Fractured Freedom(75)
I knew our train wasn’t heading in the right direction. It was veering, careening off course, away from a happily ever after into a fiery explosion down below.
It was my job to read people’s emotions. I had to know what was pushing them and what wasn’t in order to find their weaknesses and strengths.
In my line of work, I’d perfected it, but in my personal life, it was the opposite.
In those seven days after the spa, I saw her retreat into the darkness of whatever shell she thought she needed to hide inside, and I couldn’t fix her. Her light disappeared, and whatever she was thinking dragged her down, drowned her in her sadness. It felt like not even I could breathe around her.
“Want to talk about it, Little Lamb?” I asked as I gave her a massage that night, knowing she’d still turn over and let me fuck her into satiation until the sun came up. Her body still wanted me, even if her mind was far away.
She let me work her muscles and shrugged like she couldn’t do much else. No words or smiles came to reassure me that she was okay.
“My momma used to tell me I couldn’t make everyone happy. Did you know that?”
“You made plenty of us happy all the time,” she mumbled. “I just sometimes can’t be happy, no matter how much I try.”
I should have taken it as an indicator of something more serious, I should have been more on the ball, but her phone rang, and we both stared at it as an odd number flashed on the screen.
“Izzy?” I asked, and Lilah lunged for the phone like she’d been waiting for the call her whole life.
“Hello?” Lilah waited, and her eyes narrowed. “You’re here? Our room numbers?” She shoved me off her and moved faster than I’d seen her do all week. She threw on the bra she claimed was a crop top and slipped back into her black shorts. “Sure, we’re on the twentieth floor, rooms 2001 and 2002.”
She stared at the phone for one beat, and I stared at my lamb, ready to bolt and formulating a plan to smooth out the situation that was about to ensue.
Her hands wrung together. “Let’s just say I was grabbing food here.”
I glanced around my room. Her things were everywhere. Her makeup on my bathroom counter, her toothbrush at the sink, her clothes over the chair. Two pairs of her shoes were right by the door. And my stuff was all over hers. We’d spread out so much there was no way of hiding it. “Why would I lie, Lilah?”
“Because it will complicate things and I don’t want her to—”
“Fly off the rails? I can assure you Izzy has been clean for years. This won’t cause a setback.”
“It’s not what I want,” she blurted out.
“What isn’t what you want?”
“This.” She motioned between us. “I can’t give you what you want. So I don’t want this.”
“What is it that you can’t give me?” I whispered. Her words cut my organs, like she was trying to rip me apart fast and clean but doing a bad job.
“Oh my God! Everything. I’m lost. I’m scared of whatever we have. And what if it’s real? What if we really have it, the love and the life, and then we want a kid, Dante? I can’t give you a kid. Or a family.” Her hand flew over her mouth as though she couldn’t believe what she’d said. “I know. We’ve only been sleeping together for two weeks. This is probably just casual—”
“It’s not,” I answered for her. “This is forever. It always was, Lilah.”
“And that’s why it can’t be. If it’s forever, our genes don’t work in me, or no genes do, I don’t know.” Tears formed in her pretty eyes. “We can’t talk about this right now. I can’t beat whatever happened in that miscarriage, Dante. This is done. Leave it. Don’t even tell her.”
“Little Lamb.” She was ready to dart, and I could only whisper the words and hope she wouldn’t. “I don’t want children if it’s not with you. We either have them or we don’t.”
“No.” She almost yelped the word and then pointed her finger at me. “You’re not suffering because I’m suffering. You have a way out.”
“I don’t want one.” I shrugged because she had to understand what she was saying was nonsense. “I don’t want ‘a way out’ from you ever. I could have told you that the first time you tricked me into taking your virginity, the time I carried you home with your broken ankle. Hell, the time I asked what you needed for your first period in my car. I wasn’t going anywhere without you. I’m still not. I’ll wait forever for a baby with you, or we’ll be happy without one.”
“What if you’re not happy, though? What if I can’t be happy? What if I’m depressed all the time?” Tears streamed from her eyes.
“We got a million tools in the toolbox for that. I’ve perfected a few things in my lifetime, Lamb. I’m not afraid to perfect making you happy and aiding you in your mental health.”
“I don’t want you to have to fix me. I don’t want to be broken all the time. Do you enjoy putting me back together?” she shrieked like I was insane.
I was when it came to her.
“I do. I enjoy every part of you. Even the dark parts. Even the ones you’re scared of. I might tear people apart, but I enjoy putting you back together, Lamb. I want to do that for the rest of my life.”