Page 5 of Surrender
My voice is loud when I continue. “My needs begin and end with our daughter!” I’m screaming now. I’m pretty sure. Mostly, there’s a ringing in my ears, so I can’t fully hear myself and this level of emotion is unfamiliar to me. “My needs ended when hers began.”
He rolls his eyes. He actually rolls his motherfucking eyes! “She’s been in remission for three years!” he barks.
“Remission doesn’t mean she’s all better!” I exclaim, blinking a battery of tears from my eyes. I can’t believe I’m having this argument with the father of my child. The man I married when I was six months pregnant because his mother threatened to take away his trust fund if he didn’t make things right. “Sophia is still a child, Callum. She’s only six years old, and she had cancer for three of those years. She still has nightmares that she’s back in the hospitals. Her healing doesn’t just end because she got the cancer-free balloon!”
“She’ll never be better in your eyes,” he growls through clenched teeth. “And I’m tired of living this way. You don’t give a toss about me, and you haven’t since the day you found out you were pregnant with Sophia.”
I shake my head, pain erupting in my core. A deep, dark pain that I’ve been ignoring for years because I didn’t want to rock the boat. I didn’t want to break up our family. I didn’t want to admit that I knew we didn’t love each other. That I knew Callum was cheating on me. I’ve known for a while it wasn’t working between us, but I didn’t want to disrupt the only life Sophia knows. I understand the pain of growing up without a father and of having no security in your living situation when you’re too young to help. She has already suffered enough for someone who had the nerve to be born with a tumour. This isn’t fair to her!
My voice is soft when I reply, “Cal, we moved here to England for you. I left my first job as a designer behind for you! We’re living in your mother’s mansion with staff, and a butler, and freaking mallard ducks on the bedspread all for you! If I didn’t care about you, why would I have uprooted my entire life in Chicago?”
“Because you didn’t want to lose Sophia,” he snaps with a cold, calculating stare. “Because you knew my mother never would have let you keep her, and we have the means to make that reality possible.”
My heart drops. Is he really threatening to take her away? Truly? He can’t be. None of this can happen. I can’t lose Sophia. Not to Cal, not to his mother, not to anyone. I can barely stand to be apart from her for one night. We’ve been through so much together. It was me who was at every single appointment with her. I was there when the doctor told me my six-month-old baby had a brain tumour. It was me holding her tiny head over a toilet bowl after she went through a slew of radiation. It was me who comforted her when the doctor had to run another PICC line because the nurse couldn’t find a vein. I rubbed her bald head. I kissed her bruised veins. Me! Callum was just in the background while I worked with Sophia to get past her fear of touch because the memories of hospitals haunt her. This can’t be happening. I can’t share my daughter!
My voice feels like acid when I utter, “Maybe if we do some counselling—”
Cal’s haughty laugh cuts me off. “You’re not understanding me, Sloan. I’m not doing this anymore. You…I’m not staying with you. I’ve filed for a divorce with joint custody. If you make a fuss, I’ll file for full custody.” His expression is grim.
It feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach. My knees feel weak and the room begins to spin as I whisper, “But you barely spend time with Sophia as it is. Even right now, she’s spending the night with your mother because I have to work tonight. You could have been watching her. Instead, you’re here fucking Lady Godiva!”
“Lady what?” He scoffs and moves to put his shirt on while sliding his feet into his loafers. “Sophia is everything to my mother, and I’m not taking that away from her.”
“From her? From her! What about me?” I scream and drop down to the floor as reality crashes all around me. “What about what you’re taking away from me, Cal?”
“You’re hysterical, Sloan. We’ll discuss the particulars with lawyers present.” He walks past me, then pauses in the doorway. Turning on his heel, he looks back at me, chin raised like a dictator looming over his people with all his power and wealth. “And don’t waste your money fighting for full custody. My lawyers will bury you.”
With that nail in the coffin, he leaves without another look back.
My head drops. He’s right. Cal has the best lawyers money can buy and more money than I’ll ever have. Even if I tried to gain full custody, I would lose. Aside from this indiscretion, he’s a pinnacle of Manchester society. His company employs hundreds. The Coleridge family name—that he never allowed me to take in our marriage—is adored.
The tiny shred of control I had over my life is officially gone, all because I decided to come home and catch my husband cheating. There’s nothing else I can do other than submit to being a part-time mom to the best thing in my entire existence.
It’s over an hour before I move from the floor of my bedroom and drag myself into the bathroom to pee. It’s weird how your body keeps working when your soul is dead. All my organs continued digesting the water I drank today and alerted me that I had to relieve myself despite my grief. Despite my despair.
I stare at myself in the mirror as I wash my hands. My long brown hair is stuck to the dried tears on my cheeks. The hollows of my eyes are dark and veiny. The whites of my eyes, red. A dribble of snot has crusted on my upper lip. I’m twenty-eight years old, but the woman looking back at me is a sixty-year-old drug addict. I can’t help but be grateful that Sophia is with Cal’s mother this evening. I would hate for her to see me like this.
My hands tremble as I push the strands back from my face and pull my hair into a low ponytail. Callum’s ominous words pierce through every part of my soul. They pierce through the memories I have of Sophia when she was born. The pictures I have of her as a toddler with no eyebrows or lashes. The sensitive hands and skin she rarely let me touch because she was conditioned to think touch meant pain. It’s been three years since her treatments, but I’ve just gotten her back to being a little girl again. She’s no longer a sick baby afraid of anyone who comes near her. She used to cry when I’d try to hold her hand. Cancer tried hard to kill her spirit. A spirit that was beautiful, even on her darkest days. I’ve dedicated my life to bringing her back from all of that, and now Cal is changing everything.
This is torture.
This is why I would have stayed married to him. To avoid missing a single day of her precious, miraculous life. So many choices have been made for me up until this point. It makes sense that Cal decides when it all ends as well.
I slide my three carat diamond ring off and shakily place it by the sink. It represents a lie. It represents a cheater. A womaniser. A monster. It represents a side of myself that I can hardly look at in the mirror.
I jump when I hear my phone ringing from the bedroom. I’m ashamed to say that a sick part of me hopes it is Cal calling to say he’s sorry. My thoughts are completely out of control. To think I’d take him back after everything that’s happened. That I would welcome him home after how awful he made me feel. What’s wrong with me?
I stride out of the bathroom and fish my cell out of the side pocket of my purse. My seamstress and business partner’s bright, freckled face lights up my screen.
My voice is hoarse when I answer. “Hey, Freya.”
“Hiya, Sloan!” Her Cornish accent is high-pitched and oh-so blissfully unaware. “Oh my God, my international flight has free WiFi! Can you believe it? I can watch all theHeartlandon Netflix that I want!”
“That’s nice,” I reply with a forced laugh. Thankfully, Freya is so caught up in her own world, she doesn’t notice the weird sound of my voice.
“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about Gareth Harris’ suit delivery. He needs it dropped off tonight because he has family coming into town tomorrow morning. I dropped it off with your butler, and it’s hanging in your coat closet.”
Mindlessly, I mumble a thanks before disconnecting the call, grateful Freya was oblivious. I don’t have the energy to tell her what’s happened. I don’t have the energy to believe it’s true. To believe that, once again, my life is forever changed without deciding it for myself.
