Lahat ng Kabanata ng My Fake Boyfriend Is a Single-Dad Hockey Star: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

ETHAN'S POVThe moment I realised Sienna might have heard me, I moved farther down the hallway and lowered my voice. “You don't get to call me at midnight and ask about Lily, Claire. Whatever you came back for, leave my daughter out of it.” Her bedroom door was still half open behind me, and I could see the light from Sienna's bedside lamp spilling into the hallway.“Our daughter,” Claire corrected quietly. “And I'm back in New York, Ethan. I want to see her.” I laughed before she even finished. “No.” Claire sighed my name, but I cut her off again. “I said no. You don't get to disappear for six years and call me like you're arranging lunch.”“Can you listen to me for one minute without trying to hurt me?” she asked. “I'm not the woman who left anymore. I was scared, Ethan. I was twenty-four, I had a baby I didn't know how to take care of, and you were always travelling. I panicked.” I walked into my office but left the door partly open. “Lily was four months old, Claire. Four months.

ETHAN'S POV“Sienna has never pretended to be Lily's mother in this house,” I said, stepping between Claire and the sofa. Lily still had both arms around Sienna's waist, and the sight seemed to bother Claire more every second. “Whatever you've decided happened here, you're wrong.”Claire gave a short laugh and held up her phone. “Should I send you the photographs, Ethan, or have you seen them already? Family breakfast. School pickup. Hockey games. The three of you walking around New York holding hands.” She pointed at Lily. “Do you genuinely expect me to believe she invented this family idea by herself?”“You don't get to question how I raised her.” I took a step towards Claire, but Sienna's hand tightened around Lily's shoulder. “You lost that right when you walked away.”“I made the worst decision of my life!” Claire's voice rose. “I know what I did. I wake up knowing what I did, but leaving doesn't erase the fact that I gave birth to her.”“And giving birth doesn't erase six years

SIENNA'S POVMy sweet Lily.I read the words three times before my eyes moved to the date at the top of the page. It was from seven years ago, written the same week as the photograph outside the hotel in Toronto. My fingers tightened around the paper as I continued, even though part of me already wished I had left the envelope exactly where Claire placed it.Claire wrote that she didn't know if Lily would ever read the letter. She apologised for leaving and admitted there was no explanation good enough to make what she had done hurt less. She had been overwhelmed after Lily was born, constantly alone while Ethan travelled, and every photograph of her beside a rising hockey star had made her feel like she was playing a woman everyone else believed she should be.I shifted in my chair and kept reading. According to Claire, she had gone to Toronto believing Ethan might finally listen to her. She asked him for one season away from professional hockey. Just one year somewhere quiet, where

ETHAN'S POV“Sienna, wake up. I need you to read this again.”She opened one eye and stared at me as though she was deciding whether murder was worth the prison sentence. “If the penthouse isn't on fire, Ethan, I need you to remember that some of us don't wake up before sunrise for fun.”“It's the bracelet.”“What bracelet?” Sienna pushed herself up, and the blanket I had placed over her slipped into her lap. I handed her Claire's letter and pointed to the second page. “The silver bracelet Claire claims Lily wore in Toronto. It didn't exist then.”The sleep disappeared from Sienna's face. She read the paragraph once, then again before looking at me. “How certain are you?” I told her my mother bought the bracelet for Lily's first birthday, four months after the Toronto meeting. Claire couldn't have kissed something around Lily's wrist when the bracelet was still sitting in a jewellery store.“Memory can be strange, especially after seven years,” Sienna said carefully. “Do you have proo

SIENNA'S POV“Ethan, what is he talking about?”I barely finished the question before bright flashes exploded through my window. I flinched and threw up a hand, but Ethan was already swearing as he reached across me. “Turn your face away, Sienna. Now.”More flashes followed. The dark car remained beside us, and through the half-open window, I finally saw the cameras. Two men were leaning towards us, one shouting Ethan's name while the other continued taking pictures like we weren't moving through traffic.“They're photographers?” I asked, still pressed back against my seat.“Unfortunately.”Relief came first, followed so quickly by anger that I almost rolled down my window and shouted at them myself. “They followed us through three turns for photographs?”“Don't encourage them.”“I wasn't going to encourage them. I was going to ask if their mothers raised them in traffic.”That earned me the smallest laugh, but Ethan's attention remained on the road. Instead of speeding up, he slowed