Outside the maternity ward, I froze. Daniel stood there in a designer suit, cradling two newborns like rare, fragile birds. My chest tightened—was this the affair I’d feared? A nurse waved, mistaking me for family. “They need someone to sign. The mother… she left,” she whispered. Daniel’s face found mine, wrecked and brave. He’d been mentoring a frightened teen at the shelter; when labor came, she vanished. He stayed. Not lover—lifeline.
I stepped closer, the babies’ breaths like moth wings on my wrist. Love, I learned, isn’t candlelit dinners; it’s paperwork at 3 a.m. and a man in an expensive suit smelling of formula, choosing duty over comfort. We signed as temporary guardians. In the car, we buckled in silence, a new map unfolding—messy, miraculous, ours.
