ECHOES OF NIGHT - Chapter 16
Pairing: dad! Noah Sebastian x ex!hookup reader
Series summary: Noah didn’t expect that his one night stand from 2020 would keep a secret from him for years. But now, in 2024, as Bad Omens is back in Oregon, he wasn’t expecting to run into you while trying to buy some energy drink so he could endure the tour.
You looked even prettier, yes, but what caught his attention wasn’t your beauty, or the fact that you looked like you’d just seen a ghost just by looking at him.
It was, in fact, the little girl holding your hand, telling you she liked his hoodie. He really wasn’t prepared for was seeing himself reflected in that little girl who loved bees and cookies, not expecting to change his entire life for good.
author's note: Once again, I'm so thankful for all the support EON is receiving, thank you so much for all the love!! I hope you guys love this chapter, it's a LONG emotional roller coaster, so comment your reactions for this one <333
trigger warnings: implied smut, implied p in v.
masterlist
The final three days began not with a bang, but with a quiet, unspoken understanding that the temporary world you’d built was about to be tested.
The countdown was a tangible thing, a pressure change in the air you all breathed. You could feel it in the way Noah’s hugs lasted a second too long, in the way his fingers would linger on Kara’s curls when he thought no one was watching, in the way he’d watch her sleep, his expression a complicated map of wonder and grief, as if he were trying to imprint every tiny detail into his bones before the clock ran out.
The first of the three days belonged entirely to Kara.
A final, grand adventure in their own backyard.
The pool, which had started as a source of wide-eyed terror and then transformed into pure, unfiltered joy, became the stage for their last perfect, sun-drenched day. Noah spent hours in the water with her, her tiny bright-pink floaties keeping her buoyant as she clung to his back, shrieking with laughter every time he dipped below the surface and came up with a dramatic roar.
“Faster, Daddy, faster!” she’d command, her voice ringing clear and sharp across the water, small fists knotted in his wet hair.
He obliged every single time, swimming laps with her riding high on his shoulders, water streaming off them both in glittering sheets. He taught her how to blow bubbles, his large hands carefully supporting her chest and belly, patient through every sputter and cough until she finally managed a shaky, triumphant stream of bubbles that broke the surface like tiny fireworks.
“I did it, Daddy! I did it!” she sputtered, wiping water from her eyes with the backs of her chubby wrists, her joy so bright it rivaled the California sun.
Noah looked across the shimmering water at you, sitting on the edge with your feet dangling in the cool blue, and his smile was brilliant, blinding, but his eyes were haunted. He was memorizing it, you realized with a pang that stole your breath. Tucking this perfect, sun-soaked memory into some secret corner of his heart where he could visit it during the long, sterile nights on a tour bus thousands of miles away, when the distance felt unbearable.
You watched them for hours, the two of them a living watercolor of everything you’d ever wanted and everything you’d been terrified to hope for. Kara’s squeals echoed off the water, Noah’s deep laughter answering her every time. He let her “defeat” him in splash wars, collapsing dramatically onto his back and floating like a dead pirate while she stood on his chest in her floaties, fists raised in victory. When she finally grew tired, he carried her out of the pool wrapped in a giant towel like a burrito, her head lolling against his shoulder, lips blue from the cold but curved in a sleepy, satisfied smile.
That night, after Kara was finally asleep, her skin still smelling faintly of chlorine and baby sunscreen, her curls damp against the pillow, you found Noah on the back patio. He stood at the railing, staring at the dark, still pool lit only by its submerged blue lights, the water glowing like some alien, underwater moon.
You stepped out quietly, the warm night air wrapping around your bare shoulders. “She never wants to get out of that pool,” you said softly, coming to stand beside him.
He didn’t answer for a long moment. Just kept staring at the water like it held answers he desperately needed.
“I have a million of those,” he finally murmured, voice rough, cracked open. “A million memories I should have; the first time she saw a pool, the first time she ate ice cream and got it all over her face. The first step, the first word… hell, the first time she was scared of the dark. I should have been there for all of it.”
This was the mourning you’d feared: not explosive anger directed at you, but a profound, soul-deep grief for what was irrevocably lost.
A grief that lived in his chest like a second heartbeat.
You leaned your shoulder against his, the contact small but grounding. “Tell me,” you whispered. “Tell me what you’re thinking. All of it.”
He was silent for so long you thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then he turned his head, the blue pool lights reflecting in his wet eyes, and began to speak, voice low and steady, as if recounting a story that belonged to someone else, someone luckier.
“I keep trying to picture it. The beginning. You, finding out.” His gaze searched yours in the dim light, raw and pleading. “What was it like? Those first three years… before I knew it.”
So you told him.
You started with the panic in the bathroom: the way the world had shrunk to two pink lines on a cheap plastic stick, the way your heart had hammered so violently you were certain it would tear itself free. You told him about the fear that became a constant, humming companion, the sleepless nights spent arguing with yourself in the dark, the terrifying, exhilarating moment you placed your hand on your still-flat stomach and decided, with a certainty that frightened you, to keep the baby.
You spoke of your parents’ quiet, fierce support: your mom crying with you in the kitchen, your dad silently building a crib at 2 a.m. because he couldn’t sleep either. You told him about your friends rallying around you like an army, the way your life narrowed and expanded all at once: college classes traded for prenatal appointments, late-night parties replaced by folding tiny onesies that looked impossibly small.
You told him about the pregnancy itself: the nausea that lasted all day, the exhaustion that pinned you to the couch some afternoons, the surreal, electric feeling of a tiny foot kicking from the inside, like a secret Morse code only the two of you understood. You described the day she was born: a frantic rush to the hospital, the terrifying silence before her first indignant wail filled the room. You told him how they’d placed her on your chest, all slippery and red and perfect, with a shock of dark hair and his exact nose, and how she had just… stopped crying.
Looked at you with those big, unfocused eyes and quieted, like she already knew you were her home.
“She was so small,” you whispered, voice breaking on the memory. “Six pounds, two ounces. They said she was perfect. And she just… fit. Right there on my chest. Like she’d always belonged.”
You told him about the lonely nights: the 3 a.m. feedings where the only sound was her soft suckling and your own exhausted heartbeat, the way you’d rock her for hours because the silence felt too heavy otherwise. You described her first smile: a gummy, accidental thing that happened while you were changing her diaper, and how you’d cried harder than you had in months because it felt like forgiveness for every doubt you’d ever had.
You told him about her first steps: a wobbly, triumphant stagger across the living room rug that ended with her crashing into your waiting arms, laughing like she’d conquered the world.
You told him about the words: “Mama” first, of course, then “ball,” “juice,” and “no” with terrifying frequency and perfect comedic timing. You told him about her obsession with bees: how she’d point at anything yellow and black and shout “Beeee!” with religious fervor, and how you’d bought her the stuffed bee she now couldn’t sleep without because it felt like giving her a piece of the joy she brought you every day.
You told him everything.
The tantrums in the grocery store when she wanted the cartoon cereal. The way she’d fall asleep on your chest, her warm weight the most perfect anchor in the world. The countless drawings taped to the fridge: purple scribbles she insisted were “Daddy” long before she ever met him, like her heart already knew. The first time she got sick and you sat up all night with a cool cloth on her forehead, terrified because she was burning up and you were alone.
You didn’t romanticize it. You told him about the bone-deep exhaustion, the days you cried in the shower so she wouldn’t see, the moments you stared at the wall and wondered if you were enough, if you were failing her by giving her only one parent when she deserved two.
And through it all, he just listened.
His hand found yours in the darkness, grip tight, grounding. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t flinch, didn’t get angry. He absorbed every detail: every mundane, beautiful, heartbreaking moment of the life he’d missed, like a man dying of thirst finally allowed water. Tears tracked silently down his face, catching the blue glow from the pool, and when you finished, your voice hoarse and spent, he pulled you into his chest and held you so tightly you could feel his heart trying to break its way out of his ribs.
“I lost it all,” he breathed against your hair, the words raw, shredded. “I lost the chance to hold your hand through that. To feel her kick. To be the one you cried to when it was too hard. To hear her say ‘Dada’ and know it was me. I lost the right to be tired with you, to rock her at 3 a.m., to be the one whose shirt she threw up on after her first ice cream.” His voice cracked completely. “I lost… God, I lost everything that mattered.”
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his face a ruin of grief and love. “And I’m so fucking angry, Y/N. Not at you, never at you. I’m angry at time. At distance. At myself for not being someone you felt safe enough to tell. I’m mourning a ghost. A whole life that was happening right alongside mine, and I didn’t even know she existed.”
You reached up, cupping his wet cheeks, thumbs brushing away tears that kept coming. “You’re here now,” you said fiercely, because it was the only truth that mattered. “You’re hers now. You’re not missing it anymore.”
“I know,” he whispered, leaning into your touch like it was the only thing keeping him upright. “But knowing doesn’t stop the ache. It just… lives beside the joy now. Forever.”
The second of the three days was quieter, a deliberate, aching stillness.
You packed slowly, mechanically, folding tiny t-shirts and sparkly leggings into suitcases that felt like coffins. Noah played with Kara in the living room, building elaborate block towers only for her to demolish them with gleeful roars of “Earthquake!” The sound of her laughter was a counterpoint to the heavy silence in your heart, the conversation from the night before still echoing between you like a bruise that hadn’t quite formed yet.
That evening, after Kara was finally asleep, the air in the house shifted again.
The grief had been purged, bled out into the night, leaving behind a raw, trembling space. You were standing by the kitchen island, wiping down counters that didn’t need wiping, when Noah appeared in the doorway. He leaned against the frame, arms crossed, watching you with that quiet intensity that made your skin feel too tight.
“One more night,” he said, voice low, rough with everything unsaid.
“One more night,” you echoed, the words tasting like goodbye and please don’t go all at once.
The space between you felt charged, electric. All the soft kisses of comfort, the lingering touches, the shared breaths over a sleeping child, had been leading here. To this moment where the wanting finally outweiled the fear.
He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room in three slow steps. He didn’t stop until he was right in front of you, close enough that you had to tilt your head back to hold his gaze.
“I don’t want to waste any more time,” he whispered, eyes dropping to your mouth.
Your breath caught. “Neither do I.”
That was all it took.
The kiss wasn’t soft or hesitant like the first one. It was deep, claiming, years of pent-up longing and grief and hope finally allowed to breathe. His hands came up to cradle your face, thumbs stroking your cheeks as if memorizing the shape of your bones, and you felt the tremor in his fingers, the same one that lived in your own chest.
You kissed him back with everything you’d held back: every lonely night, every almost, every moment you’d wanted him and couldn’t have him. Your hands fisted in his hoodie, pulling him closer until there was no space left between you, until you could feel his heart hammering against yours.
He walked you backward, never breaking the kiss, until your back met the cool wall of the hallway. His hands slid under your shirt, palms warm against your skin, and you arched into him on a soft, desperate sound that made him groan against your mouth.
It was a silent, mutual understanding.
Clothes fell away slowly, reverently: his hoodie, your t-shirt, the soft cotton of sleep shorts, each piece a promise, a confession. When he finally laid you down on his bed, the moonlight painted silver across his shoulders, and you reached for him with shaking hands, pulling him down until there was nothing left but skin and breath and the quiet, devastating certainty of finally.
He moved like he was afraid you’d disappear, like this was a dream he’d wake up from alone. You met him with the same desperation, legs wrapping around his waist, fingers digging into his back as if you could anchor him to you forever. When he slid inside you, it was with a broken sound against your neck: relief and reverence and a love so fierce it stole both your breaths.
You moved together like you’d done this a thousand times and never at all, learning and remembering in the same breath. He whispered your name like a prayer, over and over, until the words blurred into the rhythm of your bodies and the soft creak of the bed and the quiet hitch of your shared breathing. When you fell apart, it was with his name on your lips and tears on your cheeks, and he followed right after, burying his face in your neck, his whole body shaking with the force of it.
After, he held you so tightly you could feel his heartbeat thundering against your ribs. You traced the lines of a tattoo on his chest with trembling fingers.
“The answer is yes,” you whispered into the quiet dark.
He stilled completely, breath catching. “To what?”
“To moving here. To LA. To all of it.” You pressed your palm over his heart, feeling it stutter beneath your touch. “We’ll go back to Oregon. I’ll give notice. I’ll pack up the apartment. And then we’ll come home. To you.”
The sound he made was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. He rolled onto his side, propping himself up on an elbow to look down at you, moonlight catching the tears on his lashes.
“Are you sure?” he asked, voice thick with emotion, hands trembling as they framed your face. “It’s a big thing to ask. Uprooting everything-”
You reached up, brushing his hair back from his forehead, fingers lingering on the small scar above his eyebrow. “My life is Kara,” you said fiercely. “And Kara’s life is here, with her father. My life… is here with you. Wherever you both are, that’s home. It just took me so many years to find it.”
A tear slipped free, tracing a path down his temple into the pillow. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.
“I will never let you regret this,” he vowed, voice raw. “Either of you. I swear on everything I am.”
“I know,” you whispered, pulling him down into another kiss, slow and deep and full of every promise you’d both waited years to make.
The last morning came too soon.
Sunlight, bright and insistent, streamed into the bedroom, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like tiny, frantic fairies. It felt like a betrayal, that the world could be so cheerful on a day that felt like an ending. You woke to the familiar weight of Kara crawling over you, her small knee digging into your ribs as she launched herself at the sleeping form beside you.
“Daddy! Wake up! The sun is awake!”
Noah groaned, a sound of pure, unadulterated exhaustion, but his arms came up automatically, catching her and pulling her into the warm space between you. She giggled, squirming, her curls a wild mess against his chest.
“The sun is very rude, bug,” he mumbled, his voice gravelly with sleep. He cracked open one eye to look at you over her head, and the shared knowledge of the day ahead passed between you in a single, heavy glance.
You’d made a pact in the dark, tangled in his sheets. No tears today. Not in front of her. This wasn’t a goodbye; it was a “see you soon.” You had to make her believe it so you could believe it, too.
After a pancake breakfast that was quieter than usual, Noah took a deep breath, his fork clinking softly against his plate. “Hey, bug. Mommy and I need to talk to you about something important, okay?”
Kara, mouth smeared with syrup, looked between you, her little brow furrowing at the serious tone. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, sweetheart, never,” you said quickly, reaching over to squeeze her sticky hand. “It’s about our trip.”
Noah nodded, leaning forward on his elbows. “You know how we’ve had the best time here? With the pool and the uncles and all the pancakes?”
“The bestest time,” she agreed solemnly.
“Well, today, you and Mommy have to get on an airplane and go back to our house in Oregon for a little while.”
Kara’s face fell instantly, her lower lip beginning to tremble. “No! I don’t wanna! I wanna stay here with you, Daddy!”
Your heart clenched. This was the moment you’d dreaded.
“I know, baby, I know,” Noah said, his voice incredibly gentle. He slid off his chair and crouched beside hers, putting himself at her eye level. “And I want you to stay more than anything. But Daddy has to go to work, too. I have to go on a big airplane trip with Uncle Jolly, Uncle Nick and Uncle Folio to play music for people in other countries.”
Her eyes widened, the betrayal shifting to a flicker of curiosity. “Like a super long concert?”
“Exactly like a super long concert,” he said, a small, relieved smile touching his lips. “It’s called a tour. And it’s going to take a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” she whispered, the word sounding like an eternity.
“But here’s the most important part,” you jumped in, your voice bright with a forced cheer you didn’t feel. “We are going to talk to Daddy every single day. We’ll call him on the iPad, and you can show him your drawings, and he can tell you goodnight from wherever he is in the world. It’ll be like he’s right there with us.”
Noah’s eyes met yours, full of gratitude. “Yeah, bug. We’ll FaceTime. Even if it’s the middle of the night for me, I will always, always answer. You can tell me about your day at school, and I’ll tell you about the big stages and the weird food I’m eating. Deal?”
Kara considered this, her small face a mask of intense concentration. “And Bun-Bun and Bee can say hi too?”
“Especially Bun-Bun and Bee,” he vowed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “And that’s not even the best part.”
“There’s a bestest part?” she asked, perking up.
“The bestest,” you confirmed, your voice softening into something more genuine. “When Daddy’s big trip is all over, and he comes home… we are going to pack up all our things in Oregon, and we are going to move here. To this house. With the pool. For always.”
The silence in the kitchen was absolute. Kara stared at you, then at Noah, her brain trying to process this monumental shift.
“For… always?” she repeated, as if testing the weight of the word.
“For always,” Noah said, his voice thick with emotion. “No more goodbyes at the airport after this one. You, me, and Mommy. Together. Right here.”
A slow, brilliant smile spread across her face, eclipsing the last traces of sadness. “So we’re just going to Oregon to get my toys?”
You let out a wet laugh, tears of relief pricking your eyes. “Yeah, baby. We’re just going to get your toys. And Mommy’s work stuff. And then we’re coming right back home.”
She launched herself out of her chair and into Noah’s arms, nearly knocking him over. “Okay! But you have to promise to call me every day and you have to sing me the bee song.”
He held her tight, his eyes squeezed shut. “I promise, bug. I promise.”
The relief that flooded the kitchen was palpable, a shared exhalation after holding a collective breath. Kara, now buzzing with the excitement of a secret mission rather than the dread of a goodbye, scrambled down and began detailing exactly which toys had to make the journey back to California. The conversation had worked. The foundation was laid. The hard part was over.
Or so you thought.
As you stood to clear the syrup-sticky plates, your phone, facedown on the counter, vibrated with a sharp, insistent buzz.
Then another.
And another.
Noah, still on the floor with Kara wrapped around his neck, glanced up. “Everything okay?”
“Probably just my mom, checking in before the flight,” you said, your voice light. But a cold, inexplicable trickle of unease ran down your spine. You picked it up.
The screen was lit up with notifications. Not from your mom, but from a flurry of texts in your group chat with your closest friends.
Jess: Y/N HOLY SHIT Leah: Are you seeing this?? Jess: [Image attached] Leah: It’s all over Twitter, what is happening??
Your blood ran cold. Your thumb, suddenly clumsy, tapped on the image.
It was a screenshot of a Twitter post from a fan account. The caption read: “Is Noah Sebastian a DAD??? My cousin literally just sent me this pic she took at a grocery store in LA last week. He was with this woman and a little girl who looks EXACTLY like him. My mind is blown.”
Beneath the caption was a photo. A little grainy, taken from a few aisles over, but devastatingly clear. It was the three of you from that quick grocery run a few days ago. Noah was crouched down, a box of granola bars in his hand, talking to Kara. She was looking up at him, her head tilted, her expression one of serious, adorable concentration. And the resemblance, the same dark curls, the same almond-shaped eyes, the same nose, was undeniable, a punch to the gut for anyone seeing it for the first time. You were slightly out of focus in the background, but you were unmistakably there, a part of the picture.
The world tilted. The sounds of the kitchen, Kara’s giggles, the hum of the refrigerator, muffled into a dull roar. Your legs felt weak.
Noah was watching you, his smile fading as he saw the color drain from your face. “Y/N? What is it?”
You couldn’t speak. You just turned the screen toward him.
His eyes scanned the image, his expression shifting from confusion to dawning horror. He gently untangled himself from Kara and stood up, taking the phone from your numb fingers. He stared at the screen, his jaw tightening until a muscle ticked violently.
“Oh my God,” he breathed, the words barely audible.
The carefully constructed peace of the morning shattered into a million sharp, glittering pieces. The private joy, the whispered plans for the future, the fragile new beginning, it was all out there now, raw and exposed, for the world to pick apart.
Kara, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, looked between your frozen faces. “Mommy? Daddy? What’s wrong?”
Noah’s gaze met yours over her head, his eyes wide with a storm of panic, fury, and a desperate, protective fear. The clock was no longer just ticking down to a flight.
It was ticking down to a hurricane.
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