The look on his face and sound in his voice tears me apart because all I can offer are words right now and words won’t help. They won’t take away fear or mitigate the unknown. But I offer them anyway. “Then we deal with it. You and I. Together.” I reach out for his hand and link my fingers with his. He blows out a breath. “Parents give you their genes but don’t make the person you become.”
Will he ever be free of this torment? See the amazing man inside of him that we all see?
“Still, Ry. If it’s true, every time I hold Ace will I . . .? I don’t know.” His voice fades off as he looks down at our linked hands, the silence heavy in the air around us. “Since I’ve been eight years old, there hasn’t been a single person in my life I have had a blood connection with. That’s what being adopted is like. And it’s not like Andy, Dorothea, or Quin made me feel any less because they were related and I wasn’t . . . but a part of me wanted to have that connection with someone. Desperately. I used to watch Andy, memorize everything about him so I could learn to laugh like him, talk like him, gesture like him. Just so I could be like somebody. So people might see us together and from our mannerisms alone think I was his son.”
“Colton.” It’s all I can say as pain radiates in my heart, digs into my soul, and brings tears to my eyes for the little boy hoping to belong and for the grown man still affected by the memories.
Still conflicted by the memories.
“Do you know what it’s like to know that for the first time in almost thirty years I’m connected to someone? Blood. Genes. Mannerisms. All inherited. That Ace is a part of me?” The incredulity in his voice resonates louder than the words.
“You’re not alone anymore.” I squeeze his hand, a silent affirmation.
“You’re right. I’m not,” he says. I watch his posture change—spine stiffens, shoulders straighten—to be more defensive. A man’s vulnerability only lasts for so long after all. “But at the same time I was naïve in thinking that this—the blood connection with Ace—would override the rest of this shit.”
I narrow my eyebrows. “What shit?” I ask, trying to figure out which one of the myriad of things can be considered as shit.
“Nothing. Never mind,” he says as he stands back up and presses a kiss to my forehead and Ace’s. “Just some things I need to work through on my own. I promise I’ll try to be quick.”
Our eyes connect under the cover of night, and I worry about what the darkness is hiding that I’d normally be able to see. I thought it was just the idea of becoming a dad but now I worry it’s more.
I’ve been so absorbed in my own world with everything that’s happened over the past few weeks that now I feel like an ass. I can worry about Zander, be upset over my job, and yet not once did I stop to look at the man beside me, my rock, to ask him what other shit he was dealing with.
I want to tell him, just not now. Can’t he deal with this all in a bit? Hell yes, it’s a selfish thought but at the same time, when I look down at Ace he trumps all of this. He is the perfect moment in our lives and we need to stay just like this, all together, as a unit. Colton promised me this moment and now we’ve found it, all I want to do is hold on to it for as long as I can.
But when I look back up to Colton and see the stress in his posture, I know that while the moment is perfect for me, he’s just taking a little bit longer to find his.
“Get some sleep. I’m going to go sit out on the patio for a bit and clear my head,” he says. I know that means the nightmare is still there, still lingering in the fringes of his mind and he’s not ready to go back to sleep again for fear it will return.
I bite back what I really want to say. Don’t go. It’s lonely in bed without you. Talk to me. Instead I say, “Okay. I’m here when you need me.” Because we do need you. But I also know Ace and I need the him that is one hundred percent and if he needs some time to get there, then I’m resigned to give it to him.
For him. Anything for him.
And for us.
This is marriage; being who you are while being what your partner needs when they need it the most. Stepping up while they need to step out.
“Night,” he says as he heads toward the door.
“Colton?” His name is part plea, part question because I know he is shutting down and possibly shutting me out.
He stops in the doorway and turns to face me. “It’s going to be fine, Ryles. All of it.”
THE MOTHERFUCKER IS DEAD.
My feet pound the sand. One after the other. My cadence: Fuck. You. Eddie.
Angry strides eating up distance but doing absofuckinglutely nothing to lessen the rage. All they do is put more distance between paparazzi sitting at the public entrance to the beach and me.
My lungs burn. My legs ache. My eyes sting as sweat drips into them. I pick up the pace. Needing the exhaustion, the sand, the space to clear my head before I turn around and head back.
Fuck. You. Eddie.
I push myself to the brink of exhaustion. As far north as I can go before I’m bent over, hands on my knees, gasping for air. And even fatigued the image doesn’t go away. Won’t go away.
The picture he took.
Ry’s face is in the corner, mouth open in protest, one hand reaching to cover her breast, and the other reaching out to cover the camera lens. But the joke’s on us. It wasn’t Ry he was taking a shot of. Nope. She was just the frame around what Eddie wanted more: Ace sitting between the dent of her thighs. White diaper. A mess of dark hair. Mouth open crying. Face beat red.