Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 802(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 802(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
I want to get to know the woman I’m falling for.
And now he truly does. And . . . he loves me.
I cup my hands over my face, bringing my knees up to my chin. The tears can’t be kept at bay, and I don’t have it in me to even try. Seeing Dominic today, the girlfriend I didn’t know he had blooming, felt like the worst day of my life since I watched the surgeon walk out of the theatre, his face grave, and I knew. I just . . . knew.
Now?
I feel like a safety net has been cast beneath me. Something to cushion the constant blows I feel each and every day I fall, when I’m doing something and then I remember . . .
My little boy died.
In a few days it will be three years since I last held his little hand. Kissed his little forehead. Saw his little smile. Heard his little voice.
“I love you, Mummy. Thiiiiiis much,” he says around a cheese puff, his little arms wide.
The pain hits hard, never easing off, as strong today as it was the day I lost him. My shoulders lift and fall, my heart squeezes, my lungs burn as I try to get air into them.
I feel Dec’s hands wrap around my wrists and pull firmly, revealing my tear-streaked, blotchy face. And seeing Dec’s pained expression now, it just makes me cry harder. But he doesn’t let me hide. He doesn’t pull me close for a hug. It’s as if he wants to see my emotion. Wants to see me fall apart. But I know Dec, and this, what he’s doing now, leaving me wide open, exposed, crying, is because he knows I’ve suppressed it for years.
I’ve suppressed it so much I could burst.
Burst and cause irrevocable damage.
And I did.
To myself, to my husband, to my family, and to my job.
I lost them all.
Pushed them away. I harnessed the hatred inside me and made them all hate me. I didn’t want any of them if I couldn’t have Noah. Life was just so empty, to the point I wondered how I lived before him. What was my purpose? Who was I if I wasn’t Mummy? And now I’m sitting here in a bathtub with a man who’s telling me he loves me despite all of that, and I’m thrown by my feelings toward him. Have been since the day I met him, because I’m not supposed to feel anything but sadness, guilt, and grief.
Desire, amusement, peace? None of them should be in my life. How could they be?
And still, he watches me, watches it all pour out, tears, snot, chokes, snivels, and horrid, wretched sobs. I can’t even wipe my face because he’s still holding my wrists. It just won’t stop coming, the dam open, not closing until it’s drained dry. At least for today. This is three years’ worth of emotion gushing out of me, and with each painful, messy, loud minute, my body becomes that little bit looser. My muscles relax. My chest doesn’t squeeze so hard.
Because he loves me.
Spreading his bent legs, Dec slides me into them and cocoons me, my body bunched, his arms circling my back. He holds me until my body stops jerking and my snivels fade to light, sporadic catches of breath. “I love you,” he whispers into my hair.
And I nod.
December 16th
Something’s different inside me. It’s like the storm that’s been gusting through me for the past few years, ripping me apart, has suddenly settled. Everything’s still. Calm. And the mess that it’s left behind, the broken pieces of my life, are patiently being gathered up.
By Dec.
I love you so much, my heart aches for you. I love the way you can be in perfect silence, and I can be in it with you. I love the way you hate Christmas, but it breaks me to now know why.
He’s saving fragments I never thought could ever be saved, gathering splitters of my life and putting them back together to make less jagged, damaging parts.
He’s a lifeline.
My face is tight, my eyes sore, but I open them, squinting at the low light. My cheek is pressed into his chest, my hand on his pec, my thigh thrown over his. His hand’s resting lightly on my knee.
Warm.
I feel so warm.
I gingerly peel my face from his chest and peek at him.
And lose my breath.
This beautiful man somehow loves me. He’s seen something worth saving. Seen what I could never. That makes me love him more than he could ever understand, but I hope I get to show him. Pray I do.
Slowly and carefully, I move up his body until my mouth is level with his, my boobs crushed into his naked chest. I scan his face, every beautiful bit of it, dipping and pressing a light kiss on the corner of his mouth. He smells like sleep and man.