If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(33)
Author: A.L. Jackson

My spirit thrashed, clashed with hers as she begged.

“You have to let her go,” I said again, the words cracking as I forced them from my mouth.

Elizabeth wept, lifting her back off the bed as she bucked against me, her anguished face lifted toward the ceiling. Tears streaked from the creases of her eyes and slipped down to disappear in her hair. “No…please, Christian, don’t let them take her.”

“You have to, Elizabeth.”

“Please,” she whimpered. But this time, it was in surrender. Her body went limp and she slumped back onto the bed, but the tears from her eyes fell unending, her hands balled up in fists as my hands shackled her wrists.

I swallowed down the misery and slowly released the hold I had on her wrists. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. It sounded like my own concession.

Elizabeth withdrew, turned her face from me, her eyes pinched shut. I tried to wrap her in my arms, but she rolled to her side with her back to me.

I stood there, staring down at her as she drew ragged breaths into her lungs.

I’d promised her anything. Had promised her everything.

But I was left with nothing to give.

Six hours later, I drove around the slumbering neighborhood. Night had fallen, the dull street lamps flooding muted light along the road. An hour before, Lizzie had fallen asleep in her booster in the backseat of my car. When I’d stood in the doorway to Matthew and Natalie’s, looking down at my little black-haired girl, it was as if she’d already known. She looked up at me, stricken, grief swimming in the depths of her young eyes. I’d gathered her in my arms and took her to the park where I told her everything in as little detail as I could, though the images had raged, vivid violence playing out in my mind.

Now I drove, listening to my daughter’s uneasy breaths emanating from the backseat. I went in circles. Aimless.

I guess I didn’t go home because I knew things would never be the same.

Dr. Montieth had taken me aside and promised me there was nothing I could have done, there was nothing I could have changed that would have led to a different outcome other than the one we’d been given.

But I couldn’t stop my mind from going there, from wandering, from wondering, from blaming. There had to have been something that could have changed this course. If I’d have just been gentler, more cautious, made her rest.

The rational side of me knew it wasn’t my fault, but my heart just wanted to protect her.

Exhaustion began to set in. The fog that had blurred my thoughts was now blurring my eyes. I wound back around, inching by the front of the little house we shared before I pulled into the driveway. One dull light glowed from within, the house quiet, sadness radiating from the walls.

Carefully I gathered Lizzie from the backseat and cradled her in my arms. I trudged up the walkway. At the door, I shifted Lizzie to the side, fiddled with the knob and unlatched it. The door creaked as it slowly swung open.

My mother jerked up from where she sat on the couch, perching on the side. Her expression caught mine. Bleak. Broken. Just like the rest of us. Tears wet her cheeks, and she seemed almost frantic as she wiped them away, as if she didn’t want me to find her that way. For a moment, I just looked at her, before she tilted her head to the side as if to say she understood, when I was sure there wasn’t a single person in this world who could possibly understand what I was feeling. I nodded though, turned and mounted the stairs with Lizzie sleeping in my arms.

I didn’t take her to her bed. I passed it by and carried her into our darkened room.

From where she lay on her side on the bed, Elizabeth’s silhouette seemed to fill up the entire space, her grief stealing all the air from the room.

Quietly I edged forward and placed our daughter in the middle of our bed. The two faced each other, lost in sleep, their breaths short and ragged. I tucked the covers up under their chins. Elizabeth shifted. Her arm wound around Lizzie’s waist and she tugged her near.

I just stood there in the shadows, in the blackness that consumed the walls, the blackness that consumed my heart. It echoed back the void. The loss.

I backed into the wall, slid down to the floor and pulled my knees to my aching chest.

The whirlwind had subsided. The storm cleared. And all that was left was the devastation that laid in its wake.

Present Day

I’d let her down. Even if there was nothing I could have done to stop it, it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t able to save my Elizabeth from the pain. I couldn’t. I’d been just as helpless as she was, and that was what I’d never wanted to be.

And I missed my baby girl. I missed her so much because the love I had for her was real.

I didn’t think a single second would pass in my life without me regretting not holding her. For being too much of a coward to hold my daughter in my arms. That decision would forever haunt me.

Elizabeth couldn’t even look at me after it happened. Somewhere inside me, I understood that it really wasn’t me, but that seeing me was an echo of what we had lost.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It didn’t mean there wasn’t anger and issues that neither Elizabeth nor I had been strong enough to deal with.

Never once had we talked. We’d just let bitterness and resentment grow. Until that day when no words had been spared. When they’d been said when they shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean it. I’d lashed out when Elizabeth had cut me to the core, her words so brutal she may as well have kicked me in the stomach.

I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face, grasped the counter and hung my head between my shoulders.

The hairs at my nape rose in awareness, an awareness taking hold as her calm slipped into the room. Slowly I turned my attention to the bathroom door where Lizzie stood in the doorway, peering in at me as she clung to the knob.

She blinked through knowing eyes. “Are you sad, Daddy?”

I trembled a smile as I took in the little girl who was my light.

Swallowing hard, I spoke, the words strangled as I forced them around the lump wedged in my throat. “Yeah, baby, Daddy is very, very sad.”

She edged forward, cautious as she stole into the bathroom. She came up behind me and wrapped her arms around the back of my legs.

Slowly I turned around and leaned down to gather her in my arms, slid down to the floor and pulled her onto my lap.

Lizzie buried her head in my chest, and she choked, a sob winding from her palpitating chest. She expelled it in the collar of my shirt.

With the connection, with her sorrow, I let it go, let my unshed grief fill my eyes as I clung to my daughter. Rocking her, I lifted my face to the ceiling, felt the wetness seep onto my cheeks.