37. Elena
Elena
The days blur into each other, stitched together with cries, feeds, diaper changes, and moments of fragile sleep.
I lie back, exhausted, letting him handle the first wave. I watch him rock Finn, adjusting the blankets, checking his diaper, brushing tiny fingers away from the edge of Finn’s swaddle. His presence is calculated as always, but somehow it is a shelter I didn’t know I needed.
“Your turn,” he murmurs, and guides Finn toward me, positioning him at my breast.
My body aches in protest, but I allow it, because Cormac is watching, guiding, holding, and I trust him. Trust him in a way I never trusted Liam. Liam would have left me here, alone, bleeding, and sleep-deprived, to flounder in panic. Cormac never founders. He never leaves.
The latch is awkward at first. Finn fusses, nails pressing into my chest, legs kicking. I adjust and reposition him as Cormac watches silently, hands hovering, thumb brushing against my shoulder to steady me when the pain spikes. He murmurs encouragements that settle my panic and exhaustion.
I feed Finn, back aching, nipples sore. Cormac doesn’t speak unless necessary. He just watches, observes, anticipates, ready to help. And it is infuriating, his constant control, but also impossible to resist. Safe. Measured. Unflinching.
When Finn fusses after the feed, still not fully sated, I straighten, shoulders trembling.
Cormac is already moving, bringing water for me, checking the diaper bag, pulling a clean onesie from the stack he organized days before.
He handles the messes, the spit-ups, the sleepless chaos, and I am allowed to recover. To rest. To be human.
I fall asleep in twenty-minute increments, only to wake to another cry.
And still, Cormac is there, holding, soothing, speaking softly, moving with purpose.
I watch him, tracing the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders.
He’s unfailingly calm, as usual, except when I catch a glint of exhaustion in his eyes, fleeting, almost imperceptible. Even he is human. Even he is tired.
During the day, a nurse arrives, but I know it is Cormac behind every instruction, every observation. She checks my vitals, the baby’s, the room, and leaves.
Finn sleeps between us in the co-sleeper at night.
Every movement, every stir, every small whimper binds me closer to both of them.
I reach over, touch Cormac’s hand as he adjusts the blanket over us.
He does not look at me, does not speak, but his thumb brushes mine over the baby, a silent reassurance.
He is mine. I am his. Finn is ours.
I think of leaving sometimes. Briefly, dangerously.
I imagine packing, vanishing, starting over somewhere no one knows me, somewhere I could claim autonomy.
But I always falter. I am too exhausted.
Too weak. Too dependent. Alone, I would fail Finn.
Alone, I could not manage the midnight feeds, the endless diaper changes, the physical pain, the emotional collapse. And I would fail myself.
So I stay.
And the truth is, I love Finn. I love the way he moves between us, a living bridge, binding, tethering, insisting that I cannot step away, cannot remove myself from this arrangement.
And I love, in some strange, begrudging way, Cormac.
I love the way he protects, organizes, anticipates, shapes the space around us.
I love that he will never let me, or Finn, fall.
He notices when I flinch, when I grimace, when my back hurts too much, when my arms shake from exhaustion.
He adjusts pillows, fetches water, massages a shoulder, whispers instructions in low, insistent tones.
And I let it happen. Because I am too tired to resist. Too aware that he is right.
Too aware that he makes survival bearable.
We fall into rhythms, unspoken, precise.
Cormac handles nights with military-like precision: wakes, checks, feeds, settles, returns to his side of the bed only when he deems it safe for me to rest. During the day, I focus on recovery, on fleeting moments of breastfeeding success, on small, careful movements.
Finn thrives. He is strong, alert, beautiful. And every time I look at him, I feel a pang of something impossible to describe: love, pride, fear, helplessness, joy, and an abiding, reluctant gratitude toward the man who orchestrates it all.
I catch myself watching Cormac sometimes, this man who never sleeps, never falters, even when chaos threatens.
His hand rests over mine, over Finn, a silent reminder that we are bound, irreversibly, by genetics, by choice, by circumstance.
He will not let go. I can’t leave. And in that realization, I feel something like peace.
I feed Finn again, adjusting him against my chest. Cormac moves quietly beside me, bringing a blanket, adjusting the lighting, checking the monitor he installed above the crib.
I glance at him. He does not smile. He does not speak.
He simply exists, unwavering and possessive.
And I love him. I hate him. I need him. I am trapped by him. And I stay.
Two weeks pass in this rhythm. My body heals slowly.
Nights remain fragmented. My arms ache. My breasts are raw, nipples chapped and bleeding at times.
But I am not alone. I am managed. I am seen.
I am held. I am part of a family that exists in both seamless order and raw, complicated emotion.
Finn sleeps between us, small chest rising and falling, and I allow myself to rest if only in brief increments, knowing Cormac will not let anything go wrong while I do.
And so I stay. I choose to stay. Every instinct to run, to vanish, to claim independence collapses under the simple, brutal, undeniable truth: leaving would hurt Finn. Leaving would leave me alone. Staying is easier. Safer. And maybe, in the twisted calculus of my heart, even bearable.
I press my forehead to Finn’s tiny head, tracing the soft line of his hair.
He stirs, whimpers softly, and I feel Cormac’s hand over mine, the silent promise of protection, the assertion of claim.
We are a unit, tangled, permanent. I exhale, letting exhaustion and love and fear mix in a warm, tangled, impossible knot.
I stay.
And I know, fully, completely: this is home.