Chapter 3: A Father's First Word

Chapter 3: A Father's First Word

The single word, her name whispered in his ragged voice, hung in the sterile air between them. It was an accusation, a question, and a plea all at once. For a long moment, Elara couldn't breathe. The carefully constructed dam that held back a year of secrets had just been obliterated, and the flood was coming.

“Jax,” she whispered, her voice cracking. Her first instinct was to run, but there was nowhere to go. She was anchored to this spot, to this glass box and the tiny life within it. “Please. You can’t be here. Just… go.”

His gaze was a physical force, pinning her in place. He looked from her terrified face back to the name card, as if reading it a second time would somehow change the letters. His blue eyes, usually so full of easy confidence, were wide with a raw, wounded disbelief.

“Go?” he repeated, his voice dangerously low, a tremor of anger vibrating beneath the shock. He took another step closer, invading the small bubble of her grief. The scent of his cologne, a scent she had once loved, felt like an assault. “My name, Elara. My name is on that card. What is this?”

The question was a quiet cataclysm. Every possible lie she could have constructed died on her lips. The evidence of her secret was right there, fighting for every breath under a canopy of wires and tubes.

She finally looked away from him, turning back to the incubator. It was easier to look at her son than at the man whose life she had tried so hard not to ruin.

“His name is Leo,” she said, the confession feeling like it was being ripped from her soul.

Leo.

The name hit Jax harder than any linebacker ever had. It wasn't "Baby Boy Vance-Ryder" anymore. It was Leo. A person. A son. His son. The anger that had begun to simmer inside him—anger at the lie, at the year of silence—was suddenly doused by a wave of something far more potent and terrifying.

He moved to stand beside her, his broad shoulders eclipsing the muted light of the NICU. He stared down into the incubator, really looking for the first time. He saw past the medical equipment to the being at the center of it all. Leo’s skin was almost translucent, a network of delicate blue veins visible beneath. His tiny fingers, smaller than the tip of Jax’s pinky, were curled into a loose fist. A feeding tube was taped to his cheek, and a sensor on his foot glowed with a soft red light. He was so impossibly small, a fragile miniature of a person, and yet, Jax could see it. In the faint line of his jaw, in the shape of his brow, he saw a flicker of himself.

A fierce, primal wave of protectiveness crashed over him, so powerful it stole his breath. This wasn't about Elara's betrayal anymore. This wasn't about his shattered pride or his confusion. This tiny, vulnerable person was his. His blood. His son. And he was here, fighting for his life, while Jax had been laughing in a hallway, oblivious. The shame was a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth.

“Why?” The word was scraped from his throat, stripped of its anger, leaving only raw hurt. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

Elara flinched, wrapping her arms around herself. “I… I couldn’t,” she stammered, her gaze fixed on Leo. “It was complicated.”

“Complicated?” Jax’s voice rose slightly before he caught himself, forcing it back down to a harsh whisper. Other families were nearby, lost in their own quiet battles. “You have my son, and you didn’t think to tell me? That’s more than complicated, Ellie. That’s…”

He trailed off, unable to find a word big enough for the chasm that had just opened up in his life.

Before she could answer, a nurse with a kind, weary face approached them, her soft-soled shoes squeaking on the linoleum. She smiled gently, her eyes on the monitor above Leo's incubator.

“His oxygen saturation levels have been steady all afternoon. He had a good night,” she said, making a note on a chart. She looked from Elara’s pale, tense face to Jax’s thunderstruck one. She didn't see a ghost and a liar. She saw two worried parents.

“It’s his first time seeing him,” Elara offered weakly, a desperate attempt to explain Jax’s shell-shocked expression.

The nurse’s smile widened, full of warmth and understanding. “Ah. Well, welcome, Dad. He’s a little fighter, this one. Stubborn. He gets that from his mom, I think.”

Dad.

The word struck Jax like a physical blow. It echoed in the humming silence of the room, simple, factual, and utterly world-altering. He wasn’t just Jackson Ryder, star quarterback, anymore. He was ‘Dad.’ And Elara, the girl who broke his heart, was ‘Mom.’ The nurse’s casual, well-meaning words had cemented their terrifying new reality more concretely than any confession could.

The nurse finished her check, gave them another encouraging nod, and moved on to the next incubator, leaving them adrift in a new, profound silence.

Elara finally looked at him, her defenses crumbling. The exhaustion she’d been holding at bay washed over her, and he saw the deep, trembling weariness she could no longer hide. Her shoulders slumped, and her hand, resting on the edge of the incubator, was shaking. She looked like she was seconds from collapsing.

The last vestiges of his anger dissolved, replaced by an aching clarity. She had been doing this alone. For days, maybe weeks. Carrying this impossible weight all by herself while he’d been living his life, completely unaware. He didn’t understand her reasons, not yet, but he understood the sight of the strongest person he had ever known at her absolute breaking point.

He reached out, his own hand covering hers where it rested on the plastic frame. Her skin was ice-cold. His was warm. The contact was an electric shock, a bridge across a year of pain and silence. Her breath hitched, and a single tear she could no longer hold back escaped and traced a path down her cheek.

She started to pull her hand away, to retreat back into her fortress of solitude. But he held firm, his grip gentle but resolute.

Her gaze lifted to his, full of fear and uncertainty, silently asking what he was going to do. He looked from her tear-streaked face to their son, their son, sleeping a fragile, machine-assisted sleep. In that moment, a new vow was forged in the wreckage of his old life. His future, his career, the expectations of his family—it all faded into background noise. There was only this. This room. This girl. This child.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jax said, his voice low and steady, a promise that resonated deeper than the beeping of the machines. “You’re not doing this alone anymore.”