9. Maddox Creed #3
This time, I wasn’t worried about what Gia was going to say. I was worried about Nylah. Hearing that I’d hurt her feelings was one thing, but hearing those words come from my daughter’s mouth was something I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
A few minutes later, Gia finally responded.
HER: After school.
It was simple and straight to the point.
I stared at the message longer than I needed to before locking my phone and sliding it into my pocket.
The wait shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, but my mind had entirely too much time to wander.
By the time I left Ma’s house, I’d already played out a dozen different versions of the conversation.
In some of them, Nylah was excited to hear my voice.
In others, she barely said two words before handing the phone back.
That second possibility stayed with me.
People were always talking about how resilient kids were, but nobody ever talked about how easily they got hurt or how quick they were to blame themselves for things they never caused.
The drive back into the city felt longer than usual. Traffic wasn’t bad, and the roads weren’t crowded. My thoughts just refused to give me a damn break.
By the time I made it back to the office, I already knew the rest of the day wasn’t getting much out of me.
I tried anyway.
For the next few hours, I bounced between emails, meetings, and phone calls, pretending I was paying attention while checking the time every chance I got. Eventually, I got so irritated with myself that I tossed my phone across the desk.
Not hard enough to break it.
Just hard enough to remind myself how ridiculous I was acting.
“This some bullshit…”
The office was empty, which was probably for the best. If one of my employees had walked in and caught me acting like this over a phone call, I’d never hear the end of it.
A soft vibration against the desk pulled my attention back to the phone.
My hand reached for it before I even realized I was moving.
It was Gia.
My chest tightened as I opened the message.
HER: We’re home. Call whenever you’re ready.
I read it once.
Then I found myself reading it again.
Every bit of impatience I’d been carrying around disappeared in an instant, replaced by something far worse.
Nerves…
Real nerves…
The kind that settled deep in your stomach and refused to let go. The kind that made something as simple as pressing a button feel a whole lot harder than it should’ve.
I stared at the screen for another second before finally tapping the video icon.
The phone rung three times, and every second stretched a little longer than the last.
Then the screen lit up and Gia’s face filled the display first.
“Hey…”
My eyes immediately searched past her, looking for the one person I wanted to see.
A second later, Nylah bounced into view.
The moment she saw me, her entire face lit up.
“Dad!”
My chest caved in.
Hearing her call me that after everything we’d been through hit differently.
A smile found its way across my face before I could stop it.
“Hey, Princess.”
Nylah practically climbed over Gia trying to get closer to the phone, and for the next several minutes she talked without taking a breath. She told me about school, a science assignment she was excited about, and some little boy who got in trouble for throwing food across the cafeteria at lunch.
Half the time I could barely keep up, but I didn’t care.
I hung on every word. Every story. Every random thought that crossed her mind.
For those few minutes, it didn’t feel like I’d missed nine years of her life.
It just felt like I was talking to my daughter.
Then the conversation slowed.
It wasn’t anything obvious at first. She just got quieter. The excitement faded from her voice, and the smile she’d been wearing since she got on the phone wasn’t quite as bright anymore.
A knot settled in my stomach.
Something was coming.
I could feel it.
Nylah looked down at her lap, absentmindedly picking at the sleeve of her shirt before shifting her eyes back to mine.
“You been busy?”
To anybody else, it probably would’ve sounded like an innocent question.
To me… It felt like she was asking why I’d disappeared.
“Yeah,” I answered honestly. “Some stuff came up.”
She nodded, but it wasn’t the kind of nod that said she understood. It looked more like she was trying to convince herself my answer made sense.
“You okay, Princess?”
She nodded again.
I glanced toward Gia, wondering if she’d step in, but she stayed quiet. She didn’t interrupt or try to rescue the conversation.
She let Nylah speak for herself.
After a few more seconds, Nylah took a small breath and looked back at me.
“You coming back?”
Everything inside me froze.
It was such a simple question, yet hearing it come from my daughter’s mouth damn near knocked the wind out of me. She wasn’t trying to make me feel guilty, and she wasn’t asking to punish me for disappearing.
She just wanted to know if I was really coming back.
That alone said more than it ever should have.
For a long moment, I couldn’t find the words.
I just sat here looking at her. Looking at the little girl who should’ve never had to question whether her father was coming back in the first place.
The little girl who’d spent the first nine years of her life not knowing me, yet somehow still lit up every time she saw my face.
The weight of that settled squarely on my chest.
I’d already missed nine years.
I couldn’t let her believe I was about to disappear again.
“Yeah, Princess.” My voice came out rough enough that I had to clear my throat before I tried again. “Yeah. I’m coming back.”
Nylah studied my face for a few seconds, almost like she was trying to decide whether she believed me.
I couldn’t blame her.
Trust wasn’t something I could ask for after disappearing like that. It was something I was going to have to earn, one day at a time.
“Really?”
The question damn near broke me.
Hope filled her voice, but so did uncertainty. She wanted to believe me. I could hear that much, but she was just afraid to.
I nodded.
“Yes, really.”
A small smile slowly spread across her face. It wasn’t the huge grin she’d greeted me with at the beginning of the call, but it was enough to loosen some of the weight that had been sitting on my chest.
“Good...” She said it so quietly, but it sounded honest in a way only kids could manage.
For the next few minutes, we slipped back into an easy conversation. I laughed, asked questions, and listened to every word.
Not because I was trying to make up for lost time, but because I genuinely wanted to know.
Eventually, Gia glanced toward the clock.
“Nylah…”
The gentle warning was all it took.
“Aww, man.”
That earned a laugh out of me.
“You got school tomorrow. You need to eat and shower.”
“I know… I know…” She dragged the words out with the kind of dramatic sigh that only a kid could pull off, and it hit me all over again just how much I’d missed.
It wasn’t just birthdays, holidays, or big milestones.
It was this.
The little conversations.
The exaggerated sighs.
The random stories that didn’t mean much to anybody else but somehow meant everything to me.
“Will you call me tomorrow or when you can?” Nylah asked.
“Absolutely.”
There wasn’t a second of hesitation in my voice because there wasn’t a damn thing on this earth that would’ve stopped me.
A real smile spread across her face this time.
“Okay. Love you.”
My chest tightened.
Every time she said those words, a part of me wondered whether I’d done enough to deserve hearing them.
Even so, I said, “Love you too, Princess.” And meant every word.
A few seconds later, the screen went dark.
Silence settled over the office as I stared at my reflection in the blank screen before slowly lowering the phone.
Showing up…
Kyro’s words drifted back through my mind, and for the first time all day. I still couldn’t believe that nigga was right.
I couldn’t change the past.
I couldn’t get those years back, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change everything that had already happened.
What I could do was make damn sure I didn’t miss another moment of her future.
That wasn’t a promise I was making to Nylah.
It was one I was making to myself, and this time, I had every intention of keeping it.