Eli
I don’t expect the call to make me feel anything clean. That’s the part that catches me off guard more than the words themselves.
When Killian’s phone buzzes five days after they took our swabs, and he glances at the screen before looking up at me, I’m already braced for impact in every direction.
I’m ready for dread and confusion. I’m ready for another round of legal language that sounds too polished for the mess it’s describing.
What I’m not ready for is the weird, terrible calm that opens in my chest the second Mara’s voice comes through the phone and confirms that the DNA test establishes paternity.
The horror follows right behind it, because if she’s mine, then it confirms my fears.
If she’s mine, then the blank places in my memory aren’t just stress or shame or my brain scrambling to make itself feel less dirty.
If she’s mine, then Celeste took something from me while smiling in my face afterward.
But part of me still feels monstrous for being glad my daughter came from it anyway.
Killian must see the whole mess of that in my face, because he immediately says, “Don’t.”
I blink. “What?”
“Whatever self-blaming spiral that just started. Shut it down.”
My mouth turns dry. “So, now what?”
Killian leans back against the counter, crossing his arms. “Now we move forward. Mara says this is the cleanest part of the process. Now that paternity’s confirmed, we’re not arguing over whether you have standing—you do.
Next comes formalizing custody and making sure the relinquishment paperwork is handled properly under actual supervision, not whatever half-assed bullshit her family thought dropping an envelope on a doorstep counted as. ”
That gets my head up. “So, she can’t just…” I gesture helplessly toward the baby in Julian’s arms. “Come back and take her or something?”
Killian’s expression goes murderous. “Not if I can help it. Nothing’s instant, but the confirmed result helps.
It also means you need to keep your head on straight.
No panicked texts. No calls to Celeste. No calls to her parents.
No saying stupid sentimental shit in writing because you feel bad for her. ”
I shake my head. “I don’t feel bad for her.”
Maybe some part of me will eventually find room for nuance, room to think about her family and whatever pressure they put on her, room to separate what was done to her by them from what she did to me.
Right now, there’s no room. Right now, all I can think is that she left our child on a doorstep and signed her rights away in a letter that apologized without actually being sorry for the part that mattered.
Julian comes around the island slowly, entering my space the way he always somehow manages to without making it feel like an invasion.
“Hey,” he says quietly. I look up at him. His hazel eyes are on my face, reading me too easily, as usual. “You okay?”
I laugh once under my breath because the answer is no in at least twelve different directions and twice as many languages. “I don’t know.”
“That’s fair,” he says.
Killian, because he’s Killian and would rather set a room on fire than let us drown in too much emotion without structure, says, “Be relieved. That part’s allowed.”
Julian must see the emotional collision on my face, too, because he says in a low voice, “Both can exist. The relief and the fucked-up part. You don’t have to pick one.”
I let out a slow breath. “Right,” I whisper.
I take my daughter from him with hands that still don’t feel like they belong to a father, even now that the test says they do.
She’s awake, blinking up at me with that serious, scrunched little expression she gets right before deciding whether life is acceptable or offensive.
The second her weight settles in my arms, the relief in my chest changes shape—it roots.
This is real now in a way that nothing else has been.
“Hey,” I whisper to her. “It’s official, baby girl. I’m your dad.”
When evening rolls around, Killian decides we’re handling the news properly and informs me we’re having a meeting in the living room before anyone disappears into bedrooms and makes plans without me.
The living room looks ridiculous for a serious conversation, all massive couches, expensive rugs, and Killian’s family money sitting in every square inch of the architecture, but somehow the absurdity helps.
The baby is in my arms when I walk in, and every head in the room turns to us with such open concern that my throat tightens. Nobody says anything stupid; they just look at me like I belong here, baby and all, and that does something ugly and grateful to my chest.
Killian waits until everybody’s settled before he speaks. He’s leaning against the mantle with his arms folded, looking every inch the person in charge, whether anyone voted him there or not.
“Tests came back today. Eli is the father,” he says without preamble. “Mara is moving forward with the legal process. That means a lot of things are changing around here, and we’re not gonna be fucking idiots about any of them.”
Roman, sprawled in the armchair with one ankle propped over the opposite knee, lifts his brows. “By ‘we,’ do you mostly mean Ryan?”
Ryan, who is somehow balancing on the arm of the couch instead of sitting on it, points at him. “First of all, rude. Second, I’d be an incredible uncle.”
“You’d teach her bad words before she grows teeth,” Adrian says from the other end of the couch.
Ryan looks offended. “As opposed to the rest of this house?”
“That’s enough,” Killian says, but there’s the tiniest trace of amusement at the edge of his voice, which is basically the equivalent of him giggling.
Luca lets out a slow breath and looks from me to the baby and back again. “How are you feeling?”
That’s the better question, but I still almost laugh because the real answer is too messy for a group setting. “Like I got hit by a truck and handed a baby,” I say.
“That tracks,” Luca says dryly.
“So, new house rules,” Killian continues. The room settles again, and I shift the baby a little higher against my chest.
Ryan groans instantly. “Oh no.”
“Until further notice, everybody in this house acts like what it currently is: a fucking house with a newborn in it. No more parties here for the foreseeable future. I’m not having drunk strangers tripping over baby shit or posting pictures from inside the house while this legal situation is still active.
If somebody wants to get wasted and grind on a stranger, they can do it somewhere else. ”
“That’s devastating,” Thorn says dryly, popping the sucker from his mouth. “Thought this was still America.”
“You play hockey. You’ve never cared about America,” Luca tells him.
Killian doesn’t even glance their way. “This weekend, we childproof the house. Outlets, cabinets, sharp corners, cleaning supplies, stairs, whatever else people with actual brains say we need to handle. We do it now before she’s mobile because if we wait until she can crawl, Ryan will definitely leave a protein shaker full of something toxic within reach. ”
Ryan throws both hands up. “That happened once.”
“Twice,” Thorn says from where he’s half folded into the loveseat like a grumpy slab of muscle.
“It happened twice,” Killian confirms. “Case fucking closed.”
There’s a round of muttering and half-hearted insults, but nobody argues the actual point. That does something warm and strange to me all over again. Nobody here is treating my daughter like an inconvenience, they’re already adjusting the house around her. Already making room.
“She’s the size of a loaf of bread,” Thorn points out.
“She will not remain the size of a loaf of bread,” Killian counters.
Roman throws up both hands. “Bro, I don’t even know what childproofing means.”
“It means you’re about to learn,” Ryan says mildly.
Liam leans back on the sofa opposite us, grinning now despite the seriousness. “Honestly, I’d pay to watch Roman try to install outlet covers.”
“Fuck you.”
“Get in line,” Nate says.
Sage, sitting beside Luca with his knees tucked up and his eyes fixed on the baby, tilts his head a little and says, “Okay, but maybe Eli should actually name his child now so we can stop calling her ‘the baby.’”
A laugh moves through the room, low and tired and genuine. I open my mouth to deflect, because I honestly hadn’t planned to do this here, in front of everyone, under the glow of the stupid expensive chandelier, while Ryan’s sock is somehow still under the coffee table from last week.
But the second Sage says it, I realize the answer is already there. It’s been sitting in my chest all day, waiting for me to stop acting like choosing it would somehow be premature just because the paperwork lagged behind what I already felt.
My daughter squirms once in my arms, turning her face toward me, and I look down at her before I say it.
“Mila,” I answer.
The room goes still in a different way this time, as if everybody instinctually understands that some moments deserve a little reverence no matter how foul-mouthed the people in them are.
“Mila,” Sage repeats softly. “That’s perfect.”
Roman nods once. “Yeah, that’s a good name.”
Ryan immediately says, “?Ya era hora carajo! We can finally stop saying ‘the baby’ like she crawled out of a horror movie.”
Killian gives him a look. “Congratulations on finding the worst possible sentence.”
But I barely hear any of them, because when I look up, Julian is already looking at me. I knew he would be.
He’s standing near the doorway with one shoulder against the wall, arms folded loosely, but everything about him has gone still. His hazel eyes are fixed on me in a way that makes the room around us blur.
I know why he’s looking at me that way, and why Mila’s name matters so much.