Take This Regret (Take This Regret #1)(70)
Author: A.L. Jackson

She sighed, whispered, “Oh, Christian.” Her disappointment was clear. I could see her shaking her head, sad and worried, as she told me, “Give her some time.”

Time. Always more time.

I tried, but it was nearly impossible.

The hours ticked by, second by excruciating second.

The sun fil ed the sky and then dove toward the ocean, all the while I sat static on my couch, waiting.

At seven fifteen, I call ed, and a new fear gripped me when it went to voicemail. Seven fifteen wasn’t about Elizabeth and me. It was about Lizzie. Would she real y try to keep me from my daughter?

I want you out of our lives.

A stunning pain tore through my chest as I listened to the unbearable silence on the other end, and I final y pled low, “Please, Elizabeth, don’t do this.” I prayed she would come to her senses.

I’d almost forgotten what insomnia felt like, the exhaustion coupled with a racing mind and thundering heart; only now it was so much worse than ever before. In place of nagging guilt and what-ifs was agonizing loss.

Shadows that had once concealed an unknown child were replaced by the face of my precious daughter, by her glowing spirit and the pinked roundness of her cheeks, by the trust in her smile and the faith in her eyes when I promised her I would never leave her again. Those images blurred and mixed with thoughts of Elizabeth, the woman with the sweet, insecure smile and wary heart that I’d come to know over the last months, the woman I loved even more now than the girl I’d fal en in love with years before, only because I’d grown to be capable of that kind of love.

As much as I ran from the memory, I couldn’t help but think of the way Elizabeth’s skin had burned under my hands the night before and how perfect she had felt; and even though it had been wrong on so many levels, it still had been completely right—because we were right.

Groaning, I rol ed over in bed and gave up on getting any sleep. I stood and stretched my sore muscles when the first light seeped through my bedroom windows.

I went into the office early and left just as soon as I’d come. I couldn’t focus on anything but the relentless throbbing in my chest.

From my car, I call ed Elizabeth again and again. I knew I shouldn’t, that I should give her time, but I begged her to call me. I told her I had never intended to make her feel used, that she and Lizzie meant the world to me, hoped if I told her I loved her enough she would final y believe it.

Matthew showed up at my condo that evening. I buzzed him in and wasn’t surprised at all to see the rage set deep in the lines of his face when I opened the door. It drained when he saw me, catching him off guard before he stepped inside and demanded to know what the hel was going on.

I didn’t spare him the details I had spared my mother.

“Goddamn it, Christian. What in the hel were you thinking?”

That was the problem—I wasn’t thinking.

I sank onto my couch, buried my head in hands, and looked back up at him. “I love her.”

He scratched at the back of his neck in discomfort, softened his demeanor. His commitment would always be with Elizabeth, but I also felt somewhere along the way we’d become friends and he believed me when I told him I loved her.

“That was real y stupid, Christian . . . you should have known you needed to take it slow with her . . . she’s . . . she’s . . .” He turned away and blew out a long breath. “You real y f**ked her up, man.” He cut his eyes back to me, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about what happened this last weekend.

“I know.”

“Give her a couple of days . . . she needs some space.

She’s not doing so great right now.”

I nodded, and I real y did try.

But it didn’t take long for the guilt I felt over Saturday night to transform and for my anger to grow.

I couldn’t believe Elizabeth would all ow this to happen to our daughter. I sat outside Lizzie’s school on Tuesday afternoon. I expected Natalie to be there, that Elizabeth would have asked her to pick Lizzie up rather than me as I had for so many months, but I needed Lizzie to see me, to understand that I did not intend to leave her.

Looking at Lizzie was like looking at ghost. My child was missing and in her place was a shel with an ashen face, pale and wan. She plodded along dragging her feet, her only lifeline the dol she clutched protectively to her.

From the car, I watched her from across the street.

Only when she felt me did her numbness subside, a second’s recognition and a flicker of life. Natalie trailed her gaze to mine, and smiled sadly, as she nudged Lizzie forward and into her car.

For the first time, my call s to Elizabeth were not fil ed with apologizes but with accusations.

As much as I loved her, I hated her for placing our daughter in the middle of something that was so obviously about the two of us.

My anger and concern only grew as the next days passed, and by Thursday when every call I’d made had been unreturned, I made a call I had never wanted to make.

A few hours after first speaking with him, my attorney Lloyd Barrett call ed back and laid out what he had found. I sat at the smal table in my kitchen with my elbows grinding into the tabletop, palming the back of my head as I listened to him first read through the record of eviction during the first year of Lizzie’s life just months after Elizabeth had moved to San Diego. I hadn’t known about it and was still trying to digest the information when Lloyd continued. His next words were like daggers that went straight through my chest as he read word for word the police report of the 911 call from a little girl screaming for someone to help her mommy, the beaten woman identified as Elizabeth Ayers, the paramedics, and the arrest of Shawn Trokoe.

With a hint of disappointment he said, “That’s all we have, but it should be enough to at least provoke some doubt in her judgment.”

That’s all?

I cursed myself, wanted to curse him and ask him how either of these things didn’t reflect upon me and my judgment.

Lloyd pushed on through my silence, knew me we wel enough that he sighed through the phone as he offered advice. “Listen, Christian, I know this is rough on you, but with your history, you’re going to have to use this, or you won’t have a leg to stand on. You had no contact with this child for five years, and that’s not going to sit very wel with any judge that I know.”

I sat with my phone to my ear, saying nothing, having no idea how to proceed. The last thing I’d wanted to do was drag Elizabeth’s name through the mud, shed her in a negative light, and paint her as a bad mother, because I truly didn’t believe that she was. I just wanted mediation, a legal agreement saying I had some right to see my daughter.