Page 97 of Your Soul to Keep

“I trust you, Gabe. Just…please, honey, be careful.”

“You can and I will,” he assured me quietly. “You’re not the only one afraid to screw this up.”

But I didn’t breathe easy until he was back.

And she was gone.

26

Water

Overthenexttwoweeks, Rudy and I hired an additional hostess for the restaurant which let me off the hook and successfully untethered me from Ayana’s for at least half of the week.

Temporarily.

Once Marlena was up and running, something that wouldn’t take any time at all considering she had been doing most of it when Nan was sick, I’d be almost entirely free.

For now, the paperwork, admittedly the worst part of the job, I could do from home. Or in my case, from Gabe’s home, leaving more evenings to spend with Gabe and Dylan.

With Zoe gone, I could more easily imagine a future with Gabe and Dylan. With Zoe gone, I had a place with them.

From Sunday to Thursday, I stayed at Gabe’s.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights I went into Ayana’s for the busiest days of the week and slept at home. Those were the days I spent every available minute with a needle in my hand.

It didn’t take us long to settle into a routine of sorts.

When I was at Gabe’s, Dylan only wanted me to put her to bed. Now, when she asked me to play mommy, my heart barely skipped a beat.

When I climbed into bed with Gabe at night, laughing as he rolled me under him, I reveled in his strong hands on my hips, his tongue claiming every part of me, his hips snapping as he took me bare, over and over again, his deep voice in my ear, his hands in my hair, the sweetest of promises spilling from his lips.

When Gabe covered his 24-hour shift at the firehouse, it was me who stayed with Dylan. It was me who made her dinner and put her to bed. It was me who got her up in the morning. It was me who packed her bag, fed her breakfast, got her dressed, brushed her little teeth, and drove her to daycare.

And it was me who picked her up.

Standing with the other parents, the other moms, I pretended I was one of them. Playing house. Wanting it so bad I could taste it.

But I’d been there before.

And I remembered how it ended every other time.

More than once, I had to close my eyes and take a deep, steadying, breath.

The situation was different, but it had awakened my deep desire to be a mother, and it was bleeding over into our sex life. While I loved taking Gabe bare, that old unfounded, illogical, cruelly impossible hope sent out tender shoots looking to take root.

The dream train’s whistle bellowed despite the fact motherhood was not in the cards for me. Gary wasn’t the problem, I was. And yet, I began to wonder if by some miracle, Gabe and I could make a baby.

Hope in miracles was a slippery slope that led straight to hell. And I wasn’t going back there.

I was, however, going to visit my doctor.

My knee bounced more and harder as the minutes dragged on. At least I waited in the sterile privacy of a patient room. These rooms all looked the same. Framed degrees on one wall, hand-washing instructions on another, a few anatomy posters, a stack of pamphlets, and a framed nature print some poor fool probably hoped would put you at ease in a place that was seemingly tailor made to induce anxiety. Case in point, when the soft knock sounded on the door, I jumped.

“Hello, Shae. It’s good to see you. How have you been?”

Having no time or patience for niceties, I dove straight into my concerns.

She sat back against her chair, twirling a pen between her fingers. “Shae, from what I understand from your reports, it’s clinically impossible for you to get pregnant.”

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