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“I just did,” I replied stubbornly through my teeth.
“No. You didn’t.”
“Because I fell in love with Arielle. From the second I held her, I knew. It was different with her. I don’t know if she was just supposed to be mine, or if it was because she was yours, but there’s never been a moment in her entire life that I haven’t felt like her fucking parent!”
“But you didn’t come to me then,” Ani whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “It wasn’t until after Hen—”
“I didn’t know if I could do it!” I roared, Ani’s tears making me feel out of control. “What if something happened to her? What would that do to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her, Abraham,” Ani said, reaching out to touch me, then dropping her arm as I dodged her.
I couldn’t take her hands on me then. I felt too volatile, my emotions too close to the surface.
“But what if something did?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air.
“What are you so afraid of?”
“Losing everything!” I yelled, my chest heaving. “If I lost you, I might survive. Barely. If I lost both of you? I’d be a fucking dead man.”
I clenched my eyes closed against the words and turned away, bracing my hands against the porch railing. Even saying the words out loud caused an almost visceral reaction in my body. Everything pulled tight, from my feet to my neck. I tightened my hands on the railing to keep myself from going down.
“Baby, we’re not going anywhere,” Ani choked out, coming up behind me.
“My mother lost a baby,” I ground out as she laid her hand lightly at the base of my spine.
“Abraham,” Ani breathed, dropping her head against my back.
“And it’s fucking stupid to bring that up—I’m not a child, and I realize that bad shit happens every day. I know that.”
“I know,” Ani whispered.
“You should have seen what it did to her, Ani. She just fucking faded, piece by piece. As I got older, I knew I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to take that chance.”
“Baby—”
“And I sure as fuck didn’t want to take that chance with you,” I hissed, turning to face her.
She rocked back on her heels, but before she could pull away, I was gripping her head in my hands, pulling her face to mine.
“I’d never want that for you,” I murmured, resting my forehead against hers. “Honest to God, Anita. If you had listened to me, if you hadn’t adopted Arielle, I would have never taken that chance.”
“That’s the problem,” she replied hoarsely.
“No,” I ground out. “No. I’d never go back. I’d never in a million years go back to that—I got fucking lucky.” I swallowed hard, swaying a little. “I’m so fucking lucky that you didn’t listen to me.”
“Baby?” Ani whispered fearfully as I began to slide sideways. “Abraham?”
“I’m okay,” I said, righting myself.
“No,” she gasped, pushing my body against the railing and bracing me up with her body. “What the fuck?”
“I’m so fucking tired,” I slurred, dropping my head to her shoulder as I tried to bring shit back into focus. I knew I was scaring her, but I couldn’t stop the dizziness that hit me like a freight train. “Can’t sleep without you.”
“Trevor!” Ani screamed as I tried to prop myself up.
“Jesus,” I groaned, using the railing behind me to steady myself. “I’m fine. Shit.”
“Everything okay?” Trevor asked less than a second later, popping his head out the back door. “Holy fuck, Bram!”
My vision was going spotty, and I shook my head to try and clear it.
“Trev,” I called as I felt my knees begin to buckle.
Then it was lights-out.
* * *
“Ani,” I said sometime later, opening my eyes in the dark. I knew immediately that I wasn’t home in bed, and I groaned as the smell of my parents’ house registered.
I’d passed out in the middle of yelling at Ani. Smooth.
I could hear voices speaking quietly somewhere in the house as I crawled out of the bed and stumbled to the doorway of Katie’s old room. It always took me a minute to get my land legs under me when I first woke up. It was something that had happened to me since I was a kid, and no matter how I tried to change my habits by staying in bed a few minutes after I’d woken up, I still walked around like a drunk for a full minute after I’d climbed out of bed.
It had made getting up with Arielle a bit of an ordeal as I’d waited to get steady before I’d lift the crying little miss from her bed.
I turned on the light by the doorway and glanced toward the playpen at the other end of the room, immediately shutting the light off again as I saw Arielle sleeping peacefully with her arms flung out to her sides.
