Mia. Mine.

I was raised in the wreckage of a man. A man with too many thoughts and too little peace, a man who loved with all the desperation of a drowning thing. A man who would rather tear his own hands apart than ever let me slip through them.

Will Graham, my father. Will, a name that trembled on the edge of hesitation, that collapsed into itself with the weight of too many almosts. But to me, he was just Daddy. Daddy, who burned the toast but always scraped off the black parts before giving it to me. Dad, who looked at me sometimes like he had forgotten where I came from, like he wasn’t sure whether I had been given to him or taken from him.

There was no softness in my childhood that was not also sharpened at the edges. No safety that did not feel, in some way, like a trap waiting to spring. My father, the hunter, the hound, the man with too many ghosts pressing up against his ribs. He raised me with hands that shook and eyes that never stopped looking for danger. I grew up in the space between his heartbeat and his fear.

I was a quiet child, but not an obedient one. I loved him, but I tested him. I traced the line where his patience ended and stepped just beyond it, just to see what would happen. And always, always, he would pull me back. Sometimes with words. Sometimes with silence. Sometimes with a grip on my wrist that was just a little too tight, his breath uneven, his eyes gone dark.

I never asked what scared him more—the thought of losing me, or the thought of keeping me too close.