A Single Parent Widower Romance.
He thought the only way to love his family was to live in the wreckage. His daughter and one stubborn therapist refuse to let the crash be the whole story.
Rhett did not set out to be the villain in his own love story. But one rainy night, one bad decision behind the wheel, and an ordinary intersection turn his life into a before and after. His wife is gone. His young daughter, Junie, wakes screaming at the sound of tyres on wet pavement. The man who was supposed to keep them safe walks out of the hospital with a discharge summary and a single conviction: if he hurts enough, maybe that will prove he loved them.
Years later, guilt still sits in the driver's seat. Rhett plans his days around avoiding triggers. He pretends car horns do not make his lungs seize. He hides in closets when the memories get too loud. He calls it responsibility. His daughter calls it disappearing.
Enter Isla, a child psychologist who has seen what crashes and corridors can do to a family. Her office is full of blue stress balls, talk cards, and softly stubborn questions. She will not let Rhett use self-hatred as a shortcut instead of learning how to stay. Between her rug and the community garden she tends after hours, she helps Junie find words for her "elevator stomach" and teaches Rhett to say, "My brain grabbed the wrong file," instead of letting panic decide everything.
Alongside Isla's work sits another voice: Trina's. Before she died, Rhett's wife wrote a letter in a hospital bed, asking him for the one thing he is sure he cannot give himself-a life after her. She does not want a monument built from his suffering. She wants their daughter to have a father who is present, imperfect, and willing to love again, in whatever form "again" takes.
As crash anniversaries pass, fire drills shake the school, and an upcoming sabbatical forces the family to face the reality that helpers cannot stay forever, Rhett is pushed into choices he has avoided for years. Walking past the intersection instead of bowing to it. Taking his daughter into a bakery when a fender-bender wakes up every bad memory. Standing in a garden in front of a plant named Now, realising that growth does not wait for perfect weather.
Small Hands, Second Chances is a quiet, powerful story about a widowed father and the girl who keeps pulling him back into the present. It is a single-parent romance where the first second chance is with himself. There is no miracle fix, no erased past, and no easy absolution-only the slow, stubborn work of learning that guilt is not proof of love, and that loving what is left is the bravest way to honour what was lost. Readers who love deeply emotional, character-driven single-dad stories with strong therapy representation and father-daughter heart will find a home in these pages.
