I swallow as I pull Ava closer to my chest and move to the couch, sitting and arranging her with ease on my lap. I quickly check her head, making sure she’s not upset her wound, as she curls up so small, huddled and sobbing into me. I say nothing and just hold her for the next hour while she cries her heart out, curses out loud, shouts and screams, and sobs some more. My eyes are stinging from the silent tears I allow to escape while her head is buried in my chest, her fingers clawing at my T-shirt to hold on to me, like she’s afraid I’ll leave her alone in her darkness. Never. We’re in this together. All the way to the end. I can’t see any light at the end of this torturous tunnel, but I pray it’s there somewhere.
Eventually, her sobbing subsides, though I don’t push her to leave her hiding place, waiting patiently for her to brave facing the stranger who’s holding her. ‘Zero, baby,’ Ava murmurs into my chest on a sniffle. I stiffen. ‘Why do I keep hearing those words?’
I push her away from my chest to find her eyes. They’re red and swollen. ‘It’s one of our games,’ I explain, and she frowns, encouraging me to go on. ‘I start at three, and when I get to zero—’
‘What?’
I shrug, pushing on. ‘Sometimes I tickle the shit out of you, sometimes I kiss the living daylights out of you, and sometimes I put you in bed.’ That’s about as delicate as I could be in explaining the countdown. ‘Ava, baby, it’s just another part of our wonderful.’
She smiles, just a little. But it’s still a smile. ‘Ava, baby,’ she whispers, settling back into my chest, turning her face outward so her cheek is flat on my pec, her eyes staring across the room to the wall. ‘Whenever you say that, it sounds perfectly right. Whenever you hold me, it feels perfectly right. Whenever I look at you, I know you are mine. When I look at the kids, I don’t recognise them, but something tells me to protect them. It all feels incredibly right.’
‘Because it is right,’ I reply, so relieved to hear that. It’s a flash of the light in this darkness I’m searching for. ‘Everything about us is right.’
‘So why can’t I remember?’ Her voice cracks again, and not for the first time, I try to imagine her bleakness. Try to imagine what it must be like to feel so misplaced. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare her struggle to mine. ‘You must be so frustrated, too,’ she sobs. ‘How long will it be until you give up on me?’
Give up? Jesus, she really doesn’t know me any more at all. Ignoring the pain in my heart is hard. Hearing her doubt my determination is a killer.
‘You will remember,’ I vow. ‘You and I are a formidable force, Ava. Nothing has defeated us in the past, and I’m not about to let it now.’
I take her wedding ring and bring it to my lips, kissing it gently, and she looks up at me with so much need in her eyes. It’s need of another kind. Not a sexual need, but a need for me. Just me. To help her, to support her, to love her. To remind her. ‘I once told you that I wanted to look after you for ever.’ I hold her eyes, never wavering. ‘I meant it, baby. For ever isn’t over yet. Never will be, not for us. I love you. You are the best part of me, Ava. The greatest part. That can’t be forgotten.’
She blinks a few times, maybe a little taken aback. That hurts, too, because any other time I’ve told her how much I love her, she’s just smiled and kissed me. ‘We must love each other an awful lot.’
‘It’s pure bliss, baby,’ I begin quietly. ‘Total gratification.’ I lower my lips cautiously and peck her wet cheek lightly. ‘Absolute, complete, earth-shifting—’
‘Universe-shaking love.’ She barely breathes those final words, but I hear them like they’re being delivered through a megawatt speaker held at my ear.
‘Yeah,’ I confirm, cool on the outside, but on the inside I’m constantly being carved up by the fact that she’s saying things and she doesn’t know why she’s saying them. ‘I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you, do you hear me?’
She nods through more tears and crawls in closer to me, except this time her face goes into my neck and she breathes me in, her lips resting just perfectly on my skin as her hands slip under my T-shirt and feel me. ‘You always smell so good. Are you going to tell me how old you are now?’
‘Twenty-two.’
She chuckles, and I smile. ‘I can tell you make me happy.’
‘Good.’ I relax in my seat and we spend a few silent, blissful moments in our madness just snuggling, her hands skating over my chest, lightly touching me everywhere she can. Like she’s reacquainting herself to the feel of me.
Chapter 15
We’ve been rattling around the quiet, empty house for two days, leaving only once so I could take her to therapy. We left the session after no spikes in her memory, and the hopelessness seemed to multiply by a million. I’ve forced myself into the spare bed each night, and hated it with a vengeance every time I’ve left her in our suite. Each time, she watches me as I go, and each time I’ve wondered if she really doesn’t want me to leave. But there’s no way I can ask her.
I keep seeing glimmers of a familiar look in her eyes, a pleased look, the look she used to give me every day of our lives. It’s the look that tells me she wants me. The attraction she’s never been able to hide. But now she’s holding back. She’s trying to fight it. Just like she did all those years ago when she walked into my office.
But this time, I can’t charge her resistance down like a bull. I can’t take what I want. I have to wait for it to be given to me, and it’s killing me a little bit more each day.
I’ve been watching her, wondering what’s going on in that mind of hers. And she’s caught me doing it often, smiling a small smile each time. She’s getting used to me. Weighing me up.
It’s now night-time again, and dread fills me as I walk her up to our room, the bed still unmade from this morning. I’d normally strip her down to her skin, lift her into bed and crawl in behind her. But that fear of scaring her to death or being rejected stops me again. I don’t know if I could take it. Yet walking out and leaving her kills me, too. Kate’s words crawl into my mind. Where’s the Jesse Ward we all know and love?
On that note . . .
‘Arms up,’ I order Ava, taking the hem of her T-shirt.
She gazes up at me, a little surprised. There’s uncertainty in her eyes, and she flinches when my fingers brush the flesh of her tummy. In return, I flinch, too, yet my reaction has nothing to do with the usual flame on my skin whenever I touch my wife, and everything to do with her wariness.
I drop her T-shirt and step back, giving her space, trying to control the agony in my chest before it puts me on my knees and has me begging. ‘Never mind. I’ll give you some privacy.’ I turn before she catches sight of my watery eyes and take myself away from the one person in this world who brought me back to life. And the one person in the world who can finish me.
Closing the door behind me, I stalk away, aware that if I stop and try to gather myself, I’ll either put a hole in the wall or crumple to the floor and cry my fucking heart out. I roughly brush at my damp eyes as I take the stairs, eager to put as much space between us as possible so that when I roar my frustration, she’s not as likely to hear.
My pace quickens as I round the bottom of the stairs, and I stagger into the games room and shut the door behind me, falling against the wood, my body rolling with the effort it’s taking to breathe. Bang. I smack the back of my head on the wood, squeezing my eyes shut, quaking with a fury I’m unable to control.