Page 36 of Healing Bonds

Somehow, the child quieted the ache in my chest to a dull throb in that one moment, but after, she only caused a growing anger to boil in my blood. Anger at God. Anger at Celine. Anger at Ryan. And so, Ryan stopped them from coming around. It had been two months since I saw them last.

I ignored the text, finding peace in the darkness when I turned back to the window and watched the rain.

We had tried again.

Over and over andnothing. It didn’t matter how many times wefucked—I couldn’t fall pregnant. Every month, we held our breath as I took the test—waited inside our bathroom, staring at a stick, begging it to change our lives—and every time it came out negative, I felt more and more like a failure.

We tried for six months until eventually, I couldn’t handle it anymore—the excitement, the longing, then the disappointment. Ryan remained optimistic, but I just knew something was broken in me or God was punishing me for failing to protect the first baby He gifted me with.

A knock at the front door startled me from my thoughts, and I slowly got up, feeling my bones creak with the movement. I checked the peephole, only to see Ryan, and immediately, I threw the door open.

My drenched husband stared at me with tired, blue eyes, his shoulders hunched, hair dripping into his face as he stood there, looking completely defeated.

“Hey, spitfire,” he whispered, the corners of his mouth lifting into a small, barely-there smile.

“Hey.” He stepped into me, pulling me into the warmth of his arms. I buried my face into his chest, inhaling the comforting scent of rain andhim.

“I’ve been worried about you.” His chest vibrated through me. I jumped when lightning lit up the sky and thunder clapped above the roof of our home.

“I’m okay.” I often wondered if he knew how dark my thoughts were sometimes, if he felt the darkness in my soul, any of my pain, or if a mother carried all the pain of losing her child while the husband got to move on. Didn’t help that we didn’t talk anymore.

“I missed you today.” He kissed the top of my head, and I melted, his love pouring into my cold heart, breathing life back into me.

“I hate when you leave me,” I admitted softly, ashamed of the weakness in my voice. The woman he fell in love with would never have shown weakness—not his spitfire. She was strong, her soul just as fiery as her hair. This version of me… neither of us recognized her.

“I wish I could take this pain away from you.” He walked us into the foyer and closed the door, the loud fall of rain softening now that I was back inside and the door was closed again.

I pulled back to look at him in the darkness, only to see pain—heart-wrenching pain—in his expression. “Don’t you feel it, too?” I whispered, my voice cracking.

“Of course, but we have to move on, Ames. We have to keep trying.”

I pushed away from him, my hands smacking into his chest hard enough to make him flinch. “I can’t handle moving on, Ryan!” I screamed at him. “I’m suffocating with the reminder of failing to keepmybaby alive!”

“Ourbaby, Amber,” he corrected me, his voice growing stern. “Ourbaby—not just yours. We both can’t sit here in darkness and mope. Life is too beautiful. We have to get back into a routine. Youneedto get out of this house. Our families are worried. It’s been a year, baby girl.”

His words stung worse than the one time my mother slapped me for swearing when I was sixteen. I took a step back from him and tried to think past the loud pulsing in my ears as my blood boiled with anger and rage.

“Am I just supposed to forget?” I asked him. He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. I glared at him. “Do you really want me to wake up in the morning, get all dressed up, and go to work as if I didn’t hold our dead child in my arms because I failed to keep her alive?!” I clenched my fists at my sides, my whole body trembling.

“No, you’re not supposed to forget, baby. But you’re also not supposed to be this barely alive shell of the woman I married. Of the woman Ilove.” He stepped closer to me, his chest touching mine. My lips trembled. My chest heaved.

“If you can’t handle me grieving over our child, then leave and go be with someone who’s more alive for you,” I snapped at him, throwing anything at him to make him hurt, to make him feel the pain I felt on a daily basis.

He laughed. I stared at him incredulously as I watched him throw his head back and laugh before he wrapped his hands around my upper arms. “Don’t you dare try to push me away,” he told me, his words fierce. I swallowed thickly. He rested his forehead on mine, and a tear rolled down my cheek. “I love you, Amber. I vowed to love you in sickness and in health.”My bottom lip trembled as more tears flooded my vision, and I didn’t know whether to cry or scream. “I love everything about you. Nothing you do could ever scare me away. I’m in it for the long haul, baby—through the good times and the bad. I’m here for itall. I’vebeenhere, and I’mnotgoing anywhere.”

My anger dissolved some at his soft words and sincere tone, and I dropped my head to his chest, feeling another tear roll down my hot cheek.

“I can’t handle feeling like this anymore,” I suddenly cried, squeezing my eyes shut to stop more tears from falling.

“Like what?” His hands slid up and down my arms, warming my suddenly chilled skin.

“Like a failure.” My shoulders shook with the sobs ripping from my chest, my pain almost crippling me. The tears I’d tried to hold back poured from my eyes.

He wrapped his arms around me, dragging me against him and holding me tight to him. A wail sounded from my lips as he somehow pulled my pain from me, sharing it with me rather than me keeping it as a burden all to myself. “You aren’t a failure, baby. You didn’t fail our child, and you haven’t failed me. Don’t let the darkness consume you. Fight, spitfire. Fight for us… for me. I love you, goddammit, and I fucking need you still.”

Chapter Sixteen

RYAN

---