Chapter 51
Kieran
MOMMA BEAR CARSON
KIERAN
are you home?
MOMMA BEAR CARSON
yes, is everything okay? Need me to come over?
KIERAN
everything’s okay, Layla is with Emmy
can I head over before practice?
MOMMA BEAR CARSON
of course, I’ll pop the kettle on
MY FUTURE WIFE
MY FUTURE WIFE
*photo of Emmy*
KIERAN
my two beautiful girls
I love you sunshine
MY FUTURE WIFE
I love you too but I don’t feel very radiant
KIERAN
it’s okay love, you just have a few clouds passing through
Devastation doesn’t begin to cover what overcame Layla. Horror is more accurate of a description.
I’ve done everything to try and bring my sunshine back to life. To try and revive the piece of her soul that was so evidently taken that day in the doctor’s office, but nothing I do can ever repair it.
Have you ever had to watch someone you love go through something so utterly devastating that you watch their light leak out of their eyes? It’s not only taken a part of her soul, it’s robbed mine as well, because we are each others halves.
All the while, Layla is trying to act like nothing happened, but it’s like she’s a robot turned to autopilot mode. I can tell she doesn’t want to feel anything, doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to acknowledge any of it.
But when ads on the TV come on and there’s a baby, her eyes well with tears.
When we took Emmy out for ice cream and a pregnant lady walked in, she began to cry.
Anytime we pass a baby store, her body turns rigid.
Layla is trying to be brave, but she’s not allowing herself to feel the sadness. She’s trying not to burden me, and yet all I want to do is stand in front of her with my arms open wide and beg her to give me her grief.
I don’t know what to do anymore.
Hence why I’m here, knocking on her front door before morning practice.
Charlotte opens the door a moment later. “Come in, sweetie, I’ve got the kettle on.”
“Thank you.”
Her home feels different than the last time I was here, as if Charlotte has been hit by the devastation of this as well and her home is showing the coldness.
“How is she doing?” she asks as she leads me to the kitchen.
Blowing out a breath, I take a seat at the kitchen bench. “I came to see if you had the answer to that.”
Smiling at me sadly over her shoulder, she says, “She’s been avoiding me. I’m afraid I know less than you do.” Turning back to the kettle, she pours two cups. “Although I know that’s on purpose. She knows I’d have a hard time not smothering her.”
“No such thing as smothering.”
She clicks her tongue. “Trust me, sweetie, there is.”
“How are you?”
Her shoulders droop at the question. “Not well, if I’m honest. I’m just—” She chokes on her words, her back stiffening. “She’s gone through so much as it is and this was just the final nail in the coffin. She didn’t deserve lupus, no one does, but to have lupus and be infertile?”
“It’s unfair.”
“It’s more than unfair. It feels like someone is wrongfully punishing her.”
“How do you do it?” I ask as she slides my cup of tea across the countertop. “How do you stop feeling so helpless?”
She gives me another sad smile. “You don’t. You just learn to hide it around her.” Putting her mug down, Charlotte goes on. “Layla carries a lot of guilt for those in her life. Misplaced guilt.”
“She think she’s a burden.”
She dips her chin. “I’ve tried to drill it out of her but you know her, once that girl settles on something she’ll do it.
I’ve never been able to convince her that everything her father and I did was always a choice and one made out of love.
We don’t regret a single decision we’ve ever made.
Not a sacrifice, a missed vacation or event, nothing.
We’d both do it again in a heartbeat for her. ”
“I don’t know how to help her. This seems…”
“Bigger than her chronic illness.”
Taking off my lucky hat, I run my fingers through my hair. “Yes, as awful as it sounds. I know she struggled emotionally with her health, but this is different.”
“It’s robbed her in a different way than lupus ever did.”
“With lupus, it’s like there was always a hope that the flare-up would go away but this won’t disappear. This isn’t manageable.”
“I hate to ask this, and please don’t take offense, but does her diagnosis change your feelings for my daughter?”
I rear back like she slapped me.
“Excuse my language, Charlotte, but fuck no.”
She nods. “I thought so, I just…I had to ask.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That’s true.”
Taking a sip of her tea, Charlotte places the cup down with a sigh. “I don’t know how to help her this time. It’s kept me up every night since.”
“All we can do I guess is keep showing up and hope that one day it works.”
“Just give her time. It’s a lot to process.”
We fall into silence, both of our minds whirling.
I can’t keep sitting around doing nothing. I feel like I’m constantly hovering over her shoulder waiting for her to say what she needs. Trying to preempt her emotions before she does so I can be ready to catch her when she falls.
My hope that Charlotte would have something up her sleeve to help Layla has left me crestfallen. Driving to the arena, I feel like my body weighs a thousand pounds, my heart sinking with every minute, my mind in disarray.
I don’t think I can help her.
And I’ve never felt so fucking hopeless.
There’s no magic words to say to make her feel better, no trial drug. Her lupus symptoms have slowly faded but her ovaries won’t start magically functioning like they should.
Layla just opened her heart to me, expressing how she felt like she couldn’t wish for a family because of how sick she was, and she finally had hope after years of illness, only for that to be taken from her too.
She’s lost so much, so fucking much, that as I park my car I find I can’t fucking breathe.
It’s overwhelming how cruel life can be. Not only for Layla but for everyone.
Emmy and her horribly abusive mother, her early years that I can never make right.
For my own mother, who whored me out to pay for her drug addiction.
For Layla, my ray of sunshine in a stormy world, who has been beaten down day in and day out. It’s hard to coincide that her body, the very one that contains her beautiful soul, is failing her so thoroughly. That someone so pure and kind-hearted beneath it all is slowly withering.
I can see it’s slowly making her hate herself.
And that’s the thing that is destroying me. How can she hate the most glorious person to exist? How can she hate the person Emmy wishes every night to grow up to be? How can she hate the woman that I’ve fallen so madly in love with?
Suddenly, my chest tightens past the point of breathing and I can’t get in a lungful of air. Can’t manage to breathe in the oxygen surrounding me.
Dark spots dance along my vision. Unbuckling my seat belt, I fling open my door, savoring the rush of air that greets me only for my lungs to not work at all.
I can’t breathe.
Wetness drips over my lips.
When did I start crying?
“Ashford?”
A sudden pounding of steps ring out in rhythm with the pounding of my heart.
I can’t fucking breathe!
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I got you, buddy. You’re all right.”
I still can’t see past the blur in my vision but the voice is familiar. O’Connor. I hear another car door open. Is that mine?
I’m clutching my chest, pounding on it, as if I hit my chest hard enough my lungs will begin to work again.
“You’re all right, buddy. You’re having a panic attack, but I got you.”
His hand is on my shoulder, gently leading me back to my seat, and then it’s on the back of my neck, pushing.
“That’s it, put your head between your knees.”
My shaking hands reach out before I know what I’m doing. O’Connor doesn’t miss a beat. He clasps my hand in his and instructs, “In for four. Breathe with me, buddy. One, two, three, four.”
Following the sound of his voice, I repeat it with him, breathing in for four and out for four, six times over before I’m able to fully blink away the dark spots clouding my vision. I can see my sneakers, black and white, and O’Connor’s—white and green New Balances.
“You good?” he asks.
Nodding, I slowly sit up, clutching my chest as I’m finally able to breathe.
O’Connor is leaning against the passenger door of my truck, worry etched deep into his face. “Had me fucking scared you were having a heart attack.”
“Can’t get rid of me that easily.”
The corner of his lip twitches up, then falls.
“Can I ask if you’re okay?” After I bark out a humorless laugh, he jumps in again.
“I mean, I know you’re not, I’m just…fuck, I’m worried, dude, okay?
You’ve been off in your own world this last week and Cap told us to give you space, but we’re all worried. ”
“I know, I’m sorry. I just can’t share what’s happening with everyone. It’s unfair.”
“Layla?” he guesses.
I blow out a breath. “Yeah.”
“Cindy told me. She, um…let’s just say Layla’s news hit close to home for her. She wouldn’t have told me otherwise, but I found her similarly to how I just found you and she blurted it out while crying.”
My brows skyrocket at that. “Fuck, dude, I’m so sorry.”
“I should be saying that to you. What Layla’s going through…” A faraway look enters his gaze. “Let’s just say I know the toll it takes on someone you love. I won’t lie to you, Ashford, it’s ugly, and it’s really fucking hard.”
Holding out my hands before me, I lay my heart bare. “I don’t know how to help her. I feel so fucking helpless it’s driving me insane.”
O’Connor looks like he knows exactly what I mean.
“You have to let her grieve. She’s grieving a life she dreamed of, one she’ll never be able to obtain on her own, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.”
“Fuck,” I curse, running a hand through my hair. “I really can’t help her, can I?”
O’Connor rocks his head side to side. “You be there for her. Support her, welcome her with open arms the moment she needs you, and try to do things that make her happy.” He looks around the parking lot before lowering his voice.
“Honestly, when Cindy and I went through our struggles, she found it the hardest to understand that I was okay with our future looking different. She was so devastated that our plans were changing, she said she didn’t feel like a woman and that I should be with someone who could give me everything I want. ”
“Holy shit, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He shakes his head. “No one knows. Cin likes to be fun, loud, and boisterous, but growing up her parents didn’t let her have feelings, so she struggles to be anything other than perfectly happy.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, it was rough for a long time, but we found our way back to each other.” He bites his lower lip, mulling something over before he snaps his eyes back to me.
“Just make sure Layla knows it doesn’t change anything for you.
Make sure she knows that you’re there for her regardless if she can give you children or not. ”
“Of course she knows I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t know, man, she’s had the rug pulled out from her. She probably didn’t hear a lot of anything those first few days. I had to drill it into Cindy that I didn’t want to date someone else who could give me a family naturally.”
My eyes all but bug out of my head.
Clapping me on the shoulder, O’Connor doubles down. “Make sure she knows she’s enough.”
“Can I ask how you knew about the breathing technique?”
O’Connor’s lips flatten as he shrugs. “My brother. My mom says he came out anxious.”
“Really? He always seem so…”
“Collected? Yeah, he’s not on the inside, trust me. He’s gotten really good at hiding his anxiety.”
“Does he have any tips?”
O’Connor snorts. “Yeah, really fucking good medication.”