Chapter 23 My Favorite View Emmett #3
Cara peels off her coat, carefully setting it aside.
She arches her brow as she steps out of her heels.
“I hardy think I loved Bones.” She laughs, every bit of it shrill and full of shit.
She loved that fucking dog, and everyone knows it.
In fact, Lennon captured photographic evidence of it, clicking away while Cara had that dog cradled in her arms like a newborn baby.
“Cara, you pulled off Jennie’s hair bow and put it on Bones,” I holler, arms wide.
Cara stomps a foot, fists balled at her sides. “He looked cute as fuck with that forest-green bow on his floppy ear and you know it! Everyone knows it!”
“Of course he looked cute!” I yell after her as she starts up the stairs. “He’s only eight weeks old and he’s already thirty pounds! He’s huge and fluffy and you put a fucking bow on him! Of course he’s gonna look cute!”
She tosses me a look over her shoulder, saucy and suspicious as I follow her into the bedroom. “You know, it’s just horrible what you’re trying to do to me.” She twists, showing me her back, the zipper that starts just above her ass.
“And what am I trying to do to you?” I whisper, lowering her zipper. “Because I know what I’d like to be doing to you.”
She slaps my hand away as I try to sweep the dress off her, instead turning around to stare at me as she backs herself into the closet.
“You’re trying to make me exercise. Who’s going to walk the dog when you’re not here?
Huh? You know I don’t willingly walk unless it’s a wine tour, shopping, or an after-dinner yap with the girls, Emmett! ”
I snort a laugh, pulling my clothes off, ditching them in the hamper as I close in on her. “You like a different kind of exercise, firefly. In fact, I think you spend a lot more time working out than you realize.”
Cara licks the smile off the corner of her mouth. She steps out of her dress but holds it in front of her, hiding her body. “Let’s table the dog talk for now. I’d like to change into something a little more… festive.”
Yes. Fuck yes. I resist the urge to jerk a fist into my side in celebration, instead grabbing her face, plopping a sloppy, loud kiss on her mouth, and hightailing it to bed while giggling, which is arguably much more mature of me.
I get comfy on the bed, spreading out on the mattress, arms behind my head as I keep my eyes on the closet door, waiting for it to open. My cock is every bit as eager as me, ready to ring in Christmas Day with a bang. “Patience, big guy,” I whisper, giving him a slow tug that makes me groan.
And we are patient. But then five minutes turn into ten, and ten into fifteen, and every man has his breaking point.
I slip off the bed, heading for the closet. “Care, baby, was edging me for twenty minutes part of your plan? Because while I do commend you for it, I’m going to have to punish—” I stop short at the sight before me.
Cara, naked, staring at herself in the full-length mirror, her festive lingerie crumpled up in a ball on the floor, tears streaming down her face.
Her eyes glide to mine in the mirror, and she gasps, grabbing her housecoat and covering herself up. “Emmett.” She swipes frantically at her cheeks, trying to dry her face. “Sorry, I lost track of time. Um, hey, I’m kind of tired. Do you mind if we just—”
I catch her hand, stopping her as she tries to move past me. “Absolutely we can go to bed. Right after we talk about what’s going on in that beautiful brain of yours.”
Fear fills her eyes, and she shakes her head. “But I… I don’t really…” She trails off, like she couldn’t even find the words if she tried. Instead, she folds her arms over her stomach, covering it up, and hangs her head.
My palm slides along her jaw, tipping her face until her haunted gaze collides with mine. “Let’s get you ready for bed.”
Her lower lip trembles, but she nods, letting her arms fall to her sides as I unknot the tie on her robe.
My hands glide over her shoulders, down her arms, guiding the robe off her body and to the floor.
Watching Cara’s hands fly to her front, desperate to cover herself up, is like a fist closing around my heart.
I pull out one of my black T-shirts, Cara’s favorite ones to wear to bed when I’m on the road, and I slip it over her head, a slight smile tipping my lips as I watch it engulf her.
Tangling our fingers, I lead her to the bathroom, where I gather her hair in a clip and clean her face before applying all her nighttime serums, swiping away the occasional tear that runs down her cheek in the process.
When we’re brushing our teeth side by side at the counter, her in my T-shirt, me in a pair of boxer briefs, her handwriting on my hip, I smile, and she blushes.
“What are you grinning at?”
I open the drawer where we keep our markers, pick the pink one, and draw a big heart on the mirror, right around Cara’s reflection.
My favorite view, I scrawl before tossing the marker back in the drawer and rinsing my mouth.
I tap her nose, right where it’s scrunching, and press a kiss to one pink cheek before I tow her to bed, fluffing her pillows via karate chop.
When I climb in beside her, she’s lying on her back, wringing her hands at her chest. I crook a finger at her, murmuring, “C’mere, firefly,” and she takes only a moment to study me before she fits herself perfectly into my side, like we were carved at the same time, from the same damn rock.
“We’ve got all night, gorgeous,” I tell her, running two fingers up and down her arm. “I’m ready to listen, whenever you’re ready to talk.”
I always know how desperate Cara is to get something off her chest based on how long it takes me to coax it out of her. Sometimes it’s an all-day project, and sometimes it comes barreling out of her. Tonight, the words come with her first deep breath.
“I… I’m ashamed of my body,” she admits on a fractured whisper.
“I feel so much hatred inside me, so much resentment for not being able to do this one thing, the thing that the whole world says a woman’s body is supposed to be able to do.
I look at it and wonder what you think when you look at me.
If there’s a part of you, even the smallest part—” She pauses, pressing the heel of her palm between her eyes as she squeezes them shut, tries so damn hard to breathe through it.
“If there’s a part of you that resents it too.
Loves it less. Loves me less. But the worst part…
” Cara loses the battle, burying her face in her hands, and I hold her shaking body so damn tight to mine as she weeps.
“The worst part is the shame I feel for hating my body so much. Here I have this amazing vessel that’s done the most incredible things for me day after day, year after year, and I want to love it for all of that, but all I can focus on is the one thing it can’t do.
I don’t… I don’t know how to forgive myself, Emmett.
What if… what if I never do? Who am I if I can’t love myself? ”
Pain explodes through my chest, ripping up my throat as Cara’s face all but disappears in my side, her fingernails biting into my skin as she clings to me and lets it all out, every ounce of fear she’s been holding on to.
And me? I bury my fingers in her hair, look up at the ceiling, and cry for the struggle this woman is facing, the grief, so much more than failed cycles and negative pregnancy tests, but a war, a real goddamn war she’s waging with herself, no idea how to pull herself out.
Here’s the thing: I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure there’s anything I can say that will fix this, anything that won’t sound like forged and inflated hope, positivity I’m forcing on her, only confirming what she fears: that she’s alone in this, that she’s misunderstood.
All I want to do is let her know that I see her. That I hear her. That she’s safe with me.
So we lie here, clinging to each other, and we cry.
We cry for the mountains of negative pregnancy tests, for every cycle of grief that starts over every month, for the shame nobody should ever have to feel, for the destruction of one woman’s self-worth, for the fight she so fucking desperately wants to end.
And when her tears begin to slow, her body sinking into mine as she gives in to the exhaustion, I turn us on our sides and take her face in my hands.
“You are human, Cara. You win, you lose. You laugh and you love, and you struggle and you grieve. You’re human.
Magnificently made, every inch of your path forged by you.
Every mountain you’ve conquered is because you’ve refused to stay where you are.
Every fight you’ve won is because you’ve refused to settle.
Because you get back up again, no matter how long it takes you.
Not because of your body. Because of your heart.
“I know this feels never-ending. I know it feels like you can’t breathe, like you haven’t felt your lungs fill in forever.
I know you need it now, but healing doesn’t work like that.
Sometimes the healing is every bit as painful as the hurting.
But I promise you, Cara, there is nowhere for us to go but up.
And we go together. You put your hand in mine and we move.
We can take our time, go one step at a time. But we breathe, and we keep going.”
Cara grips my hands on her face, bloodshot eyes searching mine. “Some days I don’t move at all, Emmett. Some days I’m not sure I ever will again.”
“You’re here, Cara. As long as you’re here, you’re moving. Some days you feel like you can conquer the world. Some days, conquering the world is still breathing at the end of the day. As long as you’re here, you’re moving.”
Cara throws her arms around my neck, and there’s something about the way she falls apart against me, like she’s finally set down everything she’s been carrying on her own, given herself the grace to breathe, to rest. To let someone else carry it with her.
Hooking a finger under her chin, I bring her tear-soaked face back to mine. “You’re going to get there. You’re going to heal, and you’re going to fall head over heels in love with yourself again. I’ll be by your side every step of the way, and you know what I’ll say?”
She sniffles, scrubbing her eyes before laying her head on the inside of my bicep. “What will you say?”
The way she gazes up at me with so much love, it pulls my mouth to hers, demanding a kiss, the softest sweep of my lips along hers before I tell her, “That’s my fucking wife.”