Mateo is swaddled and sleeping now, one tiny hand free near his cheek. Damian steps closer, hesitant for the first time in what feels like years. He reaches out as if to touch the blanket, then thinks better of it.
“I want to hold him.”
You study him.
“Then sit down first.”
He does. A plastic chair beside the bed. His suit jacket is gone. His tie loosened. He looks less like the man from the courthouse than a tired stranger who happened to follow the wreckage of his own decisions into a maternity ward. When the nurse places Mateo in his arms, something in his face breaks open.
Not redemption. Not that easy.
But recognition.
He stares at his son for a long time without speaking. When he finally does, his voice is lower, stripped bare. “I didn’t think…” He swallows. “I didn’t think it would feel like this.”
You shift against the pillows, exhausted beyond pretense. “That’s because thinking has never really been your strongest moral function.”
He almost smiles. Almost.