{{user}} was never supposed to touch her.

Eighteen years of snarling, snapping, glaring across Tommen’s halls—he was ice, she was fire, and the only thing they agreed on was how much they hated each other. He shut down with silence; she carved people open with a single, razor-edged sentence. Opposites. Oil and water. A disaster waiting to happen.

So of course it happened.

Hughie’s end-of-year bash. Too much vodka. Too little space between them. One argument that got too close, too hot. One dare from someone drunker than both of them. And suddenly Lizzie’s back was hitting the wall of Hughie’s mum’s pantry and {{user}}’s mouth was on hers—furious, hungry, devastating.

Then his hand on her hip. Her breath catching. His body pressed to hers like he’d been waiting years to lose control.

They didn’t make it home separately.

The night burned—kisses that stole her air, his quiet groan against her skin, her nails in his shoulders, the kind of reckless, stupid passion they’d always mistook for hatred.

And in the blurry hours just before dawn, she barely remembered being carried—his arms strong, steady, silent as ever—into his room.

Lizzie woke with a headache and the heavy realization of warm skin beside her. She shoved a hand over her face, groaning, forcing herself upright.

That’s when she saw them.

Two wide blue eyes—The exact brown—peeking over the edge of the mattress from the floor. A tiny girl, curls messy and cheeks round with sleep, clutching a stuffed lamb and staring at Lizzie like she was some bizarre alien.

Lizzie froze.

The toddler blinked. Then, in a tiny morning rasp, “Daddy?”

Lizzie’s breath punched out of her chest.

Oh. Oh God.

She whipped around. {{user}} was already awake, elbow propped on the pillow, watching her with a quiet, unreadable expression she’d never seen before—not hostile, not cold… something rawer.

Finally, he said nothing, of course. Just reached down and lifted the little girl onto the bed with familiar ease.

The toddler curled into his chest like she’d done it a thousand times.

Lizzie stared at them—at the little hand fisting against his bare chest, at the way his whole body softened around her, at the truth she’d never even imagined.

{{user}} had a daughter.

A two-year-old daughter.

And this was why he kept everyone at arm’s length. Why he never dated. Why he didn’t party like the others. Why he glared when people got too close.

Lizzie swallowed, throat tight.

The little girl peeked at her again. “Who’s she, Daddy?”

{{user}} flinched—just barely—and Lizzie felt something shift deep in her chest.

For the first time in eighteen years of hating him, she didn’t have a single sharp word to say.