Page 107 of Long Enough
He must have been concerned about the expression on her face because he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I was worried I upset you,” she whispered.
“Why would you upset me?”
She gave a head nod to the girl in his arms.
He turned to her, effectively blocking their conversation from therest of the room, the girl still snug to his chest. “You worried I’d be angry at you holding a child?”
She twitched uncomfortably.
“Belleza, we lost our son. It was heartbreaking, yes. But it’s not this child’s fault, nor is it a crime to want to hold her or any other child, for that matter.” He adjusted Paris so she sat further up his forearm, and he caressed Daleyza’s cheek with his free hand. “You were always at your most beautiful when you were doing mother things with Tobias. Any time I had the chance to watch you with him, I took it.”
She looked down at her hands twisting in front of her, picking at the nail of one of her fingers.
His warm hand reached down to stop her movements. “Daleyza.”
When she finally had the strength to look up, she looked at him through her eyelashes, her fingers still picking at each other under his hand, and her teeth biting into her bottom lip.
He reached up to rescue her lip from being bitten until it bled, then brushed a wisp of hair that had fallen free of her ponytail back across the top of her head. Clearly aware they were in a room full of people, he whispered to her, “I miss him too, Daleyza. Every day. We’re not the youngest anymore. I’ve got shitty knees for bending and picking stuff up. I’m going to have arthritis in my shoulder, most likely, after having it destroyed by those fricking bullets, and I wholeheartedly admit I hated every second of all bodily fluids attached to babies. But if you wanted, I would do it all over again. Being a father was the second-best thing in my life.”
She gasped. “What was the best part?”
“Being married to you.”
Her eyes welled up with tears. “Do you mean that?”
“I do.”
Paris started to squirm sleepily in his arms. They both glanced at the child trying to wake up.
“We’re not the youngest anymore. There would be differenttypes of risks this time. Is that what you want,belleza? Do you want to have another child?”
A huge burp from Paris broke the moment. Both jumped at the noise, looking down at the beautiful, sweet child who never cried, never raised a fuss, but apparently could belch louder than Kubrick. They both started laughing at the incongruity of it.
Ildefanso cuddled the sweet little girl closer under his neck, but his eyes were once again focused completely on her.
Daleyza reached for the tiny baby’s hand resting at the base of his throat. Her heart screamed at her to answer “yes,” but she wondered if she was being naive. That maybe she was being foolish and shouldn’t be hoping for another child when they had yet to prove they could weather the storms to come without slipping into old habits.
“Do you worry?” she asked. “Worry that there’s been too much time since we were first together? Worry that we’ll make the same mistakes again?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t, actually.” He stepped in close to kiss her hairline above her ear. “We were young. We knew nothing and were only able to respond to the world we were stuck in. I wish we’d had the chance to see how we coped in the real world after we fled Argentina, but our destiny was never meant to be normal, I don’t think. Now, we’ve had ten years apart, and we understand how we should have worked together, not separately. As long as we hold onto that, we can overcome anything. And as long as we stand together—work together—then we’ll never make those mistakes again.”
Hope slid between them, tightening the tendrils that had sprouted upon his return to her life.
Before their marriage, they’d been surrounded by people, but always alone. Doing what it took to survive.
Their arranged marriage had shackled them to one another as two people who didn’t know how to coexist with others. They were used to fear and manipulation. Yes, they’d found a way to exist together. They’d even found intimacy and passion. But still, they’dkept each other at arm’s length, afraid to rely on one another out of fear they’d be hurt worse than before.
Then he’d shattered the chains and fled, and they’d been reduced to living completely separate from the rest of the world. Isolated within billions of people, and forced to reflect on what could have been if only they’d been less afraid.
Now? He’d bound them together with something malleable—love and trust.
From the moment he returned to her world, he’d included her, never once cutting her out. He’d trusted her to be who she was, to use her skills to their advantage, and to do what was best for both of them, even when he admitted that his brain wanted to do things the old way—keep her uneducated on what was going on to protect her.
It took the death of a child, the loss of a parent, the destruction of a marriage, and a lot of years of suffering to get here, but they’d found their way to be together, not separate, and it made them stronger. It had taken far too long to get to this point, but it didn’t matter. They were here now, and it would be foolish to squander the opportunity on fears of “What if…?”
“Then I think, if it’s meant to be, it will happen. But if it doesn’t, I’ll still have you, and that’s what’s most important.”
