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I’ve slipped a time or four since coming out of rehab years ago. But only my immediate family saw that downward slide, and then the upward climb.
I can carry conversations, and I can show up to every family function. I can have a beer with the guys, and I can go home. But if Adley isn’t there to take the edge off, I’m going hard. And it’s not solely about sex. I just feel better when she’s with me. She listens, she’s soothing. She’s my anchor in life.
I don’t want to relive the mistakes I’ve made, and change is a factor I haven’t yet learned how to deal with. I still haven’t learned hownotto look for an excuse to drink. I’ll continue to limp along, taking it day by day and pray nothing changes. I’ll be okay. She’ll be what carries me through.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ADLEY
‘He caresses her face, brushing her lips with his. “You’re everything I’ve been waiting for, Ashley and I can’t go another minute without you.”’
“Aunt Addy!”
My hands stop on the keyboard and my head bows. “Yes, Dom?”
“The twins are up! They’re crying and I don’t know what to do!”
Oh, Dom. My sweet, sweet nephew who wants to be a forty-year-old man but is only six. His twin sisters, Eliana and Cecelia, are good babies but they’re babies. My brother-in-law works his ass off, my sister is pregnant,again, with twins,again, so that leaves me and Dom to handle it.
He’s six. He shouldn’t have to handle it. But he does.
“I’m coming, Dom!” I close my laptop and hurry down the hall to their room, where I find Dom already trying to soothe them both back to sleep. “We can get them up. Daddy will be home soon, and Mommy will be fine if we’re here with her.“
My sister is strung out. I don’t think having five kids was ever on her radar, but she has no idea how good she has it. She’s a writer’s dream come true. A second chance romance at its finest. But real life? She’s one diaper change away from jumping off the ledge.
I get it, in some ways, as I feel that way every day, always on edge, waiting for the other shoe to fall. I don’t want it to, and I pray it doesn’t, but I have to prepare myself because that’s all I’ve known in my life. If something is too good to be true, it probably is and the bottom will fall out, eventually.
For the last year and a half, it’s been Billy and I, making it work together. It’s been great. I’ve got the guy I always knew was inside, but despite positive changes in the family, each time is a test for him, and it worries me that he thinks he can’t pass when in fact he’s been doing it, and more.
It’s a battle every day, and he’s making his way through.
It’s the strangest memory to have two ‘first times’ with someone, especially when, for the longest time, he only remembered one. We’ve talked about that night, and when he reads my story, the one where he suddenly became my main male character, I see the wheels turning. I see him actively searching his memory and coming up with the missing pieces.
But to me, it feels like I was with two different people. It’s what led to my bestseller. I had no place else to unload those feelings, and my readers ate it up. And they got me, and until then I didn't realize there were so many others like me.
Living with and loving an addict.
Even if it’s classified as fiction, the story comes from somewhere. There’s always a bit of truth in every word, and with every feeling he brought to the surface, I knew I had to write it down.
“Oh, Eliana! Cece! What is all the noise about?!” I approach the cribs and we each pick up a baby and cradle them close to us. Bouncing them around and singing a song, we try to dull the cries.
“Oh thank god, I’m sorry Adley, were you writing?” My sister comes flying into the room. She looks amazing, pregnancy a gorgeousglow on her, but she’s exhausted and I see it on her face. She’s only four months along, but with another set of twins, concern is an understatement.
And I want to kill her husband.
Adam is that typical man, ‘I’m in charge. I’m an alpha. I’m going to keep my woman pregnant and at home’. Okay, so he isn’t really, but Jesus, let my sister breathe. I know Chelsea is a bigger cock tease than anyone I know, and Adam had no choice in the matter, but damn. Five kids under the age of six is insane.
“It’s fine. I knew I was watching them today. Just trying to throw words down when I can.” I look closely at her as she takes Cecilia from Dom. “Did you eat?”
She won’t look at me as she lays her down on the changing table. “I’m big enough. There’s no room for food.”
“Chelsea Jo!” I scold her and she laughs. “No one is laughing here! You’re growing two more babies-”
“Don’t remind me-”
“And you can’t do that well if you’re not taking care of yourself. Dom, go pull out the bowl of chicken salad I made earlier. Grab the bread and put it on the table. We’ll go make some sandwiches and make sure your momma eats.”
He scurries from the room, and I wait silently until she turns toward me, her eyes full of emotion as she says, “Adley, look at me! My body is so stretched out. How does Adam even want me anymore?”
