Axel’s POV
The text arrives during morning practice, and I know before I read it that something's wrong.
My father doesn't text. He calls—scheduled calls, precisely fifteen minutes long, during which he delivers updates about Iceland and expectations about my career and silences that say more than his words ever do. Texting implies urgency. Urgency implies something has changed.
I will be in Seattle next week. Thursday through Sunday. We should discuss your situation.
Thirteen words. No greeting. No question about whether the timing works. No acknowledgment that "my situation" involves three children and two partners and a lawsuit that's currently dismantling my life.
Just a statement of intent. Erik Nielsen is coming, and I will make myself available.
I stare at the message through the rest of practice. Miss two easy shots. Get called out by Coach for lack of focus. None of it registers. My father's voice is already in my head, drowning everything else out.
Your situation. Like my family, it is a problem to be solved. A mess to be cleaned up. A stain on the Nielsen name that he's flying across an ocean to address.
"You okay?" Mateo asks in the locker room, catching my expression. "You've been somewhere else all morning."
"Fine."
"That's not a 'fine' face. That's a 'someone died' face."
"No one died." I pull on my shirt, avoiding his eyes. "My father's coming. Next week."
The silence that follows tells me he understands exactly what that means.
"Shit," he says finally. "Did he say why?"
"To discuss my situation." The words taste bitter. "He's been reading about us online. The lawsuit made international news. Someone probably sent him the articles with helpful commentary about his son's unconventional lifestyle."
"So he's coming to—what? Lecture you? Disapprove in person?"
"I don't know." And that's the worst part. Not knowing what he wants, what angle he's taking, what specific disappointment he's bringing across six thousand miles. "He doesn't explain. He just arrives and expects accommodation."
Mateo's hand finds my shoulder. Squeezes. "Whatever he says, whatever he thinks—it doesn't change anything. You know that, right?"
I want to believe him. But my father has been the voice in my head since childhood, the standard I've measured myself against, the approval I've never quite earned. Knowing something intellectually and feeling it in your bones are different things.
"I need to tell Selene," I say, because focusing on logistics is easier than focusing on feelings.
"We'll tell her together. Tonight."
I nod. Don't trust my voice.
The drive home is too quiet. My own thoughts are loud enough without adding radio noise. I run through scenarios—my father meeting the babies, meeting Selene and Mateo, seeing our house with its toys scattered across the floor and evidence of three adults living together in ways he'll never understand.
He'll be polite. That's almost worse than outright hostility. Erik Nielsen doesn't shout or rage. He just looks at you with that particular disappointment, the one that says I expected better without ever articulating what "better" would look like.
Selene knows something's wrong the moment I walk through the door. She's developed a sixth sense for my moods—which is annoying and comforting in equal measure.
"What happened?"
"My father's coming. Thursday."
Her face cycles through several expressions before settling on careful neutrality. "Okay. We can handle that."
"You don't know him."
"I know you. I know what talking about him does to you." She crosses to me, hands finding my chest. "Tell me what you need."
What I need is for him not to come. For him to stay in Iceland with his opinions and his silences and his perpetual disappointment. For once in my life, I need to exist without his judgment hovering over everything I do.
"I need to train," I say instead. "Clear my head."
I spend two hours in our home gym, pushing until my muscles scream, until the physical exhaustion drowns out the mental noise. It doesn't work. By the time I emerge, showered and spent, my father's voice is still there. Quieter, maybe. But present.
Selene and Mateo are on the couch with the babies. Normal evening chaos—Aria demanding to be seen, Elio scaling everything within reach, Sören observing quietly from his play mat, eyes already too calculating. The picture of domestic happiness that my father will see as domestic disaster.
"Come sit," Mateo says, patting the space between them. "You've been punishing that weight rack for hours."
I sit. Let Selene curl into my side, let Mateo's shoulder press against mine. Let the warmth of it seep through the cold dread that's been building since that text.
"Tell us about him," Selene says quietly. "Your father. Help us understand what we're walking into."
I don't talk about my father. Not really. Surface details, yes—Icelandic businessman, traditional values, high expectations. But not the deeper truth. Not the weight of being the second son who was never quite as good as the first. Not the silences that lasted days when I fell short. Not the way his approval felt like water in a desert, rare and precious and never enough.
"He won't understand this." I gesture vaguely at the room, at the three of us, at the babies. "Any of it. He'll be polite because the Nielsens are always polite. But underneath, he'll be cataloging every way I've failed to meet his standards."
"His standards are wrong," Mateo says fiercely. "Look at what you have. Look at what you've built. If he can't see that—"
"He can't." The certainty of it settles like stone in my chest. "He sees a son who left Iceland, who chose basketball over the family business, who's now involved in a scandal with an unconventional relationship and children of uncertain paternity. Every choice I've made that brought me joy is a choice that brought him shame."
Selene's hand finds mine. "Then we show him he's wrong. We show him a family that works, that loves each other, that's worth all of it."
"And if that's not enough?"
"Then it's his loss." Her voice is firm. "Axel, I spent years trying to earn approval from people who were never going to give it. My parents. Cassian. I know what it's like to chase validation that doesn't exist. At some point, you have to stop chasing and start living."
She's right. I know she's right. But knowing doesn't stop the cold weight in my stomach, the automatic tightening of my spine, the way I'm already rehearsing responses to criticisms he hasn't made yet.
"Four days," I say. "He'll be here in four days."
"Then we have four days to prepare." Mateo grins, but there's steel underneath it. "Four days to clean the house, hide the evidence of our sinful lifestyle, and teach the babies to say 'Grandfather disapproves' in Icelandic."
Despite everything, I almost smile. "That would require teaching them Icelandic."
"I'm a fast learner. What's 'grandfather'?"
"Afi."
"Afi." He tries it out, mangles the pronunciation completely. "Okay, we'll work on that."
Selene laughs, and Mateo keeps butchering Icelandic words, and slowly—slowly—the dread loosens its grip. Not gone. Just... manageable. Shared.
I pull Selene and Mateo closer, letting their warmth anchor me.
Whatever he says, whatever he thinks—this is real. This is mine. This is worth fighting for.
Even if the person I'm fighting is the voice in my own head.