Page 101 of Enforcer Daddy

"Story?" I asked around my thumb, the word muffled but clear enough.

"What kind of story does my little one want tonight?"

"The brave girl," I said, because it was my favorite, the one he'd made up in the early days when I couldn't sleep, couldn't trust, couldn't believe this was real.

"Once upon a time," he began, his voice dropping into that storytelling rhythm, "there was a very brave girl who everyone thought was weak. She lived in a cruel kingdom where children were forgotten and hurt, where nobody saw her strength because it didn't look like the strength in storybooks."

I knew every word but needed to hear them anyway, needed the reminder that brave didn't always mean unafraid, that strength could look like surviving another day, that even princesses sometimes had to steal to eat.

"She was so brave that she survived winters without warmth, nights without safety, hunger without food. She taught herself to be invisible when visibility meant danger, to be silent when words would bring pain, to trust nobody because trust had only ever brought hurt."

His hand never stopped stroking my hair, and I pressed closer, my thumb in my mouth, surrounded by his warmth and scent and the steady beat of his heart.

"One day, the brave girl got caught by a beast. Everyone knew beasts ate brave girls, that they were monsters who belonged in the dark. But this beast saw something in the brave girl that even she couldn't see. He saw that her bravery had made her magic, that her survival had made her precious, that her strength disguised as weakness was the most powerful thing he'd ever encountered."

"And then?" I prompted, though I knew.

"And then the beast did something nobody expected. Instead of eating the brave girl, he gave her shelter. Instead of hurting her, he protected her. And slowly, day by day, the brave girl taught the beast how to be gentle, while the beast taught the brave girl that she'd been a princess all along, just wearing rags because the kingdom hadn't recognized royalty when it saw it."

"Did they live happily ever after?" I asked, the words slurred around my thumb, sleep pulling at me like tide.

"They're living it right now," he said, kissing my forehead. "Every day, every night, every moment in between. The brave girl and her beast, building their own kingdom where broken things become beautiful and stolen hearts become given ones."

I might have said something else, might have whispered "Daddy" or "love you" or just made one of those content sounds that meant everything was right in my small, soft world. But sleep was already taking me, there in his arms, in our pink room, in this life we'd built from broken pieces.

Tomorrow I'd wake up and be twenty-two again, responsible for thirty kids who needed what I'd found, fighting systems and prejudices and the weight of trauma that never fully went away. But tonight I was just his little one, safe and small and precious, coloring inside the lines while my beast stood guard against anything that might hurt me.

Tonight, the fairy tale was real.