our room and kisses my forehead with so much care it hurts. It’s fucking misery seeing him so calm.
Break for me.
Break with me.
Break, goddammit.
Chapter Forty-Two
Past
Toby
How to be strong 101: Don’t be.
Like with Lo, I stay here. But internally, I’m screaming.
How did she do this? Make it through the devastation of knowing something died before it had the chance to breathe? How does anyone ease that kind of pain? How do I make my wife know I love her so much?
By staying? Done.
By holding her? Done.
By not leaving her side? Done.
I’ve watched her break apart, and I’ve loved her through it. I’ve hugged her and told her how beautiful she is. I cried in the silence of the night when she finally passed out from exhaustion, but is it enough?
She broke in my arms.
I broke in the emptiness of my living room.
She hurts so much. How can my hurt compare? Yes, I lost a child I didn’t get to meet. I didn’t get to hear its heartbeat, or see whether it’d be a boy or a girl.
But her? My strong fucking wife? She lost a part of herself. She had to experience the aftermath in her body while I stay idly by, not knowing what she needed. Her words didn’t exist, but her pain screamed constantly. The way she shut down tore me up inside. It literally wrenched my heart out and pulverized it while I tried not to push her. She deserves to be happy and have a baby and be a mom. She’d be the best mom.
Tears stream down my face. It hurts to know I can’t fix a single goddamn thing about our situation. I cry for what feels like hours, wishing I could do it in front of her. But my pain shouldn’t rise above hers. I’ll grieve in silence when she’s least vulnerable, and when she needs me, I’ll be there.
Dialing my mom’s number, I yearn for her voice. Her guidance. Her love.
“Tobias?” she says, her voice filled with sleep and exhaustion.
“Ma,” I whisper, and I crack. Just hearing her soft voice and breathing, I entirely shatter.
“What’s wrong, baby boy?”
It’s like I’m ten years old again, and I’ve fucked up my ankle by trying to catch up with Jase and all his friends, breaking my bones in the process.
“I-I,” I stumble over the words. The hot feeling of guilt builds inside me, spilling from my eyes and taking my heart again. What’s left of it? There’s nothing fucking left. “I lost a baby a couple of days ago.” With those words, I slam the gavel down. I ax the words as if they’re wood I need to chop. It’s hurtful and effervescent, so fucking raw. Admitting my loss makes it so much more real.
“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.”
I can hear it, the way she sniffles. Ma and I are alike in that sense. She holds in the pain, sucking it all up from the person who’s hurting and absorbing it so they don’t suffer alone.
“It hurts so much,” I cry. My voice doesn’t even sound like it belongs to me. It’s so small and little—so sad. I’m so strong. Joey always told me that, and so did Lo, but right now, I can’t be. I wanted that baby so fucking much.
Fate had other plans.
Destiny too.
My heart hammers in my chest, reminding me I’m alive, but what about the soul? Is that still intact? Does it and can it exist when death knocks on its door, stealing from it, making sure nothing but pain is left in its wake?
“I had a miscarriage after you were born,” Mom explains after I sit and cry. “You were twelve years old.”
Right as she says my age, I’m thrown back to a memory so brutal, my body trembles.
I was twelve when I drank my first bottle of whiskey.
It wasn’t just a sip like most kids do their first time, not simply a taste, or curiosity. No, it was the entire fucking bottle.
Unlike most, it did occur to me what it’d bring.
Dad always drank his life away. Repercussions weren’t unbeknownst to me.
All the information needed, I possessed.
Going into that cabinet wasn’t with lack of purpose. Every step, breath, and swallow of that woodsy liquid was intentional.
Me nearly dying in the end didn’t matter. Only the purpose behind the action did. Escape. Freedom. Peace.
My hands trace the wood, my eyes scan the bottles, and my body hums with intention.
My dad finally snapped tonight, using me as his biggest punching bag. Then I had