Time To Live

Chapter 21: Softly

Jenna woke in the center of a massive bed, blinked her eyes several times, and tried to observe her surroundings. Before she could even realize that there was someone lying beside her, she spotted the silky blackness of the familiar Flyers blanket and quickly put the pieces together: she was in her ex's bed. She said nothing, even when she realized that he was lying quietly beside her. He spoke softly. "Don't get scared, you're in my bed. You were exhausted, you collapsed, and I brought you up here to rest." As if intuiting her next question, he smiled softly. "Christian is taking his afternoon nap and my mom fell asleep in the rocking chair beside the crib."

She said nothing but felt a growing sense of unease at his proximity. Confusion, sadness, concern, nervousness, anxiety and a myriad of other emotions warred inside of her as she sat up and moved to slide from the bed. Chris grabbed her wrist gently and offered her a comforting smile. "We made a baby together, remember? You can take a nap next to me. I would never hurt you." The look on her face was enough for him to quickly add: "I slept on top of the blanket and my mother is two doors away, Jen. Come on!"

Before she could wade through the fog of her own mind to respond, she found herself welling with tears and exploding into hysterical sobs. The weight of her mixed emotions tugged her body back down and her head crashed into the pillow as she hiccuped a sob. "Everything is a fucking mess," she cried softly.

His bright, chocolate irises raked over her body as she shook with emotion, but he was terrified to make the wrong move and upset her further. Instead, he tried to calm her with words. "We'll figure it out," he promised. "It will be okay."

Rolling onto her left side to face him, she continued to hiccup through the tears. "How?"

"I don't know," his lips quirked into a comforting half-smile. "But somehow we will figure it all out."

"He lied to me." She turned her eyes away, tugging the all too familiar blanket up over her shoulders and staring at its black edges. 

Chris bit his bottom lip, trying to order his thoughts and find a way to ask the question that was burning a hole through his heart. Deciding to go for broke, he frowned. "How did you not know? I want to believe you, I do, but this whole thing is entirely unbelievable. You are a smart woman, Jenna. Fuck it, you're smarter than I will ever be. How did you not know that you were fucking the guitarist from my band?"

Tears rushed from between her lashes and she sucked in a shaky breath. "He lied about everything and—" her voice trailed off and created a void hovering in the air between them. Eventually, she allowed her eyes to meet her ex's and she frowned back at him. "I don't know, Christopher. I was stupid and I guess I needed something that wasn't you, that wasn't connected to you. He offered me the illusion of a relationship with a man who had no ties to you or your band, and I wanted that so badly that I was utterly blind."

Chris considered this, quickly realizing that he had a hefty decision resting in his hands: he could choose to let this go and move forward with the woman he loved, or he could cling to his disbelief and lose Jenna and, quite possibly, his son. He had been through enough therapy at this point to understand that he would be an asshole to continue to cling helplessly to his inability to believe in his ex, and yet, swallowing this bitter pill was going to be no easy feat. He was speechless as he fell head over heels into the depths of her distraught eyes.