“I want my mom,” Damian cried.
And Dario had never felt worse than he did then. Had he really been using this five-year-old as some kind of pawn? To get his revenge on the child’s mother? What was the matter with him? He’d thrown it in Anais’s face that she was as bad as the father who’d never wanted to marry her mother and had cheated all throughout their marriage. But meanwhile, he was as bad as his own father, the most selfish creature who’d ever walked the face of the planet. He was worse. At least his father hadn’t cared in the slightest about any of his kids—it would never have occurred to him to use them for anything.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed her number, not sure he’d be able to speak past the constriction of pure self-loathing blocking his throat when she answered at once.
“Dario?”
“You’d better come,” he told her with no preamble. He didn’t bother to keep his voice even or calm. What could that matter? “Damian is sick.”
He didn’t know how long it took her. It could have been a handful of minutes. It could have been hours. Time lost meaning to him as he sat there in the dimly lit room with a sick boy in his lap, trying to make soothing noises. He got Damian to stop crying, which made an exultant sort of triumph race through him—far brighter and deeper than anything he’d felt during ICE’s last big product launch, which he’d previously imagined was the pinnacle of his life thus far.
Dario didn’t know how to process that. He didn’t know what it meant, only that somehow this small human who smelled of sweat and something sticky had managed to worm his way into places inside of Dario that he hadn’t known were there. And he didn’t think Damian even liked him. For that matter, he wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t holding his own nephew, not his son.
That didn’t appear to have a single thing to do with it.
And then he looked up and Anais was there.
She charged through the door, her eyes snapping to Damian and staying there. She moved so fast her hair flowed behind her like a cloak and she came straight to him, up on her knees on the bed beside Dario to get her hands on the child’s hot cheeks.
“Mommy,” the little boy whimpered. He didn’t seem surprised to see her, and Dario wondered what that was like. To have no doubt that the adults would turn up when they were needed. To expect it. “I’m sick.”
“I know, baby,” she murmured. Her hands moved all over him as she eased him from Dario’s hold. She checked his forehead, his cheeks, and then she clucked her tongue and wrapped her arms around him to rock him. “You have a little fever, that’s all. Do you have a headache?”
He moaned something unintelligible with his mouth against her shoulder and she nodded as if he’d made perfect sense. “That’s not surprising. Let’s cool you down a little bit and see if you can sleep.”
She asked the nanny to get her a wet washcloth and while she waited she stripped Damian out of his sweat-soaked pajamas and then got him into a clean pair. Then she laid him down on the bed with the cool cloth on his head, her movements practiced and easy, reminding Dario without a single word what she’d been doing these last five years. She even curled up beside the little boy so he could hold on to her, and then she sang to him.
It was the most hauntingly beautiful thing Dario had ever heard. It broke the heart he’d thought she’d turned to stone and ash years before. Over and over again.
He sat there on the foot of the bed as this mother sang her little boy to sleep, and it took him long, shuddering moments to understand that whatever the truth was, he wanted this to be real. To be his in all its uncertainty and noise, silliness and sweetness. He wanted her to have come back to him with this funny little boy who was a perfect blend of both of them. He’d never wanted a family—he barely tolerated his own—but here, now, he wanted this family more than he wanted his next breath.
He wanted it almost more than he could bear.
And he could have left when Damian drifted off to sleep, but he didn’t. Anais stopped singing eventually, but she didn’t move, still curled up next to the boy like some kind of fierce lioness who would shred anyone who ventured near. He had absolutely no doubt that she would. And that he’d help.
“‘The ICE Man Cometh’?” Dario asked into the quiet.
“If you ever try to take my child away from me again,” she replied in a very soft voice that did nothing to conceal the steel in it, “I’ll gut you with something a whole lot sharper than a tabloid newspaper.”
He believed it.
They sat like that for a long time, with only Damian’s half-snores filling the space between them.
“He already knew I was his father,” Dario heard himself say. He hadn’t meant to speak. He’d meant to get out of here, in fact—to stand up and leave her here and return to his office, maybe to actually do some work this time. He had no idea why he hadn’t done it. “He knew when I found him at his school. He said you kept a picture next to his bed.”
Anais didn’t say anything for a long time. Dario stopped thinking she would. It was enough, he thought, that they were both here, keeping this strangely peaceful vigil over a sick boy together. Silence was fine. It was more than fine.
It felt a lot like intimacy and, for once, he didn’t balk at the notion.
“His best friend is a little girl named Olina,” Anais said eventually, her voice sounding scratchy. She was propped up on an elbow next to Damian in the bed, her attention on him as he slept fitfully beside her. “Her father is a fireman on the island, which the kids agreed was very impressive and heroic. Olina told Damian that when she gets scared, her father promised her he’d always be there to fight the monsters or chase away the bad dreams. That she could just call out and he’d come. That was what fathers did, he told her. That was what they were for.”
Anais shifted then, her dark gaze finding Dario’s in the dim light, and he felt everything inside of him go still.
“Damian asked me how he could call out for his father when he didn’t know where you were.”
Dario was stricken, held fast in some awful grip that he thought might crush him to dust where he sat—but he couldn’t bring himself to look away from Anais. Not even to blink.
“I told him that you knew where he was and that all he needed was the reminder of you to fight off the bad dreams and bad things that sometimes turn up in a little boy’s closet.” She didn’t drop her gaze. “I said you were magic. That all fathers were, but especially you.”
“Anais.”
But she didn’t seem to hear him.
“So together we picked out a picture of you from the photo album I have from our wedding day, and then we went to the store and found a frame he liked. He wanted double protection, just to be sure. So it’s a Batman frame with you in it looking very magical and fierce and capable. It sits by his bed, and sometimes I catch him talking to it like you’re real. To him, you always have been.”
Dario couldn’t speak. He ran his hands over his face and wasn’t entirely surprised to find he was shaking.
And she wasn’t finished.
“This thing you did—flying him across the world and whatever you’ve been doing these past few days? Playing daddy games and indulging yourself? I knew you wouldn’t hurt him. I knew he’d be okay. That he’d think it was all a grand adventure with a character he already thinks he knows. You’re as real to him as anything he’s seen on television, that’s all. This won’t hurt him. He’s a resilient kid.”
And her gaze seemed to get darker then. Harder. She seemed to reach across the bed and tear him wide open when he knew