I smiled through my tears, staring at my son as he let me cut his hair. It wasn’t like we hadn’t done it since Chad died, but the previous cuts had been somber events.
This time he smiled and laughed with Ryker as I snipped away bits of his dark hair. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.
It was not lost on me that Ryker gave him that. Gave me that.
Ines played with her stuffed wolf happily in the living room, watching her brother’s hair fall to the floor in clumps as the boys talked, and I tried to soak up the happiness around me. It felt like every piece of hair that fell was the last piece of our lives floating away, leaving nothing but the new ones we could have.
That we already had, willingly or not.
When I finished with Axel’s hair, my hand rubbed over his head gently as I went around to look down at him. “Go ahead and shower, my sweet boy,” I whispered. He nodded, scurrying off to take a shower before bed. Ines had already fallen asleep on the couch, uninterested in the process of hair cuts. She wanted hers to grow to be longer than her waist, and she had a long way to go.
“My turn,” Ryker grunted, taking the seat Axel had occupied. I smiled at him as he tugged me into his lap. Letting my feet dangl
e over the side as I straddled his thighs, I reached up, measuring out the length I wanted for his hair and making the first snip. “What’s wrong, Sunshine?” he asked.
I sighed, continuing to cut as I tried not to make eye contact with him. I shook my head, because if Ryker had made one thing obvious in our weeks together, it was that he hated when I talked about Chad. I even understood it on some level, but I couldn’t erase my worry for the kids.
“Calla,” he warned.
I smiled at him. “I’m afraid you’ll be angry with me. You don’t like when I talk about him.”
“You’re sitting in my lap and thinking of another man?” he growled, making my lungs heave with a frustrated breath.
“It’s not like that, I swear. I don’t—” I paused, glancing into the living room to be sure Ines was still asleep. My voice dropped to a whisper when I finished the thought. “I don’t miss him.”
“Good,” Ryker said with a smile.
“Ryker!” I slapped his chest, shaking my head at his infuriating jealousy. “He was my husband.”
“And now I am, Tesoro,” he said, bringing a hand up to cup my cheek as he forced me to look down at him. I abandoned my cutting, having no choice but to focus on his intent stare.
“He was their father, and now it’s like he never existed. I don’t want them to mourn him forever. I don’t. I just—” I paused, shaking my head and trying to dislodge his focus. As always, Ryker refused, his eyes intent on my face as I tried to find the words. “I just want to do right by them, and I feel like I’m failing at that.”
“Hey,” Ryker whispered as his other hand caught my face and cradled it. “Don’t think that.”
“I would give almost anything to have had a few years to know my Mom. They had that, and I’m letting them forget him,” I whispered as tears slipped down my cheeks and Ryker caught them with his thumbs.
“I’m going to be brutally honest for a second, Tesoro.”
“When aren’t you?” I laughed.
He chuckled, his deep voice dropping to a soft murmur as he tugged me forward and rested my forehead on his. “Chad wasn’t your mother. Your mother would have loved you, and she would have treasured every moment she had with you. Your Dad wouldn’t love her the way he does if that weren’t true.”
“Chad used all of you as a cover for who he really was. People don’t suspect a cop with a wife and two kids at home to be a power-hungry sociopath. He never cared about the three of you, Sunshine, and I think you know that.”
My lungs stuttered with the pain of that admission, and the fact that it wasn’t entirely true. “I know he didn’t love me. At least now I do, but the kids—”
“Were there to keep you happy. He didn’t have to put in any effort, because you had what you wanted the most.” I winced, nodding my head and sniffling back the final tears.
There was nothing else to be said with the weight of that as I went back to cutting his hair and made quick work of it. When I finished, he grabbed Ines off the couch and took her into her room and tucked her into bed.
“I’ll tuck Axel in. You go shower off the itchy hair,” I told him, turning to my boy’s bedroom and knocking on the door. Even if he was only six, we had rules in place about privacy. The door couldn’t be locked, but we still knocked before entering, in case he was changing.
So independent.
“Where’s Ryker?” he asked as I settled into the bed with him.
“Showering off the itch,” I said with a smile, letting him lean his head onto my shoulder as I cracked open one of his favorite books to read a chapter from. Before I started, I kissed the top of his head. “Are you happy here, Cookie Monster?”