She fell silent for a moment, but then cleared her throat and said, “Axel? You said you drank a lot, and then decided to be sober. Did you go to rehab or anything? Or do you have to go to those AA meetings?”

“I never went to rehab. I realized my ways before I’d gotten to the point where I needed to seek outside help. My sister and Danny were enough of a support for me. And I’ve thought about checking out some meetings, although I never have. For the most part, I don’t even think about drinking. Well, I didn’t until you showed back up.”

“I make you want to drink again?”

I let out a light chuckle, even though my situation was far from funny. “No. Not really. But you have to remember that I started drinking because I didn’t know how to handle the loss of you. I didn’t know how to sort through my feelings regarding everything that happened between us. So instead of being an adult about it, I decided to numb it, not wanting to deal with it at all. And then you came back and set me straight on everything I’d assumed before. It was like everything I thought I’d buried long ago has been dug up, and is now haunting me.” I paused to take a breath, organizing my thoughts. “But to answer your question, no. You don’t make me want to drink. I thought about it once. But I know better than to go down that road again.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered.

“You sound tired. I’m going to let you go.”

“Goodnight, Axel. I’m picking Ayla up from school tomorrow, so maybe I’ll see you in pick-up line. If not. I’ll call you after we come back from my parents’ house and she settles down.”

I fell asleep, looking forward to seeing her after school the next day.

The following morning, I found an unfinished kitchen table at the end of my street, and put it into the back of my truck on my way to work. I planned to take it to Bree after school and surprise her with it. The anticipation of giving it to her, and the look on her face is what passed the time quickly.

With only ten more minutes left in the day, I went over some flyers that I put in the folders to send home with the kids. “This weekend, the kindergarten classes are having a father-daughter dance on Saturday night and a mother-son bowling game on Sunday. Your parents need to have the forms filled out and turned into the office by Friday.”

“What if we don’t have a father?” one of the girls in the front row asked quietly.

My heart sank for her, and I immediately thought of Ayla. “You don’t have to come with a father. You can ask your grandfather, or an uncle to be your guest. Maybe a grownup you’re close with.”

The little girl smiled and went back to getting ready to leave.

“We’re going to line up in five minutes, so make sure you have your folders and lunch boxes in your backpacks.” I turned and sat behind my desk, putting my own things away for the day.

“My papa still isn’t feeling good. And I don’t have anybody to go with me to the dance.” A small, timid voice spoke up from in front of me, melting my heart.

I glanced up and my heart fell as I saw Ayla standing in front of me with the saddest expression on her face. Her aqua-colored eyes seemed dull, not quite as full of life as I had become accustomed to. “I’m sure your friends won’t mind sharing their daddies with you. And I’ll be there for anyone who needs someone.”

A smile lifted the corners of her tiny lips a little.

“Listen to me, Ayla. I’m sure your papa feels real bad he can’t be there for you. But I bet he’ll make it up to you as soon as he’s feeling better. You two will have lots of adventures together, once he’s feeling well again. And as far as your dad, I think if he could, he’d love to be in your life.” I don’t know why I said that, maybe to make her feel better? Whatever the reason, it only made me question more. “Do you know anything about your dad?”

“Mommy says I laugh like him,” she said with a brighter smile.

“And what kind of laugh is that?”

She ducked her head, hiding her rosy cheeks as her shoulders bobbed up and down with the quiet laughter that took over her body.

“Well, I know one thing for sure…you blush like your mom.”

“Mommy also says I talk like my dad, too.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. “And how’s that?”

“She’s always correcting me. She says, ‘You sound like your father’ every time I say something grammarly wrong. But she doesn’t say it in a mean way. I think she likes it because she gets a real big smile and laughs. Oh! And I know his favorite music. She’s played me some of the songs, but some parts we have to skip over because they aren’t appropriated for kids.” She began to hum a familiar strand of Guns N’ Roses.

The room suddenly became really warm and my body felt on fire at her words. “Ayla, honey…have you ever seen a picture of your father?”

“Mommy gave me a picture of him, but it’s not really of him.”

“What’s it of?”

“Weird eyes.”

My heart raced in my chest. “What kind of eyes.”

“She says they’re from a wolf.”

My lungs refused to work and the room began to spin. My eyesight turned dark and spotted as my brain threatened to shut down. There was no way. It was impossible. Images frantically ran through my mind at warped speed: Her hands on my bare chest. My body between her legs as she sat on my kitchen counter. Her fingers working my belt. Me, telling her how we didn’t need to go that far. Her, telling me how much she needed to feel safe. Bandaging her back one moment, and then soothing her with my body the next.

Me, giving in, pulling a condom from my wallet.

Sitting on my couch.

Bree on top of me.

Her virginity.

And then my mind ran through her words since I found out about Ayla. The things she’d told me about her father: He was just some kid from school. She was in a place where she needed him. The condom must have been defective. He gave her exactly what she needed. And that Ayla was an even mix of Bree and…

I narrowed my eyes on the little girl in front of me, taking in her every feature and comparing it to mine and Aubrey’s. She had really blond hair—the color of mine as a child—yet it was curly like Bree’s. Her eyes were a bright, blue-green shade, the color you’d get when mixing blue with greenish-yellow. There were a few of Aubrey’s freckles on her nose—a nose that, now that I look at it, looks very much like mine—and her coloring was right in between mine and her mother’s, olive yet fair.

How the fuck didn’t I see this before?

Because you weren’t looking…

Because you’d worn a condom that never ripped.

“All right class,” I said, standing from my seat in the hopes of clearing the haze from my brain. “It’s time to line up.”

All the kids grabbed their backpacks and lined up next to the door. I kept Ayla next to me as I walked them to the parent pick-up area in the back of the school. I didn’t have to be back there since the school took turns having different grade levels monitor the lines, and this week wasn’t kindergarten. But I wasn’t out there to work. I had something else on my agenda.

The moment Ayla’s name was called, I escorted her to Aubrey’s car. I noticed the smile through the windshield immediately, right before she caught sight of me. That’s when her smile fell. She obviously saw the look of fury on my face. I opened the back door and waited for Ayla to climb in before tapping on the driver’s side window.

“Take her to your sister, your parents’ house, I don’t care,” I growled into the open window, not caring that Bree’s face had gone ghostly white and still. “Just take her somewhere and meet me back at your house in thirty minutes.”

“Axel—”

“You don’t get to argue with me. You don’t get a choice in this. Drop her off. Meet me in thirty minutes. Don’t make me wait, Aubrey, or I swear to Christ…” I let my threat hang, not wanting to finish it in front of Ayla. She was too small to hear the things I wanted to say to her mother—the things I needed to say.