Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
He shut his eyes and rested his forehead against mine as he pulled me against his chest. “I’m sorry. My emotions are jacked up.”
“It would be weird if they weren’t. But you don’t have to figure them out alone, right? I’m here.”
“I feel as if I’m too much for you right now. You’ve spent the past five years facing your shadows and growing. I’ve been running from them. Now, I have even more shit to face, and it’s not fair of me to ask you to stick around as I deal with my issues.”
“Hey, stop it.” I pulled back and placed my hands against his face, locking my eyes with his. “You don’t have to be perfect to be loved by me. That’s not how this love works. I don’t only love you on the good days. I love you on the hard ones, too. Be broken, be raw, be damaged. And still, I’ll stay.”
“Hailee?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
His lips brushed against mine ever so gently. “You are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
43
Aiden
* * *
The next morning, I sat on the front porch for a while, getting fresh air when the front door opened and Mom appeared. She’d been sleeping for hours. I didn’t blame her.
“Hey, Mom.”
She smiled and stepped outside. “Hey, you.”
“Last night was crazy.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” She snickered.
I lowered my head and grimaced before looking back up at her. “Have you talked to Dad since everything unfolded?”
Her small smile faded a little and I saw the hurt she was trying her best to hide from me. I wondered how many times I’d missed seeing that. I wondered how many times my mother hid her hurt. “I did. He’s staying at a hotel for a few weeks.”
She walked to the top step of the porch and took a seat. I clasped my hands together. “Are you okay?”
She lightly laughed. “Define okay. Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll be okay. How are you?”
“I’m always going to worry about you. You’re my mom.” I took my hands and placed them on her shoulders. I wanted her not to only hear me but to also feel my words as I looked into a pair of eyes that looked nothing like mine, but her heart? It beat like mine. It was because of her heart that my heart knew how to love. “You’re my one and only.”
“Oh, Aiden…” she whispered with a shaky voice.
The tears sitting at the back of her eyes finally began to fall, and I pulled her into a hug. “My mother.”
“My son,” she replied, holding me tight.
I wasn’t certain who needed the hug more, me or her, but we held one another for a few minutes. When she fell apart, I was there to hold her, and I needed her to know that I’d always be there for her, in her corner, for the rest of my life. Maybe unlike my father, I didn’t stand at an altar and make those vows to her, but I held them close to my heart. The moment my mother chose me as hers, I chose her as mine. From my first steps to my last, I would always be her son, and I was the lucky jerk who would always have her as my mother.
Once she pulled herself to a more stable state, we separated our embrace. She wiped at her eyes, then placed her hands in her lap and said, “You know the worst part of it all?”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t hate your father. I want to, God knows what that man has put me through over the years, but I can’t… because I know what would’ve happened if I found out the truth all those years ago. I would’ve left him. He knew that, too. And, if that happened, if I would’ve left your father when I found out he got another woman pregnant, I would’ve never become your mother. That thought breaks my heart because the greatest part of my life, has been becoming your mom. I would go through all this again if it led me to you.”
The new year came in, and I was having a hard time feeling festive. I had to leave Leeks soon enough to start filming, and I felt like my world was still upside down. Dad, or Samuel, or whatever the heck I was supposed to call him nowadays, kept trying to message me to communicate. Needless to say, he was fired as my manager and fired as my mother’s husband. I was still debating how to cut him loose from the fathership role, too. I wasn’t ready for that conversation. Each time I considered it, I’d talk myself out of it because of my anxiety. I hated confrontations. If it were possible, I wished I could simply ghost my own father, disappearing from his life like I’d never been a part of it.