Текст книги "Every Second With You"
Автор книги: Lauren Blakely
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Harley
Something slips through my fingers. I don’t know what it is, maybe a blanket, maybe a touch, maybe just a dream.
But then it’s gone.
And the world goes black again.
Until it’s not black. Until something bright shines in my eyes, and I blink.
My eyelids close, and I hear a gasp. A thrilled sort of sound.
Noises filter in and out of my head. Voices I don’t know, saying words I can barely process.
Scale. Response. Stimuli.
Then I hear a grunt, a soft ohhh. And I don’t know where it came from until I feel my lips moving, and it registers that the sound came from me. I try to move, to shift up on my elbow. Pain sings through my body like an opera, vibrating powerfully inside me. My hands fly to the source—my stomach.
And it’s not hard and round anymore. It’s soft, and covered in bandages, and it hurts. But then I forget about the hurt as one thought blares in my head, loud and clear.
“Where’s my baby?”
A woman with a long thick braid and dog bones on her clothes swivels around. “Oh, sweet lord in heaven! You’re awake.”
“Who are you? And where’s my baby?”
“Oh, honey, we’ll go get her for you.”
Within seconds, it seems, a nurse rushes into my room holding a baby. “Here she is,” the nurse says, handing me a bundle.
“I had a girl?”
“You sure did. She was six pounds, five ounces, and she’s one day old.”
I look down at the little person who was once inside of me, and I have no clue how she got out or what’s happened for the first day of her life, but she fits in my arms so perfectly. I try to bend to kiss her, but even my neck hurts. Still, I manage, as her sweetness, her softness, fills me up.
My little girl.
I have a daughter now, and she’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, and I already know I want to give her everything: all of my love, all of my heart. I snuggle her as close as I can manage, and she lets out a contented little sigh; the sound tells me she knows—instinctually—that I’m her mama.
I hear running. Boots smacking in the hallway. Loud, heavy, fast, then skidding to a stop. And when I raise my eyes to the doorway, there he is. My Trey, in jeans, boots and a T-shirt, and I’ve never seen a person look happier in my entire life.
His whole face is lit up, almost as if he’s glowing with joy, as if it’s radiating through his body, lighting him up from the inside out.
He runs to me, and at first I think he’s going to drop down to his knees and hug me, then I think he’s going to scoop me up in his arms, but he doesn’t do either, and I’m glad, because I think both would hurt immensely. Instead, he brushes my hair off my cheek with his gentle fingers, softly tucking the strands behind my ear. Then he kisses me on the forehead, so lightly it feels like a butterfly has touched me, and that’s what I need right now.
This soft touch. His joy. Our baby.
“You’re okay,” he says, like that’s a miracle, too. Then it becomes a question. “You’re okay?”
I nod into his already-wet cheek. “I’m okay.” A beat. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” he says, staying close to me, reaching for my free hand. He laces his fingers through mine, and then brings our clasped hands under our baby. I glance down at our hands, linked together, holding our little girl. “I’ll tell you soon. But for now, I named her Hope. Is that okay?”
He pulls back to meet my eyes. I’m sure they are brimming with tears; the happy kind.
“It’s perfect. And her middle name is Allison.”
* * *
“I was in a coma?”
The gray-haired man named Dr. Whitney explains that the entire intensive care unit was baffled. “By all accounts, you should have woken up after surgery.”
“Why didn’t I?”
“Seeing as you have no lasting deficits or complications from the seizure or the blood loss, I believe it was your body’s way of coping and healing itself.”
“So the coma healed me?”
He nods. “In a way, it did. The body does amazing things, and sometimes it needs to shut down before it can wake up. Coma, in and of itself, is a response to injury, and your body went through a lot of injury with HELLP, and the bleeding in your liver. It’s possible your body needed to compensate by shutting off nearly all functions to heal itself.”
Heal itself. That’s what my body did while the world kept spinning, while my daughter had her first meal, while my husband nearly broke. But he didn’t. He was strong through it all. Like he was before, with all he’s been through.
We all have to cope in different ways. Trey and I learned to cope in our own ways growing up. Then we learned to heal, both alone and together, in our time. Our bodies, our hearts, our minds.
* * *
Three days later, they release me. A nurse insists on wheeling me out, even though I can walk just fine. But once the doors to the hospital shut behind me, I stand up, and walk to the car, Trey’s arm in mine. Debbie is buckling Hope into her car seat, and then my husband drives us home, under the blue skies, with the radio playing one of our favorite songs as the sun beats down.
We reach our house and he parks at the curb. He scrambles around the car to open my door, then to the backseat to unbuckle the baby. He holds her and we walk up the steps, Debbie and Robert close behind.
Our family.
The five of us.
Six, if you count the dog, and I do, seeing as he’s waiting on the porch, wagging his tail, eager to meet the new addition.
Trey holds the door. I step inside the house. The windows are open, and the ocean air is breezing in, greeting me.
“I’m home,” I say to him.
“You’re home.”
We both look at the little girl in his arms.
“We’re home,” we say together.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Three Months Later
Harley
A girl builds a sandcastle as high as the sky, its towers reaching the clouds. The sand glitters and the clouds glow with a radiant white light that ignites the sky into sapphire.
“You finished it,” I say, as I stare mesmerized at the final illustration in Trey’s sketchbook for me.
“I told you I would,” he says proudly, kneeling next to me, watching over my shoulder as I look at the pictures spread out in front of me on the blanket. Hope is sound asleep in my lap as I sit cross-legged on the beach, the salty tang of the ocean waves nipping in the air.
“I love it so much,” I say, tracing the final image once again. He illustrated all of the stories from my grandparents’ cards, creating a fantastical tale of a city girl who was out of place amidst the skyscrapers, then found her way home to the sand, where she lived out her days underneath the bluest of blue skies. “I kind of feel like we made a book together,” I say, under my breath.
“Because we did. My art, your words.”
I lean back against him, and he loops his arms around me. “Our story.”
I can feel him smile as he plants a soft kiss against my shoulder, then as he brushes my blond strands away, and kisses the cherry blossom tattoo he inked on the back of my neck for my twenty-first birthday a few weeks ago. The perfect gift.
“We’ve made other things together, too,” I say as Hope stirs, stretching out her little arms, lifting them to the sky, then curling up once more as the sun beats down on my beach baby, her breath soft against my legs.
She belongs to us. But she belongs to others, too. To my grandparents, who help me take care of her. To Trey’s mom and dad, who came out to visit her a few weeks ago. His mom cooed, and cried, and sang songs, and played with her in the sand. I email her pictures every day, and every day she asks for more. More photos, more stories, more baby.
I turn to my husband. “What will we tell her someday?”
“What do you mean?”
“When she asks how her mom and dad met,” I say twisting around to look at Trey, at his green eyes with the gold flecks sparkling. “What will we tell her?”
He sinks down on the blanket across from me, lacing his fingers through mine. He always holds my hand. He did as my friend, he did as my lover, and now he does as my husband and father to my child.
“That’s easy,” he says, running a fingertip across my palm that sends warm sparks through me. “We’ll tell her the true story. That there is a place called the ugly beautiful, and that’s where her mom and dad met.”
My heart thumps faster. “And that’s where they live,” I say, quickly adding to the story.
“And we’ll tell her that sometimes people meet in the toughest of circumstances, and the strangest of places, and there’s no reason why they should be together, except that they can’t not be.”
“And if anyone asks if she’s heard the story of a guy and a girl who were so broken at love that they never should have happened, she’ll say ‘yes, and I know why,’” I say, reaching out to touch his beautiful face, to map the scar on his cheek. “Because it was mad love, crazy love, insane love. Because it was hard love, good love, true love. Because it was the real thing, and a love like that can’t be stopped. A love like that is inevitable.”
“It lasts forever, for always, because of the love they have and the way they love. And how they learned to love together. Fierce and true.”
“And I’ll tell her that’s how I feel for her dad.”
“And I’ll tell her that’s how I feel for her mom.”
“And that’s how we feel for her.”
As the water lapped the shore, then rolled back out to sea, we were finally where we wanted to be: with family, by the ocean, under the sun, on our terms, loving fierce and true.
THE END…
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to so many people. First and foremost, thank you to to my amazing readers. I adore every single one of you, and I am sending you virtual kisses, hugs and chocolate for your support. I love your enthusiasm, your notes, emails, tweets, posts, reviews and sweet comments. I write for you. You are all my reasons.
Next is my family. My husband and my children are the loves of my life, and I thank them for understanding my intense attachment to fictional characters. My dogs deserve more biscuits, bones and tennis balls – they are with me for nearly every word I write.
My beta readers are rock stars. Zoe always gives keen, insightful feedback; Kelly read as I wrote, suggesting tweaks and cheering me on; Crystal lent her sharp eye to a near-find draft, Monica helped refine the ending, and Kim, as always, had my back. THANK YOU. My editor Lauren McKellar helped with a final polish of the words.
Big thanks to my writer friends. Monica Murphy encouraged me to write Harley and Trey’s story in the first place, and I am so glad she did. I’m lucky too for the daily friendship, laughter and support of my girls Sawyer Bennett, Melody Grace, Violet Duke, Lexi Ryan, and Kendall Ryan. Big thanks to Kristen Proby, Pepper Winters, Jessie Evans and Katy Evans. Love ya, girls! Then there’s Tara Simone – my best friend in the world!
My publicist and friend Kelly at Inkslinger PR is my rock. I can’t imagine navigating this world without her by my side. My cover designer Sarah Hansen is a wizard. Credit for the beautiful cover photo goes to Anthony Langlois at Glimpse Photography. His work is amazing.
I am grateful to Jen McCoy who ably helped me choose an Arcade Fire wedding song. I owe a huge thank you to the amazingly talented Georgia Cates, who was generous with her time and knowledge of medicine and labor and delivery. Any mistakes in the hospital sequences are my own. Hetty, as always, was there for me – whether to read, to make a gorgeous picture, and most of all just to be a friend.
Hetty is also a part of my core group of gals – Hetty, Kim, Cara and Kristy – you are fabulous readers and wonderful women. Kim is by my side with her daily enthusiasm. Kelley is an amazing resource. Helen at All Booked Out continues to deliver stunning graphics, as do Tori at Give Me Books and Heather at Real Housewives of Romance.
The indie world is built on the passion of many amazing bloggers. Thank you to all the amazing bloggers who share their love of books every day. The list includes: Eye Candy Bookstore, Totally Booked, Rock Stars of Romance, Vilma at Vilma’s Book Blog, Jen at Sub Club, Book Whores Obsession, Reviews by Tammy and Kim, Book Addict Mumma, Two Crazy Girls with a Passion for Books, Shh…Mom’s Reading, Romance Addict, Little Black Book Blog, Flirty and Dirty Book Blog, HEA Shelf Blogger, Angie’s Dreamy Reads, Becky at Reality Bites! Let’s Get Lost, Kelly at KellyVision, True Story Book Blog, LoveNBooks, Just Booked and many more. Special shout-outs to my girls Kara Hildebrand and Sandra Shipman (love leaning on the two of you rock star readers! Can’t wait for dinner in Vegas!), Lexi at Book Reviews by Lexi, Retta Rusaw and Lisa Kreinheder at Because I Said So Book Blog, Shamika at Sticky Reads, Jaime Collins at For the Love of Books by Jaime, Cindy at the Book Enthusiast, Alissa Riker at Author Stalkers, Stacey at Reading Rainblog, Cindy Gibson, Vanessa Foxford, Yvette at Nose Stuck in a Book, Tracey K., Kelley from Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews, Patricia from A Literary Perusal, Betsy from Book Drunk Blog, that awesome chick Kenna Nauenburg, Jennifer Santoro from The Readiacs, Jennifer Reyes from Jen's Book Reviews, Jessica and Lyndsay from Little Black Book Blog, Jennifer from Jennifers Taking A Break, Wendy Racine, Carolyn Isherwood, Tami Schafer, MJ Fryer, Stacy Hahn, Sara Howe, Brenda Howe, Karen – The Danish Bookaholic, Kassie’s Book Thoughts, Tanya from After the Final Chapters, Diane from Naughty Book Eden, Jackie Uzzell, Mariana Lee, Louisse Ang from The Soul Sisters, Gretchen from About That Story, Lyndsey Aaron from The Eyeliner Manifesto, Theresa Potter, Laura at Bookish Treasures, Shey Houston at Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews, Tanya The Book Obsessed Momma, Wendy at The Geekery Book Review, Kat, Ava, Bianca and Brittany from Bibio Belles Book Blog, Julie Solorio with Love Between the Sheets, the fabulous Bette Hansen, Kim Brown at Chapter Break, Jassie, the amazing Dianne of Oops I Read A Book Again, Chelsea at Starbucks & Books Obsession, Teresa Gomez from Sinful Reviews, Jessica at Lovin’ Los Libros, Tabatha at Insightful Minds Reviews, Amy at Schmexy Girl Book Blog and so very many more.
Last, but not least, thank you to Harley and Trey. I have loved every second with the two of you and I will miss you both immensely.
