Six months after our divorce, my ex-husband showed up at my door with his fiancée and a wedding invitation in hand—but the second he saw the newborn in my arms, all the color drained from his face, and the perfect life he thought he’d built started falling apart right in front of me.

“Handle yours,” I said. “I’ll handle mine.”

Then he said, “I’m coming over this evening. I want to hold my son.”

I stared at Leo asleep beside me and knew Catherine would tell me the same thing I was already thinking.

Reasonable request. Reasonable condition.

“Five o’clock. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Come alone.”

He arrived on time.

For the first time since all this had begun, he wasn’t in a suit.

Just a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled once, dark slacks, wet hair from the drizzle.

He washed his hands at my sink. Put on the mask I handed him. Stood near the bassinet like he was waiting outside a church.

I showed him how to slide one hand under Leo’s head and the other beneath his body. His fingers trembled the first time he lifted him.

It startled me more than it should have.

Men like Ethan are not supposed to tremble.

Leo blinked, opened his mouth in a sleepy O, and settled.

Ethan looked down at him as if he had never seen anything so small and so powerful at once.

“He looks like me,” he said quietly.

I didn’t answer.

After a minute, he said, “I’m afraid you’ll use him to punish me.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “I’m afraid you’ll use him to control me.”

He looked up.