Lesson Learned✔

26

Chris

Dark hair spilled over pillows, eyes closed, chest rising and falling with each breath, hands curled around her stomach in a protective way.

I watched her sleep, even when my own eyes felt heavy with exhaustion, when my limbs were agitated from the constant moving. Still I didn't close my eyes even when all I wanted was to slide into bed with her, to settle between her legs and arms while her fingers knotted in my hair, until she was whispering my name and I was praying hers.

I couldn't allow myself the luxury of not seeing her, of closing my eyes and seeing the picture Nydia had showed me instead of this. Thinking that in a few minutes when she woke up, she wouldn't want me anymore for what I did and didn't do.

As she had all the right to do, to leave me and find someone who would protect her in a fierce manner. Who would hopefully love her more than I did and know what not to do to her, for them to live long and happy as I rotted away with my sins.

I would accept it even when it would hurt, even when it wasn't what I wanted.

Yet still I longed for her, to have her, to touch her but I couldn't even go near her. This was as close as I allowed myself to be with her in the room, to sit a few feet away and it was torture to do so.

To have her and not have her, to push her away from me.

Lowering my gaze to her stomach, my fingers itched to touch it, to try and feel what I had almost lost, to caress and kiss what I had learned to love. To try and feel any movement from them, to guess what they would be.

It pained me more and more each second, to see her well but not. To see her wrapped wrist, to see tubes wrapped around her arms. So much fucking pain because of me, because I couldn't protect her, because I didn't deserve her, I didn't-

"Aren't you supposed to be with your wife?"

My thoughts were broken at her voice, at the resentment and hurt, at the confusion in seeing me here. Gazing at her, my hands tightening around the arm of the chair, seeing brown hues streaked with pain, seeing them swollen and red. I had to bite away my own tears- I deserved this, I needed to accept this, needed her to hate me to leave me.

Wife. Aspen was supposed to be my wife, I still wanted her to be my wife but I doubted she would want to be mine, not after what she saw.

Swallowing, I pushed back the tears that wanted to spill, prolonging the conversation I didn't want to have. "Dr. Evanston told me you're fine. That the twins are fine."

And wasn't that a relief, to know that even when she had bleed they were still there. That even when Nydia had drugged her twice, they were healthy. That there wouldn't be any long term consequences, that Aspen would be able to see them grow.

Eyes brimmed with sadness, with hurt as I evaded her question but she brushed it away, "She told me the genders." She sat up straighter in bed, the sheets slipping past her waist, a slit of skin revealing as she tugged her hands to her lap.

I didn't move, not even when I wanted to help her, to tug her robe on, to check her vitals. I wanted to bring Dr. Evanston again, to bring someone to help her, to assure me that she was fine.

"What are they?"

I shouldn't even ask, I didn't deserve to know. It would be torture to know after what I wanted her to do, to know what I could have but never have.

"A boy and a girl," she answered as she rubbed her stomach in a loving manner. Bare fingers, gone was the ring I had given her, taken away by Nydia for selfish ways.