Daddy Issues

Yearning for Emma

Steve watched Aleks sleep, her breath steady now, lashes still damp from crying. She had cried so hard earlier - trembling, clutching him like he might disappear between heartbeats. He had never seen anyone want him that much. Need him like that.

It should have made him uncomfortable. He knew that. But it didn’t.

What it made him feel was something closer to guilt. Not because of the age gap, not because people would judge them - he was past caring about that. No, it was because every time Aleks reached for him like that - terrified, desperate - it stirred something old and unfinished in him. A wound he thought had scarred over.

Emma.

God, Emma.

He turned away from Aleks gently and walked to the window, pulling the curtain back just enough to look out. Evening had draped itself across the rooftops. Cars passed slowly on the road below.

He remembered when Emma was five or six, small enough to sit on his shoulders and scream with laughter when he ran through the park pretending to be a dragon. She used to call him “her prince,” said she’d never get married because no one would ever be better than Daddy.

They’d been inseparable once. He used to carry a folded picture she’d drawn of the two of them in his wallet and it meant everything.

And then, one day, she wasn’t a little girl anymore.

She turned thirteen and started retreating behind closed doors and headphones. Started flinching when he asked about school. Started rolling her eyes when he tried to hug her in public. She called him “Steve” once during an argument. Just to hurt him.

He didn’t even know when it happened exactly. When he went from being her entire world to an unwanted guest in it. One day she was asking him to braid her hair before school, and the next, she was calling him judgmental, out of touch, boring.

He tried. Of course he tried. But the tighter he reached, the faster she slipped away.

And now… well, she was twenty-two. Still polite when they talked. Still sent a birthday card. But it was like talking to someone else’s daughter.

The ache of that loss hadn’t left him.

So when Aleks called him Daddy, it didn’t just hit the part of him that craved affection - it hit the part of him that was still grieving.

Maybe that was why her desperation didn’t scare him. Maybe that was why, instead of pushing her away when she sobbed into his shirt, he just held her tighter. Because there was something in her that echoed his own broken pieces.

She made him feel needed again.

But more than that - she made him feel like maybe he hadn’t failed entirely.

When she looked at him with those too-young eyes, pleading and shining, he saw Emma as she used to be. He saw the version of himself that still had something to give. That wasn’t just aging and watching the people he loved slip away.

Aleks didn’t want a boyfriend. What she wanted was certainty. Permanence. A shelter from the storm she didn’t know how to name.

She stirred slightly in bed, rolling onto her back, murmuring something in her sleep. He watched the soft rise and fall of her chest, the slight crease in her brow even in rest.

She was still so young. Not just in years, but in the way she loved - recklessly, hungrily, like the world might collapse if he looked away for too long.

Part of him knew this could destroy her. Or him. Or both.

But another part - larger, louder - kept whispering that maybe, just maybe, this was his second chance.

Not to be a father again. Not to relive something already lost.

But to be seen again. Held. Wanted.

She made him feel like he mattered. Not because of what he had achieved, or how wise he was, but because of something primal and raw - because he made her feel safe. Because when she cried, she reached for him. Not anyone else. Him.

He stepped back from the window, the ache in his chest familiar, but quieter now.

He crawled into bed beside her, careful not to wake her. She stirred again, then rolled toward him, one arm slipping across his chest. Her cheek pressed against his shoulder like it belonged there.

“Daddy…” she whispered, still half-asleep.

He closed his eyes.

“I’m here,” he murmured, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”