AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We repeated the pushing process for nearly two hours.
Those two hours were the longest two hours of my life.
On the last contraction, the intern started shoving his hand up my woman’s vagina, and I was about to lose my shit when Channing yelled, “Get out of my cunt, you big handed heifer!”
And with that, our five pound, six ounce little boy, Justice Reese Rector, made his way into this world, spitting mad just like his mother.
***
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch,” Channing said, tiredly, later that night.
I looked up from my little boy’s face to find her on her side facing me, eyes finally open.
I smiled at her warmly. “You didn’t mean any of it, honey. I know.”
She closed her eyes again. “Baylee showed me a video of some of the things I’d said while you were with Justice when he was getting a bath. I know I was a bitch.”
I snorted.
That was the understatement of the century, but I wouldn’t trade her for the world.
“So...did Dixie see my coochie?” She smiled.
A startled laugh burst free of my chest, shaking the baby and making him cry out. “No, I think he slipped out at some point,” I said as I patted the tiny boy who’d already stolen a piece of my heart.
Her head fell back against the pillow, and her eyes started to close once again.
Standing carefully, I walked over to the side of the bed, and sat down beside her.
She smiled at me, but didn’t open her eyes.
Leaning down, I gave her a soft kiss on the forehead, and then rested there for a moment, breathing in her scent.
She smelled like her original citrus smell. A combination of the shampoo she used, and whatever products shegunked her hair up with that morning.
That, to me, smelled like home.
I’d found a home with Channing. We shared an unbreakable bond, now. One that’d withstood time, distance, heartache, heartbreak, and death. We were each other’s lifeline.
Channing kept me grounded. She made sure I talked through my day. If I ever needed her, she wasthere. She was irrevocably mine, and I wasirreversibly hers.
She’d given me a precious gift today. One that I could never, ever repay for as long as I lived. I would spend my days trying to bridge that gap but somehow, I knew, I could never do anything to match her gift of life.
She was everything to me. Everything I never knew I wanted. The keys to my cuffs. The balm for my tortured soul.
She’s the reason I’m stronger today than I was yesterday, but she’s also my weakness.
She had the power to bring me to my knees, and I like it that way.
Epilogue
If at first you don’t succeed, give the jar to your husband and save yourself the time.
-Life Lesson
Three years later
“Loki!” I snapped. “I told you not to call them hose monkeys in front of the kids anymore. Do you realize how embarrassing it is to have them say that when they see a firefighter?”
