One String Attached

6.

.James.

Later in the evening of that day, Riley was inside in the kitchen with Asher, helping him to eat his noodles. The boy still found it difficult to feed himself properly sometimes so it meant Ri continued to spoon-feed him most days.

He's not like Aaliyah. That girl matured way quicker than expected.
She was crawling up the stairs before she had even hit six months and started walking by eight months. Every time me or Riley tried talking to her, she used to repeat our words before bursting out into a fit of giggles.
Even now, when Ri fussed over her as the overprotective mother she is, Aaliyah would complain and fight back, stating that she was a 'big girl' now, despite only being six-year-old. She was definitely getting a bit too big for her boots.

I was stood outside on the balcony, looking out to the city. If you had told me six years ago that Riley and I would be married with a son and a little girl who isn't my offspring but is still my daughter, I would have called you crazy.
Mine and Ri's relationship has always been a little rocky ever since we were teenagers but what really seemed to pull us together was the big break between us.

We were still together at the time, Ri was nineteen, due to turn twenty, and I was a couple of months older than her. We had split up physically and so were dealing with the long-distance kind of relationship where I wasn't there to see my girl everyday. Things only seemed to deteriorate from then on.
Riley's mental health dropped and things got extremely bad. She isolated herself from everyone, had severe episodes of anxiety, panic and fear. Things got so bad that she felt she couldn't talk to anyone, including me. Even when I had travelled the whole three hours to go and see her, she wouldn't dare to talk to me and at the time, I just couldn't understand why.

It got to the point where Riley had taken the wrong path and mixed with the wrong sort of people who claimed to be her friends. They got her into drinking and parties and smoking, thankfully no drugs were involved. Ri completely changed and she refused to see or talk to anyone. There were times where she was on her own quite a lot, walking through the park sometimes but the one or two times I saw alone were the only times I could identify the girl I loved. When she was with those 'friends' of hers, she was a complete different person.
I tried talking to her and tried getting through to her but it was pretty much no use. She wouldn't tell me anything.

Then came the night when she got drunk and she slept with Bryson, which then led onto the big shock of her being pregnant. I got a knock on the front door of my apartment and I opened up to find her stood there, mascara dripping down her face as she held a shoebox in her hands. I was confused as hell but let her inside anyway and it turned out that the shoebox contained a pregnancy test. She told me that she was too scared to open it so she wanted me to be the first to look and I was.
Even if our relationship was on the rocks at that point in time, I was still there for her. We were somewhere between being together and broken up but that doesn't mean I ever stopped caring for her.

Obviously, I had no idea about Bryson whatsoever so I immediately thought the baby was mine when we found out she positive but then she started crying in my arms and continuously told me she was sorry.
I had no idea what she meant and just thought it was the idea of the two of us having a baby so soon but it was after a long discussion in the bedroom that I found out the truth.

That truth might have been the most riskiest factor which led onto the climax of our relationship, but it was the truth. It was something which had happened and which we needed to deal with head-on.
I always loved Riley and her getting pregnant, though it may have been outside of our relationship, wasn't about to change that. She had been through a lot. And she might think that I deserve better than her but in reality, I don't. I'm always getting pulled back to her and she'll always be connected to me.

Just as I'm stood outside with my arms resting on the barriers, I hear light footsteps approach me before I watch as the only little girl in the households' hands find their way to the barrier and I look down to find my daughter stood there, making me smile softly.
"Hey, sweetheart," I say to her softly, reaching down to pick her up before lifting her onto my side.
"Daddy," she calls me, making me keep my eyes on her as I kiss her cheek.
"Aaliyah?"
"Can I ask you a question?" she says, then gaining my full attention.
"Anything, love."

She breathes out and then begins to play with my hands. It had been a habit of hers ever since she was first born in the hospital, where I would move my finger towards her hand and she would curl all of her fingers around that one index finger of mine.
"Why do I have blonde hair?" she asks me out of the blue, causing me to raise an eyebrow as I tilt my head to the side, looking at her curiously.

"What do you mean, Li?"
"At school, Miss Preston told us that we are born with similar hair, eyes and faces as our mummys and daddys. But I have blonde hair and you and Mummy have brown hair. I asked Miss Preston but she told me to ask you instead," she says with a pout, causing my breathing to hitch as her small head rested against mine.

I look into the apartment to find Ri still preoccupied with Asher, cleaning his face with a paper towel as the food had managed to splatter all over his face. Usually, she found it entertaining to feed the kids and she would giggle with them or smile but right now she seemed nothing but stressed. Worry lines filled her forehead, her cheeks were sucked in and she was constantly biting her lip, not to mention the amount of times she had avoided my eye-contact.
I wish she would talk to me more and sometimes I just wished I knew her as well as I thought I did.

"Sometimes children are born with different features," I tell her softly, improvising on the spot. Aaliyah was a growing girl. She had reached the age where she was bound to start asking these kind of questions, I just wish it wasn't so soon. The last thing I would want to happen is to be torn away from a girl I see as my daughter.
"Why?" she pouts, making me chuckle. 'Why' was definitely her favourite question to ask.

"Because some children are special. Some little girls, like you, are born with many different looks. It just means they're unique. They're not ordinary," I try to explain to her, tapping the tip of her nose softly. She laughs for a few seconds, reaching out to grab my finger until I allow her to hold it and then she smiles.
"So I'm special?" she asks.
"Very special," I tell her, resting my forehead against hers for a second or so before pressing my lips against her forehead.

"I love you, Aaliyah," I whisper, holding her close to my chest as I comb my fingers through her hair, looking out towards the dark sky.
"I love you too, Daddy," she whispers to me, making me smile.

No matter what happened, she was still, and always will be, my little girl.