorts, not even looking up from her file.
“Unbelievable. You’re all supposed to be superintendents and inspectors, yet you argue like ten-year-olds. No wonder Mitchell always has headaches.”
“Careful,” I warn. “Keep talking like that, and Bradley might cry. Sensitive soul, that one.”
Bradley flips me the finger without looking up, which only makes Emma grin wider. “Please. You’d all be lost without me.”
She’s right, though. Emma doesn’t take shit from anyone—not from me, not from Mitchell, and definitely not from the guys who think walking in with a badge means something.
She is the reason this place runs as smoothly as it does.
She keeps the schedule tight, the egos in check, and the entire ops board from going up in flames most weeks.
Hell, I don’t say it out loud, but we’d be screwed without her. And she knows it.
I’ve been stationed in the office more since my promotion.
Bradley was bumped up a couple of years ago and made sure I was brought onto his team when the opening came up.
We’ve been working side by side for a long time—started out on the same beat, moved up from constables to sergeants together.
Now we’re both part of the rural intelligence unit, handling regional intel and high-risk jobs across the district.
I work five days on, two off. The weekends are non-negotiable. That time belongs to Teddy.
My phone buzzes on the desk, and I glance down. Unknown number. Normally, I’d ignore it. But something in my gut twists, so I answer it.
“Mr. Daniels? This is Mrs. Carter from Wattle Creek Primary.”
My spine snaps straight. “Is Teddy okay? What happened?”
“He’s fine,” she says quickly. “He’s here with me now—”
Here with me now? My gaze cuts to the wall clock. Three forty-five. Shit.
School finished at three.
I grip the phone tighter. “Sorry, what do you mean? Tara hasn’t picked him up?”
Tara. Teddy’s forty-something-year-old nanny, who I trust to handle all the in-betweens I can’t manage with this job.
She’s been with us nearly two years now and has never missed a pick-up.
Reliable isn’t even the word. She’s consistent.
Predictable. The kind of woman who sets five alarms and shows up ten minutes early just in case.
So where the hell is she?
“No, Mr. Daniels,” Mrs. Carter says gently. “But Teddy is absolutely safe. I just didn’t want you to worry if you were expecting him home.”
Too late. My heart is already thundering.
“Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I’ll be right there.”
I hang up, shoving back from my chair so hard, it rattles. My pulse hammers against my ribs.
This is what happens when you rely on strangers. No matter how dependable they seem, people can be unpredictable. One slip, one missed pick-up, and suddenly, your five-year-old is the last kid waiting at school with a teacher, trying to stay calm. Fuck.
As much as I’d love to lean on family, I can’t.
Not really. My parents are creeping toward their seventies.
They’d take him in a heartbeat, but they’re not built for full-time care anymore.
My sister, Sandra, is already juggling two kids and a career two hours south.
Everyone else I trust is either too far away or already stretched so thin, they don’t have anything left to give.
This is on me.
Across the office, Bradley’s watching me carefully, with furrowed brows. “Daniels?”
“It’s Teddy,” I say tightly. “He’s still at school. Tara never showed.”
Bradley doesn’t question it. “Go.”
I nod, already moving, gut twisting the whole way out the door, praying my son isn’t sitting there, wondering if I forgot about him.
By the time I hit the ute, my chest is tight.
The drive to Wattle Creek Primary isn’t long, but every red light feels like a personal attack.
My hands drum against the steering wheel, restless.
I’ve seen things in this job most people wouldn’t be able to stomach—accidents, fights, calls that end the worst way possible—but nothing knots me up like imagining Teddy sitting on a bench, waiting. Wondering why Tara didn’t come. Or me.
I grip the wheel tighter, reaching for my phone, thumb already hovering over Tara’s name. It rings a few times, then kicks straight to voicemail. I curse under my breath, jaw clenching.
I try again. Same thing. No answer, no explanation, just silence where there should’ve been a message.
My fingers tighten around the phone before I toss it onto the seat beside me and press my foot harder than necessary on the pedal.
Whatever the hell Tara’s excuse is, it can wait.
Right now, the only thing that matters is getting to my kid.
When I finally pull up outside the school, it’s almost four.
I jog across the front of the building, boots pounding, sweat prickling under my uniform shirt.
And there he is. My boy. Sitting on the wooden bench by the front office.
Mrs. Carter sits beside him, but his eyes are glued to the ground.
When I call his name, his head jerks up.
His gaze skims past me first, then lands on my chest, not my eyes.
He slides off the bench, clutching the straps of his backpack.
I crouch and pull him in, tucking him against me.
He lets me, stiffens for a second, then relaxes when I press my hand to the back of his head.
“Hey, champ.” I manage through a dry throat. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“Where is… Tara?” he replies softly.
My chest cracks. “Tara couldn’t make it. So I’m here, buddy.”
He nods once, and Mrs. Carter stands. “He waited very patiently. We played I Spy for a while.”
“I didn’t win,” Teddy murmurs quietly.
“You did fine,” she assures him, and smiles at me. “I thought it best to call you directly.”
“Thank you,” I say, meaning it. “I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
She doesn’t press. Just nods and heads back inside.
It took me a long time to figure out Teddy wasn’t just “quiet” or “shy”.
At the age of three, he was lining up all his toy cars and blocks in perfect rows on the lounge floor and lost it, and I mean a full meltdown, if anyone nudged one out of place.
He hated loud supermarkets, or any loud noise for that matter, clung to routines like lifelines, and sometimes, he’d go days barely saying a word to anyone but me. Even then, it was minimal.
At first, I thought it was the fallout from her leaving.
His mother. A woman I’d been seeing casually.
A few nights, a few blurred weeks, nothing solid.
She disappeared for years, only to show up again with a baby on her hip and no intention of raising him.
Teddy was sixteen months old when she left him on my doorstep like he was nothing.
I was thirty-two, deep in my career, running on adrenaline and shift work, with no fucking idea what I was supposed to do with a toddler who barely knew me.
For a long time, I blamed myself. For the meltdowns.
The silence. The way he pulled inward. I thought I was doing something wrong.
That every stumble, every hard day, traced back to me not being enough.
But the doctors saw it clearly. Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Suddenly, it wasn’t blame anymore, it was understanding.
At least that’s what I continue to tell myself.
It hasn’t been easy. Figuring out what works, what doesn’t.
Reshaping my entire world around his needs.
But it’s not just him. It’s me too. Because when a routine breaks, when someone forgets pick-up, or his day goes off-track, I’m the one who has to hold it together.
For him. For us. Days like today remind me how easily it can all unravel.
Teddy leans back in my arms, eyes fixed on my badge.
“Can we… have nuggets?”
Relief breaks through the tension in my chest. “Yeah. Nuggets it is.”
“Twenty,” he says.
I choke out a laugh. “Twenty might be pushing it. How about… five?”
He hums again. “Ten.”
“Deal,” is all I can say, even though I know he won’t eat them all.
Because what the hell else am I supposed to say? No? That I don’t know if I can trust anyone to care for him the way he needs? That I’m barely keeping up myself? That every time he looks up at me with that serious little face, when it hits me how much he depends on me, it scares the shit out of me?