Ducane
I had a daughter.
I’d been saying it to myself since we boarded, and it still didn’t sit right.
A father. Me.
Cadence.
I caught myself grinning just thinking of her name.
Curls bouncing, little glasses, chocolate skin, the widest smile I’d ever seen.
My heart damn near leaped out of my chest when I saw her on that screen.
And the fact that she’d been waiting on me, asking about me, made my once-jumbled thoughts clearer the closer we got home.
Everything in me narrowed down to one thing.
Getting to her. That was my first job as a father, and I wasn’t going to fumble it.
Her knowing I was her father, was the only reason I hadn’t left Skye back on that island. Somebody had a lot of explaining to do. Everyone knew. Skye’s sister. Her coworkers. My baby had a whole ecosystem I wasn’t a part of. That had my jaw locked through the whole flight.
I understood why she did it. I’d heard her say it on that beach, and I believed every word of it. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt or have me ready to yoke Skye’s ass up.
Skye had stopped trying to talk, and I appreciated that shit. I knew myself well enough to know I needed a minute before I opened my mouth. That was the attorney in me.
“Mr. and Mrs. Simmons, we’ve begun our descent into Coupeville. We should have you on the ground in about thirty minutes. Sit back and enjoy the last of the ride.”
The captain clicked off.
I felt Skye shift beside me, her thumb working the edge of her seatbelt, her knee bouncing, her teeth catching her bottom lip.
I knew that energy. The closer we got to the ground, the more she needed to do something with her hands, her mouth, anything.
Same as she’d always been. Get scared, start swinging.
“Ducane, just yell at me, please. Something. I can’t take it, and I will not have Cadence around this energy. No, sir.”
Here we go.
I stood and leaned over to meet her eyes. She inhaled sharply.
“We’re supposed to be seated, Ducane. We’re thirty minutes out, it’s protocol—”
“Do I look like I give a damn about protocol?” I grabbed her by the back of her neck. “Back room. Now.”
I guided her up and back before she could get another word out. I closed the door, and the air shifted immediately. It was just the two of us, the low hum of the plane, and the faint smell of her sunscreen still on her skin from the island. I looked at her in the small warm light.
“Ducane—”
“Skye, I asked you to be quiet, but you keep pushing and poking. I just found out I have a daughter, and you think I want to joke and be buddy-buddy with you? Everyone knew I had a kid but me. What’s funny about that?”
She dropped her head. I brought it back up.
“Nah, don’t do that. No regrets, remember.”
“That doesn’t—”
I kissed her before she finished the sentence. I wasn’t trying to hear whatever she was about to say. Skye had years to talk and chose silence and control. Now it was my turn, and we’d talk when I felt like it.
But God help me, I still loved the fuck out of this woman. My wife. The mother of my child. My mind was still trying to wrap itself around all of it. Everything I’d ever wanted dropped in my lap after I’d made peace with never having it again.
And I was mad as hell at her for it.
That was the shit giving me a headache. I could love her and want to wring her neck in the same breath, and both were true. She’d kissed me back hungry, desperate even, reaching for me, eager to make it right with her body the second words stopped working. That just pissed me off more.
Mostly because I’d kissed her first. All that warmth from the island, a whole week of having her back, I wanted that shit again, and I’d reached for it without thinking. I had no room to be mad at her for doing the same.
When she grabbed my shirt with both hands, I knocked them away and turned her around to face the mirror. Her eyes met mine in the glass, blazing, chest rising and falling fast.
“So, this is how it’s gonna be?” she said. “You can kiss me, but you can’t talk to me?”
“You spent plenty of years not talking to me. You don’t get to rush me now.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I huffed, the sound closer to a scoff than anything with humor in it. “Don’t talk to me about fair, Skye. You got me fucked up.”
She pressed her lips together and held my eyes in the glass, and for a second, I almost gave in.
I almost spun her back around and let all this heat go where my body wanted it to.
She wanted it too. I could see it. But I wasn’t about to let her fix this with her body the same way she tried to manage everything else. Not this time.
I stepped back.
“Sit down. Buckle up. We’ll be wheels down soon.”
She stood there a beat, stunned, then her face hardened.
“You’re really not gonna touch me or talk to me.”
“Not like this. Not yet.”
I left her in that back room and went back to my seat.
Bianca showing up had ruined the whole fuckin mood and vibe of our time together. But this, the cold, the distance, that was on me, and I was choosing it. For now.
Skye made it back and plopped down in the seat with her arms crossed. Brat shit. Shit, I didn’t have time for.
The last twenty minutes of the flight made my nerves bad.
Not about Skye. About what was on the other side of the landing.
A daughter. A whole person who’d been alive for six years that I was about to be responsible for.
I’d built a career on walking into rooms unbothered, and now my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
We landed. Skye stayed quiet, which was smart. I moved us through the airport on autopilot, phone already going, Lola and Devon both needing things, the machine starting back up around me.
Kareem was already at the curb when we came through arrivals, black SUV running. He stood at the door with his hands folded, and the second he saw who was next to me, his whole face changed.
“Skye?” He said it like he couldn’t believe it. “Man, get over here.”
He pulled her into a hug before she could say a word. Skye laughed into his shoulder, surprised, hugging him back.
“Kareem. Oh my god. You’re still putting up with him?”
“Ten years and counting.” He held her out by the shoulders, looking at her like a missing piece had walked back in. “I’m glad you’re back. I mean that.”
I stood there watching my driver of ten years hug my wife like she was his long-lost daughter. Ain’t this some shit. I pay this man.
He caught my eye over her head, and there was a whole conversation in it. He remembered. He’d been in the front seat through all of it, the good and the years of nothing after. I knew that. Didn’t mean I appreciated him grinning all up in her face like he forgot whose paycheck he was on.
“You done?” I said.
“Nah, give me a minute, this is a reunion.” He didn’t even look at me.
Skye laughed.
Traitor. Both of them.
“Welcome back, Cane,” he said, finally, opening the door. He looked at Skye one more time, smiling. “Ma’am.”
Skye slid in next to me, the smile still on her face from Kareem. I didn’t give her one back, but I didn’t have it in me to be cold about it either. I just looked out the window and let Kareem pull us into traffic.
“Kareem is now you and Sugar’s driver. Is she in school already?”
She turned her head. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. What has you confused?”
“Ducane, I have a car. I can drive myself.”
“And now you have a driver. Did you forget who I am and the type of people I represent? You think I’m about to have my wife and child driving around unprotected?” I let that sit. “You wanted a nigga on bullshit, Skye. You got him. All in. So buckle up.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and looked back out the window.
My phone rang, and it was my mom. I ignored it, and Skye shifted uncomfortably.
“No, not until I’m ready.”
“I agree with you, Skye. This is between us until we decide differently.”
The closer we got to Coupeville, the tighter my jaw became. By the time we crossed the city limits, I finally understood why.
I hadn’t been back since I took the Upland office. I’d built a whole life four hours away just so I’d never have to drive past The Diner where I fell in love with her, or the courthouse where I married her.
And the joke of it was, in running from this city, I’d run straight past everything I wanted.
If I’d stayed, I might’ve passed Skye on the street one day, big and pregnant, and known.
Instead, I put four hours between us and missed my daughter’s entire life.
My father wanted me in Upland. I gave him that and didn’t even make him work for it.
Skye lived in a nice two-story home in a quiet suburb. I spotted the room that had to be Cadence’s right off, pastel purple curtains in the upstairs window. My hands went damp.
Lola was standing on the walkway when we pulled up, tablet in hand. She’d flown in to help me through whatever this was. I didn’t know what the fuck “transition” even meant yet, but I knew nothing was ever going to be the same.
“Ducane, who is this? And why is she at my house?”
“She’s just here to help with some shit.”
“We just landed, and this is the first meeting. What is so important that it can’t wait?”
“I know when we landed, Skye.”
She pressed her lips together. “Can we just go inside and see our daughter before you restructure my entire life?”
“Nobody’s restructuring anything.” I got out and held the door for her. “I’m just not missing any more time with you or my child. Is that not what you want?”
“Ducane, don’t put this on me. I don’t know what you want or what you’re thinking. You won’t talk to me or share your feelings.”
I saw her chest rising and falling. Tears pooled in her eyes as she shifted.
“What is it, Skye? Why are you hyperventilating?”
She got the words out in a rush, like she’d been holding them since the island.
“Do you want to be a family with Cadence and me? Or are you coming to see her just to leave back out?” Her voice cracked. “How do we do this, Ducane? Because I can’t let her get attached to a father who’s going to walk back out the door.”