Chapter Seventeen #2
The living room was dressed for Christmas without trying too hard.
Warm lights lined the shelves, garlands hung across the mantel, and a large tree stood in the corner with ornaments, ribbons, and handmade decorations tucked between the branches.
At the foot of the tree, Helena sat on the carpet with dolls, toy dishes, and torn ribbons spread around her, lost in some little world of her own making.
For a second, I could only stand there and look at her because I still did not know how a man was supposed to survive this.
My blood was sitting in front of me, alive and breathing, after I had spent all that time not knowing she existed.
Her eyes were mine.
That truth hit before anything else. They were too familiar in her small face, carrying a darkness I knew because I had seen it in my own reflection for years. Every time I looked at her, the certainty dug deeper. Helena was mine.
She was beautiful in the clean, careless way children were beautiful, untouched by all the ugly shit adults did to each other.
That was what hurt the most. I was not a good man.
I had never pretended to be one. But standing there, looking at her in that Christmas-lit room, I felt every ruined part of myself like a stain.
Edwina cleared her throat beside me, and Helena heard it at once. Her head turned, and the second she saw her mother, her whole face lit up with trust so easy it made my chest ache.
“Mommy,” she said brightly.
Edwina’s expression softened, and fuck, that did something to me too. She stepped forward and said, “Sweetie, we have a guest.”
Helena blinked at me, then glanced back at her toys before lifting both arms toward Edwina.
“Up,” she said.
Edwina bent and picked her up without hesitation. Helena settled against her at once, one arm around Edwina’s neck, her eyes fixed on me with open curiosity.
I tightened my hand around the gift bag.
For the first time in my life, I had no idea what the fuck to do with myself.
I had to stay where I was because every part of me wanted to cross the room and find out what it would feel like to hold my daughter without hesitation standing between us.
I wanted to be the one she reached for that way and wanted to pick her up, feel the weight of her in my arms, and know what it was like to hold my own child without asking permission first. The instinct hit hard and ugly, because wanting her was easy.
Knowing how to approach her was the part that made me feel useless.
So I stayed where I was.
Then Helena looked over at me, still tucked against Edwina, one small hand tangled in her mother’s sleeve. Edwina kissed her hair and said softly, “Sweetie, say hello.”
Helena studied me with the grave curiosity children carried when deciding whether someone belonged in their world. Then her face brightened.
“I know you,” she said.
The words hit me so hard that for one stupid second, I forgot how to breathe.
“You do?” I asked, and even I heard the change in my voice, the edge stripped away by shock and by a hope I had no fucking right to show.
She nodded, sure of herself. “You came to my birthday. Mommy’s friend.”
Something loosened in my chest. For days, I had carried the memory of Helena calling me sir, that careful little wall between us lodged somewhere it had no business hurting.
Now she remembered me. I had not disappeared from her mind the moment I walked out of her birthday.
I was still a stranger in the ways that mattered, but at least I had a face to her now. At least I was something.
It should have been a small thing.
To me, it felt fucking enormous.
For a second, I let myself have it. She knew I had been there. She remembered my face. I had one thin thread to hold on to, and I was pathetic enough to cling to it.
A faint smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it. “That’s right,” I said. “I came to your birthday.”
Helena studied me as if checking her own memory, then shifted in Edwina’s arms and said, with complete seriousness, “You asked me my name.”
A warmth moved through me. “I did.”
For one moment, the room felt softer than it should have. Christmas lights glowed around us, and Helena’s small voice reached across a distance I had expected to stay wider for much longer. I set the gift bag down on a nearby chair because my hand had tightened around it.
“Can I say hello properly this time?” I asked.
Helena glanced at Edwina first. Edwina gave her a small nod, her hand moving over Helena’s back. That was all she needed.
“Hello properly,” Helena repeated, testing the words. Then she smiled. “Hello.”
I almost laughed. The sweetness of her had already started doing dangerous things to what little control I had left.
“Hello, little star.”
She seemed pleased by the sound of her name in my mouth. Her doll dangled from one hand, half-forgotten now, while her eyes stayed on me with the open attention only a child could give without knowing how deep it cut.
Then she asked, “Why are you standing there?”
Edwina made a soft sound under her breath, suspiciously close to a laugh.
I looked at her, caught the brief amusement on her face, and returned my attention to Helena. “That,” I said, “is a very good question.”
Helena nodded as if she had expected nothing less.
“Maybe because I’m still learning the rules,” I said.
She considered that. “Mommy knows the rules.”
My gaze lifted to Edwina for half a second. She stood there with Helena in her arms, Christmas light touching her face, and the sight stirred something old under my ribs.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “Your mommy does.”
Helena seemed satisfied. Then she tilted her head at me. “What’s your name?” she asked.
I blinked.
“Last time,” she added, frowning a little as she searched for the words, “I said sir. Because I didn’t know.”
Jesus Christ.
It should not have hurt and it did.
“You don’t have to call me sir.”
She blinked. “No?”
“No.” I kept my voice light, even as the words twisted inside me. What I wanted did not matter yet. What my blood demanded had to wait. “You can call me Uncle Hayden.”
The title tasted wrong the second I said it. It felt like swallowing glass and pretending it did not cut.
What else was I supposed to say? Call me father? Call me dad? Christ. I could not rip the world open over her head because my blood was screaming for it. She was too small. And I would not turn my first real moment with my daughter into another adult wound she had to witness.
So Uncle Hayden it was.
For now.
Helena brightened at once, as if I had given her a new word to play with.
“Uncle Hayden,” she repeated happily.
The title still cut, but before I could recover from hearing it in her voice, she tilted her head and added, “Like Uncle Daniel.”
Everything in me went still. The name tore through the warmth in my chest and left nothing decent behind. My jaw locked, and my eyes went straight to Edwina. She saw the change in me at once. Good. I wanted her to see it. I wanted her to understand exactly what that name did to my temper.
Uncle Daniel.
That fucking bastard had a title. He had a place in my daughter’s life. A familiar name. A door already opened to him while I was still standing outside, trying to earn scraps. Now his name sat beside mine in my daughter’s mouth, and it felt less like coincidence than a goddamn insult.
So I dragged the worst of it back and forced my voice into something Helena could hear.
“Well,” I said, “I’m much better than Uncle Daniel.”
Helena’s eyes widened. “You are?”
“Obviously.”
Edwina made a quiet sound beside us, half warning, half disbelief, but I did not look at her. Helena seemed delighted by the confidence of it.
“Why?”
I lifted the gift bag slightly. “For one thing, I brought a present.”
That did it. Her face lit up so fast it almost knocked the breath out of me. She leaned away from Edwina, already reaching toward the bag with the shameless excitement only a child could get away with.
“Is it for me?”
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. “Yes, little star. It’s for you.”
Edwina glanced at me, amusement softening her mouth. “There,” she murmured. “Now you’ve won her over.”
“Not fully,” I said, watching Helena stretch for the bag. “I’m only getting started.”
The words were for Edwina too, and she knew it. The look she gave me was brief, warm around the edges, but full of warning.
Then Helena looked back at me, her small hands reaching, her dark eyes bright with excitement.
“Uncle Hayden,” she said, “can I open it?”
The title sat wrong in me, smaller than what I wanted. This time, though, it carried trust. Excitement. A child already making room for me in the only way she knew how.
It hurt. Fucking fuck.
But for the first time, it also felt like the beginning of something.
“Yes,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “Open it.”
Helena tugged at the tissue paper with complete focus, pulling it free until it rustled around her hands. When she finally lifted the gift out, she gave a small gasp that went straight through me.
It was a white rabbit in a little winter coat, chosen by a man who had no fucking idea what four-year-old girls liked and hated that he had to guess.
Helena stared at it as if I had handed her treasure. “It has a coat,” she whispered.
“It’s cold outside,” I said.
She looked up at me, suddenly serious. “You thought about that?”
Behind me, Edwina shifted. Any other time, I might have missed it, but right then I noticed everything. Helena was looking at me as if my answer mattered.
“Yes,” I said. “I thought.”
That settled it for her. She hugged the rabbit beneath her chin, then studied it with deep concentration. “Her name is Snowy.”
“Already?”
She nodded. “She said so.”
Edwina laughed, and I turned toward the sound before I could stop myself. God, I had missed that laugh. Our eyes met for a second, and something old moved between us before Helena pulled me back.
“Uncle Hayden?”
I looked at her at once.
She patted the carpet beside her. “You sit here.”