clammy, and my body locked up. I couldn’t fucking move. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get my feet to move out from under me.
“Ma! Ma! Ma!”
“Oh, screw this! You may be able to hear her cry and not comfort her, but I sure as hell can’t!” With that she stepped aside, forcefully shoving me out of the way.
“It’s okay, Journey! It’s okay!” she coaxed to my baby girl, picking her up from the crib. “Hey… Little Miss, that’s enough of that… come on, you’re okay. I got you… you’re okay… I got you… you’re safe… I got you, baby.”
I snapped around, unable to continue to hear her comfort Journey with the same words I used all the time with Bailey. “I got you.”
I reached for her. “Give her to me!”
I swear they both looked at me with nothing but panic, especially my baby girl. She instantly threw her whole body onto Camila, locking her arms around her neck, holding onto her person for dear life.
“Ma! Ma! Ma!”
“I said, give her to me! Now!”
Camila backed away, shaking her head. “No. You need to calm down first.”
“You don’t tell me what to do! Give me my daughter!”
She held onto her tighter. “No! She’s fine, and you’re scaring her. Just calm down and then she will go to you.”
“Ma! Ma! Ma!”
I softly grabbed Journey’s arm and she screamed bloody murder.
“This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it?! To take my family from me!”
“That’s absurd! I’m just trying to help, and you’re doing the exact opposite of that right now!”
“Journey, come to Daddy!”
“Ma! Ma! Ma!”
“She’s not your mother!”
I never expected what happened next.
What was left of my world came tumbling down when I heard my son come to Camila’s defense, spewing, “She’s the only mother Journey’s ever known!”
Except, it wasn’t Jagger who knocked the fucking wind out of me like I would have expected…
It was Jackson.
<>Camila<>
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Any of it.
I should have just left. I should have walked away from this house and never looked back. But I couldn’t get my feet to move when I heard Journey crying so desperately, so wholeheartedly, so unforgivingly through their front door.
She needed me.
My girl needed me.
I wasn’t her mother by any means, though that didn’t stop me from opening the door and making my way to her as if I was being pulled by a string. Before I knew what I was doing, an urgency inside of me took over.
Seizing.
Yanking.
Controlling my every move.
Her cries resonated in my soul, in my blood running through my veins. A magnetic pull, drawing me toward her.
My feet started moving, one in front of the other, swiftly striding down the hall to her nursery where all I could hear were her cries.
Then suddenly, it was his voice.
“Baby, I’m sorry… Daddy is so sorry.”
Another subconscious step in the wrong direction, or maybe, just maybe, it was the right one?
“I never wanted this life for you, Journey. It was never supposed to be like this. Please forgive me, I need you to forgive me.”
More crying.
More subconscious steps.
More stabs at my heart.
“God, is this what you wanted for me all along? I get it, okay? I hear you! Please I am begging you to make her stop. Please help me move on … I can’t live like this anymore. I can’t go on.”
I didn’t contemplate the consequences of my actions because as soon as I stepped into her nursery all I could see, all I could feel, all I could breathe, was them.
Journey’s eyes lit up right when she saw me, and her little chubby arms reached out.
“Please, God, just send me a sign … please, I need something to hold onto…”
As if right on cue, God chose this moment to bring us together in ways that might haunt us forever.
Journey called out for me, “Ma!”
It was as much of a shock to me, as it was to her father. I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for this, but I’d be lying if I said that one little word didn’t cause everything to fade out. Just leaving us. Like I was supposed to be there. Like God wanted me there.
Why?
Causing me to blurt, “I’m here, Aiden. I’m here.”
I immediately shuddered, knowing I was about to feel the wrath of his fury.
Each second I stood there, only added to that familiar longing I felt from the first time I set eyes on him.
I wanted to comfort him, embrace him, be with him.