Chapter 15 December 15th #7
I follow a few steps behind him, our arms stretched between us, all the way to his bathroom, where he releases my hand and goes to the tub, flipping on the tap and running his hand beneath it before adding some bath soak.
Then he starts to strip slowly, dropping his clothes into a pile until he’s naked.
I take in his body, trembling, as he moves toward me, and then study his face under the dimmed light as he begins to undress me, silent and focused.
I slip my shoes off and hold his shoulders as he bends, peeling my dress down, pushing it aside when I step out of it.
Everything is slow. Silent. Everything is measured. Everything is calm.
Even me. I’m calm. Accepting. Suddenly so very clear-headed. I made him believe I didn’t want him, and that hurts. How could I not want this man?
Walking us to the bath, Dec steps in, the water still running, and helps me, holding my hands as I lower between his thighs and settle, resting against his chest. The water feels hot on my cold skin, but the atmosphere is thick with the unspoken, but by no means uncomfortable.
We’re both just waiting, taking our time, letting this play out naturally.
Dec eventually slices through the quiet with some soft but unbearably loud words. “I can’t make you love me.”
I stare forward at his bent knees framing mine, swallowing hard, unable to distinguish if the lump there represents what I’ve already lost or what I could lose.
Both? And yet I accept in my heart that to lose something, you must have it in the first place.
And I’m so scared of losing again. Amid the trauma of this evening, I’ve misplaced the magic of what Dec’s brought into my life.
Let his unorthodox light be shadowed by my murky past. I hate that he believes I can’t love him because I love someone else.
So I fill my lungs and let the words out.
“You don’t need to make me love you,” I whisper, the words sounding tattered and torn.
“I already do.” His inhale lifts me with him, and I know he’s holding his breath because my wet skin chills from being out of the water for a few moments until his exhale sinks me back beneath.
He reaches past me and turns off the running water, and then he turns me over so I’m lying on his front, my face level with his throat. “But you still love him.”
“I don’t love him. I don’t need to get over him, because I am over him,” I say with grit, fighting back the muscles in my throat from tightening. I can do this. If there’s going to be any chance of saving myself, I have to do this. And I want to. For Dec. I want to show him.
I have to say it.
“But I will never be over my little boy,” I murmur, my heart turning in my chest at the sound of those words out loud.
Dec jolts so hard, the water splashes, his eyes wide and haunted when I sneak a look up. “What?”
“He was four,” I go on, not wanting to stop for fear of not being able to start again. To finish. To give Dec the complete picture, to erase any doubt he has about how I feel about Dominic and how I feel about him.
I want you to be over him.
Never.
“He was run down.” I sound robotic. It’s the only way.
“By a drunk driver. It was three fifteen on a Friday. December nineteenth.” He’s a statue.
Frozen. Disturbed. “The driver, a woman, had been for a boozy Christmas lunch with her work colleagues. She was late picking up her kid, driving too fast.” I don’t know how I keep our eye contact, but I do.
Resolute. Somehow taking strength from him.
Dec’s holding my eyes too, and yet I know it’s because of pure shock and nothing else.
This isn’t sinking in. “She was sentenced to two years.” For the first time, I allow my eyes to leave his, frowning.
“I saw her the other day. In a clothes store. She was buying kids clothes. Christmas presents, I suppose. She was smiling. Carrying on with her life after a small blip. She was released after a year. Just a year lost with her children.” Looking back at Dec, I see nothing’s changed in his blank face.
His eyes are fixed, unblinking. It’s okay.
I don’t want him to faff and fuss, hug me or wipe my eyes.
I just need him to listen and understand.
“I was supposed to pick Noah up that day, but I was called into a meeting last minute, so Dominic got him. He was on a work call. Not paying attention, not holding his hand. Everyone knows you check both ways and wait for the cars to stop before you cross a zebra crossing, and she was driving too fast to stop.” I breathe out, realising I’ve been spitting out the words without drawing breath, desperate to just get it out there.
He's still motionless, still quiet, still vacant. “Dec?”
One blink. A swallow. His chin pulls in, a slight shake of his head, as if he’s shaking off a daze. The creases around his eyes are so deep, his frown heavy. Everything suggests he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t comprehend.
Because he could never have anticipated this, and he doesn’t need to tell me that.
Slipping his hands under my armpits, he pushes me back so I’m kneeling between his legs, his gaze now avoiding mine.
He rises, the water pouring from his naked body, and he steps out of the tub.
He doesn’t grab a towel, doesn’t dry himself.
Long strides take him out of the bathroom soaking wet, leaving me alone in his tub, wondering what the hell just happened.
My eyes dart across the water lapping gently around my kneeling form.
Should I go after him? Should I dry myself, get dressed, and leave?
A tidal wave of uncertainties circles my twisted mind, tangling it more.
Don’t tell me that on top of everything, seeing Dominic with a woman who’s pregnant, knowing he’s moving on, replacing our little boy, building a new family, I’m going to have to mourn the peace I found with Dec?
Mourn the loss of him too?
I just told him I love him. How could I have gotten it so wrong? He said nothing would change for him.
Biting down on my lip, I wince away the fresh bout of pain stabbing at my heart, reaching for the sides of the tub to lift myself out, but the sound of a loud bang, followed by a crash that echoes through the house, stops me. I stare at the doorway, hearing him curse loudly.
Then . . . silence.
And then I’m shutting down. I can feel it happening, the iron walls coming up, my mind blocking every ugly thought coming at me, trying not to let it attach and stick. Deflecting. He can’t handle the truth. He can’t handle me. As I always feared.
Every muscle in me hardens in preparation to stand up and get out of here.
And then loosens again when Dec appears in the doorway.
Still naked.
His expression now not blank but pained.
He has a short, fat crystal glass in each hand, both half full of clear liquid. Something tells me it isn’t water. Dec takes a swig of one. “Is your hand bleeding?” I ask, catching the scuffs on his knuckles.
“It’s nothing.” He comes to me and puts the drink in my hand. “Drink it.”
“All of it?”
He doesn’t answer, instead necking his own and hissing. Putting his glass on the vanity unit, he shakes the bite of the strong alcohol away and steps back into the tub, kneeling opposite me. “Are you going to drink that?”
I look at the glass, just as Dec takes it and leans out of the bath, putting it on the floor. “I’m sorry I left.”
My strung muscles loosen. “I understand.”
He shakes his head. “I just needed a moment to process what you just told me. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“There’s no wrong thing to say.”
His face falls, his palms clamping my cheeks between them. “I love you.”
The tables have turned. It’s now me motionless and stunned. Staring. Watching him as he watches me trying to wrap my mind around it.
“Deeply, Camryn.” His smile could make me burst into tears on the spot. “I’m so deeply in love with you, I don’t know my fucking arse from my elbow.”
I think I’m supposed to laugh at that.
“I love you so much, my heart aches for you. I love the ballsy career woman, but I hate why you need to be her now. I love the smile you rarely give out, which makes it all the more special when you smile for me. I love the way you close one eye when you’re thinking hard.
I love the way you can be in perfect silence, and I can be in it with you.
I love the way you hate Christmas, but it breaks me to now know why.
I love your passion. I love the mole on your cheek.
I love the way you scissor your cocktail glass with your fingers, and the way you chew your lip when you’re nervous.
” He takes in air, his shoulders slumping.
“How you laughed at Fawlty Towers and quickly corrected yourself. I love how you kiss me, but more than all of that,” he says, releasing my face and resting back on his heels.
“More than anything, I love the way you look at me. And I want you to look at me like that every day for the rest of my life.”
Stunned, I drop back onto my arse, the pessimistic part of my brain telling me I’ve misheard him. Dreamed the last few minutes. This isn’t real, he can’t possibly love me. Who could?
But Dec . . . does?
I want to get to know the woman I’m falling for.
And now he truly does. And . . . he loves me.
I cup my hands over my face, bringing my knees up to my chin.
The tears can’t be kept at bay, and I don’t have it in me to even try.
Seeing Dominic today, the girlfriend I didn’t know he had blooming, felt like the worst day of my life since I watched the surgeon walk out of the theatre, his face grave, and I knew. I just . . . knew.
Now?
I feel like a safety net has been cast beneath me. Something to cushion the constant blows I feel each and every day I fall, when I’m doing something and then I remember . . .
My little boy died.
In a few days it will be three years since I last held his little hand. Kissed his little forehead. Saw his little smile. Heard his little voice.
“I love you, Mummy. Thiiiiiis much,” he says around a cheese puff, his little arms wide.
The pain hits hard, never easing off, as strong today as it was the day I lost him. My shoulders lift and fall, my heart squeezes, my lungs burn as I try to get air into them.
I feel Dec’s hands wrap around my wrists and pull firmly, revealing my tear-streaked, blotchy face.
And seeing Dec’s pained expression now, it just makes me cry harder.
But he doesn’t let me hide. He doesn’t pull me close for a hug.
It’s as if he wants to see my emotion. Wants to see me fall apart.
But I know Dec, and this, what he’s doing now, leaving me wide open, exposed, crying, is because he knows I’ve suppressed it for years.
I’ve suppressed it so much I could burst.
Burst and cause irrevocable damage.
And I did.
To myself, to my husband, to my family, and to my job.
I lost them all.
Pushed them away. I harnessed the hatred inside me and made them all hate me.
I didn’t want any of them if I couldn’t have Noah.
Life was just so empty, to the point I wondered how I lived before him.
What was my purpose? Who was I if I wasn’t Mummy?
And now I’m sitting here in a bathtub with a man who’s telling me he loves me despite all of that, and I’m thrown by my feelings toward him.
Have been since the day I met him, because I’m not supposed to feel anything but sadness, guilt, and grief.
Desire, amusement, peace? None of them should be in my life. How could they be?
And still, he watches me, watches it all pour out, tears, snot, chokes, snivels, and horrid, wretched sobs.
I can’t even wipe my face because he’s still holding my wrists.
It just won’t stop coming, the dam open, not closing until it’s drained dry.
At least for today. This is three years’ worth of emotion gushing out of me, and with each painful, messy, loud minute, my body becomes that little bit looser.
My muscles relax. My chest doesn’t squeeze so hard.
Because he loves me.
Spreading his bent legs, Dec slides me into them and cocoons me, my body bunched, his arms circling my back. He holds me until my body stops jerking and my snivels fade to light, sporadic catches of breath. “I love you,” he whispers into my hair.
And I nod.