Now I give him a chance to speak. And he does, with clenched teeth. “You’re a little piece of shit, aren’t you, son?”
“I am, yeah. But I don’t think I can take all the credit for that. Some of it goes to you.” Then, “Oh, and that guy we usually use to mess with people? Who was going to fuck with Pete’s bank accounts? Yeah, he’s indisposed. Somebody broke into his house and broke all his bones. Now who would do such a cruel thing? I’d say a real piece of shit.”
“Looks like you need a little reminder about who’s the boss, don’t you?”
“I leave that up to your judgement, actually. If I need a reminder or not.”
My father leans toward me. “You sure you want to? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve got a lot more to lose this time.”
I clench my jaw, showing him all my hate, all of the pent-up loathing inside of me, all the fury, all the mayhem I’ll rain down on him if he dares to talk about her.
My Fae. Or Halo.
Yesterday I choked on my fear. I choked on what he could do.
But I never thought about what I could do.
What I’m capable of.
“Yeah, I do,” I tell him, keeping my gaze steady. “I do have a lot more to lose. And I thought about it last night. And I think I’ve got another little surprise for you.”
“What’s that?”
I press my hands on the desk harder, my fingers almost digging through the expensive wood. “You don’t want me to lose those. The things I’ve got to lose now. Because those are the only things standing between you and me. Between what I can do to you if you so much as even think about hurting her and my baby. Which is ironic. Don’t you think? The things you want to hurt in order to make me your bitch are the very things keeping you safe from me.”
“Are you fucking threatening me, Roman?”
I expect my skin to crawl again.
I expect to feel the phantom noose around my neck tightening up as it has in the past two years.
But nothing happens.
My breaths are harsh but it’s my fury, my anger, my own violence that’s making them so.
“No, of course not. This is not a threat. It’s a fact, and I mean it in the sincerest way possible. If you even look at my family, I’m going to rip your heart out. The only reason I haven’t done that yet — and believe me, I’ve thought about it a million times in the last two years — is because I thought I had no choice. I had no choice but to do your bidding. I had no choice but to be like you. Because we’re both assholes, aren’t we? But whaddya know, I do have a choice. And I would very much like to see where that choice takes me. If I get to fuck you up in the process, it would be icing on the cake. So be very careful about what you do next. You don’t want me to turn into a man who’s got nothing to lose. Because then there’d be no stopping me.”
With that, I straighten up.
I watch his furious eyes, so much like mine, that have a hint of terror in them.
The terror that I felt all day yesterday.
Ever since he found out about Halo and Fae’s Juilliard.
Not going to lie, I love seeing that.
I love seeing my father, sitting in his throne-like chair, afraid of his own son. I memorize it, that look and file it away for future use as I walk out of that study for the last time.
As I breathe the toxic fucking air of that toxic fucking space for the last time.
And Jesus Christ, I’ve never felt lighter.
I’ve never felt more… relieved. More like I could breathe now.
And it’s all because I’ve got a choice.
I never thought I had a choice, actually.
I had a shitty father who wanted to control me, who wanted to treat me like a possession. Who never cared about me or my sister or my mother. Or people in general. So I had no choice but to hate him. I had no choice but to rebel, to fight. To stick it to him.
I had no choice but to go to war with him.
Every action, every reaction in my life has been born out of the fact that I never had a choice.
But then… then she said that I did. That you always do.
No one’s ever said that to me before. No one’s ever said to me that I had a choice, that I could pick the life that I wanted for myself.
So I thought about it. I thought about if I had a choice, what would I want?
What are the things that I want?
Turns out, I want a lot of things. And they were buried inside of me just waiting to come out.
I’d want a mother who cared about me and Pest. Who didn’t love a villain like my father. Who was happy and carefree.
I’d want Pete as my father.
The man who taught me everything about cars and showed me what my passion was. The man who I went to last night, after driving around for hours, and told everything to. And his response was that he was done with the garage anyway. That he wanted to travel now, visit all the places he went to with Mimi, and he was ready to give it up but only if I’d promise to take care of it.
Well, his exact words were, I was waiting for you to wake the fuck up and get your head out of your ass so I could hand you this damn shop and retire.
So I took it. Because if I had a choice, I’d pick working in a garage over playing soccer any day.
It’s mine now. My dream.
Because a dream is something that gives you peace and sets your soul on fire at the same time.
That’s what she said to me.
The girl because of whom all of this is happening. The girl who showed me that I could take my life back from my father, if I wanted. I could build my own life. The kind of a life, the kind of a father that my baby girl would be proud of like I was never proud of my own father.
The girl who showed me that I could be different, good, someone I like – but wait a second.
Wait a fucking second.
She isn’t the girl who finally made me realize that I do have a dream and what it means to have one, no. Or that I could choose to be a different person.
At least, she’s not just that, is she?
She’s more.
She’s my… She’s my dream itself.
Because she gives me peace. And she sets me on fire.
Holy fucking Christ.
Fae does that for me. Every time she smiles at me. Every time she touches me. Or she tells me something that she’s read in a pregnancy book or she bakes for me. Or looks at me with her pretty eyes or blushes for me.
Every time she lets me inside her body so I can worship her, ruin her, sate myself in her.
Every fucking time she dances.
That’s why I used to be so eager to watch her spin on her toes in the woods or back at Bardstown High. Because she gave me peace. Because she took away my stress of soccer and rivalry and my dad.
Because when I saw her, all I could think about was her.
Jesus Christ, Fae is my dream.
The biggest one I’ve ever had. The most precious one.
Isn’t she?
My tight little ballerina who’s glorious and gorgeous and pregnant with my baby.
I’m outside now, in the driveway of my posh house and I have to take a second. I have to plow my fingers through my hair and just breathe.
At the realization.
At the fact that I’ve been such a fucking idiot.
All this time, all this fucking time, Pete kept telling me. My own fucking father kept telling me and I…
I’ve been too bogged down and wrapped up in my own self to recognize it. To recognize that I love her. That I could love her.
I had so much hate inside my heart that I never thought I could. I never thought I was capable of it. But she kept telling me too, didn’t she?
She kept telling me that I could love.
That if I love Halo – I do; I fucking do – then that means I can love other things as well. But I kept ignoring her like I kept ign
oring everyone else.
I straighten up then, an urgency flowing through my veins.
I have to go to her. I have to fucking tell her.
She needs to know. She deserves to know.
How I feel. How I’ve been a big fucking idiot. Especially after how I left things with her last night.
I know she’s at school right now. But that’s fine. I’m going to stand outside of those fucking black metal gates and wait for her until she comes out.
But as I begin to stride toward my Mustang, I realize I have a text. My phone’s been on silent all night long and I’ve got multiple missed calls and texts.
From Conrad, Pest. Even Ledger.
And then for the second time in twenty-four hours, a panic like no other grips me. It chokes the life out of me, keeling me over.
But I don’t have the time for that. I don’t have the time to panic or to breathe even because she needs me. My Fae and Halo. And I have to get to them.
I break all speed limits and lights as I race toward the hospital. It’s in the town of St. Mary’s, miles away from Bardstown and my father. Something that would’ve made me happy. To have Fae and the baby away from the clutches of my father.
Not so much now.
Now I’m panicking. I’m angry and frustrated and helpless.
So goddamn helpless.
By the time I reach the hospital, I’m shaking. My body is cold. My bones can’t be contained within it.
I’m not sure where I’m going or who even helps me get there but thank fucking God, I end up at the right place. Because I see the tall form of Conrad, standing, his eyes immediately falling on me as I enter the space.
“Where is she?” I ask, pushing through the panic. “Where the fuck is she?”
Conrad stares at me with grave eyes. “She fell down the stairs at school. It was an accident. We brought her in—”
I don’t think.
I get up in his face and grab his collar. “What do you mean she fell down the stairs at school? Where the fuck were you? Why weren’t you keeping an eye on her?”
“Reed —”
“She’s pregnant, for God’s sake,” I shout. “She can be slow and clumsy and does no one…” Suddenly, the winter in my body becomes even chillier. “Halo. What… Is she…”
“Callie’s in surgery right now. The fall induced labor and…” He swallows and I see the same terror reflected in his blue eyes. “And we won’t know for a few hours if Halo… We won’t know until they come out of surgery.”
We won’t know.
We won’t know if Halo is fine. If my Fae…
My fingers come loose from Conrad’s collar.
My hands fall limp as I take a silent step back.
As the initial adrenaline of panic and terror is overtaken by the heaviness of them. The weight of fear.
The gravity that we’re here. In this stark white waiting room with doctors and nurses and patients bustling around, something that I’d blocked up until now.
But it’s rushing back, along with the vivid realization that my Fae fell down the stairs at school and now she’s in surgery with Halo.
And they both might not… be okay.
“We’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” Conrad says. “Where were you? Why couldn’t you drop her off this morning?”
I texted him early this morning that I wouldn’t be able to drop her off at school today because I had something to take care of. Something that I know he doesn’t care about and I never wanted him to.
Because it was my responsibility, my father.
So I tell him, my chest burning, every bone in my body hurting. “It’s over. With my father.”
Even though his gaze is dipped in the same gravity and fear as mine, I can see a tiny bit of approval in his eyes as well. “Good.”
And then, I can’t help but say, “I love her.”
“I know. I could see. It’s good that you can see it now too.”
“I’ve been an asshole.”
“Yes. But I was wrong about you. I don’t like to be wrong but I’m glad I was.” Then the look in his eyes get shuttered. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there. To save her when she…”
Fell.
***
Halo Jackson comes into the world at exactly 3:27 PM on a Monday.
She shouldn’t have though.
She’s approximately six weeks early. All the books say that a normal pregnancy lasts up to forty weeks. Any babies born between thirty-seven and forty-two weeks are considered full term. Any born before are premature.
Halo is premature at thirty-one weeks.
She weighs 4.6 pounds and she has a ninety-five chance of survival with no ill effects.
But we need to keep her in the NICU. In an incubator because premature babies don’t know how to regulate their body temperature. They might have excessive weight loss. Their vital signs may be unstable.
Not that these things might happen to Halo because she comes under the mild category of premature, as the doctor who performed the surgery told me. Which went smoothly. They were afraid that the fall might have caused some internal bleeding of sorts but it didn’t.
My Fae and Halo were lucky.
But they’re not taking any chances. Hence the incubator.
I know all this because they told me.
But I know some other things too.
I know that she has dark hair like me. And blue eyes like her.
And I know that she’s small. She’s so very, very, dangerously small. I don’t know how I’ll keep her safe. I don’t know how anyone can keep a baby safe when they’re so small and fragile.
So breakable.
And it looks like Halo might break if I touched her even with a finger.
Good thing I haven’t.
Not yet, seeing as they took her straight to the NICU after surgery and stuck her with all these tubes. So I haven’t gotten to hold my daughter yet.
My daughter.
She’s my daughter. I have a daughter.
Over the past months, I thought I was preparing myself. I had questions. I asked them. I had a list of things to buy for her. The list of things she’ll need when she arrives.
And yes, I’ve been afraid.
Of course I have been. Of what kind of a father I’ll be. Given I always had a shitty one.
But I never thought I’d feel so incompetent. So blind as to what to do next.
What am I supposed to do now? With her.
How am I supposed to contain all this love? All this rush of love that I’ve never felt before.
Not this kind of love.
It’s like I’ll burst. My skin will fall apart with the kind of love I feel for my baby.
So yeah, I don’t know.
Except the only thing, the only person in this whole world, that has the power to calm me down, to give me peace, is sleeping. Doctors say that she’s doing great.
Except the normal post-op pain and recovery and the weakness that she’ll feel.
Oh, and her ankle’s sprained from the fall.
And I know she’s going to be fine but with her eyes closed and her blonde hair fanned over the white pillow, she looks just as fragile as Halo.
Just as beautiful and small and mine.
But then those eyes flutter and open, pure and shining blue, and my heart skips a beat.
“Hey,” I whisper, leaning over from my chair by her bed and squeezing her hand that I’ve been holding for the better part of the last two hours.
She smiles, those fairy-like eyes roving over my face. “Hey.” Then she frowns slightly. “You look completely destroyed.”
A tired chuckle escapes me. “And you look like a fairy.” She chuckles slightly too and I swallow. “How do you… how do you feel?”
“Good. I had a dream.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. About the championship game. I’m at the stadium, watching your gam
e,” she whispers, squeezing my hand back, making something prickle in my throat. “And I’m all dressed up in my tutu and my wings and I’m smiling because I know you’re gonna score the goal. But then, you look up from the field. You look directly at me and you smile too and I want to tell you that you need to keep your eye on the ball or you’ll lose but I’m so happy. So happy that you looked at me, that you didn’t care about the game and the world and you just looked at me in the crowd. And then, I felt Halo in my belly and…” Her breaths hasten, her eyes filling with realization and her free hand flies over to her belly. “Halo. What… where’s…”
“Hey, hey.” I squeeze her hand, trying to get her attention. “She’s fine. She’s here. She’s —”
“But she wasn’t supposed to be… I fell, Roman.” She looks at me with teary, panicked eyes. “I fell at school and there was so much pain. And I was waiting for you but you never came and Halo… where’s Halo?”
“Hey, look at me, Fae. Look at me. I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving.” I squeeze her hand again. I keep squeezing it as if trying to pump her heart back to life, as if to tell her lungs to breathe, just breathe. “And Halo’s fine. She’s fine. A little premature but she’s doing great, okay? There’s nothing to worry about. I promise. I promise, Fae.”
Tears are falling from her eyes, disappearing into her hair. “You promise?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. She’s fine. You’re fine too.”
Finally her breaths calm down. “Okay, I trust you. I need…” But with her ease comes exhaustion and her eyes are fluttering closed. “I need to see her. Take me… take me to her… she must be alone and… afraid. She must be…”
I caress her hair, rub my thumb over her almost completely shut eyelids.
And when she goes back to sleep, her breathing calm, easy, I kiss her forehead, smell her sweet scent and promise, “I won’t let her be. I won’t let Halo be afraid. Or you. Ever.”
Halo Cora Jackson is beautiful.
She’s the most beautiful baby to ever be born. I know I’m biased because I’m her mom, but I don’t care. She’s got the darkest hair and the bluest eyes, even bluer than mine, and she has the rosiest cheeks.
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