by Claire Adams
I ignored her snotty comment and took a deep breath, sitting down in the chair next to the couch. She flicked her fingers at the throw hanging over the edge of the new couch with a holier-than-thou look on her face. I ignored it, knowing it was her trying to be catty and letting me know she didn’t approve, which I didn’t give two fucks about.
“Why now?” I asked.
“I had to get myself together,” she said. “I just can’t stand being away from you guys any longer.”
I stared over at her in disbelief, not knowing what the hell she expected me to do. She was using Kayla as leverage. I knew that, but it didn’t take away from the fact that she was again controlling my life and our daughter’s. Unfortunately, I was put in a position where I could be looked at as either the bad guy or father of the year.
“I know that I made a huge mistake leaving you, Ryan,” she said, sitting down and leaning forward. “I have thought about you every day since I left, but I knew that I couldn’t come back until I had fixed what was going on with me. It wasn’t an easy choice, but I couldn’t be the mother to Kayla and the wife to you that you both deserved unless I did something about what was going on in my head. You were an amazing husband, and I miss our life so very much.”
“Well, as you can see, there isn’t much left of that life, just a hollowed out and redone structure,” I said bitterly.
“I know you are angry with me, and I understand, but please try to hear what I am saying,” she pleaded. “I made one of the biggest mistakes that a person could make in this life, and I want to have the chance to fix that.”
“So, you think barging back into my life when the drama has settled and you don’t have to deal with the broken hearts anymore was the perfect time to do it? I don’t know, Christina. That doesn’t make me think you’ve changed at all. Just the same old selfish Christina that left her family and shirked her responsibilities. You have no idea what it was like to go through that. You put your daughter, an innocent little girl, through hell and back. The only reason she doesn’t tell you to leave is because she doesn’t understand that you didn’t give a shit about her when you left.”
“You know that’s not true,” she said calmly, taking my hostility. “Come on, Ryan. I know you are angry. You have every right to be, but you know I love that little girl.”
“I used to think you did,” I said, shaking my head. “But how can you love someone and just screw them over the way you did? And with my best friend? Even Kayla picked up on the fact that you left with Dale, and I tried to shield her as much as I could from everything going on.”
“I’m trying to make it right,” she said. “It would be so good for Kayla for us to be a family again. You can’t deny that.”
“I don’t know,” I said, taking in a deep breath.
I was completely torn, sitting in that chair, staring over at Christina, who had done it again, made a grand entrance and weaseled her way back into my head. I didn’t want to be with her in any way. I wanted Alissa. But I couldn’t sit there and deny the fact that it would be good for Kayla to have her mother back under the same roof. How was I supposed to just pick up all of that hatred, anger, and broken trust and sweep it under the rug? I knew that if I made that decision, it would strictly be for Kayla, and I would never trust Christina again. I also knew if I made that decision, it would be the end of Alissa and me, and that was almost too heartbreaking to think about. I loved Alissa with all of my heart, and we made such an amazing team with Kayla by our side. Still, I couldn’t lie and say that if it were Kayla’s decision, she would pick Alissa. I knew better than that.
“Look, it’s late,” I said, rubbing my face with my hands. “I can’t have this conversation anymore tonight with you. It’s just going to go in circles. I need some time to think about all of this. Where are you staying?”
“I don’t have a place right now,” she said. “I thought maybe I could stay in the guest room.”
“No.” I chuckled. “That would be incredibly confusing for Kayla in the morning. She doesn’t need any more confusion, and I don’t want to give her the wrong idea. I’ll call the Weston and get you a room for a few days until we can figure all of this out. I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can go from there.”
“That is more than fair,” she said, standing up and grabbing her purse. “Thank you again for hearing me out. I really hope that we can reach a good place with all of this, but I know it will take some time.”
“I haven’t said yes to anything,” I said, opening the door and watching her walk out.
I shut the door and leaned against it, realizing that I was just put in the hardest spot I had ever been in. I had to decide between my happiness and the happiness of my little girl, and it was not simple in any way at all. I wasn’t ready to give up on Alissa. I loved her too much.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alissa
What a damn Fourth of July. It had started out so perfectly, and now, I was walking into my house, listening to the fireworks going off around me, and wondering what the hell had just happened. I went straight inside and jumped in the shower, trying to calm my aching heart. It was almost too much to bear, thinking about the fact that I just left Ryan’s ex-wife alone with him in the house, and after she made her intentions very clear. Being jealous wasn’t going to help anything, though, and the last thing I wanted to do was get in the middle of that. When I got out of the shower, Ryan was calling, so I took a deep breath and answered.
“Hey,” I said kindly. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m so sorry that all of that happened with you there. The last thing I wanted was for our Fourth to be ruined by Christina. The fireworks sucked without you by my side.”
“I know,” I replied. “But I couldn’t stay there with that situation. It was too much.”
“I understand,” he said with sadness in his voice.
“Did you two talk?”
“Yeah,” he groaned. “I don’t know what to think about anything anymore. I don’t love her, you have to know that, but she has now put me in another impossible situation with my little girl. I am the bad guy to Kayla if I don’t agree to this, and I am the bad guy to you if I do.”
“You need to take me out of the equation,” I said. “You can’t make a decision on your and Kayla’s future based on your feelings for me.”
“Why can’t I?” he asked angrily. “You were my future until an hour ago.”
“Look,” I said. “Stop worrying about making any immediate decisions. This is on your time, not hers. Text me tomorrow, and try to get some sleep.”
“All right,” he said. “Have sweet dreams.”
“You too,” I replied, hanging up the phone.
When I was done in the bathroom, I went back to the kitchen, made a hot cup of tea, and called my sister, needing someone to talk to. When I heard her voice, I wanted to burst into tears, but I knew that wouldn’t solve anything. She was still awake, just getting home from watching the fireworks with Mom.
“You’re home?” she asked, surprised. “I figured you would crash at Ryan’s.”
“Yeah, well, it’s kind of hard to when your boyfriend’s ex-wife shows up at the house, begging for another chance,” I said bitterly.
“Wait, what? Christina came there?”
“Yeah, right before the fireworks.” I sighed. “And she wants to come back home.”
“Oh, God, Alissa, I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “I mean, Ryan put her in her place, right?”
“Not exactly,” I said, walking into the living room and sitting down. “He didn’t want to upset Kayla on her birthday, so he let her stay. He had a talk with her, and when he called me a few minutes ago, he didn’t sound as sure as I hoped he would.”
“No, no, no,” Bella said angrily. “That woman is a bad person. She doesn’t deserve to be anywhere around them. You put your foot down, right? I mean, you told Ryan that he was supposed to be with you, not her, right?”
“Bella, it’s
not that simple.” I sighed. “As much as I love Ryan, I love Kayla, too, and that little girl will never choose me over her mother, nor should she have to be forced to make that choice.”
“She is 8, Alissa,” Bella said. “She doesn’t understand any of that.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I’m just afraid that I am destroying a chance for a family to come back together, for a girl to have her mother back.”
When I was a little girl, growing up without my father was extremely painful. There were times as a child I just wanted to be with my daddy, to feel his arms around me and to hear his comforting voice. It was so extremely painful when I couldn’t just walk into the other room and find him there. My mother did the best she could to help me understand, which I did as an adult, but it was really hard as a child, and it affected me on many levels. Divorce was really taxing on a child, and it never made any sense to them. I mean, how could it? To a child, love is easy. You just give it and take it in return. The people that are closest to you in your life don’t hold back from loving you, at least not normally. In Kayla’s case, her mother did hold back, but if she started new with them, Kayla wouldn’t even remember it when she got older.
I truly felt that when you loved someone, you were supposed to make decisions based on what was best for them. You were supposed to protect them and be there for them, even if it meant that you yourself weren’t able to reap the benefits of it. I would never in a million years do anything for Christina, but I would try to make the choices that I thought were best for Kayla. I would give anything if I could make sure that Kayla didn’t feel even a second of what it felt like when I was a child yearning for my father. She had already felt too much at such a young age, and I didn’t want her to continue to go through that, especially if I had a say in the situation. This was a huge thing for me, and I was really torn on which way to lean.
“You know what it was like when Dad and Mom divorced,” I said. “You saw me go through childhood yearning for him.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know that it was really bad for you,” she said.
“Would that have mattered?” I asked. “Would that have taken away the pain or made it any harder to go through my adolescence without my dad there to share it with? I know you didn’t have as hard of a time as I did. But thoughts of that hurt are very vivid in my mind when I think back on growing up. I may not have realized he was a scumbag, but even knowing now doesn’t take away the wish that I could have figured that out on my own and grown up with him close.”
“Alissa, you are being way too sensitive about this,” Bella said. “You can’t apply your situation with Dad to this one.”
“Why not? Isn’t it the same? The biggest difference is Dad didn’t come back and want to be part of our lives, so we didn’t have a choice in the matter. I can’t be the woman that stands in Kayla’s way. I couldn’t live with that choice.”
“So that’s it?” she asked angrily. “You are just going to walk away from this man and his daughter? The two people that you love more than anyone you have loved your entire life. You are going to let Christina win.”
“This isn’t about her,” I said angrily in return. “This isn’t about winning or losing for us. The only person that truly wins or loses here is Kayla. I’m sure Ryan won’t be the only man that I fall in love with, but Christina will be her only mother.”
“That’s not true,” Bella replied. “One, he may be the one, and you are walking away, and two, there is no reason Christina can’t be a mother from outside of that house. Kayla will be happy either way.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” I said resolutely.
“Well, you are an idiot, Alissa, and you are throwing away something really good for a really bad reason,” she said.
I got off the phone with Bella and took a deep breath, knowing that I needed to call Ryan right then, or I would second guess myself. I dialed his number and sat there, my hands shaking in my lap. At first, he didn’t answer, but as soon as I put the phone down, it started to ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, I was checking on Kayla. You okay?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I’ve just been thinking about everything.”
“Me too,” he said. “I can’t sleep. This is an impossible situation.”
“I don’t think it is,” I replied.
“What?”
“Look, Ryan, I love you very much, you know that,” I said holding my breath. “And I love Kayla even more than I ever thought I could love a child. It’s my opinion that I think you should give it a try again with Christina, if for nothing more than Kayla and your peace of mind that you did everything you could.”
“Alissa,” he said. “That is very big of you, but I don’t think you really mean it.”
“It doesn’t matter how I personally feel about it,” I said. “I know what it is like to grow up without one of my parents, and as much as I want to say that pain goes away when you are an adult and able to understand everything better, I can’t. It still hurts today that I didn’t have the chance to grow up with my father because of the divorce. As an adult, I know what kind of man he was, and I know I was better off without him, but that doesn’t take away that pain. I can’t in good conscience lie to you about that, nor can I sit back and let that happen to Kayla because I want to be selfish. This time, selfish is something I don’t have the luxury of being because a child is involved, and I want what is best for her.”
We sat there talking for several minutes, and he listened to everything that I said. I could tell that part of him wanted to fight me on this, but I could also tell that the other side of him knew that I was right. The calm and even keel of his tone cut right to the core of me, and even though I knew I was doing the right thing, I wanted him to scream and fight for me. I wanted the romantic gesture so badly right then, but I knew just as much as he did that this situation was not the right one for a selfish choice. I learned very quickly after falling in love with Kayla that a parent didn’t have the luxury of making selfish choices, especially when it had the ability to really affect Kayla long term. I had to be resolute and strong in my choices, and I knew that it was not only a good thing he wasn’t fighting me, but a sign as to where his mind was as well.
After a few more minutes, everything that needed to be said was said, and I sat there for a moment, quiet. I wasn’t sure what else I needed to say, and I knew that the conversation was drawing to a close. I could feel my throat closing up and tears pulling at the sides of my eyes, but I couldn’t let Ryan know that. It would be unfair to him. He needed to think I was fine and make his decision based on what he thought was best, not affected by feelings for me.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I asked.
“All right,” he said sadly.
I hung up the phone before he could say anything more. As the screen of my cell touched down on the coffee table, I burst into tears, pulling my knees to my chest and sobbing into my hands. That was the hardest thing I had ever done, and I hoped to God it was the right choice. I had just let go of the man I loved and the family I wanted the most.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ryan
A week had passed since the Fourth of July, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around what was going on. Christina wanted to come back, Kayla was ecstatic that she was still around, and Alissa had completely removed herself from my life. I missed Alissa, a lot, but I knew that until I knew for sure what I wanted to do about the situation, bringing her into it was a mistake. I had hurt her enough through all of this, and I couldn’t even start to imagine what she was feeling like, being the woman on the other end of things.
Still, I had to keep my guilt in check and understand that I was trying to make a choice based on what was best, not necessarily what I wanted the most. I hadn’t allowed Christina to move back in yet. I wasn’t ready for that. She pressed the issue a little, but I told her again and again that I hadn’t made up my mind yet, and that moving her in woul
d give Kayla a false sense of hope. She had already damaged our daughter enough. I wasn’t going to let my choices do that any further. What if she moved in, got back into Kayla’s life, and then decided she was wrong and ended up running for the hills again? There was no way that I could put Kayla back through that again. This time, there would be no Alissa waiting in the wings, and I didn’t blame her in the least.
In an attempt to see how this would work out if Christina did come back, I planned a bunch of family outings, letting her know this was about Kayla, not about us. It would be an interesting day, considering I had asked Christina to accompany us to a baseball game. I didn’t just choose that spot because Kayla and I loved baseball so much. I chose that spot to see how Christina would react to it. She wasn’t being forced to go anywhere, but I did expect for her to put on a brave face and act like she cared and was happy to be there, despite the fact that I knew she absolutely hated baseball and everything about it.
It was easy for her to go on outings she enjoyed, but I wasn’t worried about how she acted when she was happy. I was worried about how she acted when she was put into a situation that wasn’t all about her and what she liked. I wasn’t trying to please Christina or court her in any way. I was trying to really understand why she just showed up out of nowhere and decided she wanted to come home. As much as I wanted to believe her, I had a hard time swallowing the “I just needed to get me straight” card that she was pitching to me. I knew that a baseball game in the hot mid-July sun was the perfect way to see how she handled uncomfortable and stressful situations. I wasn’t willing to just take the same old Christina back into our lives.
She didn’t start the day off very well. When I asked her to come with us, she groaned slightly before begrudgingly agreeing to go. I chuckled to myself, knowing that she was feeling tortured. Poor Christina, being forced to go to a baseball game where we could all have a really good time and be there for each other. This alone had already put me in a bad mood, and when she arrived, I could tell she wasn’t comfortable in the least. She started off on the wrong foot by wearing heels and a dress, which baffled me, since she knew we would be climbing rows of stairs. Her hair and makeup were pristine as always, something I used to find attractive, but after realizing the pure beauty of Alissa, it felt like too much. She was trying really hard to get my attention when she needed to be focused on the attention of her daughter. I rolled my eyes and shook my head as she strutted through the front door like a supermodel, making her entrance on the runway. I could tell she noticed my reaction and toned down the dramatics of it just a bit.