7 - NO MORE GUILT #4
She pushed herself up from the couch. Her body was sticky with sweat and semen, her hair was a mess, and she was still completely naked. She reached for her discarded shorts. Pulled them on. Found Brock's flannel shirt on the floor and buttoned it over her breasts.
"You're wearing my shirt," Brock said.
"I'm always wearing your shirts."
"I know. I like it."
Victoria walked upstairs to the nursery.
BJ was awake now, his gray eyes—Brock's eyes—blinking up at her.
His tiny mouth was open, his fists waving, and the sound he made was somewhere between a cry and a complaint.
She reached into the crib and lifted him carefully, cradling his head the way the parenting books had taught her, and pressed him to her chest.
"Hello, my love," she murmured. "Did you have a good nap?"
BJ didn't answer, but he did stop crying. He nuzzled against her chest, rooting instinctively, and Victoria settled into the rocking chair beside the crib. Unbuttoned the flannel shirt. Guided him to her breast.
The sensation was familiar now—the tug, the pressure, the strange, intimate miracle of feeding another human from your own body. Victoria watched her son nurse and felt the familiar swell of emotion that came with every feeding. Love. Gratitude. And still, beneath it all, the faint ghost of guilt.
She'd made this baby with a man who wasn't her husband.
She'd destroyed her first marriage to be with his father.
She'd lied, and cheated, and broken the heart of a man who'd loved her.
Those were facts. They would always be facts.
Nothing she did now—no amount of love, no amount of happiness, no amount of good mothering—could change them.
But maybe that was okay.
Maybe the past didn't have to define the future.
Maybe she was allowed to be happy, even if that happiness had been born from pain.
Maybe the best thing she could do for Joey—for everyone—was to live the life she'd fought for.
To love the man she'd chosen. To raise the son she'd created.
To prove, every day, that it had been worth it.
Brock appeared beside her. He'd pulled his jeans back on, but his chest was still bare. His hand rested on her shoulder, and his gray eyes looked down at their son with an expression of naked, unguarded love.
"He's perfect," Brock said.
"He is."
"He looks like you when he's nursing. The way his brow furrows. The way he concentrates."
"He looks like you when he's sleeping. The Carter stare."
Brock smiled. "You keep saying that."
"Because it's true." She reached up. Covered his hand with hers. "I can't wait to marry you."
"I can't wait to marry you either."
"When? When do you want to do it?"
"As soon as possible. Tomorrow, if we could. But I'm guessing you want a wedding."
Victoria considered the question. A wedding.
The white dress, the flowers, the guests, the ceremony.
She'd had all of that once before—the church in Charleston, the three hundred guests, the twelve-piece band, the cake that had cost more than her first car.
She'd been twenty-one years old, and she'd believed she was marrying the love of her life.
She'd been wrong.
"I don't need a big wedding," she said. "I don't need a church full of people who've been gossiping about us for a year. I don't need the dress or the flowers or the cake." She looked up at Brock. "I just need you. And BJ. And maybe a judge who can marry us in the backyard."
"You're serious."
"I've never been more serious about anything." She shifted the baby to her other breast. "We've already had the drama. The scandal. The trial. The neighbors watching our every move. I don't want our wedding to be another spectacle. I want it to be ours. Quiet. Private. Just the three of us."
Brock knelt beside the rocking chair. His hand cupped her cheek, and his gray eyes—those gray eyes that had seen so much, that had loved her through so much—were wet again.
"Whatever you want," he said. "Whatever kind of wedding you want. Whatever kind of life you want. I'll give it to you."
"You already have." Victoria leaned into his touch. "You already have."
The baby finished nursing. Victoria lifted him to her shoulder, patting his back gently, waiting for the familiar burp. When it came, it was loud and satisfied—a belch that seemed far too large for such a tiny body—and both Victoria and Brock laughed.
"He gets that from you," Victoria said.
"Absolutely. No denying it."
She handed the baby to Brock. Watched him settle their son against his bare chest, watched his large hands cradle the tiny body with a gentleness that still made her heart ache.
Brock began to walk—the slow, rhythmic pacing that always soothed BJ back to sleep—and Victoria leaned back in the rocking chair.
The evening light had shifted. The golden hour was fading into twilight, the sky outside the window deepening to indigo.
Soon, she'd need to turn on the lamps. Soon, she'd need to start thinking about dinner, about the laundry that was piling up, about the pediatrician appointment next week and the wedding that they needed to plan and all the thousand small details of the life she was building.
But not yet.
For now, there was just this. The ring on her finger. The man who loved her. The baby who had been worth everything. Victoria looked at the diamond glittering in the fading light, and the guilt stirred one last time before settling back to sleep.
Joey was out there somewhere. Probably still in Beckley, probably still hating them, probably still posting on Facebook late at night when the grief became too much to bear.
The restraining order kept him away, but it couldn't keep away the memory of what they'd done to him.
The knowledge that their happiness had been built on his destruction.
But that was the past. And this—this moment—was the future.
Victoria stood. Crossed the room to where Brock was standing by the window, the baby asleep against his shoulder, the twilight painting silver streaks in his dark hair. She slid her arms around his waist. Pressed her cheek to his back.
"I'm happy," she said. "Right now, in this moment, I am completely, totally happy."
Brock's hand covered hers. "Me too."
"That's all I wanted. For so long, that's all I wanted. To be happy. To be a mother. To have a family."
"You have all of that."
"I know." She closed her eyes. "And it was worth it. Every terrible, ugly, painful moment. It was worth it."
Brock turned. The baby stirred but didn't wake. His free arm wrapped around Victoria's shoulders and pulled her close, and she pressed her face against his chest—against the warm skin, the steady heartbeat, the man who had been her secret and was now her everything.
"I can't wait to be your wife," she said.
"I can't wait to be your husband."
They stood together in the twilight, their son between them, the ring on Victoria's finger catching the last light of the dying day. Through the window, the hills of West Virginia rolled away into the distance—green and ancient and indifferent to the dramas of the people who lived among them.
Victoria thought about the future. About the wedding in the backyard. About the years stretching ahead. About the children they might have, the grandchildren they might hold, the life they might build on the foundation of everything they'd destroyed.
And for the first time, the guilt was silent.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, and the crickets began their evening chorus, and the world kept turning—messy and complicated and full of second chances for the people brave enough to take them.
Victoria Carter had taken hers.
It was the best decision she'd ever made.