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The doctors were wrong. I knew they were. They shouldn’t have sent her home yet. She wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. She was too small, and my hands were too big. I’d hurt her. I’d make a mistake that would cost Talon her life. I can’t do this.
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Who hurt me so bad and made me so cold?
“That’s great.” “No,” he replied, his voice cracking. “She won’t stop crying. She won’t eat. When she’s asleep, I think she’s dead, so I check her heartbeat, which in turns wakes her and leads to the crying again. When I put her in the crib, she screams even louder than when she’s in my arms. I need…I—”
“Being around you does something strange to me, something that hasn’t happened in such a long time.” “What happens?” He took my hand in his then led it to his chest, and his next words came out as a whisper. “My heart begins to beat again.”
“Loneliness is a liar,” Graham told me, sitting down on the edge of his bed as he spoke. “It’s toxic and deadly most of the time. It forces people to believe they are better off with the devil himself than being alone, because somehow being alone means a person failed. Somehow being alone means a person isn’t good enough. So, more often than not, the poison of loneliness seeps in and makes a person believe that any kind of attention must stand for love. Fake love that is built on a bed of loneliness will fail—I should know. I’ve been alone all my life.”
“He didn’t want you to push him away. He thought if you learned about his sickness, you’d become cold, to protect yourself from feeling too much. He knew you’d go deeper into your mind, and that idea broke his heart, Graham. He was so terrified of losing you, because you were his son. You are our son, and if you left during his final days…he would’ve left this world brokenhearted.”
‘The world’s a little darker tonight, Graham.’ Then he wiped away his tears and said, ‘But still, I must believe that the sun will rise tomorrow.’”
The truth lies in his eyes, Ollie had told me.
“Lucille?” he whispered. “Yes?” “Thank you.” “Always.”
My heart skipped. She looked exhausted—no makeup, messy hair, and absolutely everything I’d ever wanted.
As her eyes stayed glued to the paper, my stare was stuck on her. Some nights I wondered what would’ve happened without her. I wondered how I would’ve survived without the hippie weirdo in my life. I wondered how I’d gone so long without telling her she was one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. Lucy Palmer had saved me from the darkness, and I’d never be able to thank her enough.
“It’s you,” I whispered, our lips still slightly touching. “My greatest hope is, and always will be, you.”
Our connection, our heartbeats, matched one another in our fairytale world, but in reality, society deemed us as an awful accident.
want to take you out on a date. Tomorrow. I want you to wear your favorite outfit and allow me to take you out.” I laughed. “Are you sure? My favorite outfit involves stripes, polka dots, and a million colors.” “I wouldn’t expect anything else.” He smiled.
“Of course. It’s just a little poop. That wouldn’t change the fact that I’m in love with you and want to take you out on a date.” “What? Wait. What? Say that again…” My heart was racing, my mind spinning. “I want to take you out a date?” “No. Before that.” “That it’s just a little poop?” I waved my hands. “No, no. The part after that. The part about—” “Me loving you?” There it was again. The racing heart and the spinning mind. “You’re in love with me?” “With every piece of my soul.”
“I don’t want it to be true, but I want to prepare you. There’s going to come a time that I let you down. I don’t want to, but I think when people love each other, they sometimes let each other down.” “Yes,” I nodded, knowingly. “But I am strong enough to lift myself back up. There will be a day that I let you down, too.”
“It’s fine. We’re fine,” she replied. “Liar.” She turned to me and cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t you have a book to finish or something?” I smiled at her sassiness. I loved that side of her.
I loved all sides of her.
As the words danced from his mouth and into my spirit, I remembered exactly why he was the man I chose to love fully. When he spoke, his words forever marked my soul as his. “If you need to fall, fall into me.”
“One day you’ll be happy we didn’t work out,” I promised him. “One day you’ll wake with Talon on your left side and someone else on your right, and you’ll realize how happy you are that you and I didn’t work out.” “One day I’m going to wake up,” he replied, his mood somber, “and it will be you lying beside me.”
You are not my final sentence, you are not my last word. You are simply a chapter I wish I could delete.”
I was finally planting my roots in a home so warm. “So this is our happily ever after?” I asked softly against his lips. “No, my love, this is merely our chapter one.”
I somehow ended up with a family. Never in my life had I thought my life would end up like this—happy. The two girls who sat beside me were my world, and the little boy who would be here soon was already controlling my heartbeats.
I often looked back on the happiest seconds of my life and wondered how a man like me became so blessed. There was the moment Talon was released from the NICU. The first time Professor Oliver called me son. The time Lucy first told me she loved me. The second when the adoption papers went through for Talon to officially become Lucy’s and my daughter. My wedding day. And now, as I held my handsome son for the first time in my arms.
