Page 65 of Home Is Where You Are

I choked over the cries. This pain wasn’t right. My body felt so heavy.

“Just keep breathing for me and concentrate on my voice,” he said as he rubbed his thumb up and down my arm.

I tried. I really did. But I felt so weak. So tired. All I wanted to do was rest my eyes. I closed them and felt myself slipping away.

The last thing I remembered was Holden screaming for my mom to drive faster and for me to wake up.

The crunching of the grass brought me out of my thoughts as I pushed myself up to see who was here.

Holden.

His pain-filled gaze stared past me at her headstone as he walked the rest of the way and sat behind me, pulling me into his arms.

I leaned back into him and shifted to my side, burrowing my head into his arm.

I sobbed.

A gut-wrenching sob that needed to break free.

I cried for all the moments that I’d never get to have with my little girl. For never seeing her take her first breath. For never hearing that joyous first cry that every parent waited with bated breath to hear. For never getting to know her personality or hear her laughter. For never hearing her first word and never getting to see her look at me and call me mama. For never getting to put Band-Aids on her boo boos and kissing them all better.

I cried for the heartbreak I’d caused the love of my life when I left. I cried for the pain I’d caused my family by not staying when they begged me not to leave. But most of all, I cried for me and the broken pieces of me that I hadn’t let heal by losing the one thing I always wanted to have.

Ever since I was fifteen and in love with Gentry, I saw our future together. While we got pregnant sooner than I’d have liked, we were both so excited to bring our little girl into the world. But we were robbed of that moment, and I didn’t know how to overcome my grief to move forward with my life.

I wanted to. God, did I want to. I wanted to stop being this shell of myself. I wanted to finally figure out what I wanted out of life. But that felt like moving on from her. It felt like I’d be leaving her behind. Like I’d be forgetting her. And I just couldn’t let go of the pain. I held it so tight within me that I became someone I didn’t recognize when I looked in the mirror.

Holden rocked back and forth and rubbed his hand up and down my back as I broke free of the tormenting thoughts.

I pulled away from him, and without looking at him, I wiped away the remnants of my tears. Closing my eyes, I caught my breath and slowed my breathing.

Once I felt calm enough, I turned myself fully around, crossed my legs, and looked into Holden’s tear-filled eyes. His face was wet from tears of his own, and seeing his pain broke another piece of me that I didn’t know if I had any pieces left to give to break. This was the second time in my life I’d seen him cry. The first was when we lost Arabella.

My mouth opened and closed. I didn’t know what to say. How to explain how I felt in this moment.

“You sounded like you needed to break down just now,” he said, with so much emotion in his voice. He didn’t swipe away the tears that still fell. He let them fall with no care that I was seeing his emotions. I wished I could be that way. But I’d held my emotions so tight to the vest the past four years, I didn’t know how to outwardly show them without allowing them to consume me.

I could only nod, because if I spoke, I didn’t know if I could stop confessing it all. And Holden didn’t need to hear me break even further. He’d seen enough.

“Can I ask you a question, Ainsleigh?” he warily asked.

I feared where this conversation was heading, but if I had any chance of healing, I knew I’d need to answer his questions.

“Did you allow yourself to feel your grief so you could overcome it?”

He finally wiped away his tears as he waited for me to respond.

I could lie. I should make up something, anything, other than admitting what I’d failed to do while I was away. If Leo or Brooks were the ones sitting here, I might’ve had a chance to lie. But I couldn’t with Holden. He’d always managed to see right through me.

Instead of attempting to put into words what I couldn’t, I shook my head, looking at the ground because looking into his eyes while he processed my admission was something I couldn’t face.

“Did you talk to someone? A professional?”

“I did. It helped some, but I stopped going a couple of months after I started. I just couldn’t keep repeating the cycle every week. I felt like it was hindering me from being happy. I use some of her techniques to calm myself, but I was away from everyone who brought me comfort, and I wasn’t close enough with Aspen and Dylan yet to put all of my grief on our newfound friendship, so I bottled it up, only allowing myself to feel or remember my pain when I was alone at the end of the night,” I confessed all while still looking at the ground.

“Look at me, Ainsleigh,” he said in the softest voice.

My eyes met his as I waited for him to continue.