by K. Bromberg
“You. Hid. It. From. Me,” I grit out in a barely audible voice.
“I did?” he says incredulously, taking a few steps in my direction as Ace continues to cry, feeding off the room’s atmosphere. “I told you I was going to look into it. The email is sitting on the fucking computer clear as goddamn day. If I was hiding it from you, don’t you think I would have deleted it? Or better yet, tell CJ to send it to my work email so you wouldn’t see it? I was just getting our names in the system, trying to show interest in Z to maybe fuck with the social worker and have him stop the process. Get a grip, Ry—”
“Don’t you dare say that to me,” I scream, hysteria unhinging at the simple statement because I don’t want to see the truth in it. Can’t. “Don’t you waltz in here like you have a fucking clue what’s going on and treat me like I’m your goddamn nanny.”
He startles his head from the whiplash in my change of topic. “What in the fuck are you talking about? I’ve told you twenty fucking times to let me help and you won’t. It’s like you’re on some goddamn mission to prove you’re supermom. Last I checked this isn’t a competition, so stop making it one. Nanny? Jesus Christ, have you lost your mind?” He looks at me, chest heaving, head shaking, like he doesn’t even know me and the sad thing is, I don’t even know me right now.
I despise this woman who picked a fight with her husband because she’s scared and confused and not sure what is going on inside her. However, I can’t seem to stop for the life of me. We stand ten feet apart but there is nothing but animosity vibrating in the air between us.
There’s so much I want to say to him. So many things I need to try to explain and yet I can’t find the words, and Ace’s constant crying is like rubbing gravel in an open wound that just seems to agitate me more.
Colton closes the distance between us, his eyes searching my face for answers I can’t give him. “When you want to fight about something worth fighting about, Rylee, you know where to find me.” His eyes dare me to come back at him, press those buttons of his he wants me to push. When I don’t say a word, he holds a crying Ace out for me to take. “Until then, your son is hungry and has been for who knows how long before I walked in the fucking door.”
I look down at Ace and then back to Colton as my body freezes and words fall out of my mouth I can’t even believe I’m saying. “Feed him yourself.”
No. I don’t mean that.
“What?” Confusion like I’ve never seen before blankets his face.
Help me snap out of this, Colton. Please help me.
“Feed him formula.” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own.
Something’s wrong with me. Can’t you see it?
“Rylee . . .” Ace’s cries escalate as Colton holds him in that space suspended between the two of us. I know Ace can smell the milk on me, know he’s hungry, but that goddamn veil of listlessness falls like a lead curtain around me to the point that it’s taking everything I have not to turn and run. And at the same time to not fight to the death on this single point I am still shocked I’m even fighting over.
Take my shoulders and shake me. Tell me to snap out of this funk.
My thoughts, my breath, my soul all feel like they are being suffocated to the point that the room starts to spin and my body starts to feel like I’ve stepped into an oven. The air is hot, thick as I suck it in, making it hard to breathe and my head to be fuzzy.
He eyes me, frantic flickers from Ace to me as he tries to figure out what’s going on. He’s scared. Worried. Freaked.
I am too.
“I thought you wanted to only nurse for the first two months, that—”
“I’m not producing milk,” I lie, as I struggle to wade through this viscous veil of darkness that feels like it’s taking hold of me, seeping from my feet up my legs.
No. No. No. Fight, Rylee. Fight its pull on you.
“Quit lying to me.”
“I’m not lying.” He points to my shirt. I look down to see two wet patches staining my red shirt dark where my breasts have leaked through my nursing pads from Ace’s continual crying.
This is not you. Ace. Think of Ace. He needs you.
My mind is utterly exhausted and depleted from this civil war inside me that continues to rage regardless of whether I want to step on the battlefield or not.
“Give him to me,” I sob. Suddenly, the tears come harder than before as I reach out to take Ace. And the thing that affects me even more than my own thoughts is the look on Colton’s face and the slight way he pulls Ace back, searching my eyes to make sure I’m okay, before handing him over to me.
I turn my back to him and sit down on the couch, grabbing my nursing pillow and within seconds Ace is latching on, greedy hands kneading, and little mouth frantic for food. My sobs continue uncontrollably, but I refuse to look up and meet Colton’s eyes. I can’t. I need to do my job. Be the best mom I can be to Ace while fighting this invisible anchor slowly weighing me down and pulling me under.
“Rylee?” Colton says calmly, restraint audible in his even tone as he tries to figure out what in the hell just happened.
It takes me a second to stop crying long enough to be able to speak. “Can you please run to the store and get some formula. I just really need formula.” My voice is so quiet I’m surprised he hears it. But I need him to go so I can have a moment to pull myself together so he doesn’t think I’m losing it, although I really feel like I am.
“Talk to me, please.”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I just have a little case of the baby blues and what would really help me is if you went to the store right now and got me some formula so when I feel like this you can help me by feeding Ace.” I try to gain back my business-as-usual attitude with slow and measured words asking for help the only way I’m capable of right now.
Please just go and give me a few minutes to have this breakdown so when you come back I’m better.
I can sense his hesitation to leave by the way he starts to move and stops a couple times before blowing out a loud sigh. “Are you sure that—?”
“Please, Colton. I’ll be right here feeding Ace the ten minutes you’re gone.”
“Okay. I’ll hurry.” And the fact he hesitates again is almost too much for me to bear. The tears burn my throat again.
But he goes and the minute he’s gone, I welcome the unsteady silence that wraps itself around me like a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. I want to snuggle in it and pull it over my head until I can’t see or think or feel. Lose myself to the nothingness around me.
I look down at Ace and hate myself immediately. I have this beautiful, healthy baby I know I love very much, but I can’t seem to muster up that feeling when I look at him. This love is the most natural of instincts, the most simplest and complex form of love—from mother to child—and yet somehow something is so broken in me. When I look at him, all I feel is the ghost of it, instead of that all-encompassing rush I felt just days ago.
And knowing it and losing it is incomparably worse than never knowing it at all.
“Now that you have him, could you imagine if you lost him?” Eddie’s taunt flickers through my mind. It haunts me. Make me question myself.
He did this to you, Rylee. He’s responsible.
How is that possible? He can’t be the cause of this.
It has to be me. Something has to be wrong with me.
My mom told me most new moms would drive on sidewalks to get home to their newborn. What does that say about me if I just want to drive the other way?
All I want is that connection to be back. For it to not feel so damn forced, because that’s exactly how I feel right now, sitting in this empty house. I’m nursing him because he needs to be fed, not because I want to. I’m just going through the motions. I’m watching my life from behind a two-way mirror, and no one knows I’m hiding there.
I close my eyes, a contradiction in all ways, and try to quiet my head. And the minute I feel relaxed for the first time in what feels lik
e forever, I’m scrambling up as fast as I can, Ace still latched on, and running for the office. I grab my phone and frantically dial Colton as that black veil of doom and gloom slips over my sanity.
Ring.
Images of Colton lying dead on the side of the road somewhere fill my head. Car smashed. Thrown from the car because he was in such a rush to help me he forgot to put his seatbelt on.
Ring.
Colton lying shot dead on the floor of the local minimart just up the road where he walked in and interrupted a robbery in progress.
Ring.
Tears are burning. My mind like a horror slide show telling me that Colton isn’t coming home again. Panic claws at my throat, claustrophobia in wide-open space.
Ring.
“Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone!” I scream into the receiver, hysteria taking over as I move back into the family room, one hand still cradling Ace, the other on the phone.
Beep. Colton’s voice fills the line as his voicemail begins.
No. Please no.
I pace the floor, nerves colliding with anxiety, panic crashing into fear. Working myself into a frenzy as I wait for the knock on the door from the police telling me something has happened to Colton.
The problem this time though is I can’t step outside the emotions holding my thoughts hostage and realize I’m losing my mind like I was able to a few days ago. No, this time I’m in such a state of agitation that when Colton opens the door from the garage into the house I almost tackle him with Ace in my arms. “Oh my God, you’re okay.” I sob, wrapping my free arm around him, needing to feel the heat of his body against mine so I can believe it’s true.
“Whoa!” he says, thrown off guard by my sudden attack. He drops the bag holding the can of formula and tries to comfort me as best as he can without smashing Ace between us. “I’m okay, Ry. Just went to the store for formula.” I can hear the placating tone in his voice, the confusion woven in it, and I don’t really care because he is here and whole and came back to me.
“I was so worried. I had this horrible feeling that something happened to you and when you didn’t pick up your phone, I thought that—“
“Shh. Shh,” he says, using his free hand to smooth over my cheek as he looks into my eyes. “I’m okay. I’m right here. I’m sorry about my phone. I’ve had it on do not disturb so if it rings it doesn’t wake Ace up if he’s napping.”
I use the clarity in his eyes to soothe the uncertainty in me. “I’m gonna go put Ace in his swing, can you give him to me?” he asks, eyes alarmed as he looks down to where Ace is asleep in my arms and then looks back up to meet my gaze. I force myself to take a deep breath, hand him over, and then watch as Colton buckles him in the swing’s bucket seat and turns it on.
Within seconds he’s back in front of me, pulling me against his chest and wrapping his arms around me tightly. I breathe him in. Try to use everything familiar about him to quiet the riot within me: that place under the curve of his neck that smells of cologne, the rhythm of his heartbeat against my cheek, the scratch of his stubble against my bare skin, the weight of his chin resting on my head.
I sag, letting him hold up the weight that’s been bearing down on my shoulders. “Ry . . . you’re scaring the shit out of me. Please talk to me. Let me do something . . . anything to give you what you need. Helpless doesn’t look good on any man, least of all me,” he pleads, his arms only holding me tighter as his words make me want to pull away and dig my hands into his back simultaneously.
“Something’s wrong with me, Colton. I’m broken.” My voice is barely a whisper, but I know he hears it because within a second his hands are on my face guiding it up to look at the concern heavy in his.
“No. Never. You’re not broken, just a little bent,” he says with a soft smile, trying to replicate that moment so very long ago. Bring back a piece of our past to try and fix the current situation, but this time I’m not too sure it’s going to help.
“I feel like I’m going crazy.” The words are so difficult to say. Like I’m pulling them one by one from the pit of my stomach. When they are finally out, I feel instant regret and relief concurrently. The continual contradictions seem to be the only thing my mind can keep consistent.
His head moves back and forth in reflex, immediately rejecting my comment as his hands run over my cheeks, eyes looking deeply into mine. “What can I do? Do you want me to call Dr. Steele?” I can tell he’s panicked, lost in my minefield of hormones, unsure what to do to help me.
“No.” I reject the idea immediately, shame and obstinacy ruling my response. “It’s just the baby blues. It’s just going to take me a few days to get over it.” I hope he’s fooled by the resolution in my voice because I sure as hell am not.
“Then why don’t we get some help? Your mom or my mom or Haddie—”
“No!” The thought of someone else knowing is almost as suffocating as the emotion. Even my own mom. That would mean I’ve failed. That I’m not good enough. The thought causes more panic. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
An admission I can’t believe I’ve made.
“Then a nanny. Someone who—”
“I’m not trusting Ace with anyone.” This is a non-negotiable option for me. My body starts trembling at the thought, panic vibrating through every inch of my body at just the thought of someone we don’t know touching him.
“Rylee,” Colton says, exasperated. “I want to help you but you’re not giving me any way that I can.”
“I just need time,” I whisper. I hope. My head shaking in his hands, my eyes blurring with tears, and my heart racing, as another swell of panic hits me and takes me for its ride. “Just hold me, please?” I ask.
“There’s nothing I want to do more,” he says as we sit on the couch and he cradles me across his lap so my head is on his shoulder, legs falling over his thighs.
I use his touch to calm me. Need it to. Let the warmth of his body and the feel of his thumb rubbing back and forth on my arm assuage the wrong inside me that I can’t seem to make right or fight my way out from.
Snuggling into him, I realize how much I depend on this tie between the two of us. That connection we feel when we make love—the one we haven’t been able to have since I’ve been on bed rest and know won’t have again for several more weeks—has been lost. It makes me feel farther away when more than anything, what I really need is to feel close to him.
My heart aches in a way I can’t explain. Almost as if it’s in mourning. There has been no loss. Just a gain. A huge one. Ace.
I start to apologize again but stop myself. Apologies are only good if you can stop doing what you’re sorry for. The problem is I don’t know if I can.
But I’ve got two huge reasons to fight like hell.
Hopefully, they’ll be enough.
“I’M ALL OUT OF PATIENCE.” That and a lot of other fucking shit but Kelly doesn’t need to know that.
“I know you are. I’ve got two lines on him. I’m staking out one place—sitting in my car in front of it right now—and I’ve got Dean on the other. Twenty-four, forty-eight hours tops . . . But I’ve gotta tell you, Colton, if a man wants to get lost in a city, Los Angeles is a good place to do it.” He pauses, unspoken words clogging up the line. “Are you sure, though? I mean—”
“Don’t question me, Kelly. If you want out, walk now. I’ll get Sammy to do what I need if you can’t.” There is no mistaking the threat in my tone.
“Relax, Donavan.” Those words are like nails on a chalkboard to me. Piss me off. The irony since I think I said something similar to Ry to set her off. “I’ll set everything up. Get it all in place but I still think you need to let the police handle this.”
My laugh is low and rich. And lacking any amusement. “Eddie is a blip on their radar. Not mine. He’s done enough to my family. I’m done fucking around with this. Get. It. Done.”
“Understood. Just remember you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”
; “This horse is thirsty for revenge. I’m sure he’ll drink.”
“I’ll call when I have him. Now go spend time with that hot wife and cute baby of yours.” I know he’s trying to cheer me up with the comment but it does anything but.
I murmur an incoherent goodbye because I’d love to do just that—spend time with my hot wife. But I can’t. She’s hidden beneath who knows what, and I can’t do a goddamn thing to help her.
Give her time, she said earlier. Time my ass. Each hour she slips farther away from me.
Even now as I walk into our bedroom and see her on the bed with Ace, I can see her struggling—eyes scrunched tight, crease in her forehead—as she tries to feel that connection with him while he’s nursing. She says it’s the only time she doesn’t feel completely numb. And thank fuck she’s keeping her head above water. Barely. But luckily it’s above the surface enough to nurse Ace because trying to get him to drink from a bottle has been a goddamn nightmare.
Useless seems to be my new middle name.
It’s just the baby blues. That’s it. About ten days to two weeks. That’s how long Google tells me it can last. A topic that’s a long fucking way from my typical search history of good porn sites, Indy Weekly Magazine, and surf reports.
We’re eight days in. Halfway through.
This wasn’t supposed to be this hard. We were supposed to have Ace—the baby we never thought we’d ever have—and be blissfully happy. Get the unexpected cherry on top of our happily-ever-after sundae.
Not this bullshit.
I thought the hard part would be coming face to face with my dad. That would be our biggest challenge. That I would be the one to fuck this all up. I had no clue that while I was closing the damn door on the skeletons in my closet, Ry would slowly come undone.