The Beginning After The End

Chapter 17

The anger that flashed through Josiah's eyes were enough to let me know that I had messed up.

"Are you serious, Liz?" He asked, pulling away from me and running his hand down his face in anger. "I'm really trying here and you're not helping at all."

"I'm sorry but I'm really afraid to trust you after everything, I need time." I defended, getting worked up.

"Doesn't give you a pass to be rude. And trust? Liz, you played two guys and almost destroyed them emotionally but I still looked over your mistakes and trusted you but you can't let go of this one thing? I'm trying to fix everything but it seems your big ego hasn't got enough so fine then. Take your time."

He walked out of the nursery and a few seconds later I heard the bedroom doors shut, letting out a sigh, I followed him out and downstairs where Abigail handed me Remiel to breastfeed him.

He spent the rest of the party avoiding me, only coming to me to hand over one of the boys when they had to be fed. It was only when the last people left, Mia and Andre, that he came to sit on the couch next to me.

The saddest goodbye being Gideon and Lora.

He sighed, " I'm going to bed now, you should get the breastmilk squeezing thing from the nursery and fill some bottles so I can be able to help. I took a week off from work to help you a little and when schools close, Abigail volunteered to help you so yeah. Goodnight."

I watched as he moved toward the stairs, with Remiel in his arms, and got up when I noticed him waiting for me.

We set the twins in their matching berceau and I smiled at the two, then looked over at their father. "Can I borrow your phone to take a picture?"

"Sure." He took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. After about a dozen pictures, I gave him back. "I've got a lot of pictures of today too."

I nodded and started walking out of the room, into our bedroom, but stopped once I realized something. "I don't think I can sleep knowing that my babies are in another room with the door closed. I think I'll just camp out here."

"No need to. There are baby monitors~" I cut him off.

"Yeah but~" he cut me off too.

"And there's an option to leave the sliding doors open so it's like we're in the same room." He opened the doors wide, showing me what he meant. "You should get some milk out of your... boobs, and put them in the fridge while I shower. Then I'll watch them as you shower."

I watched as he went to the bathroom, whistling a familiar tune. It brought me back to when Gideon and I were children, playing in our garden and making up stories as we did so. Only then did I remember the words to song.

"Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell down and bumped his head, momma called the doctor and the doctor said, no more monkeys jumping on the bed."

I sang the song to Uriel, who had woken up for milk, as I gave him some of the milk I had pumped into the bottles.

For the first time I saw the childish song in a new light.

You do something wrong and you get hurt. Everything is telling you that it was wrong and if you do it again you will once again get hurt.

But you do it anyways.

Not this time because I had understood what I had done wrong and was going to try my best to fix it.

I watched as Josiah walked back into the room, with only a towel, and then nothing. He had taken his towel off and put on some pyjama shorts. Just then I let out a silent gasp, which wasn't very silent because he immediately looked up at me.