Page 101 of The Anchor Holds

“Does she know about me?” I asked, narcissistic as fuck.

He nodded again.

“Well, if she’s a good one, then she’ll recognize that you’re doing the unconscious reenactment all over again with me.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was weighed down with dread that I’d inevitably cause Elliot harm. Reliving the loss of a woman he couldn’t save.

“That’s not what she thinks at all.” Elliot pressed his lips together. “And if it was, I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything, picking at a loose thread on the sofa.

“I thought I knew what it was to be content and fulfilled in life.” Elliot squeezed my thigh harder to get my attention. “Until you, Calliope. Until I heard I had the power to make you happy.”

My heart swelled at the reverence in his tone. And I had to kill it. I had to. Many years had passed since I was that little girl, uneasy in the calm life offered if you were lucky enough to have good parents and a quiet childhood without turmoil. Yet I was still her, that little girl, gritting her teeth, muscles stiff, unable to trust something as simple as happiness.

“What do you see in your future?” I asked him, realizing how little information I’d actually asked of him. I had immense interest in Elliot, his life and everything about him. But I had very rarely done something as simple asask him questions.

“My future,” he clicked his tongue. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time there.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of my palm.

“No shit,” I gave him a smirk. Elliot was a true live-in-the-present type of guy. One of the many, many things that I loved about him. “Any rough blueprints?” I relaxed into his arms.

“Rough blueprints.” Elliot drummed his fingers along his chin. “Watching Clara go to prom, watch my brother scare the shit out of some boy, girl, or non-binary person—whomever Clara elects to be her date.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Beau will be equally protective and threatening to someone who dares think they’re good enough for his little girl.” He smiled warmly, and I smiled with him. Not just because I agreed with the gruff Beau who would likely measure up with my brother and Kip in the department of protective girl dads.

But also because that was a pretty wonderful view of the future, Clara growing, healthy, happy, doing normal teenage things. Although I doubted Clara would do anything ‘normal.’ I was excited to see what she grew up to be.

Until I realized that if all went according to plan, I wouldn’t be a part of Elliot’s, and therefore Clara’s, future. I wouldn’t see her. Or him.

I lost the feeling in my fingers.

“Maybe my brother getting out of his own way and getting himself some happiness,” Elliot continued. “My boat. Sunshine. Good hauls. A restaurant with asses in seats.” He paused, his gaze heavy on mine. “A woman I love warming my bed.”

The burn intensified in my throat, so I rummaged through my purse for antacids, even though my heartburn didn’t have a physical cause.

Elliot let me do so in silence, watching me pop the pill with an uptick to his mouth.

I chewed. “Anything else?”

“Think that’s a pretty good blueprint for happiness.”

“You don’t want children?” I didn’t hide the disbelief from my tone.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

I narrowed my gaze on him. “This is some kind of lie because you’ve deduced, correctly, that I don’t want them, and you’ve either decided to sacrifice that want to stay together or you’re sure you can make me change my mind, as society promises you can since women who don’t want children are merely confused about their role in life.”

Elliot crossed his leg over his knee, leaning back in his chair casually, but I saw his brows furrow. “You think I’d be that calculating and think so little of you?”

“I don’t think you consciously do.” I shrugged, even though the accusation and hurt in his tone hit me in the soft places he’d discovered, ones he’d created inside of me. “Internalized misogyny is a thing, living in there, camouflaged. Maybe you’re sure right now that you don’t want them, but you’re made to be someone’s Little League coach, to teach them how to fish, help with math homework.”

Even as I said it, I pictured a smiling Elliot in my mind doing all of those things like he was born to.

I looked him in the eyes, and it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “I won’t rob you of that.” I’d intended on sounding clear, resolved, but my voice was thin and raspy. “I won’t rob a child of that. And I won’t change my mind. I can’t. I ensured that with an irreversible medical procedure.”

I’d always known I didn’t want children, had been happy to rely on birth control. But after …the event, having control being taken from me in such a visceral way, I wanted to ensure therewasn’t even a sliver of a chance that I’d be forced to be a mother. That I’d never have to make a choice not to be one and feel guilt or regret.

I’d had to go to three different doctors, because apparently, a woman couldn’t get sterilized as easily as a man; she might change her mind.

It had infuriated me to no end, but once the procedure was done, I’d felt a weight off my shoulders. I’d never felt regret, emptiness or being broken somehow.

Yet staring into Elliot’s eyes, looking at an alternate future, one with him being the father of my children, I did feel a sliver of it. Even though I knew it wouldn’t work. A man, even one as close to being as close to perfect as possible, did not have the power to change me so completely. There was no future where I was the mother to his children. He needed to know that.

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