Just Breathe Again

by C. A. Harms

  I reached out, and when the softness touched the tips of my fingers, I could almost picture my daughter holding it in her hands. The bright, glorious smile on her lips.

  For the first time in a long time, envisioning her didn’t fill my heart with dread and sadness.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Faith

  There were very few times in my life when I felt like telling my parents the truth was a form of torture.

  When I was nine and I’d broken my father’s elk head that was mounted on the wall because I thought it was a great place to hang from. Literally, I hung from it, only to find myself flat on my ass and the elk head lying before me, yet I still held the tip of the horn in my hand.

  Then there was the time I had snuck out of the house at just after midnight to meet Jimmy down by the creek, but Jimmy didn’t show. Instead, I set off the alarm on my way back inside after feeling devastated at being stood up.

  Disappointing my parents was one thing I hated doing, and I was about to embark on the biggest form of that. Telling them I was carrying a child from the man who, only weeks ago, I lied about and told them he’d refused to date me due to his working relationship with my father.

  The moment I shared the news, I knew my father would see right through my lie.

  I felt sickened by it all.

  I drew in one more deep, calming breath, doing my very best to slow my racing heart before climbing out of my car and closing the door behind me. Bracing my hand on the fender, I paused when nausea threatened me once again. I would have liked to have blamed nausea, but this was nothing more than fear.

  “Faith?” My back stiffened when I heard his voice from behind me. “Are you okay?”

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded, unable to face him.

  Sure, we had spent hours at his place talking. Actually, I talked and shared things I wished I hadn’t. Who wanted to be the girl who confessed love for a man, only to have him pretty much tell her that he may never feel the same?

  That was four days ago, and I still wasn’t completely sure I was ready to face him.

  “You don’t look okay.” I felt his hand press against the small of my back, and I held my breath unintentionally. “Do you feel sick?”

  “Terrified” was more like it. Oh, and completely and utterly discombobulated. I was a freaking mess of nerves, and him touching me was only intensifying it to great magnitudes.

  “I’m good.” Hell, why did my voice sound so damned squeaky? “Just visiting my parents.”

  As I took a step forward, Aaron followed closely behind as if guiding me from fear of me falling. I let him for a few steps before I paused and looked over my shoulder at him. That was a huge mistake.

  He’d shaven his face, only leaving behind that sexy as sin light goatee he’d been wearing lately. The look only made it possible to see that strong jawline and those kissable lips even more. Lips that were almost too perfect to belong on any man and those any woman would kill for. Full, the perfect heart shape, and did I say kissable?

  “I see you found your razor.”

  He smirked and tilted his hand, making my heart feel as though it skipped a beat. There was a relaxed demeanor about him, one I hadn’t gotten to see too many times before. That playfulness I had only been given a tease of here and there but craved often.

  “I always had the razor. Just never recharged the batteries.”

  The light in his eyes, the relaxed way he watched me, was a bit shocking and so out of character for him.

  “Did you get hit in the head with a board or something?” His smile deepened. “Maybe sniffed too much stain?”

  “I see this pregnancy has only managed to enhance your snarkiness.”

  I stared at him, unsure of where the hell the Aaron I knew had gone. I was honestly waiting for the moment he flipped and went all Jekyll and Hyde on me. Then the thought occurred to me. A way to wipe that smile clean off his face.

  “I was just stopping by to tell my parents that they are going to be grandparents.” And there it went. His mouth fell flat as he looked up and over my shoulder toward the front door. “You wouldn’t want to join me, would you?”

  His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, and I waited for him to slowly back away, but he remained where he was. His hand pressed a little firmer into my back, then he took a step closer. “As long as you promise to give me enough warning to run if your dad makes a move for the shotgun.”

  I arched an eyebrow, sure he was teasing me, which only made his smile return.

  “The right thing to do is to be by your side when you share the news.” It was almost like he could hear the questions running around in my mind and was attempting to answer them. “I may not have done all the right things in the past, Faith, but I promise, from here on out, I’m gonna try like hell to correct those mistakes.”

  With that, he nudged me forward, and I shuffled my feet hesitantly. This was hard enough when I knew I had to face my parents alone, but him being there only added more tension.

  Aaron took charge, guiding me toward the door, and before I could stop him from doing so, he knocked and waited with his hand still placed against the small of my back.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I whispered over my shoulder, though it didn’t affect him. He stayed where he was, doing just what he was doing without faltering.

  My mother noticed me first when she opened the door. “What are you doing knocking?” Then she seemed to see Aaron as she looked between the two of us with questions in her eyes.

  “May we come in, ma’am?”

  A few uncomfortable seconds passed, my mother still looking to me for answers before she stepped aside and allowed us to enter.

  “What’s going on, Faith?”

  Aaron spoke before I could. “Faith and I would like to talk to you and Mr. Billings briefly if that’s possible.”

  “What’s all this?” My back stiffened when I heard my father step into the room behind us. I knew already that he must have noticed the way Aaron was still holding onto my back, his hand now sliding a little more to my hip than before.

  When my father stepped up to my mother’s side, the two of them took on that united front I had seen so many times, and I looked toward the floor. Feeling like that seventeen-year-old child who had stolen my daddy’s truck in the middle of the night to sneak off to the party of the year, or so I had thought. I was that child all over again—the one who was terrified of that disappointment in her daddy’s eyes.

  “We have some news.” I bit the inner part of my cheek at the sound of Aaron’s voice. “I’m sure it will come as a shock because both Faith and I, at one time, were shocked ourselves but—”

  “The two of you have been seeing one another secretly for months.” My mother interrupted Aaron, and he and I both shared a quick what the hell glance before looking back at my parents.

  “You forget that this is a small town and that people talk. You can’t buy nonfat yogurt from the market without every person in town gossiping about how it’s about time you notice your ass has gotten bigger. And you can’t buy a pregnancy test from the market either and keep it a secret.” My stomach bottomed out. “By the time you reach your car in the parking lot, the Gillette Phone Tree has already been activated.”

  “Mama.” I stepped forward as she kept her eyes locked on mine.

  “We wanted to tell you both, but we also wanted to make sure by going to see the doctor beforehand.” It was almost as if Aaron understood how difficult this was for me and wanted to rescue me from the heartache. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while, and though Faith wanted to tell you both often, I was worried about what it would mean for my job at Dusty Creek.”

  I looked back at him, and he offered me a kind smile—a smile I felt from the tips of my toes and throughout the rest of my body.

  “I was wrong for waiting. We should have come to you both when Faith first wanted to.”

  What was he doing?

  “I don’t think that I have to
tell you how amazing your daughter is.” I swallowed hard as my emotions began to take over. “I’ll be completely honest with you both.” I heard Aaron take in a deep breath, and I closed my eyes, knowing that what he was about to share was a monumental step for him. Part of me wanted to stop him from doing so because I knew how hard it was, but another part of me understood that if he wasn’t ready to do so, he wouldn’t. “I was married once, and we had a little girl.”

  I looked up into the eyes of my parents, watching them both study the man standing behind me but saying nothing as he continued.

  “We lost Ivy in a horrible accident, and it changed me. I never thought I would ever be able to move on. I never wanted to, to be honest. Living with my regret and guilt was consuming. I swore I would never move on, that I would never take that road again, but then, that all changed when I looked up those stairs.” I saw his hand in my peripheral vision point toward the long spiraling staircase just behind my parents. “The first time I saw her descending, I knew in the back of my mind that she was something special. Which is why I tried like hell to avoid her but staying away from Faith is impossible. She has this way of making everything seem better; even if you don’t want to accept it, it’s there.”

  My father still wore that same stern look, but my mother’s worried expression had seemed to soften at Aaron’s words.

  “I haven’t treated her right.” I pressed my lips together tightly when Aaron continued to confess his wrongs. “I’ve been moody and distant. I’ve pushed, and I’ve pulled, but that lingering feeling, that desire to have her near, it’s always been there. I need you both to know.” I felt his hands rest upon my sides, a gentle touch but one of reassurance. “I need Faith to know that I’m gonna make things right. I never thought I'd be ready to be a father again, but I feel like this baby is my new beginning. I feel like he or she is a gift from Ivy, maybe her way of telling that it’s okay to move on and to love again.”

  ***

  I sat on my living room floor, sorting through the laundry I had just removed from the dryer. Deanna hovered a few feet away, and I knew had I looked up to see her face, I would find a surprised expression. Maybe a little confusion too, but I continued to look downward, trying to hide my smile.

  “He just showed up at your parents’ house and declared his undying love for you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it love.” It was then I looked up to find her staring at me with her hands on her hips. “I would refer to it more as an obligated affection.”

  She narrowed her eyes, showing she was less than amused.

  “Plus, he didn’t really simply show up.” She was so animated, it was hard to focus on the point I was trying to make. “He was there working, I assume, at the shop and saw me pull in, I’m sure. I was fighting the fear of telling my parents the news, and he took it as a sign to run over and make sure I was okay. I guess I may have frightened him with the manner to which I was hunched over taking in a deep breath.”

  “You think?” Deanna rolled her eyes at me.

  “He found out why I was there, and instead of running away like his ass was on fire, he joined in on the fun and sort of took over the minute we were trapped in the foyer together at my parents’ house.”

  “Took over?”

  “Yes. You know how hard it is for me to fib to my parents or confess my wrongs.” She nodded. She had witnessed my struggles in that regard more than once. She was able to connive so easily while growing up, and her father fell for every little white lie she told. Mine, on the other hand, seemed to have a lie detector built into his brain. The man could smell my fear from a mile away.

  “I think he took the chance to rescue me.” Thankfully. “One thing led to another, and you know looking into the intensity of Dirk Billing’s eyes will most definitely make you ramble. Aaron had no choice but to backpedal and say anything to dig out of the canyon he and I had found ourselves in.”

  “So what did your parents say?”

  “My mother gushed over the idea of being a grandmother. My father offered me a hug while shooting daggers at Aaron over my shoulder.” Deanna laughed. “Then he proceeded to tell him that he had better find a way to make things right and that if he heard otherwise, Aaron would see a side of my father he has never seen before.”

  Again, Deanna found the humor in this. She had been on that end once or twice when we were growing up. My dad always referred to her as my “troubled friend.” He blamed her for every single wrong decision I made growing up. Now, he loved her like a daughter. Well, an annoying niece, maybe.

  “Have you heard from him since then?”

  “Every single day.” My heart ached as my doubt ran on overdrive. It ate away at me that, before the baby, I could barely get him to stay in the same room as me for more than an hour. Now, he was there every time I turned around.

  “That’s a bad thing why?”

  “I don’t want him to stick around simply because he feels he has to.”

  “Why don’t you just see this out?” She took a seat on the floor before me and grabbed a towel before folding it in her lap. “I think the way you two started out was a little backward. Who knows where things will go now? But I think you owe it to each other to find out.”

  She was right. I knew she was. Yet I still had that nagging little voice in the back of my mind telling me over and over that Aaron was too good of a man to walk away, even if that was truly what he wanted.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Aaron

  “What’s this?” Faith asked as she cautiously peeked inside the small pastry box I had just placed on her desk. The very second she spotted the homemade cinnamon roll inside, her eyes lit up. “Is this…” She paused, looking up at me hopefully.

  “Fresh from Gran’s kitchen.”

  She sighed. The way her mouth curled up with pure joy just before she leaned in and inhaled deeply, I knew what she was thinking. I had already had two before I left Gran’s house and a third on the way over here. That woman could bake just about anything, and it all melted in my mouth.

  “By the time this baby gets here, I am gonna be as big as a house.” I chuckled when she lifted the roll from the box and moved in for a quick bite. Icing dripped from her lip and onto her chin as she began to chew. “Oh my gah.” Her mouth was full, and normally that thing wouldn’t be appealing, but she looked adorable. “These are absolutely amazing.”

  “I was given direct orders to bring it straight over before it got cold.”

  “Warm is good,” she mumbled around another bite.

  As she pulled it away, she used her other finger to capture the sticky frosting that had gathered on her lower lip.

  She was so invested in the cinnamon roll, she hadn’t noticed the way I couldn’t look away. Maybe it was a possessive nature knowing now that my child was growing inside of her, but damn, I could have fucking watched her all day.

  I still found times that panic would hit me at the idea of another child that I would be responsible for coming into this world. A fear that maybe I would fail once again, and knowing that, if that were true, I wouldn’t survive it.

  Yet, this time, it felt different. I loved Lynn. I always had. But I was never in love with her. We both knew the very next morning after our slip-up that it had been a terrible mistake. One that we wouldn’t ever be repeating. We chose to move past it because our friendship meant too much to us to let it go. Then, the night she showed up on Gran’s porch to tell me she was pregnant, the ground dropped out from beneath my feet.

  Together, we made a choice to raise our child.

  But this time, looking at Faith and knowing what I now knew, it all felt so different.

  After she’d told me, I went through so many emotions at once, and I hit rock bottom. But what kept me from doing the unthinkable was the fact that I knew she needed me. I also refused to allow a child of mine to live in this world without me.

  When she showed up at my house, when she had seen me at my worst and refused to leave me, I
just knew. I understood at that moment that, though it would be hard, and I still had a long way to travel before I felt whole again, I wanted to. I hadn’t wanted anything in a very long time. That want, that need and desire to be better than I was, overtook me, and now here I was. Exactly where I wanted to be.

  “I was thinking I would come over tonight and finish up that floor in the room across from yours.” Her chewing slowed and her gaze shifted downward to avoid connection with my own. “Maybe I could bring dinner.”

  “Aaron.” The soft whisper of my name made my stomach feel hollow. “You don’t have to do this.” The way she took in a deep breath, placing the remaining part of the roll back into the pastry box before gently pushing it away, caused my pulse to quicken. “You aren’t obligated to take care of me. The only tie we share is this baby.” I watched her hand settle over her lower stomach, and my palms eagerly twitched, wanting to feel what she felt. Even though I knew that she was still too early in the pregnancy to feel a difference, it was the idea of what lie beneath her palm, our child. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  An irritation raced through me, but it wasn’t directed at Faith. It was actually directed at myself. I had an amazing woman, and I had managed to dim her fire. When I first met Faith, she was full of fire and sass. It was what had attracted me to her in the first place. But now, after a short time with me, that spark had fizzled, and in its place was a woman who questioned every single gesture I made.

  I knew exactly what she was thinking.

  I stepped around the side of her desk and knelt beside her chair, swiveling her around to face me. The way her eyes widened and she held her breath would have made me chuckle had the situation been different.