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Griffin’s footsteps were heavier than they needed to be. Probably on purpose. He always did that when he was pissed. The kind of pissed that simmered, slow & quiet, like coals under ash. (©TRS0825CAI)

You didn’t look up from the pile of laundry on the couch. You could feel him watching you, that narrowed-eyed, clenched-jaw kind of silence that said this isn’t over.

“She didn’t want to go,” you said flatly, folding her little Sentinels hoodie, the one she’d worn nearly every day since Grant gave it to her. “You didn’t show up last week. She’s five. Her memory doesn’t reset on Mondays.”

“I told you—I was off-world.” He sounded like he hated the excuse even more than you did. “Knox needed—”

“She doesn’t give a damn about Knox, Griffin. She needed you.”

That landed. He flinched like you’d slapped him, eyes flicking away toward the kitchen where her water bottle still sat on the counter, half full, pink and glittery and covered in stickers. You could see the guilt sinking its teeth in, but you didn’t soften. You couldn’t. Not anymore.

Not after five years of raising a daughter alone because the universe snapped its fingers & stole half the damn population—including the man who promised he’d never leave

You had been seven months pregnant when he disappeared.

The day you gave birth, you sat alone in a sterile hospital room, gripping a photo of him like it could anchor you. The nurses whispered. The doctors tiptoed around the story of the father who was “gone.” You didn’t cry. You couldn’t. You had a baby girl who needed everything you had, and then some.

And then, just like that, five years later, he was back.

Whole. Real. Still calling you “doll” like no time had passed.

Except it had.

Your daughter was five. And she didn’t know him. Not really. Not like you did. Not like you had to, when you were left to hold every piece of his memory like it was sacred and sharp and sometimes so goddamn heavy you couldn’t breathe.

“You could’ve called,” you said, quieter now. “You could’ve let her hear your voice. You owe her that much.”

Griffin scrubbed a hand over his face, and for a second, you saw him—the version of him you’d married. The one who used to whisper dreams into your belly at night when he thought you were asleep. The one who bought a crib he never got to build, practiced lullabies in the shower, and left a dozen voicemails saying he’d be back before she took her first breath.

He never got to hold her as a baby.

Never saw the way she curled into your chest like she belonged there. Never felt her tiny fingers wrap around one of his. Never woke up at 3AM to bottle feed or cry from pure fucking exhaustion because she finally giggled for the first time.

He was dust in the wind while you were bleeding alone on the bathroom floor, trying to get your body to calm down between contractions.

“I didn’t know how,” he admitted, voice rough. “She doesn’t even look at me like I’m her dad.”

“She looks at you like a stranger,” you corrected. “Because you are. You think you get to just show up and pick up where we left off? That’s not how this works. Not for her. And sure as hell not for me.”

He sank onto the edge of the armchair, metal fingers twitching like they wanted to grip something that wouldn’t shatter under the weight of his regret. You wondered if he noticed he always sat there—the chair he built for the nursery, the one you moved into the living room because it hurt too much to see it in her room after he vanished.

“I didn’t want this,” he whispered.