Page 80 of My Sweetest Obsession
And I can’t take it anymore.
I can’t stand here and watch her like this.
Her pain calls to me like a beacon in a storm, even though I’m the one who brought this maelstrom down upon her in the first place.
I make my way over to her cautiously, stepping up behind her like I have so many other times, but this feels different somehow. Even more forbidden than what we did on that couch the night we spread Drew’s ashes. Even more so than what we’ve been doing in their bed. Because we’re in here.
A space that was built for their child.
I slide one arm across her chest and the other down low around her belly, tugging her back to me and holding her tightly.
The sobs continue to rack her body, making her tremble in my embrace, and being the sick fuck that I am, I bury my face in her hair.
“Please don’t cry, Ivy. I hate to see you like this.”
She shakes her head slightly, then slides her hand to twine her fingers with mine across her belly. “I know, but these are happy ones. Mostly.”
I feather my lips against her temple. “Mostly?”
It takes her a few moments to answer when the only sounds in the room are her soft sniffles and the air purifier running.
Then she finally nods. “He would have loved this. All of it…”
I swallow through a tightness in my throat and clear it. “If he were here, he would have done a dinosaur theme.”
She lets out a laugh that’s half-humor and half-agony and turns her head slightly to look back at me. “For a girl?”
I nod. “He was so obsessed with them when we were little, and he would argue that they’re gender neutral.”
The corners of her lips twitch. “Yeah, I guess they kind of are.”
“You know, he wanted to be a paleontologist at one point…”
Her brows rise as her eyes widen. “Really?”
“I think he might have gone that direction if Mom had never gotten sick. He loved science and investigating things that weren’t completely understood.”
She nods. “I can see that.”
I grin at her, happy to see some humor in her eyes and on her face, but the conversation only reiterates that this really wasn’t my place. “Should I have done that? Because he would have wanted it that way?”
There isn’t any playbook for where we find ourselves right now, and it feels like everything I do, every decision I make, might be the wrong one—this included.
Tears pooling in her eyes again, Ivy shakes her head. “No. This is…this is…” Her gaze shifts over to the mural again, and a smile pulls at her lips. “This is right.”
Fuck.
She has no idea how badly I needed to hear that.
How I’ve spent the last several days agonizing over every single brush stroke, wondering if it was right…
How many times I stopped and broke down, dropping to the floor and sitting with my face in my hands, sobbing until I had no more tears left…
And now, I can finally take a deep breath again, knowing she loves it.
I squeeze her gently, and she reluctantly releases her fingers from mine, allowing me to slip away. Because I don’t trust myself to be this close to her anymore. I never did, and now, more than ever, she needs her space, and I need to get my head on straight.
Clearing my throat, I run my hand through my hair and retreat toward the door. “I should get going.”
