“With every breath that I draw,” she whispers, and it feels like there’s this fist around my heart. Her confession is raw and I truly want to believe it. I need to. I’m not sure, but it feels like she’s being honest. It feels like the truth, so I give her one of my own.
“I’ve missed you too, pet.”
“Then don’t send me away again, Roman. Let me come home. I know my lies hurt you—they hurt both of us. But, I never lied about anything that was important. I love you.”
Let her come home. Does she have any idea how much I want that? Does she know what it did to me to know that I pushed her away thinking she had planted evidence on me, only to find out Robert had done it? Does she have any idea the hell I’ve gone through knowing I pushed away my only chance at happiness? I used to think love was a lie invented by Hollywood, a dream created to sell books and movies. Survival was the only thing I understood, and maybe it still is, because I know I need Ana in my life to survive. Without her, I don’t want to. I don’t want to live one more day without her.
“Ana? Can I turn around now, if I ask you to stay?” I question, my voice thick. I look down at my hands and they’re shaking.
“Are you going to ask me to stay?” she asks, her voice breaking.
“No,” I tell her, turning. My eyes instantly lock onto her. “I’m going to beg…” My voice trails off because I’m standing there drinking in the woman I adore. I drink her in, her sun-kissed blonde hair shining, her violet eyes full of tears. The lavender sundress she’s wearing joins in and it all comes together to make her more beautiful than even I remembered.
The thing that freezes my voice and makes any further words impossible though is the obvious swell of her stomach.
Ana. My Ana, is… pregnant.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Ana
I see the exact moment Roman discovers I’m pregnant. I’m okay with it. After spending the night in his arms, him holding me even as he was sleeping, him whispering my name when I curled into him, I knew. He might not have said it and maybe he never will, but Roman loves me. That was evident in the way he came unraveled without me, in the way he held me last night. He loves me. I can live without the words because I feel them.
Still, even knowing that, this morning I was nervous. I was prepared to fight Roman tooth and nail to get him to admit that he needed me. Knowing he’s caving this easily makes it all okay.
“Ana?” he asks, a look of disbelief on his face and maybe, just maybe…happiness. My hand goes to my stomach, rubbing it softly.
“Surprise?” I half tell, half ask.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, panicking. Is he going to get mad about this? Because I didn’t tell him? Will he see that there was no way I was going to force him to accept me in his life, if he didn’t want me?
“We’re having a baby?”
I bite my lip and try to remember to breathe.
“A little boy.”
“You already know?” he asks, his eyes moving from my stomach to my face, as he walks to me.
“Yeah.” I’m unsure of what else to say.
“We’re having a baby,” he whispers, dropping to his knees in front of me. His large hand caresses each side of my stomach, and then he places a kiss on the middle of it. Little Roman apparently doesn’t like that, because he kicks out against his dad’s kiss. Roman’s head snaps back and he looks up at me.
“I think he might be a football player,” I tell him, smiling. I place my hand over one of Roman’s and bring it back to the spot on my stomach where the baby likes to push. In just a minute or two, I feel the fluttering sensation as the baby delivers a well-timed kick.
“Oh my God. That’s our baby,” Roman says, at a loss for words and acting in ways I never thought I’d see him.
“It is,” I tell him, my fingers tangling in his hair.
“We’re going to have a baby,” he says again, but I see the happiness on his face and something shifts inside of me.
“We are. We’re going to be a family, Roman.”
“You’re never leaving me, Ana. I can’t make it without you,” he says, allowing the fear to cloud his eyes briefly before that bone-melting dominant look returns, and his hand wraps in my hair. He brings our lips together for a kiss and right before his claims mine, he murmurs against them. “You’re never getting away from me again, pet.” I let his claim echo through my body, healing the empty spots inside of me that are remaining, and take his kiss. I don’t answer, because there’s nothing else to say.
I never want to leave Roman. I’m home to stay.
Epilogue
Ana
Roman Allen Anthes was born on November 14th at three in the morning after making me go through forty-two hours of grueling labor and nearly causing his father to go insane. It was all worth it though, and when I look at the child who is turning six months old today, I couldn’t imagine life being more complete.
“Is mommy’s baby, hungry?” I ask him, reaching down into the crib. He instantly stops crying and he reaches out to me with his little hands, knowing what comes next.
I take him to the rocking chair that Roman surprised me with when we were fixing up the nursery. It’s a beautiful handmade piece that I will cherish the rest of my life. I pull the strap from my dress and adjust my breast so the baby can begin to nurse. He latches on and greedily drinks up. It took some getting used to, but I love breastfeeding. It sounds hokey, but it feels as if by doing it, I’m affirming nature’s grand design. I even feel beautiful, even if my body is never going to get back to the shape it was in before Roman Jr. decided to wreck it.
I begin rocking slowly. Not enough movement to jar him, but just a soft, rhythmic movement that he likes. I hum his favorite lullaby. Pretty soon, his hungry grunts and swallows fill the room as his little hand wraps around my finger. I kiss his forehead and commit this to memory. Another beautiful memory in a lifetime of them. That’s what life with Roman has given me. I’m the luckiest woman on the face of the Earth. I feel that in my soul. Roman and I might have started off rocky, but the ride was more than worth it. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Epilogue
Roman
It’s two in the afternoon on a Friday and I’m home. I won’t be going back into town until sometime Monday, and if I had my way, I wouldn’t then.
I make a point of always trying to be home around this time each day. I don’t want to miss it. Ana has no idea the hoops I jump through just so I can be here in time to watch her nurse our son. When I round the corner to the baby’s nursery, I stop as the breath stalls in my chest.
Ana is humming a song and our child is suckling from her breast, greedily eating. The little grunts he makes fills the room and I smile, but my heart is full. In this room is my world. My complete world. I once thought love didn’t exist, merely survival. I was so fucking wrong. There are no words.
Love exists. I look at Ana now and I can’t believe it. I was an asshole. Hell, I still am, in many ways. I used her. I demanded her acceptance, her allegiance, and her body. I held her brother over her head and demanded she give me everything I wanted. I wanted to dominate and own her. My, how the mighty fall. I might have been unfair to her, but in the end, it was her who got the victory.
She owns me. She controls my world.
“I love you, Ana.” I tell her and her face jerks
up, realizing I’m standing beside her. At my words, tears spring from her eyes. She cries at the drop of a hat these days. I worried about it until she told me that her heart was so full, she couldn’t help it.
“I love you, Roman,” she whispers, smiling.
Love isn’t about survival. I made demand after unjustified demand, trying to own and control what no man could. Love isn’t about taking. Love is all about giving. My Ana taught me that, and I’ll spend the rest of my life showing her I’ve learned the lesson well.
* * *
The End.