52. Ellie
Chapter fifty-two
Ellie
“ J esus, he’s getting really good at this,” Dom says as he waits for Luca to throw the ball his way.
Luca does a dramatic windup, his arm all the way in the air, before he launches the ball with no sense of direction or amount of force needed. Just pent-up enthusiasm and a will to cause chaos—something I’m thinking he’s inherited from his fur-cousin, Hopper.
The ball strikes Dom in the forehead and I stifle a giggle. Apparently not well enough, because he gives me a you’re gonna pay for that look and it has my body reacting in all the good ways. It’s nice to feel that spark growing and flourishing between me and Dom again.
“Maybe he’ll take after Aiden and end up going pro,” I say with a shrug from my spot on the floor on the opposite end of the living room. Luca races, little bare feet slapping against floor, to retrieve the ball that bounced off his dad’s head before he takes his spot between us again and throws it at my head this time.
I duck and deflect with my palm, and Luca giggles before running off again to find the ball before the abuse continues .
Luca is absolutely going through a growth spurt again. His sleep is still miles better than it was a few months ago, but he’s needed a little extra help getting down at night. He is much more mobile, wanting to run everywhere and climb on everything. He’s adding new words to his vocabulary all the time, surprising us. What’s unsurprising is that one of those words is dammit .
I know I’m not supposed to laugh when my son swears because that’ll only encourage the behavior, but, holy shit, it’s hilarious the way he pronounces the word and the emphasis he puts on it.
We wrap up our Friday night with a dance party to “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” I think you have to really love someone to parent with them. I learned a while ago, I needed to swallow any embarrassment I might have felt when acting stupid to make my kid happy. Because if anyone else watched me cluck like a chicken in my living room, my arms tucked into my side, elbows flapping, and my neck bobbing, I’d die of embarrassment. But with Dom, it’s our normal life.
Our amazing, wonderful, silly life.
I’m finally feeling grateful for it. All that this life has given me. Everything was muted before, buried in a haze of weak self-defense mechanisms that had stopped working. I can breathe again.
Dom and I help Luca through his bedtime routine, starting with a bath and ending with Dom reading him a story and me rocking him in my arms for a few minutes.
Those last few moments of the day are always my favorite. Some days I hold him longer than he needs, waiting until he’s asleep in my arms, my mind clear and focused on the present and the gift that it is to share these memories with him. Other days I think about how far we’ve come and how proud I am to be his mom. And then there are days like today, when I dream about what’s next. Who Luca will be. What he’ll choose to do with his life. How I hope he takes only the best from his father and me.
After settling a nearly asleep Luca in his crib, I tiptoe into the hallway and, as slowly as possible, close and latch his bedroom door.
When I rejoin Dom in the living room, he’s already cleaned up the toys and sorted them into the toy bins. He’s sitting on one end of the L-shaped sectional, hunched over, elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced together, his attention on his hands.
“Everything okay?” I ask, a thread of anxiousness pulling my spine straight as I cross one arm over my stomach and the other to fidget with the collar of my crew neck sweater.
He startles, but when his eyes find mine, they soften. “Yeah. Can we talk?” he asks, gesturing to the couch. I sit on the other stretch of the couch, our knees almost touching since we’re both nearly wedged into the corner cushion.
“What’s going on, Dom?”
“I owe you an apology.”
“I mean, yeah, you laughed a little too hard at my rendition of ‘Five Little Ducks.’ I thought I was getting better,” I joke in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever serious topic it sounds like he wants to discuss.
“I think that was the most beautiful rendition there ever was…next to mine, of course,” he says with a casual shrug, instantly putting me at ease with his playfulness. “No, I want to apologize for not being honest with you when I started this whole puzzle game with you.”
“I don’t know what you mean. We’re almost done, right? I think there’s just the one corner left to go.”
“I told you when I first introduced the idea that I was doing this to help you. But I didn’t realize that I was also doing it to help myself.”
“What…?” I question, my voice trailing off in confusion before he takes my hand in his.
“I’ve been really good at focusing on what you were trying to bury. The things you were struggling with that you wanted to hide. I wasn’t willing to acknowledge that there were things I was afraid of facing too. Things I was too scared to admit to myself. That wasn’t fair to you.”
“I would never hold that against you,” I reassure him, gently swiping my thumb across his knuckle. “It’s not like I was doing a good job facing my own shit either.”
“I want to tell you now, though…” his eyes flicker between my own, and my heart breaks at the fear reflected in them .
Has he really been hurting this whole time? How could he bury this all for so long?
“I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk about it until now,” I say.
“No, it wasn’t until recently that I think I was forced—by both a professional and four not-so-professional people in my life—to look more closely at why I was so determined to fix everything. I think I was trying to fix what you were struggling with in hopes that it would fix my problems too.”
“Tell me,” I plead. “Tell me everything.”
Without hesitation, Dom pulls me into his lap and holds me to his chest while he tells me about the day Luca was born…from his perspective. He speaks slowly, and when he pauses, I look up to see tears escaping as he shuts his eyes. He doesn’t just tell me what happened, though, he tells me every thought that ran through his mind, every detail of the nurse’s expression when she tried to explain to him what was going on with his wife and newborn son post-operation. How it felt staring at his phone when texts poured in from family members and friends asking for updates while he sat next to my body as I slept off the anesthesia. The guilt for being unable to do anything to protect his wife and son. The relief when I opened my eyes and the pain as he watched me fall apart from my own experience. The joy when he held Luca for the first time and the way his heart stuttered watching me become a mother, as unsure and traumatized as I was.
When he’s done, he asks me to do the same. To say it all out loud and to not leave one detail out. I’ve told the people important to me all the same version, giving more of myself than I had since it all happened. But never like this.
I take my time and don’t rush. Some things feel too dark, too terrifying, to say out loud, but I do. Dom doesn’t interrupt. He holds me, stroking his hand up and down my spine, giving my arm a reassuring squeeze when I have to pause to collect myself or my thoughts.
By the end, we’re both crying, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders and hide my face in the crook of his neck and shoulder, finding comfort in the arms that have held me through it all .
“It was easier to focus on you and Luca than to face the hurt and unresolved grief from everything that happened,” he says softly, before placing a gentle kiss on the top of my head.
“I don’t blame you for anything, Dom. We were delt a card we had no idea how to play, and we both did the best we could. Since Luca was born, I’ve wondered what type of mom I would be if we didn’t experience such a traumatic birth. But every day, that question fades as I ask myself, what kind of mom do I want to be now that we made it through it all? Everything you’ve done…you’ve helped me find the answer to that question.”
“I felt responsible for putting us back together, because while I was terrified, I knew it couldn’t compare to what you went through. I did us both a disservice by not admitting I was struggling too. I thought I could fix it all, but I couldn’t even see myself clearly.”
I take his face in my hands and make sure I have his full attention when I say, “You helped me more than I can explain. You gave me your confidence when I had none of my own. You gave me space to process and grieve when I needed it. You made me laugh when it felt impossible. You never gave up on me. It’s not your fault that what was broken couldn’t be fixed.”
I kiss him, moving into his lap to straddle him. His hands grip my hips possessively, but travel quickly up and down my sides, to my waist, my back, my shoulders, my ass. After holding in this pain and hurt, we can finally let it go and make room for love instead.
I’m dizzy by the time I pull away, and his lips chase mine for one more soft kiss before he leans his head back along the couch cushion.
“I love you, Dominic. At my most broken, at my most healed, I love you always.”
“God, I love you so much, Ellie.”
We start to move again, slower this time, savoring every moment.
I trail my fingertips over his skin, and his palms pull and push until I’m grinding in his lap.
“I need you,” I whisper into our shared breath .
“I need you more,” he growls, pulling my top over my head and tossing it behind the couch.
I stand and slowly push my leggings off. He leans back, admiring the view with hungry eyes. “No underwear?”
I shake my head and smile, kneeling back over him in just my bra. My plain, gray nursing bra. But the look that Dom gives me makes me feel like I’m wearing lacy lingerie as he removes it.
After all these years and everything he’s seen my body go through, he makes my entire body hot with just a look.
I run my hands over his abdomen before lifting his shirt off, tossing it with mine, lost somewhere on the floor. I push the band of his pants and boxer briefs down while he raises into me, lifting us both a few inches before his clothes finally fall past his hips, then his knees, before he kicks them away.
Neither of us moves, eyes locked on each other, my hands resting atop his shoulders.
“You’re so beautiful, Ellie.” He strokes his fingers reverently over my stomach, hips, and thighs, not missing an inch of my stretched, scarred, and dimpled skin. But I believe him. The way his gaze roves over my body, not to mention his hard length between us, I’ve never felt more cherished or desired than I do in this moment.
“Let me love you?” he half asks, half begs before kissing my neck, sucking and biting gently, causing my head to drop back, eyes closing, overwhelmed at the feel of his warm skin against mine and his kiss lighting a fire inside.
“Yes, yes, please.”
He groans against my chest, his face between my breasts, his beard scratching the soft skin, before he pulls me close and shifts us both so I’m lying on the couch and he’s pressed along every inch of me.
Dom doesn’t wait; he slides home, filling me with a satisfying fullness. We moan together as he slowly slides out, lifting his head to look into my eyes.
With one hand pressed into the cushion next to my head, his other grabs my hip as I wrap my legs around him, pulling him closer with my heels, silently begging him to fill me again .
His fingers tighten, pulling me up and toward him as he sinks in again, starting a relentless rhythm.
His hips grind down as mine roll and rock against his pelvis, desperate for him to be closer, as close as he can be. My hands frantically search along his skin for somewhere to hold on. I settle with one on his back and the other on his shoulder.
“Fuck, Ellie,” Dom groans, before kissing me, his tongue dancing with mine.
“God, don’t stop,” I beg, before pulling his bottom lip between my teeth.
He doesn’t. Every muscle in my body is tight, every nerve on fire as our bodies burn hot together. Everything is building and I’m helpless to stop it. I fall over the edge, moaning Dom’s name.
His lips find my nipple, sucking and biting as he continues to thrust into me, our bodies slick with sweat.
“I want another one,” he demands.
“I don’t know if I can,” I say, even though I’m nodding.
“You can.” His mouth doesn’t stop working my nipple, while he rolls his hips into mine with perfect pressure. I scream at the intensity of my second orgasm.
Dom’s hips stutter. “Shit, Ellie. Just like that. Fuck, baby, look at you.” He throws his head back, eyes squeezed shut as he fills me.
We lie in the afterglow for a while, him pulling me into his side and tossing a blanket over us so we can catch our breath.
“I want to show you something,” he says, before standing and pulling on his joggers. He helps me stand and wraps me in the blanket before taking my hand.
“Come here,” he says, leading me from the couch and into our dining room. He stops in front of the far end of the table, his focus on the puzzle he made me. He takes a box from the cabinet and hands it to me.
“The last ones?” I ask, and he nods.
My heart is suddenly racing, nerves firing with awareness as my throat tightens. I don’t fully understand why this has me emotional; my brain can only quickly rationalize that we’ve gone through so much and fought so hard to make it this far together. Far from perfect, but stronger every day.
I place the final dozen or so pieces into the last corner of the puzzle. None of them have any writing on them. We’re finally done. Dom takes my hand, squeezing it once before sandwiching the puzzle between two poster boards and flipping the entire thing over, finally letting me see the picture on the other side.
“Do you finally see what I see?” he asks. “My wife is so fucking beautiful.”
My trembling fingers find my lips as I gaze in shock at the photo of me, laughing and smiling as big as I’ve ever seen. My hair’s a mess, and I’m not wearing any makeup, but I…love it. I look like joy personified.
“When did you take this?” I ask, voice unsteady.
“I took it about a week after Luca was born. We had only been home for a few days. It was about three thirty in the morning and we were delirious. I remember trying to take all these photos in the first few days—I probably have a hundred from the first twenty-four hours of his life—but I found this one later on mixed in with all the other candid shots I grabbed during that time. I honestly don’t remember what was happening, I only know the time from the tag on my phone. When I saw this photo, we were in the shit storm of the newborn phase and I thought…there she is. She’s still there.
“You were never broken, Ellie. You were never lost. You were just rearranging the pieces of you that make you whole. The pieces that make you who you are. You’ve always been beautiful, put together or not. Besides, I like you a little messy. I like our life when it’s a little messy. No matter what, I love you every way imaginable.”