Shielded In The Shadows

No matter how much it hurt, he had to make a choice.

Hanging his towel, he turned out the light. Padded across the carpet, pulled down the covers and slid beneath them.

Emma didn’t move. After several nights in bed with her, he’d grown to recognize the sound of her breathing as she slept. He didn’t hear it.

She might still be awake.

Hands shaking, he slid up against her back, pressed his chin over her shoulder and whispered in her ear. “I don’t ever want to know what life is like without you in it.”

She didn’t turn. Didn’t seem to move at all.

“I don’t know what the future brings,” he told her. “I don’t know what mistakes I might make. I don’t know if I’ll ever be an asshole again. But I know I’ll make mistakes. And be selfish sometimes... I can promise to always put your happiness before my own. I might not do it.” He had to stop. Emotion clogged his throat. He could feel every breath she took. And took them with her. Calming. Wanting to sleep.

Just lie there with her and sleep.

“I’m not always going to agree with you.” Her words entered the air on a whisper.

“I’m going to be right sometimes,” he told her.

“I don’t want to know what my life would be like without you in it.” She was crying again as she repeated her earlier words.

He turned her over, blinking away a moisture that astounded him. Scared him, even. No one had ever meant to him what she did.

In such a short time.

Or over time.

Maybe he’d been heading in her direction from that first case three years before. Maybe he’d needed more time to heal. Or to pay.

“I don’t want to live without you,” he told her, looking her straight in the eye in the darkness. He kissed her then.

Slowly. Softly. He was hard. But not needy. Not really even wanting all that much at the moment.

“I want to have a baby, though.”

He’d known, of course. She wasn’t going to be complete without knowing what it felt like to have her baby grow to fruition inside her.

“I’m not sure I can be a good father.” But he knew a man who’d been a darn good example. And might be willing to be a teacher, too.

“See, that’s where having two of us trying to have a relationship kind of works, because I am sure you can become a good father.” Emma’s words knocked him off course again.

And onto this new road, once more.

“You’re a good father every single time you give one of your clients a second chance,” she told him. “You have faith in them. You look after them. You counsel them. You save them from themselves sometimes. And, when necessary, you discipline them. Even when it means holding them accountable for their mistakes. Even when it hurts you to do so.”

Had his father ever held him accountable? Jayden couldn’t be sure. He’d known there were lines he couldn’t cross. So he hadn’t really tried.

His father had given him space in which to fly. And maybe kept him tethered on some invisible parental line, too.

But he was a man now. Not a boy. Or a teenager. Or a college kid. He was a grown man. It was time for him to find out if he had what it took to fly without protection.

“I don’t want to know what it would be like to spend another night alone in my house with you alone in yours,” he said.

She was crying again. He could feel the sobs in her body against his.

“I love you, Emma Martin.”

“I love you, too.”