Chapter 37 #2
“Stella.” His voice is pure protective father mode now—old-world power, expensive control, the full impossible force of a man who came into my life late and intends to make up for it partly by being furious on my behalf about things I no longer need fury for.
I understand it.
I do.
I just can’t let him steer this one.
“Yes,” I say. “I went to Newport with Tristan...”
He exhales once through his nose, the sound like a blade being drawn.
“Stella.”
“No,” I say immediately, my own voice sharpening. “You called me. You can listen.”
Silence.
Not because he’s happy.
Because I surprised him.
Good.
I push off the wall and start pacing the empty hallway, blood up now for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
“He didn’t take me there to parade me around,” I say. “He took me there to fix something he broke.”
“Fix it?” Emmanuel snaps. “With photographs? With a dance? With a hotel?”
My jaw tightens.
“Yes,” I say. “Actually.”
He goes quiet again.
I know that silence now too.
The one where he recalibrates because the script in his head no longer matches the daughter on the line.
So I give him the truth before he can fill the gap with some version of me that is younger or weaker or easier to protect than I really am.
In Spanish, slow and steady:
“Tengo tu sangre, Papá. Y hay acero en ella.”
I have your blood, Papa. And there’s steel in it.
That lands.
I feel it land through the silence.
My voice stays calm.
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” he asks, quieter now but no less intense.
“Yes.”
A beat.
Then I say the hardest part.
“I love him.”
The words don’t tremble.
Not even a little.
Because they’re true enough to stand on.
Another silence.
Longer.
Then, very softly, very carefully dangerous:
“?Desde cuándo?”
Since when?
I look down at the bracelet on my wrist, the dark blue enamel flashing once in the hallway light.
“Years,” I say.
“I’ve known him for years,” I go on. “And these past few months he showed me more character than some men show in a lifetime.”
Emmanuel says nothing. So I keep going.
“We didn’t rush into this,” I say. “If anything, we both tried very hard to avoid it. To outrun it. To pretend it was something else.”
That one almost makes me smile, because God, did we.
He doesn’t interrupt.
I stop pacing and stand still, voice dropping lower now, steadier.
“But not anymore.”
The hallway hums around me—distant showers, doors, teammates somewhere behind me. Real life pressing in from every angle.
I don’t care.
“I have never been happier,” I tell him. “And I am not ashamed of that.”
The quiet on the other end this time is different. Then he says, in Spanish, rougher than before:
“Te pones frente a mí como si fueras un ejército entero.”
You stand in front of me like you’re an entire army.
I laugh once under my breath.
“You should know that look. It’s yours.”
That gets the smallest exhale on the line.
Not quite amusement.
But close.
When he speaks again, the edge is still there, but something under it has changed.
“You are his first concern?”
“Yes.”
“He did not pressure you?”
My chest tightens at the question—not because I mind it, but because I understand where it comes from. From years he missed. From not being there to know the difference between a boy and a man when it comes to his daughter. From trying, imperfectly, to make up for absence with vigilance.
“No,” I say softly. “He waited.”
The line goes so quiet I wonder if the call dropped.
Then Emmanuel says, “Esperó.”
Waited.
Like the word itself means something to him.
Maybe it does.
“Yes.”
I lean back against the wall and close my eyes, letting the truth settle.
“He waited,” I repeat. “He let me choose every step. He gave me romance when it would have been easier to just take heat. He respected me, Papá.”
That one matters most.
I know it does.
On the other end of the line, I hear him breathe.
Then:
“Bueno.”
Just one word.
Good.
I blink.
Because from a man like Emmanuel, in this context, good is an entire speech.
“He is still on trial,” he adds immediately.
There he is.
I laugh outright this time.
“I figured.”
“And if he breaks your heart—”
“He won’t.”
“Estrella.”
I smile despite myself.
“You wanted honesty. There it is.”
A long pause.
Then, quieter now:
“You sound different.”
I glance down the hallway toward the locker room, where life is already pulling me back into the day.
“Maybe I am.”
His voice softens by a degree. “Then be happy, hija.”
Daughter.
The word hits warm and strange and still a little sharp around the edges.
But warm.
“I am,” I say.
“I can hear it.”
That nearly undoes me.
Before either of us can get too sincere and ruin the tone completely, he adds, “I still reserve the right to terrify him.”
I laugh.
“I think he knows.”
“Good.”
The call ends a minute later with no melodrama, no formal blessing, no ridiculous patriarchal speech.
Just a father pulling back one hand’s width from the ledge and a daughter proving she doesn’t need saving to deserve protection.
When I lower the phone, I’m smiling.
A little shaky.
A little stunned.
But smiling.
And when I turn, Tristan is standing at the far end of the hallway in his practice jersey, duffel over one shoulder, like he got out a minute late too and stopped the second he saw my face.
His eyes go to mine immediately.
Then to the phone still in my hand.
Then back to me.
He starts walking.
Not rushed.
Not casual.
Focused.
By the time he reaches me, his brows are drawn just enough to tell me he’s already run through five possible disasters in his head.
“What happened?”
I look at him.
At the concern.
At the steadiness.
At the man Emmanuel tried to interrogate from a distance and I defended without flinching.
And suddenly I feel absurdly proud.
“Nothing fatal.”
That almost gets a smile.
Almost.
“Stella.”
I step in close before he can say anything else and hook one finger into the front of his hoodie.
“My father went full warlord.”
His mouth tightens.
“Ah.”
“In Spanish.”
“Worse.”
I laugh.
Then I lower my voice and tell him the part that matters.
“I told him I loved you.”
His whole body stills.
Every line of it.
Not cold.
Not shocked.
That deep, raw stillness again.
The one that happens when something gets all the way in.
I keep going, because I want him to know.
“I told him we waited. That we didn’t rush. That we tried to run from this and stopped.” My hand tightens in his hoodie. “I told him I’ve never been happier.”
The look in his eyes then—
God.
No one should survive being looked at like that before nine a.m.
He reaches up and cups my jaw.
Very gently.
Like I’m something lit from within and he’s afraid to disrupt the flame.
“What did he say?”
I smile.
“He said there’s steel in his blood, and apparently I have it too.”
That gets a breath of laughter from him.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “That sounds right.”
Then he leans down and kisses me.
Quick.
Careful.
Right there in the hallway outside Monday practice where anyone could technically walk out and see us.
I don’t even care.
When he pulls back, his forehead brushes mine.
“I love you too,” he says quietly, like the words were already living there and just needed the smallest excuse to come out. “In case your father was taking formal statements.”
I laugh so hard it surprises both of us.
Then I look up at him and think, with complete clarity, that this is it.
Not the weekend.
Not Newport.
Not even the dance.
This.
The Monday after.
The hallway.
The real life.
The fact that love followed us home and still looks this good in fluorescent light.
A whistle blasts from somewhere deeper in the complex.
Tristan sighs.
“Cruel world.”
I smile and step back.
“Go be terrifying.”
His mouth curves.
“You first.”
And when we part this time, it doesn’t feel like re-entry anymore.
It feels like the beginning of whatever comes next.