I watched them for one suspended second before looking away. Some sights were too beautiful and painful to hold for long.
Inside, the café was warm, its windows fogged from the cold outside, the smell of grilled bread and fries filling the air. We slid into a red booth near the back. Helena sat between us at first, then decided she wanted to sit across from us “like a grown-up.” Hayden, who had once made entire lecture halls go silent with one look, obeyed her as if she were the only authority in the world worth listening to.
We ordered our burgers. Helena chose exactly what she always chose, cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milkshake. Hayden ordered the same as me, only for Helena to frown and tell him that was “copying.” A rare smile tugged at his mouth, reluctant and real enough to stay with me longer than it should have.
Underneath all of it, though, beneath the lights, the chatter, and the comfort of familiar food, tension kept working through me.
Today, we were telling her.
I looked at Hayden while Helena was busy arranging the ketchup bottles in an order only she understood, and the sight of him startled me more than I wanted to admit.
He was fucking nervous.
This was not some harmless awkwardness. The fear had settled into his body, into the restless movement of his hand near his glass, the tight pull of his jaw, the way his eyes kept finding Helena and leaving her again as if too much hope might gut him.
When Helena became distracted by her milkshake, Hayden leaned slightly toward me and spoke for me alone.
“What happens if she can’t accept me?”
The question hit harder than I expected.
I turned to him. “Hayden—”
“No. Tell me the truth.” His voice had gone rougher, carrying fear he could not hide. “What happens if she hears father and only understands absence? If she looks at me and sees all the years I wasn’t there? If I came back too late for her to want me that way?”
For a second, all I could do was look at him.
This was the same man who could kiss me like a storm and turn possessiveness into prayer, the same man whose darkness seemed to enter a room before he did. Yet here he was, nearly undone by the thought that one little girl might not want him enough.
“She won’t reject you,” I said.
He let out a short, humorless breath. “You can’t know that.”
“I know Helena.”
Across from us, Helena had dipped one fry far too deeply into ketchup and was studying the damage with grave concentration, entirely unaware that her whole life was waiting at the table for the right sentence.
I reached beneath the table and touched Hayden’s hand once. The tension in him shifted under my fingers.
“She already loves you,” I murmured. “You make her happy. She looks for you when you aren’t there, and when you walk intoa room, she lights up before she even thinks about it.” I held his gaze. “That matters more than you realize.”
For a moment, the fear in his face loosened.
Then Helena looked up and said, “Why are you both being weird?”
That nearly made me laugh.
“We’re not being weird,” I said.
“You are.” She pointed a fry at us. “You both got quiet.”
Hayden cleared his throat. “We were talking.”
“About me?”
Children were terrifyingly direct.
“Yes,” I said.
