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I put my hand on her cheek and tilt her face. “Aislin, baby, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
She whimpers again then her eyes snap open and immediately meet mine, just how I wanted them to. I wanted her to see me as soon as she woke, not the dark shadows that plague her dreams.
Tears fill her eyes and slip down her cheeks, and I wonder how much pain a heart can take.
“Tell me,” I say and wipe away the tears. Every night she has a nightmare, I ask her to tell me about them, hoping that when she does, it’ll help exorcise them from her mind.
She buries her face in my chest, and her body heaves with her heavy crying. My own eye itched from wanting to cry, but I’m determined to be strong for her. I give her a moment, not wanting to push but desperately wanting to help her. Eventually, she lifts her head and gives me back her beautiful pain-filled eyes.
“I had a b-baby,” she sobs. I close my eyes and pull in a breath before opening them again. Her eyes are on mine, but she’s not seeing me anymore. “It w-was a boy. H-he died because he c-came too early. I h-had a baby, Niko.” Her eyes focus back on me, tears once again flooding down her cheeks. “And I never got to hold him. I never got to see him.”
“Oh, Aislin, I’m so sorry.”
I sit up in bed and take her with me. I put my back to the headboard, spread my legs, and pull her into my arms. Her arms go around my neck, and she almost squeezes the breath out of me. I don’t care. She can hold me as tight as she needs. I want her to take comfort from me. I need her to.
I smoothly rub my hand up her back and let her cry out her sorrows for the baby she never got a chance to meet. The circumstances of his conception may have been horrifying, but it’s obvious that didn’t matter to her. She loved the child despite that, which makes her even more wonderful in my eyes because not all mothers would.
“He took so much from me,” she says with a hiccup, her cries quieting down. “How can a person, a parent, do that to their own child?”
“I don’t know. There’s no telling what goes through a person’s mind such as his. All I know is we’ll get through it together.”
She lifts her head and peers up at me through watery eyes. “Thank you for finding me and for not giving up.”
I drop my forehead to hers, overcome with emotion, and I’m glad she doesn’t flinch or try to pull away. “Don’t thank me. Don’t ever thank me. I thought for a long time I failed you, that I didn’t find you when I always promised I would. You were my North Star, my beacon, and you still are. And I swear to you, Aislin, I’ll never lose you again.”
The smile she gives me touches places inside me that I thought were long dead. They were just dormant, waiting on her return.
I move us back down the bed, and we lie down again. She tucks herself back against me. The moonlight twinkles off the silver plastic bracelet on her wrist as her fingertips touch the one still around mine. Hers is in much better shape than mine is.
“I took mine off that morning when I got in the shower and forgot to put it back on before I left for the bus,” she says softly, running her finger over the word Best. “When he took me, that was one of my biggest regrets; not having that bracelet with me.”
My gut twists, and I have to clear my throat before I speak.
“You have it now.”
“I do.” Her head nods against my chest. “I can’t believe you kept yours this whole time,” she says with reverence.
“I had to change the twine a couple of times because I outgrew it, but other than that, nothing could make me take it off.”
I lift my hand, and hers fall from the bracelet. Twisting my wrist, I twine our fingers together.
“Will you take me to the treehouse tomorrow?”
I smile in the darkness. “If you’d like.”
“I would.”
We turn quiet for a while, and then a question pops in my head. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, as it’s the reason I went to visit her that first day in the hospital. I’ve asked her before, but I want to ask her again.
“Do you remember why it was your house you came to when you first escaped?”
Her fingers laced in mine tighten for a brief second before they loosen again.
“I don’t know,” she answers with a low voice. “I was walking the streets, scared, with nowhere to go. Nothing around me looked familiar. When I made it to our street, I was going to keep going straight, but something made me turn down it. The longer I walked, the safer I felt. When I saw the house, the windows were dark and should have frightened me at the thought of going inside, but it did the opposite. It felt like my safe haven. When I broke into the basement and walked through the house, I felt more comfort than I had ever remembered having. It felt like I belonged there.”
My fingers sift through the long strands of her hair. “That’s because you did.”
She looks up at me. “Do you think it was God leading me back to you? Back to where he knew I would be safe?”
