“I thought I might lose you, and I realized that I wouldn’t just be losing my dad.” My breath caught. “I’d be losing the only person who remembers her. The only link I have. I’d truly be alone.”
My lungs stuttered, the next inhale catching halfway in, my lip trembling. I hadn’t meant to say it so plainly, but I knew our relationship could handle the truth. It had to if we were to move forward.
“I’ve never been scared like that before. Not of losing a game, or failing.” I swallowed the emotion lodged in my throat. “But of having nothing left.”
That awareness scared me more than I’d realized at the time. Especially because our relationship wasn’t perfect, but the finality of not having him, the only biological parent I had, tore me up inside.
My grip on my shoes tightened until the straps dug into my fingers, but I needed the pain to focus.
He turned fully toward me then, his expression stripped of rank, of distance, of everything but being my father, and I really saw him, weathered and worn, tired but still my daddy. The wind rushed past us, but I couldn’t tell if the sound in my ears was the ocean or my pulse.
He didn’t reach for me. Somehow, he knew I wasn’t ready yet. Didn’t crowd the space between us. He simply stood there, eyes roaming over my face, and I knew he was seeing something he’d spent years avoiding.
“You know,” he said finally, his voice rough, “you’re so like her.” He sighed, but a soft smile tipped his mouth quickly. “Strong, resilient, beautiful.” He huffed a broken laugh. “I know you didn’t know her, and I’m sorry I didn’t let you,” he admitted, his eyes glistening. “After your mom died, I thought the safest thing I could do was let you grow without watching me fall apart.” His jaw flexed. “God, she would’ve hated that,” he said, almost to himself. “But I didn’t feel capable of being a dad. The only thing I could do was throw myself into deployments, to forget about the grief.”
“And leave me.” My voice cracked.
He grabbed my hand, the movement startling me. Not because it was sudden, but because it was rare, and I don’t remember the last time he held my hand. “I understand that I don’t have any right to know you now, and you have every reason to shutthe door on being my daughter.” His grip tightened slightly, as though he needed to know I was really here. “I can’t ask for forgiveness. That’s something I need to earn. But I’m willing to.”
I’d spent so much of my life preparing for disappointment where he was concerned, building careful distance so nothing he did could knock the wind out of me. If I pushed it all away, I would be safe. But hearing him admit that he didn’t want to lose me, I wasn’t prepared for that. It was worse than grief, far more fragile and unknowing that I couldn’t speak.
Eyes fixed on our joined hands, he swallowed audibly. “I spent so long lost in my grief that I forgot my family still existed. That she still existed—in you.” His voice faltered then. “I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to come back to you.”
And that’s the ugly truth; somewhere inside me, I was still that little girl watching her daddy go somewhere unknown. Too young to understand the fear, but feeling it all the same. I’mstillthat scared, fragile heart that he left on the doorstep.
Only now I was better at protecting it, teaching it how to survive, how to keep it beating, even when it hurt.
And standing here now, with his hand wrapped around mine, both versions of myself collided at once. The girl he’d left behind. And the woman who had learned how to live without him.
“I spent a long time thinking there was something wrong with me,” I admitted. “Because leaving was so easy for you.”
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, shaking his head. “You were a kid, and I wasn’t there. I’ve made so many mistakes, but leaving you is the one I regret every day.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, hadn’t expected him to own his mistakes. The ocean rolled in close, the foam licking at the sand near our feet before retreating again.
I drew in a slow breath, filling my lungs until it burned, then let it out just as carefully. My grip tightened around his hand, tentative at first, then firmer.
An urge to pull away was still there, familiar and well-practiced, but it no longer felt like the only option. The old reflex tugged at me—build the wall, step back, protect what’s left—but for once, I didn’t obey it.
This wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t resolution. But it was something.
“I don’t need you to make up for the past,” I told him, my voice watery and weak. “I just need you to stop disappearing.” The words left me exposed, bare in a way I wasn’t used to, and I held still in the discomfort. “I’ve spent my whole life proving I can handle things on my own… I don’t want to do that anymore.”
I stayed there, hand in his, waiting for him to choose me back.
Time had no meaning right now. But I can’t deny that when his hand left mine, I braced. What I hadn’t accounted for was him stepping closer, his arms coming around me, solid and unsure all at once. He held me like it was something he was still learning how to do, and I understood that. I was surrounded by the same scent that lingered in our house he rarely lived in. Soap and musk. Home. I breathed him in, letting myself believe he’d stay.
“I’m here, Teddy. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, but I’m here now.”
Twenty-six years of loneliness unraveled with those words.
46
Connor
There were thirty-eight of us on the squad and my wonderfully kind and crazy mam had invited all of them over for dinner. Every single one.
Not everyone could make it, which wasn’t a bad thing, because while my parents’ house was big, it wasn’t thirty-eight rugby-players-wide big.
