64. Eli
Eli
Christmas is in two days. I’m on shift. My mom has Wren, both of whom are feeling much better, thank goodness. And Kendra has not spoken to me in days. The silence, this distance is torturous.
I watched through my windows like a fucking stalker as hers would illuminate and go dim.
The studio lights burned long into the night and blazed too early in the morning, making me wonder if she even went to bed at all.
I had to get at least some sleep so I could function here and at home taking care of my baby girl.
Time. I told her I would give her some. But the clock is ticking, and I wanted us to be together—as a little family unit—for Christmas morning. I didn’t care where we spent it as long as it was together.
In the past I have fucked up and sent Kendra running, having no clue what might have been the trigger.
This time though? I lit the match, threw the grenade, exploded my own life.
How many times did I tell myself to take it slow with her?
To be cautious and not scare her off? And then I had to go drop “our kids” into the middle of a casual lunch conversation, as if we’d ever even discussed it at all.
Of course she panicked.
Wren is here, sure. But it’s different. She is mine.
I want her to be officially Kendra’s too, eventually.
Having our own kids? Seeing Kendra’s stomach swell with my child and knowing that I actually get to be a part of the process, making decisions together, not to just have fatherhood dropped on me out of the blue? It would be incredible.
The idea of building a life and a family with Kendra doesn’t scare me anymore. The idea that she might not want to do that with me does.
“Kendra, I know you’re in there. Open the door.” I knock again on the front door of the cabin.
She squeaks from behind the door, “Nobody’s here by that name. Kendra moved.”
Rolling my eyes, I say, “Sweetheart, open the damn door, please. I really don’t want to have to break it down and make more work for myself, but I will at this point if I have to.”
Long minutes pass before I finally hear the lock slide, the door swings wide, and my woman’s beautiful face fills the frame.
Her eyes are red and puffy, and dark circles from lack of sleep rim her lower lids.
Kendra’s bottom lip wobbles at the sight of me, and she grips the door handle, knuckles blanching.
“Oh, it’s you!” She feigns surprise.
“Yup, it’s me. Time’s up. Let me in.” I crowd her, but she doesn’t move her pixie-sized body to let me step inside.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“Sweetheart, I told you I was going to give you time and that’s what I did. It is Christmas Eve, and I am not going to spend one more minute away from you. Let me in and let me in.” I cup her face in my hands and kiss the tear as it rolls down her cheek, licking the saltiness up with my tongue.
“Okay.” She gives in and leads me to the kitchen where she immediately busies herself making us some coffee.
I sit at the island on one of her newly refurbished stools; it’s comfortable and sturdy.
Kendra makes zero eye contact with me as she continues her quest of coffee and avoidance, so I wait patiently.
Finally she brings us both a mug and sits on the stool farthest away from me.
I pick up my steaming mug, place it on the counter, and sit on the stool right next to her, spinning hers to face me.
“Eli!” Kendra exclaims with a mix of annoyance and heat blazing in her tired eyes.
“No. More. Running. No more time or space. We are going to work this out right now. I know this is on me. I am an idiot and I shouldn’t have pushed.
Shouldn’t have freaked you out by mentioning kids so soon or so casually, and for that, I’m really sorry.
It’s just that everything that happened with Wren, it brought so much up, and I—” Kendra holds up a hand to cut me off, tears welling fast in her sad eyes.
“Please, please stop,” she begs, in a tone that breaks my heart.
I sit perfectly still and wait, just giving her a slight nod of my head in understanding that she needs to say something important.
“Eli, I can’t give you what you want,” she whispers.
“I want you,” I say.
“No, you don’t understand. You said our kids, like you want me and a family, a future.” Her eyes search mine.
I nod. “Yes, I do. I want all of that with you.” I try to take Kendra’s hand, but she pulls back.
“That’s my point.” Tears stream freely down her face now. “I can’t give you that future, Eli. I can’t have children.”
“What?” I whisper. “Are you okay? What happened?” Fear ripples through me.
“My mom, she died when I was in eighth grade. She battled breast cancer for years. Suffered for years. It was so hard. I always came to Fox Grove, to be with Nana as a respite from my life, the cancer, then the emptiness of our house after she died. Pop worked, and then I didn’t have to be alone in the house all summer.
I could come here and pretend; nobody knew my whole sad story. I could just be another normal girl.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” I reach out and tuck her loose hair behind her ear, thankful that she is allowing this small, simple contact.
“After she died I’d always wanted to know if I carried the gene, but I had to wait to get tested until I was at least eighteen. So I did, I got tested.” Kendra looks up at me finally, then squeezes her eyes shut.
“When did you do the tests?”
“Eli,” she whispers.
“When?” I plead.
“After our summer. I tested—I tested positive for the brCA1 mutation, which makes you much higher risk for both breast and ovarian cancers. And because of my mom, I am an even higher risk.” Kendra bites her trembling lip, and I feel like my world is crumbling.
She could die? She could have cancer like her mom?
“What can we do?” I ask.
“I already did it, when I was twenty,” Kendra says, back straightening.
“What do you mean?” I feel helpless and ignorant.
“To reduce the risk, doctors suggest you have a double mastectomy and remove your ovaries and fallopian tubes when you are between thirty-five and forty,” Kendra explains.
“You’re only twenty-eight,” I say dumbly.
“My mom was only thirty-four when she died, much younger when she was actually first diagnosed, and battled her cancer for so many years. Doctors told us time and time again how she was so young, how it was unfair. It’s just me and Pop and I couldn’t go through my life just waiting and worried that I was going to get cancer like my mom, force him to watch me suffer and d-die like we did with her.
” She sobs into her hands, and I pull her onto my lap, even as she weakly tries to push me away.
“Shhh, shh.” I rock her in my arms and just hold her for a long time.
Finally, Kendra says, “I made the decision to have the procedure done early. Much earlier than the normally recommended timeline. I wanted to live, Eli.”
“I understand, sweetheart.” I kiss her temple.
“Do you? I had a double mastectomy and my ovaries and fallopian tubes removed, Eli. I had reconstruction surgery for my breasts.” She levels me with a stare.
Fuck. Oh, fuck.
My insensitive comments and crude joke at Sutton’s house, the way she and everyone reacted make more sense now—and I feel absolutely sick to my stomach.
“Kendra, I’m so sorry, what I said that day, that awful joke—” but she cuts me off.
“It was stupid and you didn’t know. And it was also hurtful, yes, but I forgive you. I know that you weren’t trying to be mean. We constantly jabbed at each other and took things way too far sometimes, and that was one of those times.”
“Still, God, I’m so sorry.” I lean my forehead against hers. “All your pills?” I ask, thinking about the medication I had to bring over for her from the medicine cabinet in her bathroom.
“I’m on hormone replacement therapy, lots of different supplements. I have to manage my body and monitor everything carefully still,” Kendra explains.
I nod my head.
“I could have frozen my eggs, but honestly I was too afraid to do the treatments for that, to wait, and also I couldn’t afford it at the time.
I would have had to save up for years. Years I didn’t want to worry that I was going to get cancer like my mom in the meantime.
Eli, I can’t give you what you want. The kids, the family, the future.
Because of what I did, I can’t have children.
” She pulls back and a tear leaks from the corner of her eye, rolling slowly down her face.
“I don’t care,” I state fiercely.
“Yes, you do, you just said . . .”
“No, what you just said changes everything. I care more about having you. You are the family that I need. We have Wren. The two of you make my life complete. I don’t need anything more than that.”
“You can have someone else, more kids. The whole package,” Kendra argues.
“You are the whole goddamn package. There is nobody else. We can adopt more kids if you want, or it can be just the three of us. And I know, I know I am tossing more kid talk at you that I probably shouldn’t be, but I don’t give a fuck.
You need to know how I feel.” I smile at her and she lets out a small laugh.
“I just don’t want you to resent me for not being able to give you more kids of your own,” she says sadly.
“There is nothing you could do that would ever make me resent you, ever.” I kiss her softly on her swollen lips.
“Thank you.” She hugs me, burrowing into my chest.
“Now that that’s settled, where are we spending Christmas? I think we should come here with Wren because I don’t have a tree.” I kiss the top of her head.
“What?” Kendra pops up, looking at me with wide eyes.
“I wasn’t exactly feeling festive with you gone, so I didn’t earn any dad points.
We have zero decorations over there. You have your pretty tree here.
Let’s bring Wren’s Pack ’n Play over and the gifts and do Christmas morning here.
” I rattle off my plan with a dimpled grin and a wink, knowing it makes her weak.
“You want to spend Christmas with me?”
“Well I sure as fuck am not gonna spend it without you. Wherever you are is where I am, so that is where Wren is too, obviously.” I smirk at her. “She and I are kind of a package deal now. I hope you are okay with that.”
“I am absolutely okay with that. Honestly it was hard, painful even, to see you with her and know that you had a baby with someone else. I went one way after our summer and you went a totally different direction . . .” She looks away from me.
“Kendra, I’m not proud of the choices I made or the man I was when we were apart.
I tried to numb myself, and part of that was by having a lot of meaningless hookups that only ended up hurting me in the long run and now you.
If I could take it back I would, but at the same time that means we wouldn’t have Wren. And I could never regret her.”
“Of course not. She is the silver lining to all of it. Speaking of, where is my favorite girl right now?” Kendra asks, eyes shimmering from my confession.
“She’s next door with my sisters. They are making Christmas cookies for Santa. And that means Wren is supervising from her high chair while Sarah and Rebecca do the work and Hannah sings terribly off-key.” I wince.
“Oh, I see. So the real reason you came over here was to escape her singing?” Kendra teases.
“No, I came over here because I couldn’t be away from you for one more damn minute.” I grip the hair at the nape of her neck and pull her into a deep kiss, not coming up for air until we are both breathless.