Page 107 of Callow

Amazingly, that was true.

That had been a bit of an up and down thing.

No, she didn’t sneak out again.

But, yes, there were times when she was supposed to be one place and ended up somewhere else. She’d come home once smelling like beer covered up with perfume. And weed covered up with, I suspected, fabric freshener.

Kid shit.

And she was almost eighteen, was about to head off to her chosen college where she was going to do all those things and more. In a way, I was glad she experimented a little bit while she was still at home, so she knew her limits and shit like that. The idea of her getting drunk the first time while somewhere notoriously unsafe like a frat party was the kind of shit that kept me up at night.

“I know,” I agreed. “You’ve been behaving yourself.”

“Or so I want you to think,” she said with a glint in her eye. She was fucking with me. But a lot of truth was said in jest too. “Come on. You’re even weirder than you were when you brought up the house.”

“I guess I am,” I agreed, sucking in a deep breath as I reached into my pocket to produce the little emerald green ring box,opening it, and pushing it across the table toward her. “I want to marry your mom,” I told her.

Fuck, I did.

More than I think I’d ever wanted anything.

It was, I guess, just a formality at this point. We’d been living together since almost the beginning of our relationship. But it felt like an important formality. I wanted her to have my name. I wanted everything mine to be hers. I wanted all that traditional shit I’d never given thought to before Sabrina.

Daphne was uncharacteristically quiet as she stared at the ring in the little cushion, a fry poised over her milkshake, unmoving.

“Daph?” I called, stomach twisting in knots.

Nerves aside, I guess I never really considered the idea that Daphne would have a problem with this.

But her silence was kind of telling, wasn’t it?

“Do you not want me to marry your mom?” I asked, my pulse beating so hard in my chest that it felt like it was gonna burst out of my rib cage.

“That depends,” she said, still staring at the ring.

“On what?” I asked, glad I hadn’t eaten much because I was pretty sure I would be puking it up if Daph didn’t give me her blessing.

To that, Daphne pressed her lips together for a long moment.

When she spoke, her gaze didn’t slide to me until the very end.

“On if you will adopt me or not.”

Fuck.

I was out of my seat in a second, reaching for her and pulling her out of hers to crush her to my chest.

“Of fucking course I’ll adopt you, kid. You’ve been mine for almost two years now. Would love to make that shit official.”

She sniffled against my chest as her arms went around me, squeezing tight.

“When you adopt me,” she said, voice small, made smaller still by how she was muffling it against my shirt. “Can I call you Dad?”

My heart always seemed close to bursting these days.

But, somehow, it just kept getting bigger, making room for all these new, amazing, unexpected, big feelings that kept coming my way thanks to Sabrina and Daphne.

“I would love that. But you can call me that anytime, kid. Don’t have to wait for the paperwork to be official.”