Unravel Me (Playing for Keeps #3)

by Becka Mack

“I depend on routine. I should be more flexible, but it stresses me out to even think about changing something in my day to day sometimes. So, yes, I’m in control. But do I like to be?” I nibble my lip as I look to Adam, the way he’s watching me with rapt attention, drinking in every word. “Sometimes I crave someone else to take control, just so I don’t have to. Just so I can let go, even for a moment. Being in control all the time, it’s… exhausting.”

I remind myself that this body gave me the love of my life. That it grew something from nothing. That it endured endless bouts of sickness, days spent hugging the toilet, aches and pains that made me feel like I’d never walk properly again, an emergency surgery that—so briefly—convinced me I was less of a woman because I couldn’t push my child out. A surgery that had me unable to stand on my own for days, to take more than a couple steps with my newborn in my arms. This body isn’t perfect, but it’s strong. Physically, mentally, in everything I’ve worked so hard to overcome. This body isn’t perfect, but for all it’s done and everything it’s given me, it’s beautiful.

Her lower lip slides between her teeth as she thinks. “I think my deepest fear is just… losing it all. Connor. He’s my whole life. So, swimming after nearly drowning? Hard as it is, it feels like nothing more than waking up on a rainy morning in comparison to even the briefest thought of life without each other.” “Do you think about that often? Life without each other?” “Mostly I think about having to say good-bye, how impossible that would be, but having to do it anyway. How hard it would be knowing it was the last time I’d see his face, praying that the world would be kind to him without me to protect him.” A tightness squeezes in my chest before it rolls up my throat. “That’s…” “Sad,” she finishes with an anxious chuckle, shifting like she wants to pull away, hesitating because she can’t. “I know. It’s embarrassing. Most people don’t have such morbid thoughts.” I catch one of her hands in mine, pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm before wading to the stairs with her in my arms. “Your thoughts are painful, yes, but not morbid. I can’t put myself in your shoes, but I’d stand in them if it meant one less minute where you felt that pain alone.”

“With you, I found my gravity. That’s worth so much more than my chaos.”