Western Waves (Compass 3)

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated.

A lone tear rolled down my cheek. I wasn’t certain that I had any more of those left within me.

He leaned in and kissed it away, then he rested his forehead against mine.

“It’s not your fault,” he said once more.

Four words.

They were the only four words he spoke for the remainder of the night. He repeated them as if he were a record that played on an eternal loop. He played them while my inhalations were a struggle and my exhalations were packed with pain. He played those four words as my eyes grew heavy. He played those four words as sleep found me slowly, and his body intertwined with mine.

He gave me those four words, and before darkness overtook my soul for the night, I gave him four words back. They were quiet, and broken, and scarred, but they were all I had to offer him after he stayed so close for so many hours.

With my eyes closed, I parted my lips and whispered, “I love you, too.”

I’d been sitting in a pool of unease, unable to shake off the nerves of something being wrong. There was a heaviness in my chest that made me so fearful of the future. My mind went to the darkest place. Something was wrong with the baby. I knew it was. I felt it deep in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong with the thing I cared about most.

I couldn’t be alone.

I felt awful about that fact, but my anxiety was too high when I was alone. I worried about something going wrong and no one being there to help me. I worried about having a panic attack in the middle of the night, and Damian not being around to calm my soul.

My artwork was suffering due to my panic attacks. I couldn’t create the way I was supposed to, which sent waves of guilt through me, which only sent me through a loop of more panic about falling behind with my commission pieces. Which, in turn, only sent me through another level of panic attacks. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I feared being pregnant. Honestly, I thought it would never happen for me again after the last time. That was what the doctors told me, at least. The terrifying fact that anything I did could harm another being.

My being.

My baby.

I can’t do this. I’m not enough…

34

Damian

* * *

Watching Stella on bedrest was the hardest thing to witness. Not because she was unable to move as she wished, but because she was stuck in such a mindset of despair. She hadn’t allowed her mind to rest at all, and her light was gone.

I wished I could bring it back to her. I wished I could wrap up her pain and push it deep into my own chest. People like her were not meant to hurt like this. She was pure and didn’t deserve to know this type of darkness.

She wasn’t meant to suffer.

“I’ve lost everything that meant the most to me,” she whispered, exhaustion sitting heavily against her eyelids. She hadn’t been sleeping well, and I couldn’t blame her, but still, I wanted her to rest her eyes. I wanted her to unplug from the wildness of her mind. I wanted to take her suffering and place it against my own soul.

“First my mama, then Kevin, my previous pregnancies…now I might lose my baby…it hurts, Damian,” she said, trembling in my grip. “It hurts to breathe.”

“I’m so sorry, Stella. But the baby’s okay…everything’s going to work out.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

She was right…but I needed everything to work out. I didn’t think she would’ve survived if it hadn’t.

She snuggled closer to me as I held on to her for dear life. She finally shut her eyes and lay her head against my chest. “Promise me you’ll stay,” she said, buried so deep against me that I wasn’t even sure where I began and where she ended. “Promise me you’ll be here in the morning and then beside me at night.”

“I promise you.”

“Forever?”

“And ever.”

She fell asleep, and I kept making that promise repeatedly in my head.

“I’m worried about her,” I told Maple as I sat at her dining room table, drinking disgusting tea. March and April were the months of heartache. Watching Stella struggle with herself, living in a constant state of fear, was the most heart-shattering pain I’d ever witnessed.

“She will come around. It takes time,” Maple swore, gently patting my hand to give me comfort. Comfort that I wished I could’ve transferred to Stella’s soul.

“Yes, but it’s been weeks, and she hasn’t been herself. I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how to help pull her back to herself.”

“Sweetheart…” Maple sighed and gave me a broken smile. “After such scary news, it takes time. So, maybe the real question is, how okay are you with her not being who she once had been until this pregnancy is over?”