Athena's third birthday
"Hello princess," the voice of the woman I love rings through my ears stabbing my heart like knives. "Happy birthday baby girl," the others laugh and smile and I stand at the top of the stairs staring at her as if she had three heads. "Hi Shawn," she sighs a little. "Look at you pumpkin growing up so fast."
"Who let her in," I wave Ian to the side.
"She has a key," he rolls his eyes. "But I let her in, she wanted to see her daughter."
"She doesn't deserve to be here," I spit and Ian sighs.
"She wanted to be here before you came down, she was gonna leave soon anyways." He shrugs walking back towards her while she plays with the little girl, the only one awake. CJ just had his sixth birthday and I didn't see her around but they were all unusually happy so that could explain some stuff.
"Can we talk?" I look at her while she cuddles our tiny baby girl. Every time her and I get into arguments or something happens with her I think back to my dream, I lost her, I never had my boys and Athena wasn't even mine.
"Sure," she kisses Athena's cheek sitting her down. She has the boys in her care full time as of two days after we stopped talking.
"Well," I know everyone is listening in hopes that I'll ask her to marry me again, beg for forgiveness for my arrogance. "I don't want to take this somewhere where it could hurt the kids," I know the older kids, at least one of them is watching from the stairs.
"Me either, and I did a lot of thinking on my own and I was really," I stop her but she continues anyways just at the same time as me. "I was hoping you'd still like to marry me," she holds out a ring while I speak.
"I was thinking split custody," looking beyond embarrassed she throws my old wedding ring into the kitchen.
"Split custody sounds great," she nods. "I should go," she stands quickly running out of the house before anyone can stop her.
"What were you thinking," they all scold and I shrug. "She proposed to you," I watch while she sits in panic unable to unlock her car with her shaking hands and tear filled eyes.
"She cheated," I stare out while finally she gets into her car where she cries throwing something out the window and onto the driveway.
"So did you," Ian rolls his eyes.
"And she didn't talk to me for four months." I scoff. "Why is it ok when she does stuff but if I do it I'm evil?" I roll my eyes and they sigh. Nathan starts back into the kitchen on the phone speaking in French a language I can barely understand.
"I think you're screwed," Justin bites his lip while Nathan walks back in red with anger.
"I told you not to hurt her again," he growls.
"She hurt me first." I watch her car circle back around like it's been doing for the past five minutes.
"She was proposing," he throws the ring at me. "Do you know how hard that is, you should know how hard that is, the fear of rejection? How long it takes for you to find the ring, for you to decide what you wanna say, she had a whole speech Shawn." His voice goes soft. "She wanted a ring that might mean something to you so in a giant safe that nobody knows the combination to she took your ring and decided to propose with that." I look down at it and sigh.
"Can you just try and do this from my perspective? You think it's easy to reject her?" I shake my head as finally her car drives off turning away. "I didn't know she was gonna ask me to marry her, I thought she was gonna ask if she could see them too." I shrug. "I was gonna let her stay," I look at a confused Athena.
