Luna didn’t talk because she didn’t want to talk. It was a psychological issue, not physical, stemming from hell-knows-what. What I did know was that my daughter was different, indifferent, and unusual. People said she was “special”, as an excuse to treat her like a freak. I was no longer able to shield her from the peculiar looks and questioning arched eyebrows. In fact, it was becoming increasingly difficult to brush off her silence as introversion, and I was beginning to grow tired of hiding it, anyway.

Luna was, is, always will be outrageously smart. She scored higher than average on all the tests she’d been put through over the years, and there had been too many to count. She understood every single word spoken to her. She was mute by choice, but she was too young to make that choice. Trying to talk her out of it was both impossible and ironic. Which was why I dragged my ass to Sonya’s office twice a week in the middle of a workday, desperately trying to coax my daughter to stop boycotting the world.

“Actually, I can tell you exactly why Luna loves seahorses.” Sonya pursed her lips, plastering my drunken note to her desk. Luna would sometimes speak a word or two when she and her therapist were all alone, but never when I was in the room. Sonya told me Luna had a languid voice, like her eyes, and that it was soft and delicate and perfect. She had no impediment at all. “She just sounds like a kid, Trent. One day, you’ll hear it, too.”

I cocked a tired eyebrow, propping my head on my hand as I stared at the busty redhead. I had three deals I needed to attend to back at work—four if I’d forgotten to send the contract to the Koreans—and my time was too fucking precious for seahorse talk.

“Yeah?”

Sonya reached across her desk, cupping my big bronzed hand in her small white one. “Seahorses are Luna’s favorite animal because the male seahorse is the only animal in nature to carry the baby and not the mother. The male seahorse is the one to incubate the offspring. To fall pregnant. To nest. Isn’t that beautiful?”

I blinked a couple of times, slicing my gaze to my daughter. I was grossly unequipped to deal with women my own age, so taking care of Luna always felt like shooting a goddamn arsenal of bullets in the dark, hoping something would find the target. I frowned, searching my brain for something—anything, any-fucking-thing—that would put a smile on my daughter’s face.

It occurred to me that social services would scoop her ass up and take her away from me had they known what an emotionally stunted dumbass I was.

“I…” I began to say. Sonya cleared her throat, jumping to my rescue.

“Hey, Luna? Why don’t you help Sydney hang up some of the summer camp decorations outside? You have a great touch with design.”

Sydney was the secretary at Sonya’s practice. My daughter had warmed up to her, seeing as we spent a lot of time sitting in the reception area, waiting for our appointments. Luna nodded and hopped down from her seat.

My daughter was beautiful. Her caramel skin and light brown curls made her deep blue eyes shine like a lighthouse. My daughter was beautiful and the world was ugly and I didn’t know how to help her.

And it killed me like cancer. Slowly. Surely. Savagely.

The door closed with a soft thud before Sonya trained her eyes on me, her smile fading.

I glanced at my watch again. “Are you coming over to fuck tonight, or what?”

“Jesus, Trent.” She shook her head, clasping the back of her neck with her laced fingers. I let her have her meltdown. This was a reoccurring issue with Sonya. For a reason beyond my grasp, she thought she could tell me off because she sometimes had my dick in her mouth. The truth was, every ounce of power she had over me was because of Luna. My daughter worshipped the ground Sonya walked upon and allowed herself to smile more in her therapist’s presence.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Why don’t you take it as a wake-up call? Luna’s love for seahorses is a way to say—‘Daddy, I appreciate you for taking care of me’. Your daughter needs you.”

“My daughter has me,” I gritted through clenched teeth. It was the truth. What more could I have given Luna that I hadn’t already? I was her dad when she needed someone to open the pickle jar and her mom when she needed someone to tuck her undershirt into her black ballet tights.

Three years ago Luna’s mother, Val, had put Luna in her crib, grabbed her keys and two large suitcases, and disappeared from our lives. We hadn’t been together, Val and I. Luna was the product of a coked-up bachelor party in Chicago that had spun out of control. She was made in the back room of a strip club with Val straddling me while another stripper climbed on top of my face. Looking back, screwing a stripper bareback ought to have awarded me with some kind of a Guinness record for stupidity. I was twenty-eight—not a kid by any stretch of the imagination—and smart enough to know what I was doing was wrong.