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And I, useless fool that I was, chased her away.
A wave of grief hit me in the chest releasing the echoes from the past.
You ruin everything.
You’re out of control.
You’re too much.
Hope. My hope.
I had to get to her. Stop her from leaving. She couldn’t have gotten that far. Not in those heels. I spun to head to the stairs only to come to a complete stop.
Hope’s heels lay askew on the floor. She sat with her legs curled under her in her corner of the couch, hands clasped in her lap. My eyes climbed further up to her face and the tears that streamed down it.
“Hope,” I whispered.
She held out her arms.
Frozen, unworthy, unable to take those final steps, I hung my head. “Hope.”
Her name had barely crossed my lips when she was on me. Arms tight around my neck, legs wrapped around my waist.
Instinctively, I caught her, my arms circling her back.
Her smell, her weight, her skin, her breath, her.
Everything I never knew I needed.
Everything I never knew I wanted.
Everything I knew I could never hope to hold.
She rained kisses down the side of my face, whispered words I’d rarely heard. “Ares, Ares, I love you. I love you so much.”
The ancient walls I built inside me crumbled under the weight of her words, and I broke.
Stumbling across the room, I dropped to my knees on the floor and planted her ass in the couch. Bowed, I buried my head in her lap and gasped, the pain in my chest squeezing the breath out of me.
My voice cracked, betraying my weakness, exposing my wound. “I was only four years old.”
Her palm cradled the back of my head. Her voice thick with tears, she reassured me, “You didn’t deserve it.”
I rocked on my knees.
Oh, God, hold it together.
My fingers fisted in her skirt. My eyes burned with shame; my face flooded with heat as I failed to quell the unearthly sounds rising in my chest.
An infected boil, the pressure built, then, when tapped, the bitterness of grief burst forth for the spindly, dark-haired, dark-eyed, baby man with skinned knees and confusion swirling in his eyes.
He ran to his daddy, but his daddy set him back on his feet and turned him to face her.
I didn’t understand then.
I didn’t understand any better now.
I shook my head back and forth at the memory, a silent no, a plea, a wish. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes as I dragged in a breath and struggled to contain the pain.
