Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Kane and I didn’t have much time to talk those days. Well, we talked plenty. We talked about Mabel’s bowel movements, the amount of diapers we needed, bath time, wake windows, naps, when her last feed was, how long a particular bottle had been left out. I primarily breast fed, but Kane urged me to pump every now and again to get a break. Not that it was a break. My breasts would get engorged if I missed a feeding.
We didn’t have conversations like we used to. Long, soulful discussions about our dreams and our demons. He didn’t wax on about his feelings for me, though he still made a point to tell me he loved me at least once a day.
Our relationship was different, there was no way around it. Our chemistry still lingered, at least a whisper of it. But both of us were too tired for much else. When I had the energy, I mourned that, worried if we’d get it back since we hadn’t been together long enough to create a foundation to come back to.
The worry was exacerbated by the news of my father. That pulled the rug out from under me. I had to reevaluate the man I’d loved so fiercely. And whatever Freudian bullshit was at play, it made me rethink things with Kane.
How my feelings and past with my father were tied to my present with Kane was anyone’s guess. But my father was the man I/ trusted most in the world, and to learn that had been built on a lie shook me.
I told Kane about it, even though part of me wanted to keep it hidden, bury it back down and pretend my mother had never told me.
But already, the knowledge was corroding my insides, and the thought of keeping something like that from Kane, when he hadn’t kept anything from me, felt wrong.
I told him in whispers, after the baby was put down, glancing back at her, trying to fathom my father walking out on a baby that small.
His baby.
Me.
In my life, I’d never questioned if my father had loved me. Adored me.
After I finished, Kane’s eyes traveled to the bassinet too, as if he were thinking the same thoughts.
“Babe… Fuck ,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.” I blew out a long breath, still unable to process the information. My mother had expressed regret for telling me after she’d watched me intently throughout the night.
“I didn’t mean to load your shoulders with even heavier weight,” she murmured after dinner. “I thought it would help you understand that even the most wonderful people—and your father was a decidedly wonderful person—struggle immensely with this stage in life. Instead, I stole your hero, made you question everything. Something you’re learning now is that as a mother, you’re constantly wondering what the right decision is. Right now, it’s regarding swaddling, feeding, napping. And then when they’re older, it’s over what truths to omit and which to tell. As you can see, I’m still getting it wrong.”
Again, I felt blown away by the weight of motherhood, yet another thread weaved my mother and I closer.
Which I appreciated.
“You didn’t get it wrong,” I told her. “I’m glad I know now.”
I wasn’t lying. Not exactly.
“I’m sorry,” Kane said as he rubbed my back. “This on top of your adjustment to life as a mother… It’s a lot. What can I do? How can I help?”
“Even the most amazing man can’t help me with this,” I sighed. “And you are the most amazing man. But you are not able to fix this, get my body, or my bladder control, back.”
I hadn’t meant to say that last part. I wasn’t an overly shameful person and didn’t get embarrassed over bodily functions, but I also didn’t want Kane knowing about my bladder control, or lack thereof. He’d already seen me fully dilated. That was enough.
Kane didn’t look perturbed about the bladder control comment, though. Although he was nice enough and smart enough to school his features if it did freak him out. “Your body doesn’t need to be fixed,” he framed my face with his strong hands. “Your body grew our child, brought her into this world and is now keeping her alive. You absolutely should not worry about your bladder control or your hemorrhoids.”
There was a low ringing in my ears. “I didn’t say anything about hemorrhoids,” I gasped, horrified.
Kane chuckled, obviously not as smart as I’d credited him for considering he was laughing at me at that moment. “Babe, I read everything and anything I could on not just pregnancy but the childbirth process. I wanted to know exactly what your body was going through so I’d know how to help. I know about hemorrhoids. They’re completely normal, and again, evidence of our child being brought safely into this world.”
“This conversation isn’t happening.” I hid my face in the crook of his neck. “I’m not talking to my super-hot, super-muscled boyfriend about hemorrhoids.”
Kane pulled me up to look at him, his brow furrowed. “You can talk to me about anything.”
“Anything except hemorrhoids,” I corrected. “Though the prospect is a bit worrying right now. I would like you to eventually fuck me again and find me attractive.”
Kane’s brows flattened, his mouth turned down and his eyes went downright stormy.
He grasped my neck roughly, reminiscent of the way he used to grab me before I birthed a child and ruined my vagina.
Even ruined, my vagina responded to the touch.
“That is the last fuckin’ time I’m gonna hear any kind of bullshit to that end,” he growled. “I have always found you to be the most breathtaking creature to walk the earth. And then you grew my child. You brought her into this world. I truly didn’t think I could love you, worship you, more. Than I did. Than I do. Every day. As I watch you grow into this. Blossom into this.”
He nodded at the bassinet.
His grip tightened. “And I know that you’re processin’ this shit with your father and it’ll probably bleed into doubts about me, so let me tell you… I’m not leaving. I’m never leaving. I’ll have it inked into my forehead if you need me to.”
I smiled. “That won’t be necessary.”
“The offer stands.” He kissed my head. “You believe that, though, don’t you?”
I nodded my head, even though I didn’t. Not entirely.
I was unraveling.
Slowly.
Or rapidly, depending on how you counted time.
Before then, before Mabel, I could make decisions without hesitation. Menus, staffing, ingredients. Now, the simple thought of how many layers she should wear to bed consumed me. I went back-and-forth, debating with myself. I questioned putting her in her car seat—was she angled correctly, was she buckled too tight? Not tight enough?
Every decision was agonizing, as though it determined whether the world would end or not.
I know everyone noticed me struggling. It was impossible to miss. And that was eating me up inside too. Looking weak. Even if logically I knew this was chemical, hormonal.
My mom and Maisie were leaving the next day. I could barely eat due to the dread I felt about that. My mother was in the kitchen, making the last of the freezer meals that were neatly labeled and dated.
Maisie was in the living room with Mabel, and Kane was getting groceries. I’d taken a shower, forcing myself to make it long, knowing my sister had it covered.
My hair was wet because I couldn’t bring myself to take the time to dry it. I wore my new uniform of pants with an elastic waist and a linen, button-down shirt, easily opening to feed Mabel.
I made my way through the graveyard of baby products that promised to calm even the most distressed child. Swings mothers on the forums swore by, bouncers that countless women recommended, playmats that were meant to entertain and help with neck strength. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars’ worth of products marketed to desperate parents who would pay anything to calm their baby.
Mabel didn’t like any of them. She liked to be in her father’s arms the most. Then whomever else was around. Currently, it was Maisie, standing, swaying back-and-forth, watching some show on the television.
I watched her for a moment, her skirt moving fluidly with her movements.
There was still a rift between my sister and me. A clean break between us, the slice practically surgically sliced since the day our father died. We dealt with it in entirely different ways. She and my mother had seemed so vulnerable, so delicate that I took it upon myself to be a fortress, to keep the family together by shoving my grief away somewhere where the pain became a distant part of me that I gritted my teeth to ignore as I watched my mother and sister weep at my father’s funeral. I’d let tears escape my eyes in short bursts, quickly wiping them away in order to nod and smile at the many people who had come to pay their respects to my father.
He’d been a popular man. So popular that they ran out of room at the church where the service was being held and had to set up screens for the people lined up outside.
I hated them all. His friends, milling around our house afterward, drinking, eating, talking. But I’d also been glad to have them filling up the rooms so I didn’t have to feel how empty they were. It gave me a distraction.
The people left, eventually, but my coldness stayed. It grew. I stayed away from Maise and Mom and left as soon as I could. Yet they were there for me when I needed them.
I cradled a coffee my mother had handed me before she went to do yet another load of laundry.
“How did you do it?” I asked Maisie over the mug. “I’m trying, but I … can’t. I’m falling apart.”
It was the first time I’d verbalized that.
“You created a person inside of you,” Maisie replied, not looking at me like I was weak, broken. “You cultivated fingers and toes, a liver and a brain, reproductive organs. All the grandchildren you’ll have were in your womb. You made an entire person and all the organs to sustain her life. Your own organs rearranged themselves in order to accommodate that person. And when it was time for her to leave, your pelvis stretched, your body opened to its limit, and not only did she come out, but the life you produced was wrenched from inside you. You experienced the biggest hormone drop any human will have … ever. Your insides are forever different. You don’t get out of motherhood unchanged or unscathed, sweetie.”
She kissed Mabel’s head.
I ground my teeth, her kind words scratching against my irritated skin. She freely gave tenderness, kindness to me. Kindness I felt I didn’t deserve.
“You must hate me,” I said.
“Hate you?” Maisie repeated, still rocking. “You’re my sister. I’ve hated you plenty,” she teased.
I rolled my eyes. “For not being there. When Hank and Wyatt were born.”
Her grin left her face. “You were there. You sent gifts. Great gifts.”
“Yeah, I spent as much money as I could to cover up the shame of my absence,” I admitted, watching her with Mabel. “I didn’t drop everything to come to you, cook for you, clean for you, be there for you. I sent gifts.”
I screwed up my nose, horrified with myself.
“Great gifts,” Maisie corrected. “That bougee baby carrier was worth its weight in gold. It was the only place Hank napped for the first five months of his life and saved me from being shunned in a dark nursery for contact naps. Absolutely no back pain from all of that carrying, despite him being a big boy. And when he did finally make it to his crib, you got the eco-friendly, nontoxic one plus the breathable mattress.”
“Don’t do that,” I pleaded. “Don’t try to make me feel better.” It was making me feel worse, much worse, her efforts to quell my regret.
“I wasn’t there,” I said firmly.
“No, you weren’t.” She reached out to hold my hand, her other stabilizing Mabel on her chest. “And I don’t hate you for it. Not even a bit. I know you wanted to be there. But I also know that you weren’t ready to be there. And simply, you weren’t a mother. You were only you. Avery Hart. Chef.”
Mabel started to whimper, her cries decidedly hangry.
Reflexively, I began unbuttoning my shirt, my breasts already tingling from the sounds of her weeping.
Maisie shifted Mabel to me, not even blinking at my bare breasts. I never thought I’d be showing my nipples to my sister and mother so often, but there we were.
When Mabel was latched, Maisie moved around the room, tidying things.
We sat in silence, our conversation on hold until she finished cleaning and came to sit beside me. She watched Mabel feed for a handful of seconds, her face compassionate.
“Your life was calculated chaos,” she said. “Regimented rush. You were constantly on a schedule, often doing multiple things at once, always thinking three tasks ahead, never taking a moment to breathe. And motherhood is like that. But there is no calculated chaos, no regime. It is a free-for-all shitshow.” She grinned. As if this was funny. “You inhale your meals, you hurry through showers, bathroom breaks and basic hygiene routines. You rush sex. If you even have enough energy to have it. And some people, some mothers, can sink into that, can thrive off it. Most do not. Because your cortisol is constantly peaking, you’re constantly in fight-or-flight mode. And sometimes, babies like Mabel come along.” She looked down to my daughter with absolute unconditional love. I had that for my nephews, but I’d buried it, hadn’t let myself feel it, let alone show it. “They give you no choice but to stop, be in the moment. They make you sit there, with their weight on your body, their hand in yours, and there is no more rushing. There is only surrender. You breathe. You read. You think. You watch their face, examine their perfect features. Honey, you think it’s a curse, but Mabel is giving you the gift no one on earth, except maybe that man of yours, can give. Peace. You just have to embrace it.”
“Embrace it,” I parroted, looking down at Mabel’s head.
“It’s a process,” Maisie said. “And we’ll be back.”
“Promise?” I looked up at her. “I know I haven’t said it, I know I don’t deserve to say this, but I need you.”
She put her hand on my thigh. “We need you too, Avery Hart. And we’re not going anywhere.”
KANE
I was struggling.
Fuck, was I struggling.
Luckily, I was managing to hide it because the last thing I needed was Avery to see it. She needed to focus on two things: herself and our baby. I could see it, eating at her, the need to be perfect, to do it ‘right’ all while her brain and her hormones were waging a battle against her.
It hurt me, physically hurt me to see Avery struggling and not being able to do a fucking thing about it.
The one thing I could do was not pile on more or complain. She had it so much fucking worse than me. She slept less because she was up feeding constantly and didn’t wake me. Another source of guilt… I managed to sleep through some of Mabel’s wake ups because I was so fucking exhausted. Avery had told me many times that there was no point in me being awake too when I couldn’t ‘do’ anything.
I disagreed. I could change the diapers, reswaddle, resettle Mabel. I could make Avery’s life just a little bit easier.
And I could pull myself together.
I thought I’d been through it all, thought I was tough. I played the tough guy pretty fucking well, but being a father? Yeah, that made a man of me.
Leaving the house, even with Judith and Maisie there, felt like a betrayal because I didn’t want to leave Mabel and Avery. Worse, I felt guilty as fuck because a small and fucking selfish part of me was thankful for the break, to be able to get on my bike and ride past the ocean and just fucking breathe.
Horrible. Selfish.
I wouldn’t take them away, not for the fucking world. But I’d give myself less of a fucked-up childhood so I knew how to step up for them.
I had no father figures beyond variations of stepfathers who came in and out of my life, ranging from apathetic to sadistic. A mother who stayed in the picture long enough to fuck me up royally. Not to mention the other abuse.
I hadn’t told my mother about her granddaughter yet. We weren’t close like that. Especially after seeing Judith, the perfect grandmother. My mother wouldn’t be that. She’d find a way to make it about herself, she’d find a way to make me take care of her. And I didn’t need that. Avery didn’t need that.
I’d considered myself evolved—I’d gone to therapy, accepted my trauma, whatever the fuck. But if parenting had taught me anything, it had showed me all the ways I still needed to parent myself.
And I had to. Fucking had to. Not just because I planned on being there for every moment of Mabel’s life, and Avery’s too. But I planned on Mabel adoring me, never questioning my love for her or her mother.
I had to pull myself together.
“It’s Kane ‘The Dad’ Rhodes!” a voice exclaimed, making me jump.
I’d been sitting on my bike, helmet in my lap, staring into space. Who knew for how long. I was supposed to be out on a pastry run, not fucking wallowing in self-pity.
I glanced to where Kip was sauntering out of the bakery, coffee in hand. I’d seen him and his business partner Rowan a handful of times around town, mostly at the bakery since their wives owned it, and they made it their business to be near their wives, something I’d come to understand about them.
Part of me knew we’d get on well. Both seemed nice enough guys—Kip a little more outgoing than Rowan–but I saw they were good people. Though I was a little gun shy with letting anyone into my life since Brax. Yeah, my internal alarms had warned me to be careful with him, but I’d thought he was harmless.
And he’d almost ruined my fucking life.
My fists clenched, thinking about him, and I wondered, not for the first time, if I’d made a mistake in not taking my brother up on his offer.
“You look how I felt for the first year of June’s life, brother.” Kip grinned at me in a way that told me the expression was second nature to him. He slapped me on the shoulder as I got off the bike.
“Fatherhood,” he sighed. “It’s hard.”
I hummed in agreement.
His hand, still on my shoulder, tightened, and his eyes narrowed on me. “No, bro, it’s hard . I’ve been in combat. I’ve had people shooting at me, I’ve been this close to death.” He held his thumb and finger millimeters apart. “But I’ll tell you, fatherhood is harder than war.”
I looked at him, not able to tell if he was joking or not.
He shook his head, the haunted look leaving his face. “But it’s worth it. I promise. And it gets easier.” He took a long sip of his coffee, seemingly in thought. “Kind of. I know you guys are still in the newborn trenches, and let me tell you, I know they’re fucking trenches, but once you’re out, we’ll come over. Me and the wife and June. We’ll show you there is life after this.” He squeezed my shoulder again, quite obviously unafraid of physical affection with a man he barely knew.
“For now, copious amounts of coffee, sugar, and for fuck’s sake, don’t ever tell her you’re tired. You’re apt to get your face metaphorically clawed off, if you’re lucky. No matter how tired you are, they are 1.000 percent more tired.”
He winked then turned to leave.
I looked at the pink bakery I’d become a regular in, my bike parked on a Main Street that could only be described as quaint with what I was almost sure was spit-up on my shirt.
I was exhausted—obviously not more exhausted, never more exhausted than Avery—not from an all-nighter, not from training for the Olympics, not from crashing at the X-Games and narrowly avoiding death. Nope, drained from an eight-pound baby who liked to be held and fed and hated sleeping anywhere that wasn’t on her mother or me.
The crisp sea breeze seemed to be the only thing keeping my eyes open.
I’d never felt more alive in my life.
And despite my struggle, my bone deep fear that I was going to fuck up, I wouldn’t have it any other way.