Dare To Love Again

* * *GISELLE* * *What’s going on? First, my ex-mother in law shows up without warning, claiming she just wanted to see the baby and me, and now Calen is acting out of character once again. I’m dying to know what happened between him and Dana, but my mother in law had acted as if she hadn’t even seen the other woman when she arrived.

There was no change in her attitude towards me, but what is she doing here? I didn’t buy her story for a second, and I got the feeling that there was something on her mind, but there is no way for me to dig any deeper. As accepting and welcoming as she’s been since my return, and as much as I’ve seen her dislike of Dana, I’m not fooling myself that if it does come down to a choice, she will choose her son. Who was now listening to his best friend tell him who knows what about me.

I can’t tell him the truth; there’s no way, not if I want to keep him safe. It’s all I could do these last two years to keep my baby and me from harm, but if the monster feels threatened in any way by Calen’s presence in our lives, there’s no telling what she’d do. Her hate for me, something I never understood and still don’t all these years later, will never allow her to want to see me happy. That’s the conclusion I’d drawn two years ago when she’d tracked me down.

I could think of no other reason for her to make the threats she’d made since I wasn’t taking anything away from her and hadn’t asked her for anything in more than five years. When I told her that my marriage had nothing to do with her and that I didn’t need her for anything, that only seemed to make even angrier.

There was only one thing that didn’t make sense, something she’d let slip that I still can’t make heads nor tails of, but I’d stopped dwelling on that a long time ago. It was at the very beginning before I’d found out that I was pregnant. She’d been about to hang up the phone, and I swore I heard her say, ‘anyone else but someone like him.’ I didn’t know what it meant then, and I still don’t all these years later.

As I’d sat here thinking before my mother in law showed up, I was beginning to draw the conclusion that Dana might’ve had a hand in my mother finding me, but how? There was no ready explanation, and I’d put those thoughts aside when mother in law showed up.

Now here was Calen acting in no way as I expected. That look on his face and the tender way in which he cupped my cheek was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I was aware of my mother in law, leaving the balcony with the baby, but I didn’t look away from Calen as I tried to read that look. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure he could hear it, and when he pulled me up from my chair and wrapped his arms around me, it was all I could do not to break down in tears.

I wanted to ask him what was going on but was afraid to make a sound lest I break the spell. Even the way he held me felt different, which left me wondering even more exactly what had gone on between him, and Dana. Did this mean that he wasn’t going to throw me out for her? That she was wrong about him taking my child and raising him with her?

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” He said the words with his lips buried in my hair, but my heart heard them all the same. For a few seconds, I was sure I was dreaming; nothing about this made any sense. I tried pulling my head back so that I could read his eyes, maybe this was some sick joke he and Dana had concocted to make me lower my defenses, but he wouldn’t let me move.

Instead, he cupped the back of my head, pulling me into his chest, even more, the way he used to whenever I was upset in the past. To say I was confused is an understatement. Still, since he didn’t seem in any hurry to push me away and wasn’t saying anything that would answer any of the million questions running around in my head, I opted to enjoy the feeling of being locked in his arms like this for the first time in more than two years.

I tentatively lifted my arms to wrap them around him, and when he did nothing more than sigh appreciatively, I let myself relax a little bit more. There were no words spoken as we stood there for what felt like hours until he finally spoke. “Let’s go get our son.” He released me only to take my hand and walk into the house. I followed him wordlessly through the nursery and down the stairs, where we found his mother in the kitchen feeding the baby a snack.