Chapter 27
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Alie
Seraphina colors at the table while Liam and I cook. I decided on spaghetti because it’s her favorite and it’s easy. He stands beside me, bumping my hip with his lightly.
“You want to tell her during or after?” he asks.
“Um, I think when it feels right?” I suggest. Timing on something like this, I suppose, is instinctual.
“Can I be the one to tell her?” He looks at me hopefully.
I nod slowly. “Yeah, I think that makes sense.”
“Hey, wook!” Sera shouts.
We both turn to see her holding up the picture she was coloring.
Liam wipes his hands and walks over to her. “That’s beautiful,” he says, taking it in his hands.
She beams. “Thank you.”
He starts to come back to the stove, but I wave him off.
“I got this.”
He nods, smiling.
I listen to them talk as I finish the meal. He’s so sweet with her. And I can tell she feels a natural ease with him. If I had known him better before, I would have never believed anything Aaron said because this man that I see now … adores our little girl.
When we sit down to eat, there’s a bit of nervous energy underneath the normalcy of the moment. We listen to Sera ramble on while we nod and smile.
Then, about halfway through dinner, Liam clears his throat.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
She looks up at him.
“There’s something we need to tell you.”
“Okay.” She looks at us curiously.
“You know how your mommy has a daddy?”
“Poppy?” She looks at me.
I nod. “Yes, baby. Poppy is my dad.”
She looks back at Liam. “Yes, my Poppy.”
“Right, exactly. Well, I’m your dad.”
I look at his face, and I can see the emotion written all over it.
Sera looks from him to me. Blinks. Then back to him. “My daddy?”
He nods slowly. “Yes.”
Then she looks at me, and I smile and nod.
“Okay,” she says, shrugging.
Liam and I look at each other and laugh.
“Well, that was easier than I’d thought it would be.” He reaches for her hand.
Her tiny hand rests in his large one, and I swear I feel like I’m on the verge of tears. But Sera … she has no idea what kind of emotional earthquake she just created. I look from their hands to Liam’s face. I can’t tell if he wants to cry or laugh at the simplicity of this moment for her.
“I call you Daddy?” She tilts her head.
Liam pulls in a deep breath and nods. “Yes, you call me Daddy.”
She smiles, satisfied, then removes her hand from his and continues to make a thorough mess with her spaghetti.
“Who your daddy?” she asks him.
“My dad and my mom live in Kansas. They don’t like to fly in airplanes, so I only get to see them when they can drive somewhere, or I can go to them. But I told them all about you, and they’re so excited to meet you.”
“What’s Kansas?” She asks, curiously.
“It’s the place I grew up. I’ll take you there to meet them someday.”
“On an airplane?”
“Yeah, we’d take an airplane.”
“I wike to fwy.”
He takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to get control of his emotions.
“Hey,” I ask, touching his forearm. “You good?”
He looks at me and smiles. “I am.”
“You stay for bath?” Sera asks him.
Liam looks at me, and I nod.
“Yes, I can stay for your bath.”
“You read me story?”
“I would love to read you a story.”
I watch my daughter and see that she really is content with this news.
She’s definitely not distressed. It’s like it’s the most obvious and natural thing in the world for her to have just found out who her dad is.
I’m relieved that she knows now though. I can’t imagine how this conversation would have gone had she been older.
She might not even remember much about her life before Liam as she gets older.
We finish dinner, and as I clear the table, Liam cleans Sera’s face and hands.
“I make mess,” she tells him with the cutest smile.
“That’s okay. We’ll get you cleaned up. Sometimes, I make a mess when I eat too.” He finishes wiping her, then tosses the paper towel in the trash.
“You do?” she asks him, eyes wide, like they share some secret.
“I do. Especially if I eat chicken wings or ribs.”
“What’s that?”
“Wings and ribs?” he clarifies.
She nods enthusiastically, like she can’t wait for the answer.
“Wings come from a chicken.” He imitates a chicken flapping its wings. “Bawk, bawk.”
She giggles.
“And the other one can come from a cow or a pig.” He pauses then. “Moooooo. Oink, oink.”
Sera claps her hands and copies him. “Mooooo. Oink, oink.”
He lifts her out of her booster seat, and she wraps her legs around him, and her arms hang over his shoulders.
He looks over at me with a smile full of love.
“We can finish this later?” Liam asks me, nodding to the dishes.
I turn off the water. “Yeah, we can finish after she goes to bed. Let’s go get your bath done, baby.”
We walk out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the bathroom.
Liam leans in and loudly sniffs Sera. “Smells like someone definitely needs a bath.”
She laughs and tightens her hold around his neck. “Bubbles?” She looks at me hopefully from over his shoulder.
“Yes, you can have bubbles.”
When we get to the bathroom, he sets her down.
“I’m going to let Mommy get you in the bath, and how about I go grab some pajamas for you?”
She looks up at him and nods. “My pink footballs.”
He looks at me for confirmation and direction.
“The set should be together in the middle drawer of her dresser.”
“Got it. I’ll be right back.” He ruffles her hair and walks out.
Just as I set her in the tub full of bubbles and kneel next to the tub, he walks back in with the pajamas.
“These the right ones?” He holds them up.
“Yes!” She claps.
“I wasn’t sure about what she wears under.” He looks at me and shrugs.
“We’re starting potty training and she’s doing really good, aren’t you?” I brush her sudsy hair back.
“I go’d on potty.”
“That’s amazing!” He holds out a hand for a high five, and she smacks her hand against his.
“At night, she wears a diaper or Pull-Up. I’ll go get one.” I stand. “You good?”
“Yep, I got her.”
When I get back, he’s sitting on the floor next to the tub. It can’t be very comfortable for him, given how tall he is, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. He listens to everything she says and laughs when she’s silly.
After, we go to her room and put the guardrails on the bed down and pull back the covers while she grabs a book off of her shelf.
“Oh shoot, I forgot her milk. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” he says as I walk out.
Then I hear, “Daddy, you lay wif me?”
And I have to silence my gasp with my hand.
I wait for him to answer, and after a pause, he says gruffly, “Yeah, I can lie with you.”
My heart.
I grab the milk, then quickly return. And the sight that meets me is just … everything. Liam’s big body is sprawled across her full-size mattress, and Sera is in the middle of the bed with her head tucked into his shoulder.
She looks up at me when she notices me come in and pats the mattress on her other side. “Mommy lay too.”
I press my hand to my mouth, then walk over, hand her the milk, and climb in.
Liam looks at me over her head, and I can see the emotion swimming in his eyes.
He reads her a story, and then she begs for another. And by the time he finishes, her eyes are heavy.
I kiss her on the head. “Night, my favorite girl in the world. I love you so so much.”
“Night, Mommy. Wuv you.” She yawns.
Liam kisses her on the head next.
“Night, Daddy. Wuv you,” she whispers sleepily.
“Night, sweetheart. I love you too.” He barely manages to say it back, voice thick.
My heart leaps and then falls down to my chest. As much as I love having Liam in our lives, I’m realizing my heart will break if our newfound family falls apart. Because I like this too much. No … I think I love this.
I love us.
And it scares me.
The house is quiet as we finish cleaning up the kitchen. Once he finishes wiping down the stove, he folds the towel and sets it aside.
I turn to face him and lean against the sink.
“That went better than I’d expected,” I whisper.
He laughs softly. “Yeah, I guess I’m not really sure what to expect because my experience with almost two-year-olds is limited, but she handled it like I was telling her that the sky was blue.”
We start to move closer to each other without really thinking about it.
“What does this look like, Alie?” he asks quietly.
“I’m not really sure. I think what we’ve been doing. Spend time together. Be consistent. Be present,” I suggest.
“I can do that for her. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Good,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat.
It’s been a really emotional night, and I feel like I can barely process one thing to another.
“And what about us?”
I hesitate. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
He walks toward me and slips his arms around my waist.
“I think the same applies. We see what happens. I think … if you’re still angry or harbor any resentment, it’s hard to build a foundation on that, you know? And honestly, I’m still trying to wrap my head around Aaron’s part in all of this too.”
“I get it. And you’re not wrong. I’m not angry in the way that I was when I first found out.
I am mad at Aaron and think we need to confront him together.
I need to understand what his motive was for lying to me, but also lying to you.
” He pauses. “And resentment? I’m not resentful necessarily, more like sad that I missed so much.
But blaming each other for this isn’t going to help Sera.
We’re going to have to be a team here. I’m not an expert by any means on relationships, but I do know, based on my parents’ example, that we need to be good partners for our kid.
That means assuming the best about each other.
Not weaponizing every mistake. Talking things through instead of letting pride make decisions.
And it seems that your parents have a good foundation with that as well.
Patient. Consistent. You don’t tear each other down in front of your kids.
You don’t keep score. You show up. And at the end of the day, it really is all about Seraphina.
Me being angry and resentful won’t move us forward. I want to do this with you.”
He places his finger under my chin, tilting my face. His knuckle brushes the curve of my jaw, slow enough that my breath stutters.
“Okay, you’re right. I think there are times that I look at you or look at you together, and I feel guilty for not reaching out to you directly. Like I not only kept you from her, but I failed her too.”
“And I understand that, and I appreciate that you are also hurt by how this all happened. But it did happen, and we can move forward or lay blame with each other, but that’s not what’s best for Sera.”
“You’re right.” I wrap my arms around his waist cautiously.
“I know I am.”
Then he kisses me. It starts slow, then builds into something deeper, emotion heavy. Charged.
My fingers fist in the fabric of his shirt before I can stop myself.
His other hand finds my waist, pulling me closer—not rough, but certain. The kiss deepens. Opens. Emotion flooding through it. Regret. Want. Relief. Months—maybe years—of unsaid things pressing between us.
My heart pounds so hard that I can hear it.
He exhales against my mouth, and it almost sounds like my name.
I tilt into him without thinking, rising onto my toes, and that’s when it changes—when slow turns into something electric. Urgent, but not frantic. Weighed by everything we almost lost. Everything we didn’t know.
His thumb presses lightly into my hip. My pulse jumps.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathless.
“I need to go,” he mumbles against my lips.
“Okay.” I pause. “Wait, why?”
He rests his forehead against mine.
“Because tonight was big. And as much as I want to fuck you on every surface of this place, we should probably ease into overnights.”
Seriously, you would think he was a veteran parent with all the sense he’s making while I’m hormone-driven tonight.
I can’t help it; I blame his kisses.
“You’re right.”
He kisses me softly.
“Alie, this isn’t me running away.”
I nod. “Oh, yeah, I know.”
And I do.
“Walk me to the elevator?”
I back away from him and take his hand because if I stand here like this any longer, I might not let go.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says with one last kiss.
“Bye.” I lift my hand as the door closes, then touch my mouth.
This feels like the beginning of something real.