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Affinity took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in her throat. "Dad, what are you talking about?"
His teary eyes stared at her for a moment, a painful silence growing between them. "There was a real reason why your mother made me leave."
Affinity didn't say anything more, she only waited for him to continue.
His breath rattled in his throat. "It happened about 16 years ago, you couldn't have been more than six months old. As you know, your mother and I married young and I had only been an officer for two years, but about five years later, I had been assigned a very similar case to what I was assigned today...a homicide. A man had murdered his wife and I was the one who arrested him." He anxiously rubbed the stubble on his chin as he continued. "The night he escaped, was the same night he broke into our house. Guys like that always crave revenge, but it wasn't just me that was his target, it was my whole family. I can't remember why I was awake or if something had woken me up, but I was so thankful I did because just as I walked out my bedroom door, that killer was walking through yours." A moment of silence fell between them again. "That was the only man I had ever killed."
Affinity's breath hitched in her throat. "You shot him?" She asked, knowing the obvious answer.
"He was going to kill you." His words were strained and his teeth were gritted tightly. "Affinity, you are my life. My everything. You're the reason why I get up in the mornings, the reason I'm able to smile every day after my life went to hell. That day I realized that I had finally become a father. You want to know why? Because I realized how easily I would give my life to save you."
Neither of them knew what to say. The air in the room suddenly felt like it was weighing down on their chests, preventing them from speaking. It wasn't the comfortable silence they were used to. They had both kept something from each other, and coming from a relationship where they would always tell each other everything, it hurt. Affinity was the first to break the silence.
"What happened to you and mom?" She exhaled.
"That night pretty much doomed our relationship," he began. "She blamed me and my job and said that if I didn't come work for her, she would take you and leave. I couldn't let that happen, so I quit. Our marriage was never really the same after that. It slowly started to fall apart and for a long time, she made me believe that it was my fault, telling me that I made her feel unsafe and I put our daughter in danger. You were too young to remember this, but I went through the lowest part of my life the months that followed that night. In all honesty, I think your mother finally decided that she was through with me and needed an excuse to have an affair and leave me." He pulled Affinity into a hug and she buried her head into his shoulder, trying to give him a feeling of reassurance and that she understood. "I may have gone through emotional hell but you got me through it, and I would go through it over and over if it meant I would have this life with you again."
