Blue
: Chapter 3

I CLUTCHED my bag to my chest and shuffled myself down the thin aisle of the plane. I tried not to make a scene, but everyone else was already seated, their eyes rolling into the backs of their heads as I passed.

We were running thirty minutes behind schedule, and I was entirely at fault. Unfortunately, a panic attack had greeted me like an old acquaintance in the departure lounge. I wasn’t sure if the pilot made a habit of allowing his passengers the lenience that I took or whether he caught on to my last name and feared for his job. Probably the latter, considering my father owned the airline. But the passengers on board the aircraft hadn’t known about my situation. Row after row of accusation and judgement stared back at me. What they saw versus what they knew were vastly different. It was easy to assume I was a spoiled brat living out of daddy’s pocket with my blonde hair, made-up face, and designer clothes. And they were right, to an extent. A normal seventeen-year-old wouldn’t be wearing the latest Givenchy on an economy flight. Maybe I shouldn’t have fought with the iconic James Sterling over flying first class and instead given him his one final hurrah.

I continued down the aisle and pulled my oversized black sunglasses over my eyes, allowing them to serve as my armour. Halfway, I spotted a pink bunny on the floor and a little girl with pigtails attempting to reach for it from her seat. Her arms weren’t quite long enough, and the harder she tried, the more she seemed to blush in frustration.

Once I neared, I crouched down to retrieve it, careful not to show too much skin in my short black dress. She beamed a big toothy grin when I handed it to her. By instinct, I smiled back. Innocence was hard to come by and only much harder to grasp as you grew up because life’s lessons stole it away from you, replacing it only with guilt and bitterness. I’d know because I was her once–the little girl clutching her bunny to her chest. The little girl that left her bunny behind.

Beside her, a woman bounced a crying baby on her lap and offered me her thanks, looking moments away from a breakdown.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, not entirely sure why I was apologising instead of offering back a simple “no problem.” I supposed being an empath was both a blessing and a curse. I could resonate with people on a level that not everyone understood, but it also magnified my issues. Cue my panic attack–sudden but predicted.

In my crouched position, I picked a piece of lint from my dress, then looked at the little girl one last time as I stood, gently tugging at one of her pigtails. “I had a bunny just like that once,” I said, sharing something I would usually keep to myself. “Keep it safe, or you might lose him for good.”

Her features pulled together, but she nodded in understanding, clutching her bunny tight to her chest like it was precious cargo.

My nerves re-emerged as I continued down the aisle with each step. Being on this plane meant I was leaving behind what I’d once considered my future. Just the fear of that alone was overwhelming. Little did I know what my future had really entailed. I’d likely spend my youth lounging by our pool, drinking stolen champagne flutes from passing waiters while my father hosted some lavish party, full of females walking around in their minuscule bathing suits. It was contradictory, but I loved my father as much as I loathed him for being so overbearing and overprotective. Which was why leaving that lifestyle behind was so important to me.

Something about the unknown terrified me as much as it excited me. And something about doing this on my own felt like it freed me from who I was expected to be. Even if I had no idea who I was going to become.

Sometimes I wondered why I couldn’t just be an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl without these heavy thoughts residing in my head, making me feel like an outcast.

I checked my ticket for my seat number while both my heart and head wheezed with uncertainty—and that’s when I realised I was still at least a quarter of the plane away from my seat. I tried not to think about how many more dirty looks I’d endure as I continued down the aisle, although I should have been used to it. Being brought up in a life where money overpowered everything, people often made assumptions based on what I looked like and who my father was, without knowing who or what was under the surface.

My father called it jealousy.

I called it stupidity.

The artificial blonde weaved into my brown hair may have been fake, but nothing else was when it came to my looks. I’d lost count of the number of times someone had asked me if my lips were natural. Or where I’d found a plastic surgeon who had happily risked his reputation to offer surgery to someone my age. They hadn’t known I was the image of my mother. And I only knew so because of the photographs my father often put in my room right before I threw them out.

I couldn’t help but want to erase her very existence.

I couldn’t stand to remember her happy after the way I repeatedly watched her die in my nightmares.

Catching the eye of a flight attendant standing near the back of the plane, I snapped out of my trance. She’d be pretty if it weren’t for the look of annoyance she wore, aimed right at me. There was no disguising the displeasure that shone in her overly made-up eyes. But as I got closer, she smiled all the same. I tried hard to control my own eyes from rolling, but it was deemed impossible. I’d finally reached my limit, I guess.

What could I say?

Nobody’s perfect, even the girl wearing Givenchy.

I didn’t return the fake smile she gave me, but I did say, “Thank you,” as she held out her arm, pointing in the direction of my seat. Because against being raised spoilt, I still knew right from wrong. I learned how a simple hello, a please, and a thank you could easily alter someone’s day. Manners didn’t cost a thing, yet there were people in the world too selfish to endorse them.

Finally, I located my seat—the middle in a row of three. Except the lady on the outer chair, closest to me, was asleep and considerably large, which meant I’d struggle to pass her.

Before I attempted to wake her, I raised on my tiptoes in my suede boots and opened the overhead compartment to squeeze in my bag. A floral beach bag and a large backpack already occupied the space, not leaving much room for anything else, but after pushing the bags to either side, I managed to fit mine between them.

I pursed my lips in satisfaction as I sank back on my heels. Then, I gently tapped the lady’s shoulder, hoping to wake her. When she didn’t flinch, my eyes searched out the air hostess, requiring some assistance. Only she refused to acknowledge me and instead made her way down the aisle on the opposite side of the plane.

“Seriously?” I murmured. She clearly didn’t care for my name, not that I’d use it to gain an advantage. That wasn’t who I was, contrary to what others might’ve believed.

I tapped the lady’s shoulder again, a little harder this time, and gave it a sort of shake. At the sounds of a snigger, I looked over my shoulder to see a little boy with curly auburn hair picking his nose. “My granny could sleep through a hurricane. You’ll probably have to climb her.”

He had a weak London accent. It was quite like my own, adopted from my father, only with a touch of… American, I suppose. I’d never really thought about my accent. Not the same way I did about other things. Like why were there spaces between the stars? Why was my life spared instead of my mother’s? And why was it I suffered for something I had no control over?

I wondered if other seventeen-year-olds thought the same way I did. By choice, my thoughts weren’t something I discussed with my friends over lunch in the school canteen. We’d chat about which member of the football team Kourtney Jacobs had dropped her panties for over the weekend, or how Marco had been caught injecting himself with who knows what before practice by the school janitor. Sometimes I wondered if they knew me–I mean, really knew me–what kind of things would they say?

Would they consider me as fragile as my father did?

Would they accept me for being as fucked up as I was?

I sighed.

“Climb her?”

The boy grinned at me, showing a gap between his two front teeth, and I turned my attention back to the task at hand.

Suddenly, another air hostess, blonde and slightly older, called to me with a bite to her tone. “Miss, you need to sit down as we prepare for take-off.”

It was safe to say the cabin crew’s patience for me was thinning by the second. There was no disguising my huff of frustration or the “fuck my life” that fell from my mouth. I wanted to raise my middle finger and wave it through the air to convince myself that I was like my peers. But I didn’t.

I turned, dropping my chin to wink at the little boy over the rim of my sunglasses. “Looks like I’m climbing your granny, kiddo. Close your eyes; else you might see my ass.”

The gapless toothed kid grinned wider and pinched his eyes closed tight. And I was happy to discover his parents were raising a gentleman. So then, without any other option, I raised my leg, wedged my foot on the chair’s armrest of the row in front, and placed my arm on the back of the headrest, scaling myself across to my allocated seat. I felt like some damn spider monkey. My laced underwear barely covered my ass. All I could think was if my friends could have witnessed this, they’d have pissed themselves. I’d never live it down. And if we were still in school, I’d be the topic of canteen gossip.

As I moved across the back of the chair, I noticed a guy seated on the far side with his hoodie pulled down over his face. He hadn’t bothered acknowledging me, so I could only assume he was asleep or perhaps didn’t give a shit for the whole charade. At the very least, I was saved from even more embarrassment. Until I fell into my chair, accidentally elbowing him.

“Fuck,” we both cursed.

At the same time, my sunglasses dropped from my face, landing somewhere on the floor with a clatter. “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, not sparing the guy beside me a second glance as I bent down to pick them up.

As my hands blindly searched the floor, my head practically rested on the stranger’s cotton clad thigh due to the limited space riding economy. Coincidentally, it only made me more flustered. Once I caught my sunglasses in my grip, I sat back up in my chair, dropping them to my lap. Then I positioned my elbows forward, careful not to touch either passenger beside me as I smoothed my hair back into place.

I jumped when the small dashboard above my head chimed, ordering me to fasten my seatbelt. Just as quick, the lights inside the plane flickered off. Somehow, I’d missed the whole ‘this is what to do in case of an emergency’ talk, as if there was an inch of possibility you could survive plummeting to your death. Obviously, you couldn’t. My father drilled that into me from a young age. How death can happen in the blink of an eye. You could be here one minute, gone the next. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. Blah blah blah. He coddled and cosseted me throughout my childhood, worried he’d lose me as he lost my mother. He didn’t need to program it into my head when I’d been there to witness first-hand how fast things could change.

My whole life had been a bit of a cliche.

Poor little rich girl.

I stroked a finger across the small scar on my collarbone, on edge with the reminder. That’s when I felt eyes burning into the side of my head from the seat beside me. Maybe the guy had seen me make an ass of myself. Or was he trying to figure me out? Or did I think that because my guard was up, and my anxiety was screaming to be heard? No one could blame me, could they? I’d had enough of people’s judgement today.

Lifting my chin, I turned my head to face the nameless dude to my side, dropping my hand as he dropped his hood.

The first thing I noticed was his eyes. One brown, one green, as they drank me in like a shot of my father’s finest whiskey.

“Huh,” I murmured. I hadn’t intended to say anything, yet it was my lips’ first and only response.

The corners of his mouth tipped up with a hint of a smirk, and ever so slowly, his tongue came out to lick his full bottom lip. He had the perfect amount of stubble covering his defined jawline, and his chocolate brown hair was neatly tapered on the sides with just enough length on top to run my fingers through. It was more wavy than curly. With the way it laid, I could tell it was previously styled with precision, only flattened by his hood.

I diverted my attention to his eyes, staring at him through my own greenish-blue.

He said one word, and immediately I pulled my attention from his eyes to his mouth as I watched each syllable sound through his lips.

“Heterochromia.”

My eyebrows pinched together, and my lips formed a pout, not understanding the word or what it meant.

“I was born with a genetic mutation, and nope,” he said exasperatedly, “there’s nowt wrong with my quality of vision.”

I bit my bottom lip to hold back a shy smile, not missing the undercurrent of his statement. “And I didn’t ask,” I responded, taken aback at his need to clarify.

“You didn’t have to.”

He had an accent I couldn’t place–something British, dampened by the same London accent as my father’s.

“You look familiar,” I said with a hint of uncertainty. My eyes squinted as I took him in for the second time. Was he famous? A social media influencer? A model for Calvin Klein? Moments passed in silence as my brain tried to place him. And then it clicked–my recognition falling like dominoes.

“Wait. Wait.”

His head was off-kilter on the headrest of his seat when he drawled out, “Waiting,” in a lazy pillow talk kind of way.

“I know you.”

It was subtle, but he nodded.

“Oh my God. My father sent you, didn’t he?” Although I couldn’t recall when we’d met, my mind attempted to connect the dots. Noticing my struggle, he took out a black metallic card from the pocket of his hoodie and showed me his ID. It was the same ID as my father’s. One he shared with all members of his staff. Like they were all privy to Sterling business, and I was not.

I pulled at the material against my thighs. I knew that not much ever happened by coincidence when it came to my life.

“You’re all grown up,” he said when I said nothing.

It felt more like an observation than a statement with the way his eyes began to move across every tittle of my face. His voice was low but rough, as if he smoked ten a day. But a small inhale through my nose told me he didn’t smell like cigarettes. He smelt like expensive cologne and pheromones. His sleeves were pushed a small distance up his arms, showcasing strong veins. He had a tan, his skin a touch lighter on his arm where he’d usually wear a watch. And that’s when I first noticed his knuckles.

Red, blue, and bruised.

“What happened to your hand?”

He clenched his reddened fist and clucked his tongue, never moving his eyes from mine. They were intense and full of severity, like he had something to say but wouldn’t. But whatever the reason for his bloody hand, he didn’t feel like talking about it. He remained quiet.

I’m not sure why, but not understanding something was always harder to cope with than not knowing, even if the thing in question had no relevance to me.

I turned away and faced forward, trying to breathe through the anxiety that was beginning to rework its way into my chest. The pressure only magnified once the plane started to gain speed down the runway. Tremors shot through me like waves, so I knotted my fingers together on my lap, hoping it would calm my shaking hands.

Somehow, the handsome sort of stranger had served as a temporary distraction to my fear of flying. But there was no backing out now, and definitely no time for regrets.

“Flying makes you nervous,” he practically whispered against my ear. He hadn’t changed his position once, giving him the vantage point. He was able to read me easily, and it seemed I couldn’t have been any more transparent when a shiver floated from my neck and down the length of my body.

“Something like that.”

He held his palm out to me, and I eyed it sceptically.

“Hold it if you want.”

One hand went to my throat as my voice shook not only with nerves but with the vibration of the aircraft. “I don’t hold hands with strangers.”

Despite my words, I felt an unfamiliar sensation in my stomach. A feeling that somehow convinced me that though he was somewhat a stranger, and although his knuckles were bloody and bruised, there was something about him that was safe.

Before I could think any deeper about what the stranger beside me had asked, he sighed as if I was acting obnoxious. Then without giving me time to engage, he pushed his palm underneath mine and linked our fingers together, squeezing to keep my hand locked in his as the plane inclined towards the sky.

WALKER

I ALL BUT pulled my gaze from her face and to her hand. “Fear is a survival instinct,” I said, squeezing her fingers between mine.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she replied. But there was something in her tone that didn’t convince me. She tried to pull her hand away, but that only made me hold it tighter.

“Are you sure about that? We’re all afraid of something.” One of the reasons I sat on this plane was because I was afraid. Afraid of what would have become of me if I decided against what James had asked. Afraid of continuing the mundane normality of my last eleven years, and not taking the plunge to do what I’ve wanted since the day Noah moved out. Though it seemed I was full of shit, because I’d already leased the penthouse. I’d already made my choice. It was the guilt sitting in my stomach that had me second-guessing myself. It had never been my intention to hurt Sophia, but it didn’t matter if I left or stayed, I’d hurt her either way.

I knew taking Blue’s hand was unethical. That contact of this kind wasn’t asked of me whatsoever. But she was young and under distress–at least that’s what I told myself. It was nothing to do with the annoyance I felt with my wife, or the annoyance I felt with my fucking life. It had absolutely nothing to do with the alcohol swimming in my veins. Alcohol that I’d disguised in a throwaway bottle of water before boarding the flight, all for the lie of sobriety. Perhaps it was all that and more. The least I could do was fuck with her to humour myself. It’s how little Sophia thought of me after all.

My attention recoiled when Blue made a noise in her throat that could only be described as frustration, and her nails bit into the top of my hand. “I knew my father letting me leave quietly was too good to be true. He couldn’t just let me go without having the last say, could he?” She attempted to remove her hand from mine again but failed. “This is a joke, right?”

I sighed. I had more credentials than to serve as Blue Sterling’s babysitter, but it was all for a worthy cause.

“I could think of better things to do with my time,” I told her. “I wish it were a joke.”

She let out a breath that signified defeat as she searched my eyes for answers. In the end, she chose not to argue with me on the matter.

“So what, you’re like, my chauffeur? Are you going to be reporting my every move?”

“Depends.” I shrugged a shoulder and rolled my head back in her direction. “Does every move of yours warrant reporting?”

There was a glint of something in her eyes. It read sugar, spice, and all things fucking nice. But the shrug of her shoulder and the up-turn tilt of her lips was the only response I needed.

“You and I both know this is out of your hands,” I said. Having me in her life temporarily was the lesser of two evils. She’d have never left Miami if her father hadn’t given her his permission. Besides, this wasn’t anything like a marriage, so I counted that a win. And thank fuck for that, because I already had one of those. A wildly fucked up marriage, nonetheless. With this, either of us could tap out at any time if shit got too much. We wouldn’t have to worry about a piece of paper tying us together. Except I knew there was only one thing that would have me tapping out of what was essentially the most significant move of my career. And I had no plans to die anytime soon.

“Whatever. You can let go now,” she said, trying to pry her hand from mine.

I looked down at our entwined fingers and noticed how I was possibly holding her small hand a fraction too tight. Strangely, I liked the way her skin felt against my own, how the warmth of her palm distracted me from the coldness in mine. In spite of all that, in spite of how much I craved something to make up for what I’d… lost, I loosened my grip. She was barely an adult compared to my age of thirty-four. I had years on her. She was still just a kid, and this wasn’t adequate behaviour. It wasn’t at all the behaviour her father expected of me. Regardless of how I’d watched him treat women in the past, he’d wear my balls as cufflinks if he knew just how reckless I was being.

She slipped her hand away, wiping both her palms against the hem of her short black dress. Designer, of course. Overpriced sunglasses and Louboutin suede boots made up the rest of her attire, which begged me to ask, “Why wouldn’t you go to college back home when you have everything there at your disposal?”

“How well do you actually know my father?”

Unamused, I raised a brow. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I probably knew him better than she did. “Well enough.”

“So your question was rhetorical, then?”

I chose not to respond to her question the way she probably expected, much as she decided not to respond to mine. It was apparent that her father’s money had turned her into a brat. A lot like mine had Sophia. Though, I wasn’t blind. Not only did I believe that it was her last name that helped solve her first world problems, but she was a beautiful girl, albeit much younger than me and totally forbidden. In normal circumstances–one where I wasn’t in close business with her father–perhaps one where I was casually strolling down Bond Street, it’s plausible I would have looked twice. Of course, I would have never acted on it. And undoubtedly, Blue’s age factored into it too. She didn’t look like most seventeen-year-olds. At least none that I’d ever known. She was well dressed, with shiny brown and blonde hair. Petite, but with curves in all the appropriate places. Every teenage boy’s wet dream, I’m sure. Yet, it wasn’t those assets I found most appealing. I couldn’t help but admire her face–the fullness of her pink lips and thick dark lashes surrounding eyes the colour of sea glass. I could always appreciate something beautiful when I saw it.

Marriage didn’t blind me–it just drove me to drink.

She breathed a sigh and returned to her previous position, facing forward. Her eyes were on the back of the chair in front of her when she spoke again. “My father has wanted me to stay within the lines he’d mapped out for me since I was old enough to know better. Old enough to want more than a safe and wealthy lifestyle. He’d prefer it if I lived in the bubble he created, kept out of harm’s way.”

“Because of your mother’s death?” I knew it was the most probable reason, but found myself asking the question anyway.

She snapped her head back in my direction. “Wow,” she drawled. “You’re going there, really?”

Taken aback by her reaction, my eyebrows pinched together. “What?”

“I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it. You’re not a shrink, are you?”

“No, I’m not a shrink,” I said with a frown. I ran my fingers over my knuckles, not feeling the need to disclose anything else if she didn’t like talking about it–to explain that I’d witnessed the car accident–as none of it held much relevance to my present. At least it didn’t until today. James said she was fragile. The question was how fragile?

After a few minutes of loaded silence, she decided to speak again. And what she shared had me understanding her a little better. “He worries about me way more than he should. And because of that, he controls everything. He tries to puppeteer every aspect of my life because he thinks he’s doing the right thing. It’s almost as if he overcompensates for the parent not here. Do you know how suffocating that feels?”

Keeping my gaze firmly on hers, I gnawed the inside of my cheek as a way to stop myself from saying something that might get me into trouble. We, too, didn’t speak of the accident that took her mother. But none of that stopped me from noticing the resentment Blue held for her father in her eyes. If only she realised how fortunate she was to have one parent that gave a fuck rather than two who didn’t. Not all of us were so lucky.

“I’m trying to say that I’m done living in his bubble. We don’t have much of a relationship outside of his controlling ways. And if you know him as well as you say you do, for him to trust you anyway, then you must have some understanding of what I’m telling you. He likes to take charge. I’m sure you’re not stupid. Come on; it’s why you’re sitting next to me right now. Tell me it’s not.”

I continued to frown, choosing to avoid her heavy stare by keeping my eyes down. “I’m sure he has his reasons. Not every person deals with grief the same,” I said. “It can be different for everyone. Perhaps it’s not right–the way he cares about you–but it’s not wrong.”

She scoffed. “Isn’t it?”

I understood what she was trying to say. I understood how it felt to be under the control of someone else, or something else, for whatever reason. I understood how hard the fight could be to get out of something that felt so set in its ways. But fuck being soft just because I felt a touch of sympathy for her.

“It’s not my job to chat shit, and neither is it my duty to attend your pity party for one.”

Regardless of what I could have said, I had to act like I had it together if I wanted to keep James happy. I wasn’t her friend. I was barely an acquaintance. And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to lose a chance as big as the one James offered me so early in my career. Work was the only thing in my life that was faithful, and although this wasn’t my usual way of business, ultimately, it was still business. It was much more than that in actuality because it meant my name above the fucking door of a club I’d worked myself to the bone for.

Blue didn’t answer me. And though she didn’t strike me as a dull girl, I wanted to be certain. I couldn’t have her bad-mouthing her father or burrowing her way under my skin.

“Surely you’re not naive enough to misinterpret that your father has your best intentions at heart?”

“No,” she hummed, surprising me. “I know he does, but that doesn’t mean I want him to control my entire life. I need to experience things on my own—make my own mistakes. Experience my own happiness. My first heartbreak. If my choices become my downfall, then I’ll handle them. I don’t need him to pick me up every time I fall over.”

“He’d never allow such a downfall to happen to you, kid.” I remained nonchalant but spoke in a tone that was anything but. Fuck, I’d easily trade her heartbreak for anything she had to offer Monday through Sunday. I still battled with my own, often thinking of the day Noah was taken into foster care. The guilt went hand in hand with the tragedy.

No one deserved to feel as though their heart was being pulled every which way from their chest while their head battled with the why.

She rolled her eyes, then casually pushed her hand down through the top of her dress and presumably into her bra before pulling out a small orange pill. “They help me sleep.” And then she popped one into her mouth like it was nowt more than a mint. My eyes lingered on her lips until I pulled them back to her eyes.

“Prescribed?” I asked. “I take it your father knows.”

I had to be sure. If James required my assistance, then I needed to know everything about the girl to accommodate her the way I was expected. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to James that his daughter had a drug addiction, and I’d sent her in a taxi to a rehabilitation clinic as soon as she stepped a heeled foot off the plane. The Lagoon had only just recovered from a drug raid, forced by the tabloids with their constant publication of lies. They found nothing, but I couldn’t imagine James would still want to sign over his seventy percent if it turned out Blue did have a habit. In fact, he’d probably take it away.

I waited for Blue to speak, my eyes on the gentle movement of her throat as she swallowed.

She frowned, and for a moment she seemed confused, but then she said, “Duh, how else would I have gotten them through security?”

That attitude was as defensive as it was sassy. I couldn’t hide my smirk even if I wanted to. “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?”

Her cheeks blushed a light shade of pink, but she didn’t offer me a reply. As much as I wanted to ask more. More about her–more about her wants and needs, her likes and dislikes, all to keep James happy and the ball in my court–I remained tight-lipped, willing myself to think more rationally. I couldn’t bombard her. She likely wouldn’t give more than she could get, already backed into a corner like a feral kitten.

It took her forty minutes to drift off to sleep after taking her medication. To my surprise, and in the pretence of what looked like a tender moment, her head fell to the side and laid on my shoulder, where I had a strange sense it would remain for the entire flight.

It had been a long time since I’d been so close to another female who wasn’t my wife. The saddest thing was how much more relaxed I felt knowing it wasn’t Sophia’s head on my shoulder.

What the fuck did that say about me?

It said a lot about my marriage, but not a whole lot about this goddamn situation I’d fallen victim to.

I was grateful Blue hadn’t argued with me over her father’s wishes. But I was confident she would throw a tantrum once the plane touched down at Heathrow. I was expecting to be faced with a less appealing version of her once she realised I wasn’t her chauffeur but much more than that. I was giving her a roof over her head. Somewhere to eat, sleep, and piss.

However, with her asleep on my shoulder, it did give me time to process the information she had shared before.

She said she wasn’t afraid of anything, but her tremor told me otherwise. It didn’t matter how many times I went around in circles; the truth was, I kept coming back to the same conclusion. Her fear of flying was likely just the tip of one giant iceberg, encouraged by her father’s unhealthy obsession to wrap her in cotton wool.

Though I couldn’t say I blamed him.

Not after witnessing what he’d lost.

Not after throwing my fist through the window of his wife’s car and hurling his three-year-old daughter into the safety of my arms.