I clung to his shirt, fighting for breath, as an all-out panic attack tore through me. It wasn’t my finest hour. It was, however, thirty minutes before the entire Leblanc family was set to descend upon my old Victorian for Thanksgiving dinner and I had just burned the bottom of the sweet potatoes.
Roman and I had been taking it slow. Which, for us, meant we’d furnished an entire house together, he’d moved in, we’d taken two full weeks off work so we could spend every day together, he’d made love to me every night, and I’d fallen in love with him all over again. Not that I’d ever fallen out of love with him, but it was different this time.
Time had changed both of us.
But, dare I say, this version of Roman Leblanc was even better. He pissed me off with his bossiness, but it only made the moments when he was tender that much sweeter.
We had bodyguards watching us twenty-four-seven, but he never made me feel like I was trapped inside the house. He worried about me—I could see it in his eyes. But, if I wanted to go somewhere, I went. And, depending on the task, he sometimes came, too.
Not everything had changed though. We still laughed like maniacs, slow-danced in the shower, and occasionally ate dinner on a blanket on the dining room floor instead of at the table.
It wasn’t all a walk in the park though. I was still struggling with the past and our new reality. Our attorneys were working around the clock, and we waited with bated breath for a judge to sign off on our request for DNA testing. It wasn’t an easy sell, but with Rorke and his team working on their end, we had hope someone would come through for us.
Tessa weighed heavily on our minds. I prayed that she was safe. And, if I was being honest, I prayed the same for Clare. I couldn’t imagine what she was living through, but Roman was right. Our first responsibility had to be Tessa, but that didn’t mean I’d give Clare up.
I’d framed the grainy surveillance photo of Tessa and placed it on the nightstand next to a picture of Tripp. Then I promptly lost it when I realized, if Tessa was ours, it probably meant that Tripp wasn’t.
Roman held me until I was out of tears and eventually fell asleep in his arms. The next morning, I awoke and found him fully dressed, sitting in bed, holding a scrapbook that I knew had still been in my nightstand at the old house.
I’d started it when we’d first decided to do IVF. In that book was everything from the beginning to the end: ultrasound follicle pictures from when I was in the stimulation phase. Pictures of Roman and me wearing those hair nets doctors wear in surgery—it was taken just minutes before they’d put me under for our egg retrieval. There was another picture of us in the exact same pose taken five days later as we held a tiny picture of two beautiful embryos while waited for them to be transferred back into my uterus.
Then the images changed. There was a picture of us holding a positive pregnancy test, both of our eyes filled with tears. It was followed with weekly belly pictures leading up to our twenty-week ultrasound, where we found out about Tripp’s condition. But, even through my grief, I still documented every moment of our little boy’s life.
On the last page was a picture of his tiny body snuggled into my chest, Roman’s hand on his back, a huge smile on both of our faces. The name Roman Daniel Leblanc, III “Tripp” in huge letters at the bottom of the page.
Roman smiled as he placed the album in my lap then kissed my forehead. “Lis, he was ours in every way that mattered. He was created with love, born with love, and died with love. Not everyone can say that.”
Oh, yes. I loved Roman Leblanc.
So, with tears in my eyes and a photo album of our baby clutched to my chest, I filled him in. “I love you.”
He grinned, the twinkle of the man I’d first met all those years ago dancing in his silver eyes as he said, “I love you, too. I never stopped, and I never will.”
That afternoon, we went to visit Tripp’s grave together for the first time ever.
The peace I felt while standing in Roman’s arms as we both spoke softly to our little man was indescribable. When we got home later that night, just before we fell asleep, Roman confessed that, the day I’d buried Tripp’s ashes at the cemetery, he’d spent the afternoon in my empty house, sitting on the edge of our old bed, trying to figure out how that had become his life.
It broke my heart, but I held him tight and assured him that that life was over for both of us. And I meant it. I wasn’t a fortune teller, but I still knew that Roman was here to stay. Mainly, because I flat-out refused to ever let him go again.
After that, he sat in bed, laughing, as I gave him a ration of shit because, if he had been sitting on my bed a year ago, he had clearly broken in.
We both fell asleep with smiles on our faces.
Content for no other reason than we were doing it together.
Which brings us back to the now. Thanksgiving Day. Burnt sweet potatoes. Me in an all-out panic about that—but mainly about spending a holiday with Roman’s family for the first time in years.
“Chill out,” he said, palming each side of my face and dipping his forehead to rest on mine.