“I was overwhelmed by the intensity of you. You enthralled me. And I swear that if you’d asked me, I would have run off with you, just like that girl at the end of The Graduate.”
“I was sorely tempted, I assure you.” He brushes his thumb over my lower lip. “Do you have any idea what I wanted to do back then? How I wanted to take you away from that reception, find a dark room, and touch every inch of you. I wanted to take you over the edge, Nikki. I wanted to feel you explode in my arms. And as I stood there by those damn tiny cheesecake squares, all I could think of was how you would sound screaming my name when you came in my arms.”
“Oh, yes.” I shiver as I think about it. “I wanted it, too. But it never would have happened. I would have walked away, slapped you across the face, even. I was too much under my mother’s thumb. Too locked into seeing myself the way that she saw me, and I didn’t have the courage to break away.”
I’m no longer talking about running from Damien that night, and he knows it. I’m talking about escaping from the life I was trapped in. The world where I was a walking, talking Barbie doll, and my mother was the girl playing with her pretty, mindless toy.
“But you did find the courage,” he says gently.
I swallow, thinking about the scars that mar my body. “A blade isn’t courage.”
“No, it’s not. It was a tool—the strength was always there. And now you don’t need the tool anymore, either. You’re strong, baby. You know I believe it.”
I sniffle and nod. It’s true. He looks at me and sees strength. He believes in me even when I don’t believe in myself. “I have the strength because of you,” I say.
He shakes his head. “That’s not true. But even if it is, so what? I’m right beside you, and I promise you, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere.”
6
“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper to the baby in the crib. I reach for her, moving her gently into my arms, and she blinks wide, blue eyes at me, her expression of utter love so like her father’s it makes my heart sing with joy.
I want to hold her close and never let go.
I want to applaud her first steps, hear her first words.
Most of all, I want to keep her safe.
She is the most precious thing in my world—our child. Mine and Damien’s.
Tears of joy trail down my cheeks. Because she’s finally here with us, and it’s true and it’s right and it’s perfect.
I don’t know how I ever doubted. How I could ever have been afraid.
“You can’t do this.”
The harsh, familiar voice pulls my attention away from my daughter, and I look up, my blood running cold when I see the woman standing in the middle of the nursery, arms crossed, a stern expression cutting deep lines into her usually attractive face.
“Mother?”
“You can’t do this,” she repeats, her eyes darting down to where I’m cradling my daughter.
Except when I look down, the baby is no longer there. My arm is still crooked, but there is a deep, raw wound running the length of my inner forearm, blood oozing from wrist to elbow.
Terrified, I look up again, only to find my mother clucking her tongue.
“No!” I scream. “I didn’t do this.”
“Are you sure?” she asks, and I realize I’m not. I’m not sure at all.
I look around wildly, wanting answers. Wanting help.
But we are no longer in the nursery. We’re in the kitchen. And in my other hand, I’m holding an aluminum can top, its jagged edge stained with blood.
“See?” my mother says.
I can’t speak. I can only shake my head as I search the room, trying to remember what it is that I’ve lost. “The baby!” I finally shriek, as my blood falls in red splotches onto the pristine white floor. “Where’s the baby?”
I’m standing at the sink, and I look out the window, only it’s no longer a window, and we’re no longer in the kitchen. Now, I’m on a balcony, leaning against a metal railing, and we’re so high up the world below looks like a drawing, and I have no idea where we are because the earth is too far away and unfamiliar to recognize.
But then I see the baby tumbling through space toward the ground.
“Ashley!” I scream, reaching uselessly for my child.
“I told you,” my mother says. “Of course, she’ll fall. Of course, you can’t save her.”
“No!”
I dive off the balcony after the baby, but I’m too far behind her. And she’s falling and falling and falling, and she’s going to crash against the hard, horrible world, and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t reach her. I can’t save her.
But then I see Damien standing on the earth below. He reaches out. He pulls her in, then holds her close.
He saves her, and I start to shake as sweet relief floods through me.
Then I realize the next harsh truth—he can’t catch me. Not while holding the baby.
I screwed up. I lost our child.
Thank God Damien was there to catch her, but he can’t save me, too.
And as the ground rushes closer and closer, I scream and I scream and I scream.
“Nikki! Nikki, baby, wake up!”
I blink, still sobbing as I slowly come back to consciousness in Damien’s arms.
“Damien.” My voice cracks on his name, broken by the weight of my emotions.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
I don’t. I don’t even want to think about it. But I rub the back of my hand under my dripping nose and then draw in a long, deep breath. “She was there,” I whisper. “My mother. And I was holding the baby—and, oh, Damien. She was perfect.”
It’s silly because I know it was only a dream, but my breath hitches as I tell him the rest. About the baby falling. The terror that filled my throat—so raw I can still feel the scream that was ripped from me in those last moments. And then my relief when Damien caught our child, even though I plummeted to the ground.
“It was just a nightmare,” he says, holding me close.
I nod because I know that’s true, but at the same time, it felt more real than even the news of my pregnancy in the first place.
With a frown, I curl up even closer to him. We’re in bed, and the last thing I remember is lying next to him as we watched a new spy thriller that Damien rented off the hotel system. I recall the set up and a car chase, but nothing after that, and I realize that I must have drifted off, sucked once again into the pregnancy vortex and then down, down, down into sleep and dreams.
Now, a news program is playing on the muted television. Either the movie is over, or Damien got bored. But he’s still in the same jeans and pale blue T-shirt, so I don’t think that much time has passed. Certainly, it’s not yet morning.
I don’t nap well—I always wake up disoriented, and right now I’m still trying to get my bearings. I glance toward the window and see the city lights sparkling in the dark. “Is it late?”