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She stares back at me, smiling the way she did only when she was looking at me. I never deserved that look, but, God, I fucking loved it.
The smell of her is gone. I guess when six years pass, that’s what happens. I don’t feel her here the way I did when I had to live here the first few months after she died. I damn near lost my mind, being in our house when she wasn’t here. Every painted wall, every picture frame, every piece of art and lamp … she had picked out. It wasn’t my house anymore. It wasn’t ours either.
My stomach churns, but I push myself up the stairs. Knowing that if I never face my sorrows, I’ll never be able to move on past this part of my life right here.
For so many years, I’ve been running. I thought that if I worked long hours, harder missions, maybe … I could keep myself stable enough not to fall apart.
All of that running is catching up to me now. Only this time, I somehow feel a little stronger about handling it.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I glance into our bedroom. The baby-blue sheer curtains make the room look brighter, just like she said they would. It looks like a post right off of Pinterest because that’s exactly where she got it from.
I look at the bed and picture us lying under the covers on a rainy Sunday. She’s laughing about something stupid I said, and I tickle her, knowing how much she hates it. Or how she came out of our bathroom, a pregnancy test in hand and tears in her eyes before she leaped into my arms. She couldn’t wait to be a mom, and even though I was scared to death, I couldn’t wait to have kids with her.
Slowly, I back out of our bedroom and gaze at the closed door across the hall. A room I haven’t been in since the day she died. I’ve tried to block it out of my brain that it’s here, but I know that isn’t fair to anyone.
I take a few steps before reaching my arm out. My hand hovers on the doorknob. I haven’t been in this room in six years. No one has. Yet for some reason, reasons beyond my control, I feel like I need to go in now.
I stand here, frozen and terrified to open the door. Because once I do, I have to acknowledge that the life I was so excited to have will never be.
Pushing the door open, I feel a stabbing sensation in my chest as I look around the nursery Cami so carefully designed. The white crib, dresser, and changing table I put together during a break I had from work. The circular pink rug that has the alphabet on it and the rocker in the corner.
I had three weeks off, and I don’t think that woman let me sit still for more than ten minutes at a time. My honey-do list was a mile long, but I didn’t care. Hell, if it had been ten miles long, I would have done each task with a smile on my face.
Light-blue letters hang above the crib. They spell Neveah. A name Cami and I picked out together one morning, lying in bed. She had rattled off countless names. I didn’t hate them, but they weren’t … her name. But when she said Neveah, I knew.
That was her name.
Some days, I miss that baby so much that I think the pain might kill me. I never met her, and yet she’s a part of me. A part of my wife. She’s my daughter. My baby girl, whom I will never get to watch grow up. She must have been way too good for this dark world, just like her mom.
That’s what I tell myself every day, even if it doesn’t make the pain any less.
Moving on from them hasn’t been easy. Or it wasn’t until Dove landed in my life. And suddenly, I feel my heart beating the same way it did when I first saw Cami.
But every time I imagine a life with Briar James, my mind travels to my wife. And my baby.
How hurt are they, looking down at me and thinking I’ve forgotten about them? Do they hate me for it? Do they feel betrayed?
The guilt from those thoughts alone makes me pull away from Briar, time and time again.
I know one thing to be true though. I’m in love with her. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure she gets out of this shit with Enzo safely.
I might not be her future, but I’m sure as hell going to make sure she has one. Even if I’m not in it.
Walking over to the rocker, I run my hand over it, thinking back to the day when we went shopping for the perfect rocking chair for the baby, and I close my eyes.
“Nope, not this one,” Cami said, quickly pushing herself out of the wooden chair. “My ass would be asleep in, like, three seconds. That is so not comfortable.”
She walked over to a white glider chair with a cloth cushion and sat down. “This one is way too soft. There’s, like … no support.”
I watched her, an amused look on my face. “I’m going to call you Goldilocks because the way you’re talking about those chairs, you’re fresh out of that book.”
“Has to be right,” she said with a shrug. “When she’s screaming her head off all day and night, we’ll need a magic chair to lure her back to sleep.”
That got my attention. “Day and night?” I frowned, rearing my head back. “How often is this little shit going to cry?”
“No way to know for sure.” She shrugged, walking past me before she shot me a glare. “And don’t call our baby a shithead. It’s a girl, so that means she’ll be an angel, like her mama.” She winked.
Even though she meant it as a joke, I never told her she couldn’t have been more right. That woman was an angel.
