𝙺𝚊𝚛𝚖𝚊

𝔎 1.

𝔍𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔫'𝔰 𝔭𝔬𝔳
Living life with regret and fear is one of the worst ways you can kill your life away. I have had my own fair share of regret in life, which consists of hurting people in the past. And the fear was even worse. I feared that karma was somehow going to come crawling back and that pain from the past would soon be hitting me even harder.

But I can't live my life that way anymore.

Not when I now have an amazing wife and a beautiful baby girl.

And that my biggest secret and regret of my life happened so many years ago.

Not even my wife knows.

But how could karma come back after all this time that has passed?

These thoughts have flooded my mind and have kept me up at night for the past few years.

It might even kill me.

***

"It's getting a bit late, you're not coming to bed?" My wife gently asks me taking me out of my thoughts as I had been staring at an empty TV screen in the living room for God knows how long. She held our sleeping six month old daughter Daisy, waiting at the end of the beige carpet staircase with white wooden bars.

"Yeah, sorry, just dozed off," I shake my head, standing up and putting the TV remote away.

Daisy gently cries making Hailey look down at her.

"Guess she's a little grumpy too," she says and I gently laughed at her comment.

"I'll be in bed in a second okay?" I say giving her a kiss and with that I picked up my shoes from the carpet as Hailey made her way up the staircase.

I turned off the living room lights and soon followed Hailey up the stairs. Hailey entered the baby's room, carefully placing her inside her white wooden crib. I smile at our daughter as she had the most adorable face I've ever seen.

Long eyelashes, a cute tiny button nose, the most pouty lips, and lets not forget her very kissable chubby cheeks.

Her skin was fair like mine, and her hair was a light brown in straight strands that covered her scalp.

"She didn't take a nap today did she?" I whisper and she shakes her head saying, "she refused." Normally Daisy was difficult to put to sleep at night, but she loved sleeping during the day. But, since she hadn't taken a nap today, she was extremely tired and fast asleep now at 10pm rather than screaming bloody murder at 12am, refusing to sleep.

I stood next to Hailey, joining her in our nightly look of adoration for our daughter. But that quickly came to an end when Hailey asked me if I was okay.

"You were just staring at the TV," she says. She doesn't know about the dark secret. About the regret and fear that kills me every day and night, from the moment I wake up, until the moment I fall asleep.

"You're not high are you?" She jokes making me softly laugh as I didn't want to wake up Daisy.

"No," I shake my head with a laugh and she lifts one eyebrow at me.

Something she's always done when she thought I was lying to her.

"I'm not high," I insisted as she then relaxed her one lifted eyebrow.

"Hm, alright," she muttered as she then walked past me waiting at the door way. I bend over the crib, planting a gentle kiss on Daisy's forehead before leaving the room with Hailey.