Alayna laughs. “That’s called rooting, you dork.”

“It’s not called rooting when I do it.”

“No, that’s called awesome,” she says, looking up at me with that devilish grin of hers, the one that can make me instantly hard if I’m not careful.

Again, I have to look away. “Stop it. You’re going to make me horny, and the nurse said six days.”

“Six weeks.”

I sigh. “I suppose I heard wrong.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

I return my focus to the screen in front of me and scan further down the list. “What do you think about the name Mina?”

“Mina? Mina Louise.” She repeats it, testing it out. “I like it. What does it mean?”

“Precious. In Sanskrit.” I gaze down at my daughter—my daughter!—and watch her fight to open her eyes, her little lids squeezing tight and relaxing before they pop open. “Look at her. What do you think? Does it fit?”

“She’s certainly precious.”

“Like her mother.”

I toss the iPad to the end of the bed and wrap my arms around my wife and child. For someone who once felt very little, I am now overwhelmed with emotions. My heart is full to the brim, overflowing with love. So much love.

Sometimes it’s hard to even remember that I ever was another man. That I ever was anything but this one—a man who will fill a camera with newborn baby pictures and tear up as his precious daughter opens her eyes. A man who found sunshine in his dark existence when he deserved it least.

Alayna Withers changed everything for me. I can easily divide my life into two parts—before her and after. The person I was in that time long ago and the person I became when my eyes first found hers.

Though that isn’t entirely accurate. Before her, I never really lived. So there is only after.

I begin and end with her. It’s as simple and as profound as that. Our worlds have entwined and wrapped around each other’s completely. They’ve shaped into something new and fixed and whole. There is no longer her story or mine, but now and always, only ours.

THE END