Crap. Crap.Crap.
This can’t be happening, can it?
I slam the door shut, and throw my back against it just in case he tries to get in.
He's here.
Jamie Nicks.
The man I’ve met exactly once. The father of the best thing to have ever happened to me is standing on my doorstep with flowers, like he's waiting to take me out for prom instead of showing up four years too late.
My heart is beating so fast, it feels like it's about to pound its way out of my chest.
What the hell is he doing here?
Groaning, I slide down to the floor and hug my knees to my chest while sweat prickles at the back of my neck.
How the hell did he find us?
I moved out of state once it was confirmed his family dropped the lawsuit. I changed my number and email once we all agreed to communicate through my lawyer. That was supposed to be it.
I was never supposed to hear from them again.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I nearly jump out of my skin when I hear him shuffling around on the porch.
Why hasn’t he left yet? Does slamming the door in his face not give him enough understanding on what's going on here?
I press my forehead to my knees, trying to breathe past the light-headed swirl of panic making its way through my body.
“Go away,” I whisper, feeling as small as the last time I saw him. He was warming the bench at my cousin Zach’s senior-year game three years ago.
The same feeling of dread comes seeping through me. The day I realized I meant so little that he gave me someone else's name right before I lost my virginity to him.
I hear Jamie’s sigh through the door, confirming this isn’t some twisted nightmare my brain cooked up. He’s here in flesh and blood.
But why? Why now?
“Who was that mommy?” My beautiful Ella asks, her voice yanking me back from the edge. She's dressed in her Princess Blanca costume, day three of wearing it, looking so innocent considering what just happened.
He saw her, and in those few, fleeting seconds of eye contact, it felt like someone reached into my chest and ripped out a piece of my soul.
She came face-to-face with her father, and she has his face. His smile. His damn chin.
And now he knows it.
The connection I’ve spent years dreading, praying I could outrun, has happened, and there’s no undoing it.
Is he going to use this against me? Hold her over me like a loaded gun? Ella doesn’t deserve to be a pawn in whatever sick game Jamie and his family are playing.
“Mommy?”
I press my finger to my lips, check the door is locked, and quickly stand, ushering her into the playroom Zach spent a weekend perfecting. Pale blue walls with silver snowflakes in the theme of Ella’s favorite movieIced Out.“It’s fit for a princess,” he’d said when he finished, and Ella had squealed in happiness.
Now, it’s the only place I feel safe.
He can’t get in. There are security cameras outside. The door has a sensor.