I stayed.
I sold my truck to cover the first three months of bills. I picked up extra shifts and learned how to pack six different lunches at six in the morning. I learned how to braid hair from a YouTube video. I signed permission slips, sat through nightmares, and drove to emergency rooms for stitches and fevers at hours when the rest of the world was asleep.
I made a decision I've never once regretted.
Noah never made it easy. He tested every boundary I had.
But he also quietly, over the years, started calling me Dad. Not because I asked. Just one afternoon it was there, slipped into a sentence, and neither one of us made a big deal of it.
***
Ten years passed.
The little one who'd called me "Mr. Ryan" was twelve now. Two of the middle kids were in high school. And Noah, who'd watched me that first summer like he was waiting for me to bolt, had gone off to college and grown into someone Claire would've been so proud of.
