Whit
I race to finish the chapter in my book when Colt’s truck pulls into the driveway. I wasn’t expecting him tonight, especially when Alex should be back with Jonas any minute. The instant my eyes skim over the final line, I toss my Kindle down on the empty couch cushion beside me and watch the door.
Jonas bursts through it first, sights set on the refrigerator, as if there aren’t remnants of chocolate on his upper lip.
I’m going to need a second job to pay for his eating habits pretty soon.
Betty’s close behind him, equally eager to find a snack.
Jonas pulls a pack of pepperoni out, pops one between his lips like he’s smoking a cigar and tosses another to the dog.
“Hey, bud. How’s it going?” I slowly rise from my comfy seat, draping the throw blanket over the back of the couch and heading into the kitchen.
When my butt hits the counter stool, the front door closes, and I look over to see Colt. When our eyes meet, he smiles and winks. “Hey, Mama.”
No matter how often I hear it, those words glide across my skin like the worn feel of his hands frisking me, tingling my inner thighs and making my core flutter.
“Hey.” My response barely comes out before I’m being interrupted.
“I saw Colt at the fair, and he said he’d give me a ride home.” Jonas answers the question I forgot to ask. “I was tired of hanging out with Dad and Fern.”
A few hours after Colt licked my pussy while I tried to explain the concept of boundaries, Alex and I had a good conversation for the first time in ages.
He said he understood why Jonas and I have troubles with trusting him—whether that means anything changes or not remains to be seen.
Despite my insistence that he didn’t have to do anything, Jonas suggested the two of them go for dinner so he could still hang out with his friend at the fair.
“Why were you tired of hanging out with them?” I prop my elbow on the counter, eyes flitting between Jonas and Colt. “Was dinner okay?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs, tearing a bite from his pepperoni stick. “Fern’s having a baby, so that’s all they wanted to talk about. It was boring.”
I freeze, breath lodged in my throat. “What?” I choke out.
“Fern and Dad are having a baby.”
My foolish eyes prickle, and I grasp the counter’s edge until my knuckles blanch.
The ringing in my ears has my head spinning.
Can’t blink. Can’t swallow. Can’t hear. A poisonous fog fills my skull.
Colt and Jonas chatter, droning voices I can’t make out.
Like I’m six feet underwater with no way to tell which way is up. Drowning.
Somehow, I manage to tear my shell-shocked body from the scene, moving instinctively toward the stairs. As if filled with lead, I suffer through hauling my feet from step to step, clutching the stair railing to keep from passing out.
If either of them says something, I don’t hear it.
The laundry room door shuts softly behind me, and I barely muster up the energy to turn the dryer dial before sinking to the floor. My cheek flattens across the cold tile, and I clutch my unmoving chest.
Breathe.
It comes in a stuttering contraction, each inhalation barely getting enough oxygen to keep me alive.
And within moments, they turn gasping as sobs rack my entire body.
Tears pool in the corners of my mouth, then flow freely—puddling on the floor, matting my hair to my head, leaving a salty taste in my mouth.
My knees curl into my chest, bare legs squealing as they drag across the floor. A scream claws its way up my throat, and I slap a palm over my mouth to stop it.
Breathe.
I can’t.
I think my lungs have incinerated inside my chest.
There’s no approaching footsteps. No knock on the door. No squeaky hinges.
And yet, somebody is pulling me into a cradle. Scooping my corpse into their arms. I lean into the familiar scent, and the gentle shushing, and the warm embrace.
“I’ve got you, honey. I’m here,” he whispers, cutting through all the noise inside my head. “I’ve got you.”
I wrap my arms around his neck like he’s a life preserver and whisper his name to be sure it’s really him.
“I’m here. I don’t know what’s wrong, but let me try and fix it, okay?” He smooths his hands over my wet hair, pushing it away from my burning cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble between sobs.
“Don’t be sorry, honey.” We’re gently rocking side to side in time with the clunking of my dryer. “Don’t even stop crying until you’re ready.”
His lips plant sweet kisses on my forehead.
And he holds me, arms wrapped tight around my body, bearing the weight of my pain.
He keeps me afloat, cooing in my ears until my gut-wrenching sobs become slow, meandering rivulets of tears rolling down my cheeks.
Until both our shirts are tear-stained and my heartbeat slows to meet his.
“That’s my girl.” He slips his fingers under my chin and tilts my head. I squint under the harsh laundry room light, barely able to see through waterlogged lashes. Colt’s thumb glides under my eye. “We’re okay, honey.”
It’s easy to say we’re okay when he doesn’t know that in a minute we’ll be very, very far from okay. By now, I should be used to the loneliness and heartache that comes with never being enough.
“I-I…I don’t—”
“Let’s not talk about it right now. It’s okay.”
I shake my head and reach up to pat my fingers on my swollen, flushed cheeks. My mind’s whirling wildly, and I shove my way through the storm, determined to focus. “No, I need…we need to talk. I’ve already put it off for too long.”
His body freezes under me, and worry fills the sudden creases in his forehead. “Um…let’s go out to the living room?”
I slowly crawl out of his lap and move to sit cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t want Jonas seeing me like this.”
“Okay then…right here it is. Can we turn this rackety dryer off, though?”
After receiving a tentative nod from me, he shuts it off. Now it’s too quiet. We’re staring at each other, our knees touching, and the only sound is ambient video game music drifting up the stairs.
“So…”
“So,” he repeats. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
I recoil. “With Alex? No. I haven’t been in love with him in…shit. It’s been a long time.”
“Oh, I thought…” His Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow. “I thought you were upset because you’re still in love with him, and now he’s with somebody else.”
Somehow I’m not entirely out of tears, despite my body feeling shriveled and dehydrated. I blink them away. Falling into another puddle of despair won’t make this conversation any easier.
“Y-you thought that and still sat here consoling me?”
“Of course…I told you I’d be here for you. And maybe it makes me a fucking idiot to sit here soaking up your tears while you cry about somebody else, but I’ll do it anyway. Because I’m a man of my word and also I’m stupidly in love with you.”
That’s all it takes to sever the veins and arteries connecting my heart to the rest of my body.
I don’t deserve that love. I don’t deserve him.
“N-no—you’re not.” My lip wobbles, and I brush at the salt itching my cheek. “I can’t…I can’t be enough for you.”
“Whit, you’re not just enough. You’re everything.”
“No. No, I’m not,” I whisper. “There’s so much you don’t know about me.”
He shakes his head, tongue skating between his teeth. “We went over this. I know what I need to know, and I have no doubt you’ll fill me in on the blanks as we go. That silly stuff doesn’t matter. There’s a connection that’s so much deeper than that—and I know you feel it, too.”
“It’s…” Looking down at my lap, I pluck at the skin I’ve managed to tear apart around my fingernails.
They’re red and puffy, which is what I imagine my entire body looks like after sobbing on the floor for so long.
“I wasn’t crying because I’m sad about Alex.
I’m…” I take a heaving breath. “I’m not the one giving Jonas a sibling. That kills me.”
He rocks forward to slide a hand into my hair, pressing his forehead against mine.
Even though I know what’s about to come, I let it happen.
Closing my eyes and breathing deeply, I lock away the scent of him in my lungs for safekeeping.
If this is the last time I feel his hands on me, I want to soak it in. Memorize every part of his touch.
“Maybe this is too forward…. Hell, I know it’s too forward.
But I’m willing to do anything to put a smile back on my girl’s face.
” His lips press to mine, slowly turning into a smile that I can’t help but mimic.
His soft laughter fills my mouth, my lungs, my heart.
“Okay, turns out that was easier than I thought. But you’re already a great mom, and I’d love a kid someday, so I was going to say… we can.”
We can?
I spring backward. “Colt…”
“I know I said it’s too forward. I was just—”
“I can’t have more kids.”
The truth hangs suspended in the warm, humid air. A door slamming shut between him and me, snapping the invisible strings that he seemed to believe were tethering our souls.
“Well…” His brows pull together with confusion.
“After Jonas was born, I hemorrhaged…. I lost so much blood so quickly, I don’t really remember much.
Um…they were giving me transfusions and trying to stop it, but…
” A shiver carries along my spine at the memory of the weeks following the emergency procedure.
“But I woke up missing a uterus. They did emergency surgery to save my life. And I’m so, so grateful they did…
but I can’t get pregnant. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. ”
Rare silence from the man who always has a quippy response in his pocket.
I sniffle, swiping my fingers along my teary waterlines and refusing to look anywhere but at the floor.
“It took a long time to grapple with having that choice taken from me. And for the most part, I’m at peace with Jonas being my only kid.
Sometimes it…it fucking sucks, ya know? It…
it really hit me in a sore spot hearing that Alex gets to carry on and have another baby. After everything. Why him and not me?”
Hearing that thought finally spoken is akin to stabbing myself in the gut. And letting Colt down will be a twist of the blade.
Why him and not me?
Why not me?
For fucking once I want it to be me who gets a win. I can’t even be worthy enough for whatever fucking higher power exists to do me a solid.
Colt blows a huff of air from his nose, and he speaks so softly I find myself tilting an ear toward him to catch it. “Wasn’t…didn’t you say he wasn’t at the hospital when Jonas was born? Even with all that?”
“Yeah.”
Technically he brought food a few times, but that’s nothing worthy of defending.
His knuckles crack.
“It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair that he can’t be bothered to be a dad to the kid he currently has, yet he can go knock up some girl he’s known for a few months.
And when Fern realizes what a piece of shit Alex is, it’s going to be really un-fucking-fair to Jonas to not have that sibling around.
” Shit, here come the tears again. I give up trying to contain them, letting rivers flow to the tip of my chin, where droplets swell until they fall and splatter on my legs like heavy rain.
“And it’s really goddamn unfair that I met somebody as great as you, and we were doomed from day one. ”
“Wait. Why are we doomed?”
“Colt…I can’t get pregnant, and you’ve mentioned your future kids more than once. You’ll be such an amazing dad, and you deserve to get that experience. Y-you…you can meet somebody new and have everything you want. The things I’ll never be able to give you.”
“We could adopt if we wanted to.”
I want to excitedly tell him we can adopt all the babies, as if that’s not something I’ve ever considered before. I’d love to reignite the spark of hope quickly fading from his face.
“Yeah…” I give him a flat smile. “I doubt it’s something we could ever afford, but—”
“Okay, so I won’t have kids.” He shrugs, as if this isn’t something that completely derails the future he saw for himself.
As if it’s just that simple to shrug and give up on something you’ve dreamt about.
If that were the case, my eyes wouldn’t be burning and my chest sore from heaving sobs over the news that my ex-boyfriend is the one giving my son a sibling, instead of me.
“But you want kids—”
“I want you,” he says with a huskiness to his voice that commands me to look up at him.
When I meet his big, sad eyes, my stomach twists. He’s nurtured my heart since the day he walked up to my front door in his stupid cut-off T-shirt. Taken the time to repair the breaks and build trust, promising things he didn’t know he had no business promising.
“You won’t. One day when all your friends have kids, and you feel that biological clock ticking, you won’t want me.”
“You don’t know that.” He blinks, sniffing.
“I can’t spend each day braced for impact. Maybe a more secure woman could ignore the live explosive in the room, but…but I’m forever going to be hovering around the detonator, hoping I’m fast enough to see you reaching for it so I can beat you to the punch.”
So…boom.
Explode it now, while it’s still small and the impact is contained to me and him.
“Whit…” Tears well in his eyes.
“It’s okay to want kids, Colt. It’s understandable.
I don’t blame you for wanting them. I wish…
I would love it if things were different.
” I rub the space between my eyebrows, squeezing my eyes so hard, they hurt.
Or maybe they hurt from all the tears pouring out of them.
“But this is better. Or…it will be…. You’ll leave and—”
“I don’t want to leave.”
I glance up at the ceiling. My chest no longer aches. Bled dry, my heart is numb. “It’ll be easier if you do. I need you to go. Don’t make this harder. Please.”
His hand on my thigh, Colt leans in and presses a firm kiss to my forehead.
The burn is unbearable. I hear the rough swallow—the emotion clung in his throat—and he lingers there for a few heartbeats.
The entire time he pulls away, I want to wrap my arms around his neck and stop him.
But despondency searches out every gap in my rib cage and settles into the crevices where hope briefly lived.
“See you later, Mama.”