If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(35)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I’d never been able to look before, even though I knew it was there. Before she went back to Virginia, Claire had kissed my forehead and told me it was there for me whenever I was ready. And I didn’t know if I was ready. I didn’t know if I ever would be. Four months had passed, and I knew one day I had to face this.

I will try.

I came to a standstill outside my bedroom door. Tears streamed, and I just stared. I still didn’t know if I was brave enough to handle what was inside.

Brave.

The hoarse laughter that shook me was almost bitter. None of it was directed at Claire, even though she was the one who had proclaimed it.

There was no bravery found in me.

After they’d ripped her from my arms, I didn’t even have the courage to open my eyes. I just wanted to seep away, bleed into the nothingness that my spirit called me into.

I will try.

With a trembling hand, I reached out and pushed on the door. It swung open to the room that served as my refuge yet haunted me at the same time. In it was Christian’s presence, both the warmest light and the harshest freeze. It was here I’d loved him and here where I’d let him go. These walls still crawled with that anger, something that had boiled between us before it’d finally blown.

Part of me still hated him for it.

Sucking in a pained breath, I took a step inside. The loneliness I was met with every time I walked through this door encroached, wrapped me in a cloak of isolation, amplifying the void at the center of me that was getting harder and harder to bear.

I swallowed deeply as I shuffled across the floor. I came to stand at the entrance to my walk-in closet. A frenzy of nerves sped through my veins. I pushed them down and slowly opened the door. A dark, vacant hole stared back at me.

I fumbled for the light switch. Harsh light flooded the tiny space. I squinted, holding my hand up to shield it. Once my sight adjusted, I edged forward then dropped to my knees.

The box was on the top shelf, shoved back and hidden behind a stack of blankets in the far corner.

Discarded.

Like waste.

Agony twisted my heart, so tight I didn’t know how it was possible for it to keep beating.

She would never be that way to me. Forgotten. Unwanted.

Rejected.

A shot of anger rumbled beneath the surface of my skin, resentment I was sure I would never shake.

I tugged on the box and pulled it down, got onto my knees in the middle of the closet floor. It was a large keepsake box, pink and floral and accented in ribbons. The kind designed to keep someone’s most cherished memories.

I sat there for the longest time, staring at it through bleary eyes, searching inside myself for the courage I knew didn’t exist.

I fisted my hands on my thighs. I blinked, and tears slipped down my cheeks and dripped from my chin. I sniffled and wiped them away.

I owed her this. Owed her this respect, owed her this act of adoration when my body hadn’t been strong enough to protect hers. And maybe I owed it to myself, because it was her memory I clung to so desperately, and her memory that caused me my greatest pain.

Maybe I needed to see.

Something pushed me forward, and I lifted the lid from the box. For a moment, I froze, stricken by the items waiting inside. My chest quaked. I slowly set the lid aside.

Little remained of her, just the few things that had touched her life.

My jaw quivered, and I sank my teeth into my lower lip to try to stop it.

She hadn’t even been given that. Life.

But to me, she had. She had lived because she lived in my heart.

The tiny identification bracelet that had been cut from her ankle lie on top. It was so small, so small it could have been a ring. A shudder trembled through my being. Did I forget how small she had really been? I picked it up and gently twisted the plastic band that had marked her stilled leg around my finger.

Tears resurfaced. I tried to bite them back, but they bled free. And I knew they would fall endless, ceaseless, even when my eyes were dry. Never would I stop grieving her. This love was eternal. My name was there, just under hers, and numbers were printed below that I knew somehow categorized her death. I let it curl around two fingers, held onto it as I dipped my other hand into the box. I pulled out the preemie Onesie my mother had bought from the hospital gift store for me to dress her in. It was the one she’d worn as Mom snapped three pictures of her in my arms. They were there too, the pictures, tucked inside a card, a merciless reminder of her face that was forever frozen in time.

Stifled air pressed down. I felt strangled, as if the life were slowly being squeezed out of me.

Seeing her this way, so clear, removed from the fog of that day, gutted me.

Stripped me bare.

How could I face this? When would it ever be okay?

It wouldn’t.

Still, I held the pictures at my chest as I lifted my face toward the ceiling. The single bare bulb glared down, streaks of light glinting against my eyes that were squeezed closed. Tears continued to fall, and my anguished cries bounced around the confines of the tiny space.

I could barely suck in a ragged breath. It hurt as it expanded in my lungs.

By the time I set the pictures down on the floor and pulled the blanket Claire had given her from the box, I could barely see. I frantically pressed it to my nose, desperate to catch a suggestion of her. I held it close and inhaled the fabric, because it felt like the most tangible thing I had of her.

But that void…it just throbbed.

She’d taken a piece of me with her and left this hollowed out place that I didn’t know how to fill.

And it ached and stabbed and cut.

She was real. Didn’t they understand that?

But I knew no one really could. No one could really understand the impact she’d made on my life. How she’d changed me inside.

Because she’d been real and my child and now she was gone.

Gone.

And it hurt. Oh my God, it hurt so badly, stretched me thin and compressed me tight, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see through it.

My fingers curled in the blanket as I wept, as I cried out for the child I would do anything to hold in my arms again.

One token remained at the bottom of the box.

I still didn’t know if I could bear to look at it.

No amount of time could heal it. No passage of days or months or years could erase the fact that she had never been given the chance to live.

Memories surfaced, ones that I had blocked through the shocked haze that held me under. Ones I still didn’t want to remember. Somehow, I knew Christian had picked it out. Vague impressions slipped through my mind, the way he’d tried to hold me as he’d asked questions at my ear I didn’t want to hear. I remembered this was what he’d wanted and somehow I’d agreed.