My wife was a beautiful woman. Even half drunk, stumbling across her front lawn screaming at her husband, she was stunningly beautiful. Fourteen years after I’d last laid eyes on her, she still took my breath away.

Tenille had made some changes, though. The long black hair I’d loved had been replaced with a shorter cut that hit her shoulders. Still looked good, but not my preference. And the curves I’d loved on her had been ditched. Her body was stick-thin instead, and that was a fucking shame as far as I was concerned.

I stood in the shadows of her neighbour’s house watching her argue with her husband, Craig. It was just after nine at night, and he’d come home late. She’d started in on him immediately, until they’d brought the fight outside. He’d exited their home first, and she’d chased after him. Her drunken state didn’t help her. She’d almost tripped in her haste to catch him before he got in his car. He’d caught her before she fell, but had pushed her away while they continued arguing about her drinking and the money missing from their bank account.

I’d arrived in Melbourne late that afternoon and had intended to get eyes on Tenille’s place, suss out the area and then crash at my motel before going back to see her in the morning. I didn’t want our first conversation after fourteen years to be late at night when everyone was tired. However, my plans changed when their fight became physical. No fucking way would I stand by and watch a woman get hurt. Especially not my wife.

I covered the distance between the three of us fast but not fast enough to stop his palm from connecting with her cheek. Everything that happened in the few moments after was a blur. Between them yelling at each other, Tenille trying to hit him back, me trying to intercept, and Tenille’s shock when she realised who I was, I wasn’t sure how it all went down. But I would never forget the look on her face as recognition set in.

“Aiden?” My name fell from her lips on a strangled cry. I felt every ounce of her pain and confusion in that cry. And the knowledge that I’d caused her any kind of agony cut deeper than it had in the past fourteen years.

“What the fuck?” Craig’s confusion mirrored Tenille’s. We’d never met, so he had no way of knowing me, but he knew my name.

“No… it can’t be. You’re dead,” Tenille said as she lurched my way, bewilderment splashed across her face.

“Tenille,” I started, but stopped when she gasped.

“Oh my God!” She stood in front of me, eyes wide, and placed her hand against my cheek. “You look different, but I would know that voice anywhere,” she said as she brought her other hand to my face also.

I did look different. I’d packed on a fuckload of muscle, inked half of my skin and grown a beard. I sure as hell wasn’t the scrawny kid she’d married.

She madly moved her hands over my face, as if she was trying to feel for something she recognised. I gave her a few moments and then reached for one of her hands to stop her. “It’s me.”

Her breathing slowed at the same time her hands did. Her body stilled also. And then she slapped me, right about the same time her eyes flashed with anger. “You fucking bastard! Where the fuck have you been?”

I deserved that slap, so I took it. But when she started in on me by punching my chest, I shut that shit down fast. Grabbing both her hands, I pulled them away from my body. “I see some things haven’t changed,” I muttered. Tenille had often used physical violence in an attempt to get her point across.

“Yeah, well when I discover my husband didn’t really die, but rather just left me without another word, you can bet your fucking ass I’m going to react this way.”

Craig took that moment to step in. Finally. If I were him, I would have involved myself from the beginning. “You’ve got a fucking nerve showing up like this. I dragged Tenille from the shit you left her in. If you think I’m about to let you back into her life, to screw her over again, you’re seriously mistaken, asshole.”

I’d held my temper in check because I owed Tenille the space to be angry and hurt. But I didn’t fucking owe this asshole a thing. My shoulder’s tensed as I met his gaze. “I don’t want a fucking thing. But let’s get something straight here, Craig. You didn’t drag Tenille from any-fucking-thing. I made sure she was set up financially before I left. I made sure she had everything she needed. By the time you came on the scene, she wasn’t in any shit. But you’ve sure as fuck put here there now, haven’t you, motherfucker?”

“Fuck you!” he spat as he threw a punch at me.

I’d seen that coming and blocked it by grabbing hold of his arm and shoving him with enough force to knock him flat on his ass. Ignoring Tenille’s shocked gasp, I stepped over his body and pushed him so he was on his back. Pinning his hands to the ground, I said, “A lot of shit has gone down in this family, and I’m here to sort it out for you. I may have walked away from Tenille and Charlotte once, but I’ll be fucked if I’ll stand back and watch them suffer again. I suggest you get on board with that or else you and I are gonna have trouble. And trouble with me is the last fucking thing you want.” Men like Craig—small men who paraded as big fucking men—were best dealt with fast. He needed to know where we both stood. And although he was married to Tenille, that meant very little to me. As far as I was concerned, it was my job to make sure she was okay.

“Mum, what’s going on?”

The air in my lungs disappeared at the sound of my daughter’s voice. It felt like a hammer had hit my chest, causing my heart to beat in erratic, painful throbs that roared in my ears and screamed through my body.

I stood hunched over Craig, frozen to the spot, unable to look up. Fourteen fucking years without that voice in my life, without her in my life, had caused me more torment than anything else had ever come close to causing me.

I desperately wanted to look at her, but my greatest fear stood between us, almost suffocating the life out of me. I hadn’t expected that, and it threw me. I didn’t fucking acknowledge fear in my life, but this one had haunted me for so long that it had rooted itself deep inside.

What if Charlotte refused to accept me?

Fuck.

“Go back inside, Charlotte,” Tenille urged.

“Not until you tell me who that is and why he’s threatening Dad.”

Dad.

That word slashed right through me as the world began to spin. Jesus, I was losing my shit. And still struggling for fucking air.

It was Craig who snapped me out of it when he pushed me away and yelled, “Charlie, for fuck’s sake, go back inside! This has nothing to do with you.”

Charlie.

She was my fucking Charlie, not his.

My head snapped up, and I finally caught a glimpse of the child I’d missed every single day since I’d left. If I thought I’d been frozen a moment ago, I was completely and utterly rooted to the spot now. Every inch of my skin shivered with a sensation I hadn’t felt in sixteen years. It was as if I was seeing her for the very first time again. This was the same feeling I’d felt when I’d laid eyes on her at birth.

Wonder.

Awe.

Disbelief.

Love.

As I stood staring at her long dark curls that were an exact replica of my mother’s, and lips that were the same as Tenille’s, she placed her hands on her hips and snapped, “God, you can be such an asshole!” With a huff, she spun and stomped back into the house.

I tracked her movements until I couldn’t see her anymore. Craig took the opportunity to attack while my attention was elsewhere.

His fist smashed into my face hard, leaving the kind of pain that usually sent me into a rage. This time, however, I locked that shit down tight. The last thing I wanted to chance was Charlotte seeing that from inside the house. Instead, my hard glare met his as I moved directly in front of him. “The only thing holding me back from knocking you the fuck out is my daughter. You do that—”

“She’s not your daughter, asshole. You gave up that right the minute you left town and never looked back.”

I took a deep breath as I clenched my fists by my side. “She is my daughter. Yeah, I left town, but I never stopped watching over her. You think you and Tenille have been getting by on your own all these years? Think back to the time you lost your job because you smashed your boss’s face in at the pub that Friday night. You ever wonder how you had a job offer on the Monday morning? And the time you blew through five grand at the casino? You never stopped to ask how that money magically appeared back in your account the next day?” At the shock lining his face, I nodded. “Yeah, you get the idea. We won’t rehash every single time you fucked up and I fixed it before Tenille ever had to know.”

Craig didn’t have a comeback, but Tenille delivered one that did the work of a thousand armies deployed to destroy. “A man who isn’t there to kiss their child’s fears away, and bandage their wounds, and help with homework, and tuck them in at night while telling them monsters don’t exist, and teach them that they are enough is not a father, Aiden. He’s simply the guy that donated some fucking sperm. Don’t get the two mixed up.” I met her hard gaze right before she added, “Helping me and Craig get by certainly doesn’t make you a father. Whatever help you think we need right now, we don’t, so just go back to wherever you came from and leave us alone.”

I watched in silence as she stalked back inside, her earlier drunken wobble almost gone completely. The sound of the door slamming closed behind her filled the night air with a reminder that I was going to have to work hard to gain her trust back. I had expected that, but reality was always a harsh bitch compared to expectations.