And just staring at the door.
She reaches out and touches the door’s handle, almost like she's afraid of it.
She finally turns the handle and throws open the door to a giant playroom—filled with a multitude of toys and huge stuffed animals.
“Whoa!” the girl say at the same time, their eyes big as they run, skip, and jump from one thing to the next.
Vanessa still hasn’t entered the room. She’s just staring into it.
And I get the feeling that opening this door was like opening her heart.
I can’t help but wonder if this room has something to do with the baby she lost.
“This is an amazing room.”
She turns to me.
And I know by the look on her face and the tears in her eyes, that I'm right.
It's amazing the pain another person can cause you.
Vanessa is tough. She's a strong business woman. Smart, beautiful, but she's as broken as I am.
And she just needs someone to love her.
To have the same hopes and dreams as her.
I think.
No, I’m going with my gut on this.
And I know I’m right.
I pull her into my arms and kiss her right in front of the girls.
“You want me to let go of the guilt, but you haven't, have you?”
She brushes away a tear, like she's mad it even dared to fall.
I move her hand away from her face, by pulling it to my lips and kissing it.
Then I look into her eyes and know that time doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that we’ve only been together for a short time.
When you know it, you know it.
“I love you,” I say.
“Now you're really going to make me cry,” she says, smiling through her tears. “I love you too.”
“I love you three! Harlow yells, running over and hugging both our legs.
“And I love you four,” Ava adds, wrapping her arms around Vanessa.
Vanessa hugs her back tightly, tears now freely streaming down her face.
I usually hate to see tears.
With Whitney, tears were a bad thing.
The start of another bout of depression.
But these tears seem cleansing.
Freeing.
After we tuck the girls into bed, I take Vanessa's hand and lead her out to the pool.
I stand in front of her. “Take your clothes off.”
She looks surprised by this.
And normally, I’d want to undress her, but not now.
She needs this.
“Um,” she says, looking puzzled.
“I’m taking my clothes off,” I say as I strip them off and throw them into a chaise. “Get naked with me.”
Her eyes trail hungrily down my body. I love the desire I see in them, but that's not what this is about.
If it were, I'd have her stripped and pinned under me in about two seconds flat.
I walk down the steps and into the pool, the water the perfect soothing temperature.
She takes her clothes off and joins me in the center.
“I don't like being told what to do,” she says softly.
“I know you don't, but sometimes you need it.” I give her a long, sweet kiss. Then I hold her shoulders, keeping her away from me. “You're naked,” I state.
“Yeah, I am,” she flirts.
“That means right here, in this pool, it's just us. Naked.”
“You've said the word naked like four times. I get it. We’re naked.”
“We are physically, but I want you naked emotionally.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me what happened. Why opening that playroom door hurt so bad. And why do you have a room like that?”
She takes a breath and slumps her shoulders, her body defeated.
I touch her face. “Tell me.”
“I was pregnant. Almost four months along. I was happy. Bam was happy. We’d told everyone we knew. He wanted to start decorating the nursery, but I was afraid to. I’d had two other miscarriages. But they happened during the first trimester and once I got past that point, and got to see an ultrasound, I really got excited. I still was afraid to decorate the nursery, so I decided to do a playroom instead. I told myself when our friends with children visited, they would have a place to play. But, really, I was doing it for our future children. I bought all the stuff in the playroom. A few weeks later, I let myself start dreaming and thinking of names.”
She starts tapping her foot.
I can tell this is the hard part.