Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
For the first time in a long time, Gaia woke without a single ounce of stress plaguing her mind, free from the doubt that had riddled her for a month or the anguish that had taken over when she had found out the truth about Max. It had knocked her for a six, every morsel of information that had told her who the girl was, but her weeks of worry were over and on Sunday morning, she woke with a smile at half seven.
Clover had never slept in that late before, giving her parents an extra hour to sleep in before her hungry cries woke them. Gaia rolled onto her side, ready to face the day as she slipped out of bed and scuffed her feet into a pair of slippers, quietly padding out of the room so she didn't wake her husband. He was sleeping soundly on his front, something he hadn't done for more than a month, as he snored against his pillow.
Slipping her loose nightdress off one shoulder, Gaia smiled down at her crying daughter as she bent down to scoop her up, soothing her back as she nestled her against her chest. She hadn't breastfed much at all recently, and Gaia missed those peaceful bonding times each day, when she could be with her daughter uninterrupted. Cradling Clover close, she wandered back into her own bedroom and sat down in the same spot where she had spent the night, resting her back against the headboard and closing her eyes, the crown of her head against the wall.
This was heaven as she knew it, life slipping back into the comfortable rhythm with which she began her favourite day of the week. Evan snoozed beside her, peaceful and oblivious as she spent twenty minutes of bliss with their youngest child. The forecast on her phone declared that it would be a beautiful July day, the epitome of summer with blue skies and a bright sun unobstructed by clouds, the temperature a perfect eighteen degrees. Gaia was perfectly content with anything from fifteen to twenty-one degrees, above which she was too warm to be comfortable.
Evan stirred as Gaia dressed, keeping an eye on Clover, who was lying on the duvet, happily thumping her feet and grinning up at the ceiling as though it was the most fascinating thing in the world. As the sun poured through the window, the tree outside dappled the light, casting moving shadows across the ceiling that had captured her attention. Gaia chuckled as she watched her daughter, and Evan looked up from his sleep as she pulled on her bra, doing it up around her stomach before twisting it round and hooking the straps over her shoulders.
"Morning, beautiful," he croaked, his voice scratchy for his first words of the day.
"Morning," Gaia said, pulling on a t-shirt dress. In the time it took her to tug it over her head, Evan got out of bed and was standing right in front of her when she reappeared from the material, and she jumped with a laugh. "What're you doing?"
"Loving you," he said, pressing his lips to hers as he held her hips against his. Gaia swallowed the seed of lust, suppressing the desire to lead him back to the bed and pull him on top of her. Instead, she draped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek on his shoulder, and he held his arms around her shoulders, and she felt as though a single hug from her husband could solve every qualm in her mind. It was as though his touch untangled the threads of thought that littered her brain, knots slipping loose until things seemed to make sense again.
