Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

About her.

About our daughter.

I don’t cry a lot. Sometimes on her birthday when I’m alone and wondering what she would be doing if she were with me and not with the wonderful couple who adopted her that April afternoon. There’s just something about having this conversation with Machlan that feels overwhelming today.

The longer I cry, the tighter he holds me.

I think about waddling into that little store and watching Machlan choose a blanket as though it was the most important purchase he’d ever make. How he woke up that morning in the dingy little motel and this was the only thing he wanted to do—buy the baby a blanket.

His cheek lays on the top of my head, and I’m not sure if he’s holding me or I’m holding him. My own trembling makes it hard to tell if it’s all me or if some of it is coming from him too. Either way, as deeply as it hurts, it feels better to know I’m not hurting alone.

It’s only when I’ve thoroughly soaked his shirt and my chest stops vibrating and my tears turn into whimpers does he loosen his grip. He plants a kiss to the top of my head that I think I’m not supposed to feel before he lets me go.

“Sorry,” I mumble, stepping back. I dab my eyes with the corner of my damp shirt. “I didn’t mean to break down on you like that.”

He brushes a lock of hair that’s matted to my cheek off my face. His thumb glides over my skin, his palm cupping my cheek before he withdraws it. “Do you think about her a lot?”

“I think about her every day,” I whisper. “I wonder if she still has your dark hair and my eyes.”

“I wonder if she still has my mom’s widow’s peak.” He runs a hand over his face, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “She had two crowns at the top of her little head. Remember that? And the lines on her left hand ran together instead of splitting into two.”

I purse my lips so I don’t cry. “Yeah.”

“Damn it, Had. I’m sorry.” He looks away, gulping. “I’m so damn sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” My heart breaks in two. The pain of watching him replay that day hurts as much as replaying it myself.

He walks in a circle, shaking his head. His hands go to his hair, and he yanks on the tresses, pulling the locks in a display of utter frustration.

“Machlan. Stop it,” I beg.

Much to my surprise, he does. He stops.

“You know what I do first thing every morning?” he asks. “Before I get out of bed or take a leak or make coffee? I think about her. Every fucking morning. Then I think about you. And I think about how everything could’ve been different if I’d had my shit together.”

“Machlan—”

“Then I say a prayer,” he says, ignoring me. “I ask God to watch over her and keep her safe and to let her always feel how much we love her, you know?” He turns to me completely, and the look in his eye—completely and utterly raw—almost breaks me. “Then I pray for you. That you have a life you deserve and that, somehow, by the grace of God, everyone can forgive me for being such a massive fuckup.”

“Machlan—”

“Don’t even,” he warns, shaking his head.

“Don’t even what?” I cry. My eyes are wet with tears as I watch the man who did the best he could in that situation blame himself. Doesn’t he understand how I would’ve fallen apart without him? How him never leaving my side from the moment I told him I was pregnant until we laid our precious girl in another set of arms meant everything to me? How he held me when I broke down and gave me the courage to go on? Doesn’t he understand any of that?

“Don’t even try to act like you can forgive me,” he warns.

“We made that decision together,” I remind him. “I was eighteen. You were almost twenty. Neither of us had parents. Neither of us had a plan on what to do. We didn’t have any money. Your inheritance didn’t get released for a couple of more years. Don’t you remember that?”

“I’ll tell you what I remember. I remember loading up my truck and lying to everyone, telling them I got a job in Ohio and we’d be gone a few months. And then getting there and trying to find a place to stay and trying to see how we felt about everything and me getting two jobs in the first six, seven weeks and getting fired because I couldn’t manage my fucking temper.”

“You were a kid,” I say. “I was too. Which is why we weren’t ready to have one of our own.”

He bites his lip, unable to stay still. He paces around the hilltop, jamming his hands in his pockets and then pulling them back out. His eyes darting at everything but me.