WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

26 - What Blood Could Never Give

HANA'S POV

My father stops in the doorway when he sees us. His eyes move from my mother's tear-streaked face to mine, and I watch the exact moment he realizes something has happened. He doesn't ask what it is immediately. He just stands there, one hand still wrapped around his keys, his expression changing slowly from confusion to concern. 

"Hana?" He says, and there is something so familiar about the way he says my name that it nearly breaks me. 

I have heard that voice in every version of my life. When I was five and had a fever. When I was ten and had fallen off my bicycle. When I was thirteen and had come home crying because I had failed an exam I had studied weeks for. When I was seventeen and had slammed my bedroom door because he had refused to let me go somewhere with friends. It is the same voice now, only softer. 

"What's wrong?" I look at him, really look at him, and for the first time I am seeing the man behind all the rules. The man behind the expectations. The man who stayed. 

"Dad," I whisper, and his face tightens immediately. "Come sit down."

He glances at my mother, and whatever he sees there makes him set his keys on the counter without another word. He walks toward us slowly, like he is approaching something fragile, and when he pulls out the chair beside me, he doesn't sit until I nod. 

For a few seconds, none of us speaks. The silence is unbearable. My mother looks between us, tears still shining on her cheeks, and I suddenly understand that she has been afraid of this moment for years. Maybe he has too.

I stare at his hands resting on the table. I know those hands. I know the small scar across his knuckle from when I was little and he tried to fix my bicycle himself. I know how warm they are because they were the hands that tucked blankets around me, held my forehead when I was sick, steadied my shoulders before every important event and squeezed mine whenever I was too nervous to speak. I know all of this, and somehow knowing the truth hasn't erased any of it. If anything, it has made every memory sharper. 

"Mom told me," I finally say. His eyes close for the briefest second. He doesn't ask what she told me. He already knows. "About my biological father." His jaw tightens. "And about you." 

He looks at me then, and there is something unbearably sad in his eyes. "I see."

"Why didn't you tell me?" The question comes out smaller than I intended. "Why did you let me spend my entire life thinking you were my biological father?" 

He exhales slowly, looking down at his hands. "Because I was afraid." The answer catches me off guard. My father has never been a man I associated with fear. He has always seemed impossible to shake, impossible to intimidate, the kind of person who could walk into any room and make everyone straighten their backs without saying a word. 

"Afraid of what?" I ask. 

"Of losing you." My throat tightens. "I knew what people would say. I knew what your grandfather would think. I knew what would happen if the truth became something everyone could use against you. But mostly..." He pauses, and his voice breaks just slightly. "Mostly I was afraid that one day you'd look at me differently." 

I swallow. "Like I'm looking at you now?" 

"Yes." His eyes don't leave mine. "I was afraid you'd wake up one morning and decide that because I didn't give you your blood, I didn't deserve to be called your father."

A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it. "Did you ever think that I wasn't really your daughter?" 

His expression changes immediately, almost offended by the question. "Never." The answer is so quick, so absolute, that something inside me cracks. "Not once." He reaches for my hand, hesitates for half a second, and then places his palm over it. "Hana, listen to me. I have never once thought of you as anything other than my daughter. Not when you were born. Not when you were five. Not when you were fifteen. Not now. Biology doesn't get to rewrite eighteen years of loving you." His thumb moves slowly over my knuckles. "You think I stayed because I felt sorry for you? I didn't. I stayed because the first time I held you, you were mine. That's the truth. You were so small." His voice softens, and I can hear the memory in it. "Your mother put you in my arms and you were barely awake. You had this tiny little hand curled against your chest, and you were making this ridiculous little sound because you were hungry. I remember looking at you and thinking..." He laughs quietly, but his eyes have begun to shine. "I remember thinking, how could anyone look at this child and leave? How could anyone hold you and decide you weren't worth staying for?"