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"She's our daughter. Not just yours," Jagger grits through his teeth.

"You don't even know her name!"

He jerks his head back. The room turns silent except for Charlie's furious crying and the wind still throwing itself against the windows until he demands, "Then tell me. Tell me my daughter's name."

"It's not your business," Mama says, stepping next to me.

"Not my business?" he booms.

Mama shakes her head. "No. It's not⁠—"

"Charlotte. Her name is Charlotte, but we call her Charlie," I blurt out.

Mama turns and glares at me, an expression of disloyalty on her.

Awe, grief, and a longing so raw move across Jagger's face. For one dangerous second, the anger drains clean out of the room and feels a lot more like two people standing in the wreckage of a year neither one of them chose, both of them equally lost.

"Charlie," he repeats, testing the weight of it the exact same way he tested my name that first night at the bar, and staring at her head full of red hair.

"Yes." I nod, more tears falling.

He steps closer. "Can I hold her?"

Mama physically inserts herself into the space between us, her entire body forming a wall. "Absolutely not."

"Excuse me?" Jagger barks.

"This is a baby. Not another one of your toys," she snarls.

"Mama!"

"I'm her father!" Jagger seethes.

Mama doesn't back down an inch, chin lifted, eyes hard as flint. "You're a stranger who showed up a few minutes ago claiming a dozen different things, half of which contradict everything I know about you. So I don't care how many times you say the word father. That doesn't make you anything to this child."

"Ma'am, I'm trying to be respectful since you're Lainey's mother and my daughter's grandmother, but she's my daughter. No matter what you think about me, I'm going to be part of her life," Jagger insists, pinning his glare on Mama then turning it on me.

Charlie fires a new set of wails.

My breath and words come out shaky. "I know you are, but, Jagger, look around. We're in a war zone right now and Charlie's too shaken."

His jaw tightens. He eyes dart from Charlie to Mama, to me, then back on Charlie. After a few minutes, his shoulders drop a bit. He nods. "Okay, Lainey. You're right. This isn't how I want to meet my daughter."

"Jagger—"

"No, listen to me." He holds up a hand and takes a few deep breaths before declaring, "I want to hold my daughter so bad, it feels like it's going to tear a hole straight through my chest. I've wanted it since the second I heard her cry down that hallway. But I'm not going to do it like this, with everybody screaming, your mother looking at me like she's two seconds from calling the sheriff, and you barely able to stand up straight."

I swallow the lump in my throat.

He looks between the three of us, and insists, "I'm not going to hold my daughter right now. So both of you take a breather, get on the same page, and come to terms with whatever you need to. But when I come back, and it will be later today, I'm holding my daughter, and we're figuring this out. All of it. You and me, Lainey, no one else." He pins his eyes on Mama.

She opens her mouth.

"Mama, don't," I order.

She looks at me, betrayed.

"He's right," I quietly admit.