Page 67 of Rebooked For Us
I massaged my temples and stood there a second, working through what I still didn’t have an answer for. I didn’t know what the next week would look like, or the next month, or how you build a relationship with a child you’ve never met, or how you do that while also working through what her mother did and didn’t do. I didn’t have a plan, and I always had a plan. The absence of one was having its way with me.
But I knew one thing.
Whatever I was carrying, Cadence didn’t put it there. She deserved to meet the version of me that was here out of pure love for her entire existence. She didn’t deserve the version standing on this porch working through his feelings.
The silent treatment, the cold shoulder, all of it had made sense on that plane. It had made sense on the drive over. It stopped making sense the second I looked up at that purple curtain.
Skye and I had things to say to each other that needed to be said. But not tonight. Tonight belonged to Cadence. I headed inside. Airalynn met me at the door. She looked at me for a long second.
“Hey, Ducane.”
“Sup, Airalynn.”
I embraced her before she stepped back and let me in.
Little feet on hardwood. Hairbows clacking, fast and rhythmic, announcing her arrival and making my stomach flutter in the process.
She came around the corner in cloud pajamas with her curls everywhere and her little glasses slightly crooked. She stopped when she saw me, eyes went wide, mouth open. She was the perfect mix of her mother and me.
I crouched down.
She took three steps toward me and stopped.
“Daddy, it’s really you.”
The word brought tears to my eyes.
“Yeah, baby. It’s me.”
She closed the distance at a full run and hit me in the chest, wrapping both arms around my neck. I caught her, stood up, and held on. She smelled like baby lotion, hair grease, and fabric softener. She was so small against my six-five frame. I pressed my face into her hair and held her tighter.
Behind me, I heard Skye exhale.
I didn’t turn around. I just stood there in the doorway of a life I hadn’t known I was missing and held my daughter for the first time.
Cadence pulled back, looked at my face with those wide eyes, before reaching up to touch my beard with both hands.
I fixed her glasses and smiled.
“You’re a giant,” she said, arms wide.
“Nah, I think you’re just small, little one,” I said.
She giggled and buried her face back in my neck.
“I have to show you all my toys. I love stuffies, but mom says I have wayyy too many, but how can you have too many friends?”
I smiled at her rambling. She sounded just like Skye, word running into word with no space left for anybody to get one in edgewise. Whatever worry I’d been carrying let go of me right there with her in my arms.
Yeah. I wanted my family, and I would have it. I just needed some time.
Cadence went down aroundnine after making me read the same book three times and negotiating a fourth before Skye put her foot down and turned the light off. I sat on the edge of her bed until her breathing evened out, then stood there for another minute, just looking at her sleep.
I had missed six years of this little person’s life, and she greeted me like no time had passed at all, like I had simply been somewhere else for a while and now I was back, and that was that. Children had a grace about them that adults spent their whole lives trying to regain. She got that from her mama.
Man, what you got going on up there?I asked God, still watching her chest rise and fall, in awe of what I’d helped create. If the dizzy spells and the monitor were building toward this, a kid asleep down the hall who already loved me before she knew me, then I’d take that scare again and not complain once. Maybe this was what I was supposed to be paying attention to the whole time.
I stepped out into the hallway and pulled out my phone.
