Page 99 of Finding the Pieces

“Nope. But fuck, what a happy accident.” We laugh and I cradle her in my arms while we get to have our first realpillow talkin months.

Chapter fifty-two

Ellie

“Jesus, he’s getting really good at this,” Dom says as he waits for Luca to throw the ball his way.

Luca does a dramatic windup, his arm all the way in the air, before he launches the ball with no sense of direction or amount of force needed. Just pent-up enthusiasm and a will to cause chaos—something I’m thinking he’s inherited from his fur-cousin, Hopper.

The ball strikes Dom in the forehead and I stifle a giggle. Apparently not well enough, because he gives me ayou’re gonna pay for thatlook and it has my body reacting in all the good ways. It’s nice to feel that spark growing and flourishing between me and Dom again.

“Maybe he’ll take after Aiden and end up going pro,” I say with a shrug from my spot on the floor on the opposite end of the living room. Luca races, little bare feet slapping against floor, to retrieve the ball that bounced off his dad’s head before he takes his spot between us again and throws it at my head this time.

I duck and deflect with my palm, and Luca giggles before running off again to find the ball before the abuse continues.

Luca is absolutely going through a growth spurt again. His sleep is still miles better than it was a few months ago, but he’s needed a little extra help getting down at night. He is much more mobile, wanting to run everywhere and climb on everything. He’s adding new words to his vocabulary all the time, surprising us. What’sunsurprisingis that one of those words isdammit.

I know I’m not supposed to laugh when my son swears because that’ll only encourage the behavior, but, holy shit, it’s hilarious the way he pronounces the word and the emphasis he puts on it.

We wrap up our Friday night with a dance party to “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” I think you have to really love someone to parent with them. I learned a while ago, I needed to swallow any embarrassment I might have felt when acting stupid to make my kid happy. Because if anyone else watched me cluck like a chicken in my living room, my arms tucked into my side, elbows flapping, and my neck bobbing, I’d die of embarrassment. But with Dom, it’s our normal life.

Our amazing, wonderful, silly life.

I’m finally feeling grateful for it. All that this life has given me. Everything was muted before, buried in a haze of weak self-defense mechanisms that had stopped working. I can breathe again.

Dom and I help Luca through his bedtime routine, starting with a bath and ending with Dom reading him a story and me rocking him in my arms for a few minutes.

Those last few moments of the day are always my favorite. Some days I hold him longer than he needs, waiting until he’s asleep in my arms, my mind clear and focused on the present and the gift that it is to share these memories with him. Other days I think about how far we’ve come and how proud I am to be his mom. And then there are days like today, when I dream about what’s next. Who Luca will be. What he’ll choose to do with his life. How I hope he takes only the best from his father and me.

After settling a nearly asleep Luca in his crib, I tiptoe into the hallway and, as slowly as possible, close and latch his bedroom door.

When I rejoin Dom in the living room, he’s already cleaned up the toys and sorted them into the toy bins. He’s sitting on one end of the L-shaped sectional,hunched over, elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced together, his attention on his hands.

“Everything okay?” I ask, a thread of anxiousness pulling my spine straight as I cross one arm over my stomach and the other to fidget with the collar of my crew neck sweater.

He startles, but when his eyes find mine, they soften. “Yeah. Can we talk?” he asks, gesturing to the couch. I sit on the other stretch of the couch, our knees almost touching since we’re both nearly wedged into the corner cushion.

“What’s going on, Dom?”

“I owe you an apology.”

“I mean, yeah, you laughed a little too hard at my rendition of ‘Five Little Ducks.’ I thought I was getting better,” I joke in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever serious topic it sounds like he wants to discuss.

“I think that was the most beautiful rendition there ever was…next to mine, of course,” he says with a casual shrug, instantly putting me at ease with his playfulness. “No, I want to apologize for not being honest with you when I started this whole puzzle game with you.”

“I don’t know what you mean. We’re almost done, right? I think there’s just the one corner left to go.”

“I told you when I first introduced the idea that I was doing this to help you. But I didn’t realize that I was also doing it to help myself.”

“What…?” I question, my voice trailing off in confusion before he takes my hand in his.

“I’ve been really good at focusing on whatyouwere trying to bury. The things you were struggling with that you wanted to hide. I wasn’t willing to acknowledge that there were things I was afraid of facing too. Things I was too scared to admit to myself. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“I would never hold that against you,” I reassure him, gently swiping my thumb across his knuckle. “It’s not like I was doing a good job facing my own shit either.”

“I want to tell you now, though…” his eyes flicker between my own, and my heart breaks at the fear reflected in them.

Has he really been hurting this whole time? How could he bury this all for so long?

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