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I reach out and brush my fingers through her hair. This is my biggest regret—leaving her. It feels too close to home. The pain of whispering, Goodbye, little one, over her crib is the same life-shattering ache I felt when I lost my baby all those years ago.
I was such a different person then, but if there was one thing that I’ll never shake, it is the agony of having to leave behind a child that I love more than myself.
I look around her room, full of all the things that I put in it, so that she would feel comfortable, safe, happy. Plushy toys, toys with sounds to encourage speech, toys from cartoons she giggled the most at.
I don’t know who Violet’s mother is, but I wonder if it was just as hard for her to leave Violet on Reese’s stoop as it is for me as I stand on it, sobbing hysterically, before I walk to my car and leave them both behind for good.
54
REESE
When I wake up in the morning, I’m alone.
I can still smell Olivia on me. Her body lotion mixed with the scent of her sex. Our sweat. Our emotion. Our… love.
But after everything, she really did leave.
If this is the part where I’m supposed to break down and cry, I don’t follow the script. I shove myself out of bed and grab my phone. I can’t let go of Olivia. Not that easily.
REESE: Olivia, come back.
REESE: I can handle the blowback. I can get ahead of it.
REESE: Don’t do this. Not to me. Not to Violet.
My fingers keep flying over the screen of my phone. Message after message. I get no response and that’s when I begin to feel the walls closing in.
She left.
She really fucking left.
No. I don’t have to accept that. We don’t have to accept this. She didn’t make the choice to leave because of something I did, or because we drifted apart, or any of the trillion and one other dumb reasons people stop being with each other. She left out of fear.
I just need to tell her that there’s nothing she needs to be afraid of.
I can protect her.
I rush to Violet’s room after throwing on some vaguely clean clothes. She’s bright-eyed, gurgling, and has a full diaper in need of changing. I’m clumsy as I do it, but I remember Olivia’s instructions like they’re tattooed onto the insides of my eyelids. Violet wriggles the whole time, but as if she can sense that I’m not completely myself, she doesn’t give me too much trouble.
I have her changed and fed with a hot new bottle and burped like I’m an expert at this dad shit. She giggles and coos at me the entire time, chattering away in a tone that sounds vaguely encouraging. It’s reassuring and, when the babysitter that I just barely remember comes knocking, I don’t feel like I’m leaving the impression of an incompetent father this time when I go tearing out the door.
I pull Olivia’s address from her original application. It’s a fifteen-minute drive, but this is one of those times I’m thankful for being a professional athlete, both because I have access to a Ferrari and because I don’t give a flying fuck if someone thinks I’m a douche when I rip past them doing one-twenty on the highway.
When I get to her apartment, however, her car isn’t there. Uncertainty over her whereabouts grips me, until I have the thought that perhaps she’s at her mom’s. I go diving back into the application paperwork in search of Olivia’s emergency contact.
I get a few curious looks from residents passing me by. Either I’m crazy, they recognize me, or both. The thought doesn’t give me nearly as much anxiety as it should when I finally find Olivia’s mother’s address.
If getting here was fast, getting there is a fucking time warp.
My car is out of place in the quaint little neighborhood. This part of town is more accustomed to pick-ups and minivans than sports cars. I’m looking, looking?—
There. There’s Olivia’s car parked out front.
I’m barely in park before I launch myself out of my car. I leave the door open and sprint my way to the front door. I knock so hard that I think I’m going to bust my knuckles open.
“Hey! Olivia! Open up!”
I’m obnoxious and loud, but when am I anything but that? I need her to know that it’s me, that I’m not just going to give up on this thing because of some silly setback that neither of us had anything to do with.
