Six months after the divorce, I never expected to hear my ex-husband’s voice again. Yet that morning, as I lay in a hospital bed with my newborn daughter sleeping peacefully beside me, my phone vibrated. The name on the screen made my breath hitch: Ethan Walker—my ex.

Ethan turned back to me, tears filling his eyes. “Is she… is she really mine?”

I nodded once. “The DNA test is already done. You demanded it during the divorce—remember?”

He winced. “I never even checked the results.”

I inhaled slowly. “She is your daughter, Ethan. But that doesn’t mean you can walk back into my life like nothing happened.”

“That’s not what I want,” he said immediately. “I want to be responsible.”

“For the baby?”

“For both of you.”

I studied him carefully. The confident man I once married was gone. In his place stood someone broken—afraid and ashamed.

“You’re supposed to be getting married in two days,” I said.

“Not anymore,” he answered without hesitation. “I canceled it.”

That stunned me more than anything else.

In the days that followed, Ethan came quietly and respectfully. He learned how to hold his daughter, how to change diapers, how to sit beside me without asking for forgiveness.

But forgiveness wasn’t the hardest part.

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