Page 93 of Sugar
Picking up my fork again, I stab a piece of egg with all the might of a deflated balloon. “For what it’s worth,” I whisper, “Ireallylike these.”
A smile spreads across his face, eyes sparking with amusement. He shakes his head in disbelief. “Jesus. You are going to put me in an early grave, woman.”
When I’m done—when I’ve licked the plate clean—Kasey scoops me into his arms and brings me back to bed.
The next coupleof weeks go on with a comfortable routine. Kasey heads out to work before the sun rises every morning, leaving behind a warm mug and a different colored flower. I ease into the day, spend lazy hours bundled in his bed soaking in the smell of him or laid out on the couch with my laptop. I hear back from my colleague on the restraining order paperwork and, now confident that I’ve got it all right, I get it ready for Kasey’s signature.
Most afternoons I venture down to the barn, enjoying the quiet walk along the way and the horses once I get there. I admire Kasey and his brothers and everything they do as they all take turns teaching me something new. I let the warmth of a downcast Texas sun sink into my skin and fill me with hope for a future that might bejustlike this.
I still get emotional. A little shaky with anxiety. Sometimes I want to jump in my Range Rover and drive away and never look back. But I know there’s no place to drive to, and even if there were—I don’treallywant to go. It’s just something I wrestle with. Something that cages me in at times, makes me feel small and incapable.
On those days, I stay in. I curl up with a blanket and turn on a movie, or text Layla to come over with sweet treats. I never tell her about all the ways in which I worry, but I think she picks up on it. Sometimes she brings Olivia, or the boys. Sometimes it’s just us, and we lie on opposite ends of the couch, staring up at the ceiling beneath a shared blanket. Silent, but together. It’s . . . nice.
One Wednesday morning I wake up with a jolt. The sun is up and Kasey’s long gone, but something feels . . . different. My awareness spins around the room, searching for the source of my rapidly increasing heartbeat.
And then I feel it.
Well, feelher.
I clasp my hands to my stomach, gasping. It’s the most beautiful, wonderful, breathtaking feeling I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. There, deep in my belly, is the faintest flutter, like someone is tickling me with the pad of their pinky finger from the inside out, teasing with happy little strokes.
“Oh my god,” I breathe, eyes filling rapidly with tears.
I sink back into the pillows, into the sheets and blankets that smell like Kasey and sunny days andhome, and simply close my eyes andfeelher. For the first time since taking a pregnancy test in my sterile, cold Miami apartment and watching it far-too-quickly turn positive, I truly let myself be excited. For the first time, I don’t worry about all the things that could happen to make this harder than it already is. I don’t think about all the ways I feel like I’m failing or how I don’t measure up. How, maybe through some existential karma from mistakes made in a previous life, I’m just not wired to be worthy of the things I so desperately want.
I just let myself exist in it.
This baby, I realize, is everything I never knew I needed. She is hope manifested, a calling to something greater than myself.She is and will be my reason for getting up every day, for fighting against the pain of the world to carve out a little slice of something calmer, something safer. And the truth is, when I let myself dream about that slice, of all the glimpses of what it might look like, it’s not just me and her.
I lie in bed and feel her kick and promise her that I will make sure we are happy. I promise her I will never leave her, that I’ll never run from her, and it’s the surest I’ve ever been about something in myentirelife.
Eventually the fluttering stops, and my mind relaxes, and I feel . . . calm. But also really, really happy. And desperate to tell Kasey about it, to watch the skin crinkle outside his eyes while he looks at me the way he does, like he already knows the slice I want and all the ways to help me get it.
Bounding out of bed, I throw on the shirt he wore last night to bed and a pair of sweatpants I find in his drawer. My jeans are starting to get too tight, and I know I need to go shopping, but I’d probably still wear his clothes anyway so, also, what’s the point? I brush my teeth and run a comb through my hair and scour through the house trying to find a pair of socks to put on under my sneakers.
Outside the air is warmer than it has been, and I’m sweating before I even make it ten feet from the house. The sun is shining so bright, I’m not sure anything could wreck this mood I’m in.
It probably should’ve been the first clue, but I’m too blissfully ignorant to realize it.
I make it more than halfway down to the barns before instinct kicks in, a sudden intuition that something’s wrong. A curling plume of dread I’ve long grown accustomed to.Watch out, it says lovingly.Trust no one.I used to be fond of it, of the ways it helped me move through life. But now . . . now I just feel exhausted.
Suddenly Layla is in the distance, running toward me. I scan her up and down for any clues, but her face is set with determination the moment she sees me. “Ava!” she shouts, the smallest lilt of worry in her voice.
I stop moving. But she keeps running until she’s right in front of me. Panting.
“Ava, they need you at the main house.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Something bad, I think. Let’s go.”
She turns on her heels and kicks off, so I do too. The back of the house is already in view, but so far, I don’t see anything. Is Kasey hurt? Did something happen to him? Maybe that’s why Layla came to get me, and not him. “Is Kasey—” I start to ask through uneven breaths.
But the question dies on my tongue, because now I see.
Kasey looks unhurt, standing tall beneath the sunlight, his dark hat firmly on his head. He’s turned away from us so I can’t see his face, but written in the lines of his posture is all the evidence I need that he’s not happy. On either side of him are Rhett and Wells, both with arms crossed in front of them. They, too, are stiff and unyielding forces.
Farther in the distance, sitting a few yards away, is a silver BMW I don’t recognize, a rental, I think. But it looks like a car I’ve been inside hundreds of times, whisked off to romantic dates and dinner parties and charity events for the firm. And standing next to the car, in a dark-blue suit that looks a little crumpled, is a man with cold eyes and an even colder heart. A man I’ve been ignoring for weeks as I hoped my silence would be enough to make him go away forever.
