Page 189 of Twisted Needs

Most headlines still introduce me as “controversial author Anderson de Sousa.”

Parker and I stopped caring years ago. Any press is good press…but I will not have my face posted all over YouTube for my children to see while some bitch talks shit about their fathers.

He sighs sympathetically. “My poor sweet victim.”

“The only thing I’m a victim of is your breath-right strip attacking me in my sleep.”

“Yeah, Papa,” Nayah agrees. “It’s gross.”

“Watch it, Princess,” Parker warns. “Daddy told you to be nice to me.”

“Because we can’t be mean to old people,” Natalia says matter-of-factly. Definitely my daughter.

Parker gasps like he’s been mortally wounded while Anton climbs onto his back like a feral raccoon and growls into his ear. I sit in the middle of the bed trying not to laugh too hard as syrup sticks to my fingers and sunlight warms my skin and the people I love most nearly crush me to death.

Absolutely perfect.

And somewhere in the middle of all the noise, Parker catches my eye again. There’s a softness there that still undoes me after all this time. The certainty of it lands exactly where it always has.

“Thank you for my amazing breakfast,” I tell my family, looking at the plate of cold scrambled eggs and approximately fifteen syrup-drowned pancakes. “You guys are very sweet.”

“You’re welcome, Daddy,” the girls chorus.

Anton raises both Hulk fists. “Hulk made pancakes.”

“That explains a lot,” I mutter.

Parker laughs under his breath, and I look around at all of them—our daughters giggling against my sides, Anton slamming his fists together, Parker smiling at me with sleep still in his eyes—and it hits me again with startling clarity.

For most of my life, love felt hard to come by, like it could vanish the moment I reached for it. But this isn’t that. Sometimes it feels like a prison. A perfect, loving prison I never want to leave. And as Parker climbs back into bed beside me, tangling our legs together while the kids argue over pancakes and who gets to walk Benny first, I realize something simple.

Maybe happiness was never meant to feel extraordinary. Maybe it was always meant to feel like this—warm sunlight, too much noise, someone you love reaching for your hand without thinking.

And a life so full it no longer leaves room for fear.