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Shoving my earbuds in, I start a random playlist, toss my shit in my bag, and throw it over my shoulder. I shove through the door of the school gym dedicated to athletes alone and move over to the treadmill.
I hop on, hit the incline, and turn the thing to max speed.
System of a Down screams angrily in my ears, and I bob my head, pumping my arms as if trying to scale a fucking mountainthat seems to double its height every fucking time I reach the top.
I run and run, and I don’t stop until my knees buckle and I fall, flying backward until my spine slams into the weight machine behind me.
I groan, dropping my head back, but I don’t get up.
I sit there glaring at the man in the mirror, wondering if he’s enough to get all he wants out of this world.
All the while knowing damn well he might not be.
I might fucking not be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Payton
Now,July 10
Ari givesDeaton another kiss to the cheek before wrapping her arms around my neck for a quick goodbye, and I do my best to keep smiling. Cameron is next, and then they’re piling into the car.
“Bye, girlie! Chat soon!” Cameron blows a kiss, hits the gas, and they’re off, officially leaving me and Deaton alone.
Their car doesn’t even make it to the stop sign before my lips begin to quiver, and my arms tighten around my son. I walk swiftly into the house, closing and locking the door behind me and bouncing him in place a moment while I try to gather myself.
Everyone is gone. All of them.
This is what you wanted, I try to remind myself, but it doesn’t feel like what I want.
Or maybe it’s that it’s not what I need. I don’t know, but I’m alone. My brother and Kenra are gone, Lolli, Nate, and Noah with them, the group headed over to the Tomahawk headquarters, where Noah will get settled into the apartment closer to the NFL practice field. Nate’s going to share with him since he’s a sophomore at the University of San Diego this year and isn’t required to stay in the dorms. None of them are coming home tonight.
Everyone is back to normal life, college, work, playing for a professional freaking football team, and here I am…essentially in the same place I was last year, on this very day.
Two point five seconds away from a nervous breakdown, overflowing with anxiety, pain, confusion, and, the worst of all, wishful fucking thinking.
Last year, I stood in this very place in the entryway, though it was the one next door, and wished Deaton would stay, that we had more time so I could talk to him about where life was going to take us now that we were pregnant. But his brother showed up, and he said he had to go home or his parents would come and make things worse. He promised everything would be okay, that we would figure it out and he’d call me when he got home.
Today I’m standing here wishing for nearly the same things. That he didn’t go and we had the time to talk, that I got the chance to tell him I wanted to raise the baby together and I was just afraid, that I wasn’t going to give our son up for adoption, and that he would get to be the father he wanted to be the moment he learned I was pregnant.
The only difference is last year, everyone was here, so I wasn’t alone when the call came through to say there had been an accident and we needed to get to the hospital as quickly aswe could. Ironically, the call wasn’t even for me but for Nate, because his sister was in the same car Deaton was that night.
Today, I am alone…because no one realizes what today is, which is understandable. No one was affected by the loss of the boy I loved the way I was. I’m sure it was hard on his parents in one way or another, as horrible as they were. Considering how poorly they treated him, they don’t deserve this frame of thinking, but I have to believe they mourned him in some way, that they experienced some sort of loss and sadness. He deserves to be missed, and I’ll do everything I can to make sure he’s never forgotten.
My son will know his father even if he never gets toknowhis father.
One year.
It’s been one full year without you, and it still feels like yesterday.
Deaton’s little hands come up, pressing into my cheeks and squishing my lips, and a choked sob slips past them. Thankfully, the wateriness of my smile is missed by my baby boy, and when he smiles back, there’s nothing but joy and his big blue eyes. I tug him close, pressing kisses to the side of his head as I play with the dark curls that mirror his father’s.
Pulling a deep breath into my lungs, I take one single second to settle myself, and then I put on my happy face and bounce my little boy around the room.
We play with his plushies and then his blocks. We go down to the ocean and dip our toes in the water and have lunch on the patio.
I selfishly try to keep him awake as long as possible, and he makes it well past his nap time, but when he starts to fall asleep in his high chair, I suck it up and lift him into my arms. We settle on the couch, because I can’t stand the thought of putting him down, and he quickly falls asleep on my chest.
