I raised my champagne glass to celebrate my perfect engagement, but the moment two little girls looked me in the eyes and called me Dad, everything I'd built began to crumble.

Abana opened the door thirty seconds later.

She was wearing scrubs. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked like she’d worked a double shift at the hospital and then come home to cook dinner and help with homework and do it all over again the next day.

Which she probably had.

For seven years.

She didn’t look surprised to see me.

She didn’t look happy either.

“You came,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I came,” I said. I held up the bags. “I brought… stuff. I didn’t know what they liked. Or what size they wear. I just… bought everything.”

She stared at the bags for a long moment.

Then she stepped aside.

“Come in,” she said. “They’re doing homework at the kitchen table. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Ethan. I mean it. If you’re just here to play Dad for a day and then disappear again, leave now. They’ve been hurt enough.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

She closed the door behind me.

The apartment was small. Two bedrooms. One bathroom. The carpet was worn thin in spots. The couch had a tear in the arm covered with a throw blanket. But it was clean. Warm. There were drawings taped to every wall. Most of them were of four people. A mom. Two little girls. And a tall man with no face.

That was me.

Lila looked up from the kitchen table when we walked in. Her face lit up like the Fourth of July.

“Daddy!” she yelled. She jumped out of her chair and ran to me, nearly knocking over a glass of milk. She wrapped her arms around my waist so tight I could barely breathe. “You came! I told Mia you would! I told her you weren’t like the mean dad in the book who never comes back!”

Mia was right behind her. She was chewing on the end of a crayon. Her face was covered in marker.

“Daddy,” she said, like she was testing the word to make sure it was still real. “Did you bring me a unicorn?”

I pulled the stuffed unicorn out of the bag.

Her eyes went so wide I thought they’d fall out of her head.

She grabbed it and squeezed it so hard its eyes bulged.

“Thank you thank you thank you,” she said, bouncing up and down. “I’m gonna sleep with him every night forever.”

Abana leaned against the doorframe, watching us. Her face was unreadable.

I spent the next four hours there.

I helped Lila with her math homework. She was smarter than I’d been at her age by a mile. I colored unicorns with Mia until my hand cramped. I ate the burnt macaroni and cheese Abana made for dinner and told her it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. It wasn’t a lie. Nothing the fancy chefs at my country club made had ever tasted half as good.

Lila asked me a hundred questions.

What’s your favorite color? Do you have a dog? Can you teach me to ride a bike? Why didn’t you come before?

That last one stopped me cold.

I looked at Abana. She nodded slightly. Telling me it was okay to answer.

I knelt down so I was eye level with Lila.

“Because I was scared, baby girl,” I said. “A long time ago, when I was a lot younger, I found out I was going to be your dad. And I was so scared I’d be bad at it that I ran away. That was the worst mistake I ever made. I missed so much. And I’m so, so sorry. But I’m here now. And I’m never going to run again. Ever.”

Lila thought about that for a long time.

Then she threw her arms around my neck.

“Okay,” she said simply. “Everyone makes mistakes. Mrs. Henderson at school says the important part is saying you’re sorry and trying to do better.”

Mia nodded seriously.

“Yep,” she said. “And you brought me a unicorn. So you’re forgiven.”

Abana laughed. A small, surprised sound. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh in seven years. It sounded exactly like I remembered.

After the girls were in bed, Abana and I sat on the worn couch in the living room. She poured us both glasses of sweet tea. No champagne. No crystal. Just sweet tea in chipped glasses.

She told me everything.

How she’d found out she was pregnant two days after I left. How she’d considered doing what I’d asked. How she’d been sitting in the clinic parking lot, hand on the door handle, when she’d felt Lila kick for the first time.

How she’d worked three jobs for seven years. Nursing shifts at the hospital. Cleaning houses on the weekends. Taking in laundry from the neighbors. How she’d gone without heat for two weeks one winter because she couldn’t pay the bill. How she’d never told anyone who the girls’ father was because she didn’t want them to be ashamed of me.

How she’d only found out about my engagement two weeks earlier. She’d seen my picture in the society section of the paper. Me with Olivia. Smiling. Perfect. Living the high life while she worked herself to the bone to feed our kids.

“I didn’t bring them to that party to ruin you,” she said quietly. “I brought them because I read the article. It said you and Olivia were planning to move to London. For good. I couldn’t let you leave the country without them knowing who you were. I couldn’t let them grow up thinking their dad didn’t want them.”

She looked at me.

“The papers I gave you? The custody claim? I never filed them. I was going to, but then I saw you with them tonight. The way you looked at them like they were the best thing you’d ever seen. I knew I didn’t need to force you. You either want to be their dad or you don’t. The courts can’t make you love them.”

I reached across the couch and took her hand.

She flinched at first. Then she let me.

“I do want to be their dad,” I said. “More than anything. I messed up, Abana. Bad. I let my own fear turn me into the exact thing I hated most. But I’m here now. And whatever you need. Whatever they need. It’s yours. All of it. I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m just asking for a chance to be the father they deserve.”

She stared at our joined hands for a long time.

“Okay,” she said finally. “One chance. But if you hurt them? If you leave again? I will destroy you, Ethan Voss. I don’t care how much money you have or how many lawyers you can buy. I will burn everything you’ve built to the ground. Do you understand me?”

I smiled.