Love's Rapture

Kelly: They All Fall Down

This has nothing to do with the book but I thought it was cute.
I'm sitting in the living room writing this chapter and I glanced up at my husband. This man is as a goofy country bumpkin and he makes me laugh so hard.
We've been married 10.5 years (11 in March) and he looked up and saw me staring. This is the conversation that followed:
Husband: "What are you starting at me for?"
Me: "I'm writing a romance novel so I was looking for some inspiration."
Husband: "Well, you ain't findin any here!"
😂🤣😂🤣
10.5 years, 3 kids, more laughs than I can count... proof that there's still romance. ♥️
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Days started to fly by quicker than I ever thought they could. With the holiday barely over a week away, the entire campus was getting ready for a huge, annual Halloween bash. Parker decided to get The Hut in on the mix, so he asked Lexi to work, figuring at three months pregnant, she'd like to be involved but wouldn't want to be where the rowdy college kids could hurt her. She told him he was sweet and took the shift.

Lexi blended in with our group so effortlessly. She was the youngest, but with motherhood on the horizon, she was in a life stage none of us had experienced yet. Being around her made me think about kids, which made me think about Talon all too often. It became apparent that I was beginning to fall in love with him, which scared me.

*

A few days before the Halloween bash, everything seemed to come crashing down around me in the worst ways. My phone started ringing, and seeing it was Mom; I picked it up.

"Hey, Momma," I said with a smile in my voice.

"Hey, baby," she answered. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. Her pain-filled tone told me she'd been crying.

"Mom? What is it?"

"Is Parker there?" she asked, and I told her to hold on. I ran into his bedroom and threw open the door. He jumped when I barged in, and the book he was reading went flying. The look on my face must have stopped whatever words were about to come out of his mouth because he just scooted over on the bed.

"We're both here, mom," I said after a moment.

"God, help me; this is so hard." She took a shuddering breath. "Pop called early this morning. He said he'd been feeling a little off these last few weeks, and Grandma finally convinced him to head to the doctor." She started sobbing, and there was some movement on the line.

"Hey, kids," Dad's voice came over the phone.

"Dad, what's going on?" Parker demanded. He sounded harsh, but the look in his eyes spoke of fear.

"Yesterday, your grandpa found out he has lung cancer. It's pretty early, so there's hope, but Pop acted like he wasn't sure if he wanted to go through chemo and radiation. Your mom and grandma aren't taking that very well at all. Of course, it's up to him, but it just seems like it's too early to decide everything for sure."

Parker and I made eye contact with each other. His face drained of blood, and I'm sure mine did the same. Although we're incredibly close to our grandparents, my main concern was my mom. Pop is everything and more to her.

"Should we come home for a couple of days?" I asked Dad.

"That's a nice offer, but I think Mom will stay with Pop for a while. He told her not to, but you know your mother."

I couldn't help but smile, even if it was a sad one. "Yeah, we do."

"Keep working hard, kids. Don't worry about your grandpa. Between Maria and your mom, I'm sure they'll help him figure things out. We love you guys so much. You know that right?" he asked.

"We know. We love you, too," Parker answered.

After hanging up, we sat in silence for a few minutes staring at the wall. Parker cleared his throat and then climbed over the edge to stand up. I couldn't help but picture myself standing at a casket one day, holding one of the world's best men. Pop. It broke my heart.

Death was inescapable; I knew that. My family was everything to me. The thought of losing a single member broke me, but I couldn't control my family's size. I'd likely experience losing a lot of family... That's just the way life worked.

But what about all these other people I just chose to let into my life? What if they all disappeared. Was love meant to go this way?

I thought of Breton and how I'd felt when he died. I felt like a part of me died with him. It took years to be able to deal with the things I'd hidden within my thoughts. I thought about the last conversation I'd had with Talon. We were eating dinner at a nice restaurant, and he'd asked me what I thought my future would look like in ten years. I didn't know what to answer, mostly because the image that popped up was so beautiful that it was too good to be true.

I'd seen myself and Talon standing in a kitchen making some dessert. He'd tried to lick the spoon, and I'd turned around to pull it out of his reach, exposing my belly that was so obviously carrying his child.

It was so crystal clear, and I wanted it so badly it made me catch my breath. I hadn't even known I'd want something like that for myself! But I didn't tell him that. We'd only been together for such a short amount of time. Telling him I could see myself spending the rest of my life with him was the definition of insane.

So I'd said something about teaching and wanting to find a cute house on my own. He talked about the desire to write a book one day, and after dinner, we went to a park and pushed each other on the swings, laughing the entire time about how we must have looked to the children there. I'd forced myself to ignore that image for the rest of the night and the days that followed.

Now, my grandpa was entering a battle for his life, and I had a harsh reminder that I couldn't control anything. It didn't matter how much I'd learned in therapy or how deeply I knew that I'd be able to survive the pain.

One look at my face, and Parker stopped whatever he'd been about to do.

"Kelly," he said in warning. I picked up on the fear in his voice, and I was hurtled back in time to when we were younger. He'd sound so afraid after his nightmares when he told our parents what happened in the dream. It was the same fear, the same sound. I was scaring him, and I couldn't do anything about it no matter how badly I wanted to.

I know what I looked like without needing a mirror. I felt lost. I felt helpless. I knew one day I'd have to deal with death again, but this was too soon, wasn't it? My grandpa was most likely going to die.

Oh, God. I hated death. There was no peace in death for me. Even with the promise of a better place for the loved one, where was the security for me? Why did I have to love people? I was so selfish, but even that didn't stop the train derailed in my head.

I felt like the walls of Parker's bedroom were getting closer and closer. It's almost as if I could feel them pressing up against my skin, trying to overtake me entirely. My eyes grew wide when I felt that inevitable snap in my chest. I'd experienced it twice before. Once when Breton died and once my parents told me I couldn't go back to the field.

"Oh, no," I cried aloud right before everything I was trying to suppress burst forward. I had no chance of stopping it. Every sob was a blade through the most sensitive places in my heart. Parker stepped close and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Kelly!" he shouted, but I couldn't focus on him. It hurt too much to breathe.

I felt Parker's arms squeeze around me. "Breathe with me," he said quietly. He took a deep breath, but I was too scatterbrained to catch it the first time. He did it again, and I tried hard to follow his lead.

Minute by minute, he helped me even out my breathing until my heart rate returned to normal. I was left with silent tears falling down my blotchy cheeks and a definitive revelation that needed immediate followthrough. I couldn't go through the pain I'd felt when I lost Breton. I couldn't control if something happened to my family, but I could control how many people were outside my family.

And I had the power to make that number as small as I wanted.