California Dreamin'

“And I told you that I’d protect you from whatever his reaction might be.”

His words vibrate between us, authoritative and possessive, a burst of heat in this cold weather.

I go to say something to him but I hear my dad come out on the porch.

“Fallon, come inside.”

Just three words. One of them is my name and still, I feel my dad’s command right down to my bones.

I feel it to the point where I know, I know that any second now, my fists in Dean’s sweater will unfurl and he’ll slip through my grasp. Any second now, I’ll have to watch him leave while I stand here, watching him walk away.

Because I can’t defy my dad.

One defiance was enough. Moving away for college was enough. And then, taking this road trip.

So two of them then. Two rebellions.

Still, whatever the number, they were enough to last me a lifetime now.

I look up at Dean with wide, fearful eyes, my fists tightening despite my dad’s words. I don’t wanna let him go. I wanna talk to him, to my dad, and figure this out.

We can figure this out, can’t we?

It’s Dean. My dad loves Dean. He’s family.

What even happened in there that was so terrible that Dean has to leave?

Dean’s jaw tightens up when I don’t obey my dad and let go of him. He puts his hands on mine—his warm, brimming-with-heat hands—and forces me to let him go. When my fingers lose contact with the fabric, Dean dips his face even lower.

With my heart pounding in my chest, I feel him kiss the top of my head. It’s a soft kiss. A feathery kiss, but still, it dislodges my tears and they drip down my cheeks.

“Your dad’s right. Get inside the house, Tiny,” he whispers to me, his gaze swimming with intensity and struggle while he wipes off my tears.

At last, he steps away from me and looks up at my dad. A look passes between them that I don’t really get except that it’s laced with… hostility. At least, on my dad’s part.

And then, what I predicted just now comes true.

He slips away and I watch him leave while I stand in the same spot where he kissed me and wiped off my tears.

I remember the day Fallon was born.

I remember the panic I’d felt. The panic at the first few contractions. The panic at finding out that my baby girl was coming. I was overdue actually so it shouldn’t have been such a shock but still.

No one ever tells you about that, about the level of panic you’re going to feel. Or maybe they do but you don’t really get it.

You don’t really feel prepared for it, the moment your child enters this world.

You don’t really feel prepared for the fear, the pain, the chaos in the hospital room. Nothing can prepare you for the sheer joy, the pure freaking love in your heart when the tiny human being you made is writhing around, kicking up her legs, crying her lungs out in the hands of doctors and nurses.

Not to mention the craving you feel to hold her yourself, and when they give her to you the panic—again that emotion—you feel is immense, more intense than anything else you’ve ever felt before.

But most of all, nothing can prepare you for the kind of love you feel, the kind of love you fall into, with the man you’ve loved for years already.

No, nothing can prepare you for the moment your husband holds your baby for the first time.

As it is, I remember crying in that moment.

I cried a lot that day, screamed a lot too. And when Simon held Fallon for the first time, my waterworks wouldn’t stop.

By that time, we were both exhausted.

It had been a long delivery, through which I screamed all the obscenities that I knew, and all at my stoic Ice King of a husband.

And well, that was the day—among other days in the past twenty years of our marriage—when I’d really tested his patience and broke his legendary control into pieces.

Simon was upset.

More than that, he was terrified and in distress. I swear a couple of new lines had emerged around his mouth and his forehead between rushing me to the hospital and the moment our baby girl was born.

All of that went away though, all of his stress and panic like mine, when he held Fallon in his arms for the first time.

I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes.

The way his strong but exhausted frame softened up. The way he made a cradle out of his arms so he could hold her in the crook of them.

The way his gray eyes—the ones that remind me of rainy skies—brimmed with tears even though his lips were stretched out in a big smile.

I remember the look of wonder on his king-like face when his daughter grabbed his finger in her small fist.