Aced

“Please, Colton. I’ll be right here feeding Ace the ten minutes you’re gone.”

“Okay. I’ll hurry.” And the fact he hesitates again is almost too much for me to bear. The tears burn my throat again.

But he goes and the minute he’s gone, I welcome the unsteady silence that wraps itself around me like a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. I want to snuggle in it and pull it over my head until I can’t see or think or feel. Lose myself to the nothingness around me.

I look down at Ace and hate myself immediately. I have this beautiful, healthy baby I know I love very much, but I can’t seem to muster up that feeling when I look at him. This love is the most natural of instincts, the most simplest and complex form of love—from mother to child—and yet somehow something is so broken in me. When I look at him, all I feel is the ghost of it, instead of that all-encompassing rush I felt just days ago.

And knowing it and losing it is incomparably worse than never knowing it at all.

“Now that you have him, could you imagine if you lost him?” Eddie’s taunt flickers through my mind. It haunts me. Make me question myself.

He did this to you, Rylee. He’s responsible.

How is that possible? He can’t be the cause of this.

It has to be me. Something has to be wrong with me.

My mom told me most new moms would drive on sidewalks to get home to their newborn. What does that say about me if I just want to drive the other way?

All I want is that connection to be back. For it to not feel so damn forced, because that’s exactly how I feel right now, sitting in this empty house. I’m nursing him because he needs to be fed, not because I want to. I’m just going through the motions. I’m watching my life from behind a two-way mirror, and no one knows I’m hiding there.

I close my eyes, a contradiction in all ways, and try to quiet my head. And the minute I feel relaxed for the first time in what feels like forever, I’m scrambling up as fast as I can, Ace still latched on, and running for the office. I grab my phone and frantically dial Colton as that black veil of doom and gloom slips over my sanity.

Ring.

Images of Colton lying dead on the side of the road somewhere fill my head. Car smashed. Thrown from the car because he was in such a rush to help me he forgot to put his seatbelt on.

Ring.

Colton lying shot dead on the floor of the local minimart just up the road where he walked in and interrupted a robbery in progress.

Ring.

Tears are burning. My mind like a horror slide show telling me that Colton isn’t coming home again. Panic claws at my throat, claustrophobia in wide-open space.

Ring.

“Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone!” I scream into the receiver, hysteria taking over as I move back into the family room, one hand still cradling Ace, the other on the phone.

Beep. Colton’s voice fills the line as his voicemail begins.

No. Please no.

I pace the floor, nerves colliding with anxiety, panic crashing into fear. Working myself into a frenzy as I wait for the knock on the door from the police telling me something has happened to Colton.

The problem this time though is I can’t step outside the emotions holding my thoughts hostage and realize I’m losing my mind like I was able to a few days ago. No, this time I’m in such a state of agitation that when Colton opens the door from the garage into the house I almost tackle him with Ace in my arms. “Oh my God, you’re okay.” I sob, wrapping my free arm around him, needing to feel the heat of his body against mine so I can believe it’s true.

“Whoa!” he says, thrown off guard by my sudden attack. He drops the bag holding the can of formula and tries to comfort me as best as he can without smashing Ace between us. “I’m okay, Ry. Just went to the store for formula.” I can hear the placating tone in his voice, the confusion woven in it, and I don’t really care because he is here and whole and came back to me.

“I was so worried. I had this horrible feeling that something happened to you and when you didn’t pick up your phone, I thought that—“

“Shh. Shh,” he says, using his free hand to smooth over my cheek as he looks into my eyes. “I’m okay. I’m right here. I’m sorry about my phone. I’ve had it on do not disturb so if it rings it doesn’t wake Ace up if he’s napping.”

I use the clarity in his eyes to soothe the uncertainty in me. “I’m gonna go put Ace in his swing, can you give him to me?” he asks, eyes alarmed as he looks down to where Ace is asleep in my arms and then looks back up to meet my gaze. I force myself to take a deep breath, hand him over, and then watch as Colton buckles him in the swing’s bucket seat and turns it on.

Within seconds he’s back in front of me, pulling me against his chest and wrapping his arms around me tightly. I breathe him in. Try to use everything familiar about him to quiet the riot within me: that place under the curve of his neck that smells of cologne, the rhythm of his heartbeat against my cheek, the scratch of his stubble against my bare skin, the weight of his chin resting on my head.

I sag, letting him hold up the weight that’s been bearing down on my shoulders. “Ry . . . you’re scaring the shit out of me. Please talk to me. Let me do something . . . anything to give you what you need. Helpless doesn’t look good on any man, least of all me,” he pleads, his arms only holding me tighter as his words make me want to pull away and dig my hands into his back simultaneously.

“Something’s wrong with me, Colton. I’m broken.” My voice is barely a whisper, but I know he hears it because within a second his hands are on my face guiding it up to look at the concern heavy in his.