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“Skid, I’m in love with you.” She ignores what the woman tells her and focuses on me. “I want this baby to be our fresh start. I want us both to raise this chil…oh fuck!” She screws up her face and focuses on what's happening to her body while I let her words sink in.
Everything around me suddenly becomes so distant. I can hear the midwife encouraging her, telling her to push but she sounds muffled. Addison’s hand shakes from the tension she’s holding onto me with, but I can barely feel it. All I can think about is how selfish I’m being.
What right have I got to move on and be happy, when Carly had her life stolen from her? How can I drag this sweet girl and the child she’s about to push into the world into my life? The sound of Addison howling is replaced by a cry and when the midwife places her baby all slippery and pink directly onto Addison’s chest, she beams up at me proudly.
“You were right, it's a boy,” she tells me with tears of joy in her eyes.
Natural intuition stops the baby from crying when she looks down at him and strokes her still-shaking hands over his precious little head. It's a beautiful sight, a vision of pure innocence that I don’t fit into.
“Does Daddy want to cut the cord?” The midwife looks at me with a wide smile and the insanity of this whole situation hits me like a ten-ton truck.
Sweat seeps through my pores, my palms become too slippery to grab hold of anything. My chest squeezes so tight I feel like I’ll never catch my next breath, and suddenly the image of my beautiful wife, lying dead with her eyes wide open is all my mind can focus on. I stand up and take a step back, tripping over the stool and jumping outta my skin when I hear the tray of instruments that were behind me clatter to the floor.
“Skid?” Addison looks at me so strangely, all that joy starting to fade from her face.
I hear Carly’s voice screaming my name, begging for me to come while his filthy hands crush around her windpipe, squeezing the life outta her and our child. This should be her,sheshould be cradling our child and looking at me with all that happiness. All she ever wanted was to be a mother.
“Skid.” Addison’s desperate plea calls out to me again and when I draw my eyes back onto her and see the fear and confusion she’s staring back at me with, I detest myself even more.
She didn’t deserve this false hope I’ve given her. Any feelings I’ve convinced myself I have can’t be real. I found my soulmate, I married her. I planned my whole life around our dreams, how can that ever be replaced? This poor girl is just someone who got tangled up in my healing process. Another innocent creature who could be ruined if I let her into my life.
“Skid!” Her voice rings through all the chaos in my head as I continue to back away from her. Everyone in the room is staring at me, judging me.
This is a happy moment, probably the best moment Addison is ever gonna have in her whole life, and not only do I not belong in it, I’m ruining it.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her weakly, turning my back on her and her newborn son and running.
I’d rather ruin a moment than a whole fuckin’ lifetime. Addison may never know it, but what I’m doing right now is saving her. And as I get further and further away, I start to wonder how a heart that's dead can still fuckin’ hurt.
I wake up fighting for breath, my skin stuck to the sheets from sweat and my heart thudding wildly. The space beside me is empty, and after all these years, I still haven’t gotten used to waking up and seeing that. The other morning when I opened my eyes and saw Addison lying beside me, that heartbreaking second that starts off each morning didn’t come. But it was quickly replaced by guilt.
I sit up and run my hands through my damp hair, reminding myself to breathe. I’m always gonna hate myself for what I did to Addison. This isn’t the first time I’ve revisited the moment I hurt her, and as I close my eyes and try to focus on something else, what I realize is that I’m setting us up for the same thing again. I’ve learned over the five years that we’ve been apart that those feelings I had for her weren’t part of my grieving process. They were real, and now they’re back.
Time, distance, or fear of her hating me haven’t made them any less. If anything, seeing the woman she’s become has made ‘em stronger. Having her here, kissing her the way I did, and letting her sleep in my bed is all progress toward an outcome that I fear.
The air in here’s far too stuffy. The fact there's only a wall between me and her seems as much of a curse as it is a temptation and so I pull on some jeans, grab a shirt, and get the hell outta here.
I find myself at the top of the hill that looks out over the club just in time for sunrise. This was one of Carly’s favorite places. I can’t count the times she dragged me outta bed to bring me here to watch the sun peek over the valleys that provide the landscape surrounding the compound.
“Ain’t nothing more perfect than the start of a new day,” she’d tell me every time the rising sun would warm her face. Although I can just about hear her voice in my head, I don’t feel that kiss on my cheek that used to follow the words. I barely feel her at all anymore. The house stopped smelling like her years ago.
It feels like she’s fading away from me and the fact I kissed another woman in our damn kitchen proves that I’m letting her. What's worse about it all, is that kissing Addison felt good. It brought back a feelin’ inside me that I thought I’d never feel again, and it didn’t feel at all like a fuckin’ sin. It felt right, and that seems like the biggest betrayal of all to a woman I promised to love, honor, and obey.
Now, more than ever, I feel the need to be close to her again. I’m hoping coming here will do that. I close my eyes and remember my wife, pushing away the haunting vision of her dead in my arms and focusing on all the memories I’ve got of her smiling. Carly was the happiest person I ever met, she never let nothin’ get her down. Her happiness was infectious too, there wasn’t a person in this world she couldn’t make smile. When the memory of her lying dead on our living room floor casts its ugly shadow over that beautiful vision, I grip at the dirt beneath my hands and growl out from the agony it unleashes, and the fact there ain’t an outlet for it. At least, not until I find the man who took her from me.
How the fuck can I make Addison promises about keeping her and her son safe when I couldn’t protect my own wife? I couldn’t protect our baby either. I let ‘em down and I don’t deserve a fresh start when they’re lying in the fuckin’ ground.
Yet there's a connection between me and Addison, one that's been there since the day I first met her. I told myself I was just being decent, that helping her was what Carly would have wanted. Hell, I even convinced myself that Carly had somehow sent her to me to help me heal, it’s the kind of thing she would do.
But having Addison here, being around her again after all this time and what’s starting to develop is making me realize that it’s so much more than that. My heart wants to heal, but my head just ain’t letting it.
I hang my arms over my knees and drop my head, wondering what Carly would be telling me if she was here. My wife was the most unselfish person in the world. I know, deep down, she’d tell me to chase happiness and try to love again, but that don’t make it any easier to accept. Having Addison come here to find me, seeking out my help, and putting all her faith in me again, seems like a gift.
I let her go before because it felt like the right thing to do, she deserved so much more than a broken man who could never love her, and being who I am is what got Carly killed. I wasn’t gonna ruin another life, in Addison’s case, two.
Just thinking about hurting Addison again feels suffocating, so much that I feel my chest start to tighten. I lift my head to take in more air and notice the female deer that stands just a few meters away. I try to steady my breath so I don’t scare it away. It ain't rare to see deer around here, especially this time in the morning when the dew is still on the grass and the compound is silent, but itisrare to have one come so close. She doesn’t seem skittish like all the others I’ve seen. She’s aware that I’m here and hasn’t bolted. In fact, she’s staring right at me, her big brown eyes not even blinking as they reach into my soul.
I slowly stand on my feet, expecting her to take off into the trees, but as I step closer toward her, she remains perfectly still. Something a little surreal comes over me as I continue to approach. I’m less than a meter away from her now, so close that I can see my reflection in her eyes, and yet she still doesn’t act like I’m a threat. I take another careful step forward, reaching out my shaky hand and becoming even more shocked when she lets my fingertips touch the fur on her nose. It sends an instant wave of comfort through my body and I swallow the lump in my throat when her eyes finally blink and I see a familiarity in them. There’s no sadness there, just peace, and my chest feels close to bursting when her head slightly lowers.
