I never thought I’d see her again. Not after what I said. Not after what I did.

Yet here I was—standing at the same door she lived in 3 years ago, heart hammering like a fucking drum in my chest. I wasn’t sure why I came. I told her she was nothing but a hook up to pass time with. But now, face-to-face with her, every plan I had to play it cool vanished the second the door opened.

She looked the same. Maybe a little more tired around the eyes.

Still the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

But it wasn’t her that nearly knocked the air from my lungs.

It was the little girl beside her.

Blonde hair tied in two buns, apple slice in her small hands, eyes the same shade of green I saw in the mirror every morning. No older than two.

“Who’s him, mama?” The little girl asked her softly.

Mama?

I felt the ground tilt beneath me. My eyes flicked to her—her, the woman I couldn’t forget if I tried—and I could see it. The fear. The defiance. She pulled the kid closer, like she was shielding her from me.

“I don’t know, Delilah,” she said, voice like ice. “May I help you, sir?”

Sir?

She was pretending she didn’t know me. Pretending I wasn’t the man who once held her like she was the only thing in the world that made sense, until I told her she was meaningless to me.

A daughter? I thought she didn’t like kids?

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My throat was dry. My mind spiraling.

And that little girl—Delilah—was mine. I didn’t need a test. I could feel it in my blood.

“I—” I croaked, scrambling for something, anything, to say. “I just… do you have some sugar? It’s for my mother. She wants to bake a cake.”

A fucking cake?

I wanted to punch myself in the face.