Claiming Serenity(80)
“Well,” he finally said, grabbing her hand to pull her attention away from the window. “Whatever you want to do, just say the word. I want to help any way I can.”
God spoke to her, she was sure of it. It was the push she’d needed. It was the nod of approval in her father’s eyes, in the way he smiled at her, looked at her like the past months and their distance from each other had never happened at all.
“Can I come home?”
She hadn’t expected her father’s frown. She thought he’d smile wider that he’d be excited to have her back, but she hadn’t been prepared for the way his mouth tightened or how long he waited before he answered her. And then, that forced smile he’d always reserved for disgruntled opposing coaches and anal refs, twisted across her father’s lips. “Of course, sweetheart. I can help you pack.”
Fear is real. It’s a tactical thing that breathes against the back of your neck. It’s the whisper of worry that we all try not to listen to, the one that niggles and nags in your mind, telling you that something would always be there to disappoint you, to make any hope you have for joy seem like the faint memory of dreams you knew would never come true. Donovan lived in that fear. Daily. For weeks. If he was being honest with himself, he’d let fear consume him since he was eighteen.
But as he walked into his apartment, dog tired from his practice, from the drills Declan made them all run through in some freak attempt to let a missing Mullens know he could handle the squad in his absence, Donovan experienced a new fear that wasn’t fear at all. It was abject horror, terror, the blinding fright of loneliness, of losing something he thought was his but had never had enough nerve to claim.
The apartment was empty. All the small little trinkets and girly things Layla had scattered around his place—the purple cable knit throw she kept on the back of his couch to hide a tear in the leather, the little boxes and bowls littered around the coffee table and on the entertainment center, her perfume and makeup, her scarves and neatly folded clothes, were gone. Every trace Layla had left of herself in his home was vacant now. The only thing of her that Donovan could feel was the tight squeezing burn in his chest; it was the place where she’d been for months. It was the empty spaces her presence, her laugh and smell had filled since the first time she’d kissed him.
He looked over every inch of his apartment, growing worried, at first, when she wasn’t there, thinking that maybe something had happened with the baby, that maybe she’d gone off still annoyed at him as she had been for weeks. Maybe, he’d thought, this was a punishment because he hadn’t touched her. Because he hadn’t wanted to chance even the remote possibility that he’d see his daughter moving inside Layla. He couldn’t… no.
But as he searched and did not find her, as he looked hopefully for a scribbled message, something, anything to tell him where’d she gone, Donovan realized the only damage done to Layla and their baby came with Donovan’s distance, with his firm belief that getting too close to either of them would hurt too badly when it all fell apart. And it would. He knew it would. It always fell apart, and so he sat on his couch, head back, eyes focused on the textured surface above him thinking of how quiet his apartment would be now. How absent the sights and smells of Layla would turn his place back into the cold, lifeless shell it had been before she started coming to him every night.
And the baby… would she even let him be there when the birth happened? Would she let him hold her hand as she pushed their daughter out of her body and into the arms of people he didn’t know? Did he want to be there at all?
His mind went back to that sonogram, the slow movements of that tiny life on the screen, the soft, comforting whoosh of a heartbeat that told Donovan he’d made something precious, finally done something remarkable with his life. It had scared him. It had fascinated him and he knew he’d never see that, feel that again. If he was lucky he’d get to hold her once. If he was lucky, he’d give her one parting kiss.
Donovan didn’t bother to dry his face when the shock of Layla’s departure and the memory of his daughter’s image on that machine became too much. He thought he’d ignore the buzzing of his phone. If Layla didn’t want him, didn’t want their life together anymore, then he wouldn’t run after her. He wouldn’t make an ass out of himself in some pathetic attempt to change her mind. But his phone kept ringing, then chirping over and over and he sighed, brushed his arm against his wet face before he dug his phone out of his pocket.