Page 52 of Blackout

Maybe she was right.

Maybe I should’ve fucking left.

At least then I wouldn’t have to watch the painful expression fill her pretty face.

It’s funny.

I can take pain, but I can’t take hers.

Exhaling, I swipe a hand over my face and bow my head.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Lace.”

“Don’t be sorry for expressing how you truly feel,” she sneers, furiously wiping at the tear that escapes the corner of her eye.

“I don’t know what the fuck I feel,” I admit, gripping the edge of the counter again. Frustration claws at me as I keep my eyes pinned to her. “All I know is the last thing I want is to see you lose yourself to your maker. I don’t understand why you won’t just talk to the doctor before you make a decision.”

“And I don’t know what’s so hard for you to comprehend. It’s my body, therefore it’s ultimately my decision, but it’s our baby, Blackie. It’s not a dream anymore. It’s not a what if—I’m pregnant and I can’t understand how you would risk our child being born with a heart defect.”

Her words slap me in the face, and I clench my jaw, trying to keep my emotions in check. There shouldn’t be a choice. We shouldn’t have to choose between Lacey’s mental stability and bringing a healthy baby into the world, but once again life has us by the balls. No one gets a say in the cards they’re dealt. You get what you get. You either play your fucking hand or you fold. Some people go all in. They risk everything they got and pray they don’t lose. Others, they’re more cautious and maybe that’s because they’ve lost in the past. Maybe, just maybe they want to hang onto what they got and don’t want to press their luck.

I already visit one wife in a cemetery.

I don’t want to visit Lacey in the fucking psych ward.

“Let me ask you something,” I say hoarsely, pausing to swallow the lump suffocating me. “Have you thought about what happens after the baby is born? More specifically, have you taken a fucking second to think about what happens to you?”

She doesn’t answer me as she diverts her eyes away and I take the opportunity to paint her a picture.

“The baby is born, and she’s perfect. She’s got a full head of dark hair and the prettiest brown eyes either of us have ever seen. She’s everything we dreamed of and yet, I’m the only one living the dream. You don’t look at her the way I do. You don’t hold her and feel the same things I do. To you, she just exists, and you don’t understand why. You forget the sacrifices you made bringing her into the world. You forget the dreams you had for her. You forget it all.”

“Stop,” she orders, balling her fists at her side.

“No,” I growl. “I won’t stop. You won’t get to experience the joys of motherhood, Lacey. You won’t hold her in the middle of the night when she wakes. You won’t get to watch her grow or teach her how to walk. You won’t even give a fuck because you and your maker will be one. She wins and your child, the precious baby you fought so hard to bring into this world, she fucking loses.”

Suddenly, Lacey spins around and takes the glass from the sink. Before I realize what she’s doing, she turns back to me and throws it across the room. It misses me by an inch and crashes against the floor.

“Get the fuck out of here,” she cries.

When I don’t move, she advances towards me and stands across the other end of the island.

“I want you to leave!”

“I’ll go,” I tell her. “But I won’t fucking apologize for a word of what I just said. Children are born with birth defects every day, Lace. Sometimes the doctors catch them early on and sometimes they don’t find out until the baby is already in the mother’s arms. That don’t make them broken or any less loveable.”

I loosen my grip on the granite and take a step backward. Glancing at the broken glass, I move to the sink and bend to retrieve the dustpan. Silently, I clean the mess and discard the shards of glass in the trash before looking back at her.

“I know it’s your body. I also know it’s our baby and I’ll love that baby no matter what. If there’s something wrong, I swear I will find the best doctors. I will do everything in my power to make sure she gets whatever she needs. I just don’t want to lose her mother.”

Lacey doesn’t say a word and I don’t really expect her to. As I make my way through the house and towards the front door, I start to wonder if maybe I’ve already lost her. When the cards fall, sometimes we can’t pick them up. We can only walk over them and do our damnedest to escape the wreckage.

If you’re me, you get lost.

You lose your pain to the bottle.

You drown in the poison until you forget who you are and what you’ve seen.

You get so fucking high you don’t feel your heart split wide open.

You fuck up and lose everything.

Every single fucking thing.

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