Malachi Azure
Kai’s words, they were less for Jess to hear, and more Kai letting out the stream of thoughts that filled his mind. He wasn’t mad at her, he was mad at the situation, even mad at himself. If he was in that situation, he couldn’t even say he would have been able to do much differently, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t still hurt. He hated Anna, but he would always love Jess. As much as he didn’t like the thought that he had ever gotten Anna pregnant, those kids were also Jess’s family, and they were his kids, his flesh and blood. It hurt knowing that he had spent so long never knowing they even existed. Even just finding out about them, he felt as though he had already let them down.
How much could one person fail in their life before it becomes too much? It felt like every single time he truly cared, he failed. What he cared most about in his life seemed to be where everything would crash and burn. Love, family, parenthood. More pain came than anything else. He broke Jess, breaking himself in the process, and when he loved Skye, he did everything to keep from making the same mistakes, only to lose her. His family, everything he knew growing up, was in shambles. Everyone was torn apart. Being a father, every time he took a step forward in trying to be a good father, he was pulled two steps back in some other way. It was like he was drowning, and soon enough his mistakes were going to pull him under.
To his kids, he never existed until now. They grew up raised in different families, not knowing a thing about him. To him, they hadn’t existed until now. Maybe it would have been easier to never have known, but there was no going back now. “dancing with them…” he repeated when Jess said the words. It was like rubbing salt in the wound. He danced with his daughters when they were little. He was with his daughters without knowing who they were. There was a part of Kai that was trying to remember, pick out every detail of the memory from so many years earlier, but it killed him to think about how he was that close and didn’t know, how everything he wanted at the time was within reach if only he had known. So many times in his life he had been just within arms reach of having a life like he wanted, but every time he missed the chance.
“Like I forgot about you? I never f^^king did Jess.” Kai may have moved on with Skye, but there was no way he could say he forgot about Jess, or ever fully moved on. She moved on, built a life for herself with a family of her own, but Kai, even having loved Skye, would always have a part of him tied to Jess. She would always be the one that got away. “and them, how can you expect me to just walk away and forget about them now? Could you? What am I supposed to do here Jess? What do you want me to say? That I’d rather go back to everything I f^^king hate about my life, just to still wonder if my daughters hate me or think I hate them. I can’t, and you know that. I have to know more about them, what their lives have been like. I have to know what kind of people my children have grown up to be. I need to see them.” It didn’t matter if they had any idea who he was to them or not, he needed to meet them. Even if it was just to take a small weight off of his shoulders, just enough so he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life wondering.