Page 86 of Shootout Daddies
My name is on the seal.
“Do you want me to—” Hunter asks softly.
I shake my head. My hand trembles just a little as I reach for it. My throat is too dry, my tongue heavy. For all the ways I’ve pictured this moment, I never imagined how hard it would be just to break a line of glue.
I tear the paper. I unfold it. My eyes skim the neat black letters, the clinical phrasing that has nothing to do with the chaos inside me.
Probability of paternity: 99.99%.
I let out a sound I don’t recognize. Half laugh, half sob, raw in my chest.
Hunter sits up straighter. Ivy shifts closer to me on the sofa, her eyes wide, searching.
“She’s mine,” I say, and the words feel foreign and familiar all at once. “She’s my daughter.”
The truth of it crashes through me like a wave I can’t hold back.
My chest tightens, my vision blurs. I press the paper flat against my thigh, staring at the words again and again like they’ll change if I look long enough.
But they don’t. They stay the same.
I am Chloe’s father.
The walls I’ve built around myself for years, the ones that kept me safe, the ones I thought made me strong—they’re splintering.
I spent so long convincing myself I didn’t need this. That I couldn’t have it. That kids were for other people. That I was better off alone.
And now she’s here. She’s been here all along.
I press a hand over my face. My shoulders shake.
Ivy’s hand touches my arm, light and tentative. Hunter shifts closer, his voice low, firm. “Rhett. Look at me.”
I drag my hand down, meeting his steady gaze.
“This changes nothing,” he says. “She’s still ours. Still Chloe. Still the same baby we’ve been raising together every day. You don’t lose us in this.”
I swallow hard, my chest burning. “But it does change something. It changes everything. I’m her father, Hunter.” The words crack on my tongue. “I’m?—”
“Yeah,” he cuts in, his mouth tugging into a small, soft smile. “You are. You’re her dad. And you’re not alone in it.”
The conviction in his voice makes my throat ache worse. He believes it, down to his bones. And somehow that belief steadies me.
Ivy squeezes my arm gently. “She already knows who you are, Rhett. She knows you’re hers.”
I think of Chloe’s laugh, the way she lights up when I walk into the room. The way she reaches for me with her tiny hands, how she curls into my chest when she’s tired.
She’s known all along.
The weight shifts in me, not lighter, but different. Heavier in the best way. Real. Permanent.
I let out a long breath and shake my head, laughing under it even as more tears burn at the corners of my eyes.
“I never thought… damn, I never thought I’d be anyone’s father. Never thought I’d be raising a baby with my best friend. And yet here we are.”
Hunter chuckles softly, leaning back again, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Life’s got a way of blindsiding us.”
“No kidding.”
