Rock Bottom (Dawson Family 6)

I turn back just in time to see Logan take Paige back from Mom and sit back down next to Danielle, who leans in for a kiss. Reaching for my beer, I lean back and look around the table at my family—my happy family—and I can’t deny it anymore.

I want this, and it’s what’s been the source of why Kara and I have argued so much the last few months.

I want this, and she doesn’t.

I can’t understand how she doesn’t, but maybe she can’t understand how I do. Maybe I was too hard on her. Not understanding enough. Didn’t explain myself well enough.

Things have been rocky between us, but she’s my wife and I love her. We were happy once, can’t we be happy again?

I down the rest of my beer, trying not to acknowledge something else I’ve been ignoring. No one wants to admit they’ve been falling out of love, and the pain builds slowly. You don’t notice it at first, and then one day, you wake up under the crushing weight of a broken heart.

I don’t want us to get to that point.

Though part of me thinks we already are.

And now that I want a family and Kara doesn’t…it doesn’t help.

When we got married, we had plans to travel, to see the world, to live it up as best we could. Having kids wasn’t part of that plan. I didn’t want kids for a good while. In three years…five years…hell, even seven years, then maybe we’d think about it.

But we’ve been married for a while now and haven’t traveled as we imagined. Haven’t lived it up. Though does anything go according to plan?

“Dean,” Quinn calls, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“Scarlet, Jamie, and I are going to see a movie tomorrow? Can you ask Kara if she wants to join?”

“Yeah,” I tell her, though I have a feeling Kara will decline her invitation. She told me it feels weird to hang out with Quinn and Scarlet since they’ve become so close. When I tell her she could become close to them if she actually accepted their invites every now and then, she gets mad at me.

And I get mad right back.

Arya starts to fuss, wiggling around in the highchair. She throws her bowl of mashed potatoes on the floor and all four dogs swarm around her, pushing each other out of the way to lick up the mess. Quinn starts to stand but Archer stops her, telling her to take it easy and he’ll handle their toddler.

“Thank you,” Quinn says softly, looking at Archer the say way she looked at him on their wedding day.

It hits me then that while I get pissed at Kara, I’m not without my faults. She does stuff that irritates the shit out of me, but I do the same to her. We’re dangerously walking the line of falling completely out of love, and I’ll be damned if I let that happen.“You’re leaving already?” Dad pulls a cheesecake out of the fridge.

“Yeah. I’m going to bring Kara her dinner and force her to take the night off from studying.”

“She’s almost done with her class, isn’t she?” Dad sets the cheesecake on the counter and gets out another Tupperware to get me a few pieces to take home.

“Yes, thankfully. It’s been a hectic last few years.”

“It has been. We miss seeing her around here.”

I nod, agreeing with him. “I think I’m going to surprise her by booking a vacation over her winter break. Going somewhere warm would be nice.”

“Winter is a good time to go on vacation,” Dad notes, talking about work and not the weather. Dad worked his way up from a carpenter to starting and owning his own construction and contracting business, and I work with him. I’ll take over the family business when he retires. We slow down a bit in the winter, not able to do much exterior work when it’s bitterly cold. Though we already have a full lineup of new houses set to go up in the spring.

“Ohhhh, that’s so sweet,” Quinn says, having overheard me talking to Dad. “We can’t wait until we can go on a vacation again.”

“Didn’t you just go to Disney World?” I ask her.

“It was months ago.” She pats her stomach. “And I couldn’t go on the good rides.”

“And aren’t you going again in like six months with Archer’s parents?”

“Yes.”

I laugh. “That’s not that far to wait, sis.”

“It feels like forever,” she laughs. “Text me later and let me know if Kara wants to come with us. I’m going to buy the tickets online tonight so we can get good seats. Preferably at the end of the aisle since this baby is fifteen pounds and sitting on my bladder.”

“That baby weighed six pounds at the last scan,” Archer quips, coming into the kitchen to refill Emma’s water cup.