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My eyes went searching for him, expecting to find him sleeping in the large chair he’d claimed at my bedside.
But he wasn’t sleeping.
He was wide awake, staring at me. Still clutching my hand.
“I had a little girl,” his voice punctured the quiet. I could barely hear it, but the words were thunder in my ears. “She would’ve been the same age as Violet.” His chin dipped, looking down at our clasped hands. “A year and six months older, to be exact.”
The monitor measuring my heartbeat beeped faster as the words sunk in.
“I got married young,” he explained. “Real young. ’Cause I got my high school girlfriend pregnant. My parents insisted we get married. They were good Christians, you see.”
My hand tightened in Swiss’s. Or at least it tried to. I wasn’t strong enough to squeeze it as hard as I wished I could.
“My dad grew up in the ‘hood,’ worked really fuckin’ hard to make sure I wouldn’t. My brother wouldn’t. He met my mom, got her pregnant, and they moved to a nice, mostly white neighborhood outside St. Louis.”
His voice had a smooth cadence. Even. It might’ve danced against my skin if it wasn’t for the information he’d provided. The information that had torn through me.
“They wanted more from their kids, ya know?” His eyes held onto mine. “Wanted us to be doctors. Lawyers. Whatever the fuck people become after goin’ to some fancy college.”
He shrugged. The gesture was almost violent, his hand tight on mine.
“But then I went and got my girlfriend pregnant,” he sighed. “My white girlfriend, whose parents weren’t exactly thrilled some black kid got their princess pregnant.” His eyes were dry, solid. “But they were good people, a little bigoted, which was something I was used to by then. So they accepted it. Accepted me. Begrudgingly.”
My heart thrummed. and the monitor continued to beat erratically. My skin ached for the pain in Swiss’s voice, hidden expertly, which wouldn’t have been detectable if not for how well I knew him. How well I thought I knew him, at least. I’d suspected there was something in his past. A trauma of some kind. But I had never imagined this. I could never have imagined this. There was no happy ending here. If there was, then Swiss wouldn’t be sitting here. He’d be in a home with his wife. His child.
“Wedding was small but nice. We moved in with my parents. I wanted to get a job immediately, provide for my family. But my dad wouldn’t hear of me droppin’ out of school. We butted heads on that.” He grinned without humor. “We butted heads a lot.”
He didn’t continue immediately, so we sat there in silence. I watched him linger in that memory.
My soul was splitting apart. His grief was palpable. Pain a living thing.
“Mary stayed in school too.” Her name was stated hoarsely. “For as long as she could, at least. Planned on goin’ back when the baby was born… Our moms were gonna take turns with the baby. It was all sorted.”
He looked up to the ceiling, as if he was looking for strength to say the rest.
Swiss, the strongest man I’d ever met, was struggling to find what it took to tell me the rest.
He found my eyes once more. “Mary got into a car accident. She was eight months along. I didn’t like her driving. We had arguments about it. She won.” Another smile. No humor in it either. No joy. Only a regret that made my teeth hurt. A pain that made my bones ache.
“She was dead on arrival to the hospital,” he said, voice flat and empty. “They took her in for a c-section. To try to save our daughter.” He blinked a few times as if calling up an image. “She was so small,” he whispered. “So beautiful. Her head fit in the palm of my hand.”
Tears ran down my cheeks.
“I didn’t go to either of their funerals,” he muttered. “I was gone by then.”
My throat burned with all the things I wish I could’ve been able to say. The things that wouldn’t make a difference. Wouldn’t change the pain in his voice or heal the open wound inside him that would always bleed.
I was desperate to hold him. But my limbs were lead.
“Anyway, I didn’t go to college.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Lot of shit happened between then and now. Shit we’ll talk about whenever you want. I just wanted to let you know that I’d never held anything in my arms that mattered like my daughter did. That meant the whole fuckin’ world.”
His eyes burned into me, and he clutched my hand tighter. “Until you,” he whispered. “You’re my whole fuckin’ world, Countess. You’re my proof that I’m not ruined beyond repair. And if I’d lost you, there would’ve been nothin’ left of me.”
I opened my mouth, desperate to speak to him at that moment. The moment after he’d laid his soul bare to me. It did not deserve my silence.
“Don’t talk, baby,” he instructed, watching my mouth. “I know you. There’re probably a million things you want to say. I know them all. So you don’t need to say anything. Just keep breathing.” His eyes studied the monitors. “Keep that heart beating. That’s all I need you to do for me.”
I closed my mouth again, knowing that I was not strong enough to speak anyway. Physically or mentally.
Instead, I used every ounce of strength left in me to tug on Swiss’s arm.
With devastating slowness, Swiss stood and carefully climbed into the small bed. He tucked me into his shoulder, and I found my home on his chest. The one that had my initials carved into it.
