back nearly three months’ worth of photos until I find one that is.
Circles around his eyes make him look somehow...haunted. Still heartbreakingly handsome, still the achingly beautiful boy I fell for.
I’m sure two years on the road takes a toll on a person. It doesn’t matter. It’s not my problem.
I’m still staring into his haunted eyes when my phone starts ringing. It startles me, and I drop it onto my own chest in surprise.
I pick it back up as I try to shake off whatever feelings were just lancing through me merely by looking at him again, and I see it’s my husband calling. I glance at the time. It’s a little after eight, so he’s sneaking in the call before the main act takes the stage.
I know his schedule like the back of my hand.
It used to be my schedule.
“Hey,” I answer, trying to keep the fatigue out of my voice. I’m tired. I’m worn down. I need a break.
But moms don’t really get breaks.
“I need to tell you something,” he blurts.
Alarm sears my chest, and I sit up a little straighter. I’m not sure why we need to sit up when we’re being given news, but it’s some automatic habit. “What’s wrong?”
“He came by here today looking for you.” His voice is flat. Quiet. Devoid of emotion.
“He?” I ask even though I know exactly who he’s talking about. I play the part I’ve been playing for two years, though. The part where I pretend like I don’t still think of him every second of every day. The part where I pretend like I don’t feel a million tingles of electricity all at once lighting up every nerve in my body.
“Tyler Caldwell.”
“Oh,” I murmur, the single word doing absolutely nothing to convey the radical shift in my chest.
My heart beats faster. My cheeks flush. My stomach heaves. My thighs clench.
All just from learning that he’s here in Milwaukee and he came looking for me even after two years.
I suppose there’s more that might figure into that equation, but I don’t need to think it through since my husband nails that for me next.
“I’m scared, Danielle.” I hear it in his voice. It’s the very idea we both feared from the beginning as it’s brought to life before us.
“Don’t be,” I say, gearing up to utter the words I’ve rehearsed so many times that I actually believe them myself. “She’s yours, Ford. In every way that matters, she’s yours.” Except for that one tiny thing, that one little legality called blood. “She’s been yours for the last nineteen months. You’re the one who can provide a stable home for her. You’re the one who works a semi-normal job with actual time off.” I say the words that I’ve thought through so many times. It’s not an actual normal job or he’d be home at eight o’clock on a Thursday night. “You’re the one who was there for me through nearly my entire pregnancy, and you’re the one who was in the delivery room. You’re the one I married.”
You’re the one I settled for when someone else held my heart.
Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to marry him, but he was offering me something I needed at the time, and I couldn’t see any other answer.
I still can’t.
Ford is a good, steady guy. He’s reliable, and he’s balanced, and he offers my daughter things she wouldn’t otherwise have had. He’s become my best friend. But he’s not Tyler.
When a friend told me she thought she loved two different men back in our early twenties, I scoffed. You can’t love two men at the same time, I’d told her with a little bit of arrogance, like I was some expert on love at a time when I’d just moved to Milwaukee with a guy who turned out, in the end, to be a total douchebag.
Turns out I was wrong.
You absolutely can love two men at the same time, and circumstances are what determines which of them you end up with. Not which one you deserve. Not which one deserves you. Not which one is the better choice or better suited for you. But life in general as it happens.
And just as Tyler once told me that he didn’t have a choice in his own decisions, I finally sort of get that. I didn’t have much choice, either. Not when it came to making my decisions in the best interest of my child.
I could either wait around for a gamble with someone who