Page 59 of His Vivacious Angel
“Like what?”
“Abigail or Madelyn—Abby, Maddy—for a girl.” I swallow past the glass in my throat. “Nicholas or Oliver—Nicky, Ollie—for a boy.”
Shayla hums as we sit with that. Any visions of what could have been my future start to fade. When I get my phone back, the first thing I’ll do is delete the baby names list I made in my Notes app since I won’t need it anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Autumn,” Shayla says after a while. “What are you going to do now?”
I chew the inside of my lip as I think it over, hating what I have to do. “Try to force myself to get over Forest and move on, I guess. But the kids—” I press my hands to my heart, curling in on myself. “I don’t know what we’re going to say tothem. I don’t want to leave them or…or try to forget about them.”
Shayla clutches my hand, blinking back tears. “You won’t be able to. Trust me.”
“But I have to,” I nearly wail. “I already have to remind myself all the time that his kids are notmykids, and it hurts so much. It’ll kill me if Forest finds someone else and gets married.”For more reasons than I’d have admitted before today.“His wife definitely won’t want me around, and it’ll only confuse the kids even more. But I’m scared that, if I try to have a real relationship with Forest, wait around, hoping he’ll eventually decide he wants to have more kids—which he might never do—then I’ll grow to resent him. That’s not fair to either of us. So I have to cut ties now, and I want to die just thinking about it.”
Shayla rolls her lips and nods. “I felt the exact same way about James and Grayson. I don’t know how I would have survived it if James and I couldn’t be together.”
We’re back to hugging, trying to comfort one another until we’re spent of tears,
“When are you going to break things off with Forest?” Shayla asks.
My chest hurts just thinking about it. “Tonight, after the kids go to bed.”
“And then?”
“Try not to fall for anyone else whose future doesn’t align with mine.”
We take a few more minutes to sit in the closet, since I’m not ready to face anyone just yet, and Shayla nudges my shoulder. “The silver lining in all this is that now you won’t become ‘Mr. and Mrs. Forest and Autumn Woods’. That’s something, at least.”
“Oh yeah, because ‘Autumn Fischer’ reallyrolls off the tongue,” I say, then snort. “Imagine if he’d taken our last name. ‘Forest Fischer’.”
“I don’t know which is worse,” Shayla says with a small chuckle. She pats the floor, then wipes her hand on her white tennis skirt. “Why is the carpet wet?”
“You don’t want to know,” I say, pushing her shoulder so she’ll scoot away from the wet spot.
Her mouth twists like she’s sucked on a sour wedge of lemon, and she shakes her hand out. “Please tell me it’s not what I think it is,” she says with a little squeal.
“Sorry, sis. It’s exactly what you think it is,” I say, cracking a genuine smile. Leave it to one of my sisters to make me want to laugh at a depressing time like this. “You might want to wash your hands.”
Shayla flings herself out of the closet and races to Forest’s en suite, chanting, “Ew, ew, ew,” repeatedly. “Eden!” she yells when she leaves the bedroom after scrubbing her hands clean. “Can you watch the kids? I need to run home to change my skirt.” I hear the front door slam a moment later.
Okay, so she did lift my mood somewhat. I crawl out of the closet and nab two of Forest’s boxer-briefs to slip on when I get cleaned up and redressed, then rifle through his medicine cabinet. I don’t have any cramps yet, but I shake out and swallow two Ibuprofen just in case.
After an awkward, silent drive with me staring out the passenger window on the way to the hospital, our group stands in the hallway outside Dad’s new room, since he’s been moved out of the ICU. We play rock-paper-scissors to decide which family gets to see Dad first, so we don’t overwhelm him by visiting all at once. Forest nervously shifts closer to me when Shayla scowlsat him, which only makes her scowl harder, and James thumbs his nose at him. I’ve never seen my brother-in-law so pissed off, so I have no doubt Shayla told him everything on the ride over.
Though his voice is weaker than I’ve ever heard it, we don’t make it past two rounds before Dad shouts, “If you girls don’t quit messing around and let me see my grandkids right now”—he takes an audibly raspy breath—“you’re all grounded to your houses for the next six months.”
“Sherman, please, stop all that yelling and breathe,” Mom chides. “The doctor said you need to keep your stress levels down.”
“I don’t care what the doctor said, angel,” he says with a grumpy huff. “You tell them they can all go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks if they try to stop me from seeing my family.”
Forest and I hang back to allow Shayla and Eden to go inside with their families, the kids bursting with excitement to show their grandpa their poster. Forest gently clasps Josephine by the shoulders when she tries to follow Bailey, Isaiah, and Brady inside. Bless her precious little heart, she looks up at her dad with her face drawn, questioning why she’s not allowed inside yet. I have to turn away so she doesn’t see the tears welling in my eyes. It’s painful listening to Dad greet each child by name, the hospital bed squeaking as multiples are surely climbing onto it to hug him.
“Where’s Autumn?” Dad asks loudly afterward, though he’s breathing harder. “Is she running late?”
Standing just outside the doorway, I call out, “I’m here.”
Dad says, “Get your butt in here, young lady, and come give me a hug.”
I can’t look at Forest when I pass Benjamin to him, then drag my feet inside, where there’s hardly an inch of standing room. “Hi, Daddy.”
