“Hey there, little man,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

“I’m so sorry your dad took so long to get here.” I had negotiated rooms full of powerful men without my pulse ever changing.

A grip from a hand smaller than my thumbnail dismantled me entirely, and I understood, kneeling by that incubator, that some part of me I had kept sealed shut for years had just been pried open by four pounds of stranger, and would never close again.

I had spent my adult life cultivating a particular kind of hardness and calling it strength.