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When Sadie sees what I’m doing, she turns Aurora around and says, “Say cheese.” Aurora obviously doesn’t say that, but she does giggle, which is even better. I take another picture, then switch it to video so I can capture the sound, knowing when I’m back home and alone, and they’re over seven hundred miles away, it’ll be the only thing I’ll have of my daughter to get me through until the next time I can see her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GAGE
When it’s time for her bath, since Sadie doesn’t kick me out, I stay and watch, memorizing every babble, every giggle, dreading the moment when they leave to go back to Virginia.
Sadie lets me participate in Aurora’s bedtime routine by reading her favorite book to her and explains that she usually goes to sleep earlier at home, but being here has thrown her off a little bit. Not being at home in her room has messed up their structured routine.
“Can I come visit?” I ask once Aurora is fast asleep in her portable crib.
“Gage…” Sadie sighs, shaking her head. “I… I don’t…”
“I know,” I say, not needing her to finish. “This is all a lot to take in. I get that, and I know you have a boyfriend, but fuck…” I glance at the sleeping beauty who’s half mine. “I want a chance to get to know her.”
Sadie’s eyes fill with liquid as she nods. “Can we please just take this slow? She doesn’t know you, and it’s just all so unexpected.”
“Yeah, of course,” I say, willing to agree to anything that will get me time with my daughter. And then a thought hits me. “Does your boyfriend…?” I clear the emotion from my throat. “Does Aurora think he’s her dad?” I choke out.
Sadie’s eyes go wide. “No.” She shakes her head to emphasize her answer. “No, he’s never even met her.”
I sigh in relief.
“We only recently started dating, and I didn’t want to bring her around him unless we were serious. My best friend from college, Sarah, lives in Virginia, which is why I moved there. She’s married with two kids, busy running her own spa. When I first moved there, I didn’t know I was pregnant, but it worked out. Rory is close to the same age as her youngest, so sometimes, she’ll watch her so I can have some alone time.” She shrugs. “Between working full time and Rory, it’s easy to forget to make time for myself.”
Speaking of which… “How are you on money?”
She narrows her eyes, and I quickly raise my hands, waving the metaphorical white flag. “Sadie… It’s obvious you take care of our daughter just fine, but the last time I saw you, you were homeless.”
She sighs and nods in understanding. “I wasn’t homeless. I just didn’t want to go home. It was the last place I saw my family alive, and it was too hard. After you…” She clears her throat, ready to skip over what I did, but one of the most important parts of recovery is facing what I’ve done, so before she can continue, I finish the sentence for her.
“After I brought two women home and had sex with them in the living room.”
Her eyes fill with hurt. “Yeah,” she whispers.
“Sadie…”
“Gage, I don’t really want to go there. We weren’t together, and you didn’t owe me anything.”
“Maybe not, but what I did was still wrong. There were a million other ways I could’ve pushed you away, but I chose the one that would hurt you the most.”
“Why would you want to hurt me?” she asks, her voice small.
This isn’t exactly the way I want to end my time with her, but it’s a conversation that needs to be had… One she deserves.
“The reason I had a drug problem was because my high school girlfriend committed suicide… and I’m the one who found her.”
Her eyes go soft, and she moves closer to me. “I’m so sorry.”
“She had been lashing out for a while, but she wouldn’t talk to me. After she died, I found a note from her that said her stepdad had been raping her for months. He was threatening to send her away and hurt me. She had tried to tell her mom, but she wouldn’t listen. It all became too much, and she felt the only way out was to end her life.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It was. My mom was murdered when I was twelve in a motel room where she was prostituting. They claimed it was an accidental overdose, but I’d seen her pimp shoot her up too many times. When Tori died, I felt like I failed her and my mom, so to cope, I started using.
“The band took off for LA, and we quickly hit it big. The next several years were a whirlwind of recording and touring. The guys tried to get me help several times, but I wasn’t ready. I was a functioning addict.”
