I Have Lived and I Have Loved - Willow Winters Page 0,248

for sympathy or guilt, but there’s nothing there. The dog pants for a moment, and Jay waves him off with his hand.

“You didn’t seem to mind the dogs before,” Jay says as he turns his back, leaving me in the hall to watch as Toby stretches along the dark hardwood floor in the opening to the living room. The fan is on, and the faint breeze ruffles his fur.

It’s only when I turn, pulling my eyes away from the dog that I register Jay’s words. “What dogs?” I ask him as my heart beats harder.

I take a look at him as he walks into a nearby room. He picks up something small off the dresser, and I recognize it instantly. I’m stunned as I take a step into the room and realize it’s not just any room.

This is my room.

“If you could be anywhere you’d like, where would it be?” he asks me.

I shift on the floor, my shoulder feeling numb. I pick at my broken nails and look at the floor where I’ve been picking at the ground. There’s never anything to do. Nothing but talk to Jay.

I can’t stand it when he’s gone. It’s the fear of not knowing if he’ll come back. The fear of not knowing what I’ll become if his father takes him away from me forever.

“Hey,” I hear Jay say softly, “just talk to me.”

I stare at him, bewildered. He’s different today. Softer in a lot of ways. “If you could go anywhere at all, where would it be?”

I pull my legs into my chest, feeling my back stretch as I close my eyes. “In a castle in Ireland,” I say jokingly with a smile. Deep down my heart hurts because I know what I really think. Back home with my family. But I’m not allowed to talk about that. Jay doesn’t like it when I bring them up.

“Ireland?” he asks with curiosity. I shrug my shoulders and let out a small sigh.

“There’s a picture from one of my books at home. It’s a room in a castle.” I feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment as I remember it’s from a fairytale. I won’t tell him that. I’m already younger than Jay. I don’t want him to think of me like I’m a little kid although that’s exactly how he sees me.

“I thought you’d say Disneyland,” he says and laughs at me, rolling onto his back and passing the ball back and forth between his hands. It’s odd to see anything at all in the room. The ball moves from palm to palm rhythmically and I see a smile grow on the boy’s face. He looks so young, smiling as he lies on the ground, fiddling with a baseball.

It was a present, he told me, a present for being good.

I sit up on the floor, my palm brushing against the concrete that’s all too familiar. “Do you think he’ll let us go outside and play with it?” I ask him.

He stops his wrist in mid-motion, gripping the ball tightly in his right hand and almost dropping it.

“There is no outside, little bird,” he says and then looks up at me, a small smile trying to curl his lips up, but it’s so sad. I swallow the lump in my throat as he adds, “But we can pretend to be anywhere.”

Although my heart breaks and tears fill my eyes, Jay sits up and hands me the ball, forcing it into my hand and sitting cross-legged across from me.

“Tell me about your room, Robin. I want to know all about it.”

***

My eyes glide across the room, taking in every inch of it. Again, the ceilings are so high up. Higher than I realized at first, and the cream ceiling is fitted with dark wood beams that make my eyes travel up. A thin white chandelier with small crystals and lights that look like candles brightens the room. There are two smaller ones on either side of the bed which sits on the far end of the room along the wall. The headboard is the same dark wood as the beams, and it travels up the height of the wall.

It’s hard edges and darkness are at complete odds with the bed itself, which is plush and littered with small cream pillows decorated with crystals and embroidery that my fingers long to touch.

“I made it for you,” Jay says softly and I turn to him, not knowing what to say.

“Everything you need is here. I brought what you