Chapter 44 Gabriel #2
“Reflections are reversed. I got it after the first time I visited you at work. I didn’t take over for Dad, by the way.
He’d decided you were fine without constant oversight, but I showed up one day in a pissy mood to see what the uppity girl who’d knocked over my whole life was doing, and you assumed I was supposed to be there. I rolled with it.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t like you very much at first,” I say.
“You got my name tattooed on your chest when you didn’t like me?”
“You started as my warning. Then, you became my reward. I was grateful for what you’d done, even in the beginning.
It could have been so much worse if you weren’t you.
Then, I kept going back to remind myself why I had to stay sober.
I showed up a lot in the beginning, sometimes two or three times a week. ”
“I remember,” she says softly.
“Anytime I needed a distraction from my cravings, I found you. Indulging your requests seemed a small price to pay in exchange for what you were giving me. We were both fighting not to laugh by the end of my second visit. By the third, we leaned into it. You were never vindictive or deliberately cruel. You were the best part of my week. And, then, it was love, and I didn’t even know when it happened, only that it had. ”
“I used to write down things I knew you’d think were funny so I didn’t forget them when you came back. I waited for you all week.”
“You bought me books, so I knew you were thinking about me when I wasn’t there. Some of them were riveting reading.”
Her face wrinkles as she fights her smile. “We’ll need to wait until we have kids to test the recipes in Cheesemaking with Breastmilk.”
I force my expression into somber agreement. “I do love a good charcuterie.”
She loses the battle, leans her forehead against my chest, and cackles.
I wrap my arms around her as the morning sun beats down on my shoulders and the sounds of children laughing and people talking filter in.
The world is waking up around us, families on vacation arriving with their sand pails and folding chairs farther down the shore.
Sydney always wanted kids. I’ve never had words for the way it felt to know she wouldn’t consider having them with me, even after telling me she loved me.
We could have gone on indefinitely: Loving each other, but never able to get past our own walls of self-protection.
Now, she mentions a family so casually, as though it wouldn’t rock my entire world on its axis.
“Sydney.” I search for the right words. “Do you remember that you told me you’d never have children with me? You said it was one thing for you to choose to tie your life to mine. You could walk away if I started drinking, but a child couldn’t.”
She looks into my eyes, every ounce of humor gone.
“I remember my life as much as any normal person would now, I think. Not the kidnapping, but our lives before. Once the prenup and the day we met stuck, the last pieces fell into place. Before that, it was like . . . trying to interpret data without a control group. Without context, my mind couldn’t assign meaning or form coherent conclusions. ”
Which means she understood what she said.
“I’d be a good dad,” I say in a voice I can’t manage to make casual. “I’d be present and responsible. I’d be fun, but I wouldn’t only be that. My children would always be safe and loved with me. If we had them.”
She squeezes me around the middle and speaks in a voice thick with emotion.
“You’ll be the best dad any kid ever had.
My lack of trust wasn’t because of who you are.
It was because of me. I remember how I felt, but .
. . do you ever look back at something you did when you were younger, and you remember that you thought a choice made perfect sense?
But the person you are now would never do that thing? ”
At my sardonic expression, she shrugs. “I can see that decision I made and even understand it, but I made it based on . . .” She frowns in thought.
“Okay, H2O2 at 3 percent solution looks the same as H2O to the naked eye. But hydrogen peroxide is unstable and, particularly in higher concentrations, can be both corrosive and reactive. Water looks like hydrogen peroxide but is stable and safe. I knew to be wary of H2O2, and when we met, you were a big ol’ beaker of an unstable compound.
” She stuffs our prenup into her back pocket and gestures with both hands.
“But, you know what happens to H2O2 in an exothermic reaction, right?”
I grin. Goddamn, I love this woman. I do know, but I want her to keep talking. “Hit me with it.”
“It decomposes into water and oxygen, leaving a stable compound and an element that is stable under normal conditions. Now, oxygen in high concentrations can be reactive under the right conditions and become dangerous. Even the tiniest spark in a hyperbaric chamber can be bad news, for example.”
“Boom,” I say.
“Boom. But only a dummy walks around terrified of the normal stable oxygen she needs to survive.”
I slide my thumb over her cheekbone. “Did you just call me the air you breathe?”
“Isn’t chemistry romantic?” she asks with a cheeky smile.
My eyes burn, and I blink away the sting. “Only coming from you.”
She cups my face. “When I’m fully recovered, and the doctor gives us the green light, we can try for a baby if you want to. I’d love that.”
I nod. For once, I’m the one who can’t speak through my emotions.
“Don’t be afraid to talk to me about things you want or need or that hurt you. Please. I’ll never use them against you. I swear it,” she says.
It sounds too easy, but acknowledging a problem is sometimes half the battle. I won’t reject her, and I’ll do my damndest not to doubt her because she’s healing too. I can return the trust I asked for. “I don’t know what it’ll look like to be that open.”
“It’ll look like love. When you need rest or support, you lean on me, the same way I lean on you.”
“What if, one day, I put my head in your lap and cried like a baby? Would you still say that?” I quip, doing my best to turn it into a joke, though my mouth is dry.
Her brown eyes grow warm and wet. “You already did. It was why I fought so hard to come back for you. Part of me knew you were waiting.”