It worried me.
Once inside, I let my bag slide off my shoulder onto the breakfast bar and hesitantly glanced back to the little boy standing awkwardly in the doorway. We continued to look at each other a while before I asked, “You got something to say to me, bud?”
A second later, he nodded. “Yeah.” He shuffled his feet.
He had something important to tell me; I could feel it, as a mother does. I gave him my undivided attention. “What is it?”
A.J. spoke, and I wasn’t prepared for what he said. Not at all.
“Well, sometimes, late at night...”
Oh, this was not starting well. My heart immediately began to race.
“Sometimes...” He looked down at the skirting and rubbed his shoe against it. His voice lowered a few decibels. “Sometimes, Daddy comes to see me.”
The pressure in my heart released, the tight band uncoiling.
Oh, Lord.
Today was not the day.
I felt like crying.
“Baby.” My eyes closed of their own accord and I let out a humorless laugh, forcing down the thickness in my throat. I pulled him into me and squeezed him tightly, rocking him from side-to-side, kissing his temple.
He hugged me back just as hard and I explained a few things to him.
“I know it feels that way.” I kissed him again. “Daddy comes to me too sometimes.” I pulled back and watched him cautiously. “In my mind. In my dreams.”
“No.” A.J. shook his head. “Not in my dreams, Mummy. It’s real.”
Oh, sweetie... no.
My heart broke as I tried to explain to him that what he was feeling, what he was seeing, was nothing more than a coping mechanism. I should know. At one point, Twitch would be in my room every single night and I would talk to him. He never responded to my anxious questions. It took me a while and a whole lot of therapy for me to realize I was psychologically hurting myself.
“When I dream of Daddy, it feels so real.” Inhaling deeply, shakily, I spoke out on an exhale, “It feels so real that sometimes I don’t want to wake up from such a beautiful dream.” I closed my eyes to stress my next words, gripping his forearms. “But it’s just a dream, honey.” I pulled him to me once again and snaked my arms around him. “It’s not real.”
A.J. frowned. “No, Mummy.” He tried to shake his head against my chest. “It’s real. Really real.”
No, it isn’t. He’s gone.
“Baby.” My heart ached as much as the spoken words. “Daddy’s gone.”
“He isn’t,” he said adamantly in only the way a five-year-old could.
I bit my lip to stop myself from releasing a pained cry. Instead, I whispered, “Yes.”
But A.J. wasn’t having it. He took a step back from me, and I felt the loss immediately. The full force of his glare hit me. “No.”
Goddammit.
Didn’t he know how much he was hurting me?
Twitch was gone.
And he was never coming back.
But my son was so important, so precious to me, that I caved, and as I did, a tear trailed my cheek. “Okay, baby.”
A look of vindication crossed him, and when he threw himself into my arms, I held my baby and wept silently.
Because my son was mourning the father he never had. And whichever way he chose to cope with that was okay with me.
Even if it meant hurting me in the process.
Chapter One
Twitch In the shadow of night, I moved slowly, quietly, and when the house came into view, I stalled. The lights were still on. I stood by the gum tree on the street corner and waited.
Looking down at my wrist, I checked my watch in the moonlight and counted the seconds. When the clock struck eleven, I peered up at the house and it was suddenly awash with darkness. It was like clockwork. Every night at eleven p.m., Lexi went to bed, but not before checking on A.J.
A small smile pulled at my lips when the lamp in my son’s room illuminated the window.
And there it was.
See?
Clockwork. Same thing, day in, day out.
A moment passed and the window dimmed, and that was my cue.
With my hands in my pockets of my hoodie, I moved gracefully, silently, and when I reached the window, I put my hands to the top of the wooden frame and pushed. It rattled as it opened. I pulled out the fly screen and placed it on the ground before climbing in. The second my foot hit the floor of his bedroom, I heard plastic cracking.
I clicked my tongue, and muttered, “Fuck.” When the little man in the bed lifted his head and blinked at me sleepily, I uttered quietly, “I thought I told you to clean this shit up.”
He rubbed at his eyes, then mumbled, “I forgot.”
“You forgot.” I chuckled under my breath. “Sure you did.”
The little smirk pulling at his lips told he was lying. My son might’ve gotten my looks, but he was his mother through and through. Kind and honest and good.
I glanced around the room, at the floor, before sighing at the mess, and stepped silently towards the bookshelf. “What’s your flavor, boy?”
“Green Eggs and Ham,” he said immediately.
My lips puckered into a small scowl. “Again?”
“Again.” He nodded, sitting up in bed.
Another sigh was pulled from me, but it was exaggerated. I really didn’t give a fuck what he wanted me to read to him. I would do it, reading the same book over and over again, if it meant I got to spend some time with my boy. Because what little time I got with him was something I cherished. It was precious, and I’d missed him his whole life. So what little I got of him, I would deal with.
Book in hand, I went to him. “Scoot over.” When he did, I sat on the edge of the bed, lying back against the timber headboard, and I put my arm around him and held the book up.
Without hesitation, he leaned his sleepy head into my chest. I blinked down at him as he let out a little yawn, and I died on the inside.
I fucking died.
Never had a child been so loved as my son. His trust was not something I deserved, but I would take it because it was habit of mine—taking things that didn’t belong to me. Claiming them as my own.
As I started to read in low tones, I recognized I didn’t even need the book anymore. I’d read it so many times I knew the damned thing by heart. But A.J. seemed to like the pictures, so I held the book up and let him turn the pages when needed, watching him smile at the goofy-looking drawings, smiling right along with him.
I never understood what people meant when they said it was the little things.
Peering down at my son... I got it.
Those smiles, his laughter, the way he scratched his butt without shame... it was worth all the time I spent away from him. For this child, for Lexi, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. I didn’t want to, but I would, which was why it was so important to have taken care of business before I reemerged from my hollow grave.
I was so close to being resurrected. I could taste it, taste Lexi’s full, sweet lips as they worshipped me.
Thinking of the woman down the hall, alone in her bed, made my gut clench. How easy it would be to sneak into her bedroom and watch her a while.
Yeah. I was a sick fuck. And old habits died hard.
God. The memory of her....
My chest ached as my mind conjured up an image of her beaming up at me, smiling in that soft, warm way that was reserved for me and me alone.
I missed her.
It had been too long.
Finished with the book, I closed it then hugged my drowsy son close to me. “You tired, little man?” He nodded into my chest and I smiled. “Want me to stay until you’re asleep?”
Another nod, weaker this time, and a thought crossed me.
I would kill for this child.
Running a hand through his messy hair, I closed my eyes, breathing him in. He smelled of green apples, fabric softener, and something uniquely A.J. I pressed my lips to his head and held them there, missing him already.
One scrawny arm flopped down across my stomach and held me tight. His voice was whisper quiet. “You’re coming back, right?”