There are rabbits on the wall, stuffed rabbits surrounding his bed, and his pajamas even have bunnies. Seth has a love of rabbits—an influence of his godmother.
“I’m in the wedding?” Seth asks.
“Yes. They specifically asked for you.”
Seth smiles, and I tuck the blanket around him. I never knew it was possible to love anyone as much as I love Echo and my children. I never knew it was possible to be loved so much in return.
“But they aren’t going to want a cranky boy,” I say. “I need you to go to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a big day.”
With his stuffed bunny cuddled tight, Seth rolls to his side and closes his eyes. “I love you.”
Hearing those words never gets old. “Love you back.”
I stand and watch him longer than needed. It doesn’t take long for him to fall back asleep and hopefully he’ll be out for the rest of the night.
There’s no way to wake up at two a.m. and not check in on the rest of my kids. It’s a gravitational pull I don’t try to ignore.
Macie has her covers kicked off and is sprawled out in her bed with arms and legs in every direction. She has Echo’s features, but she has my dark hair and brown eyes and too much of my mischievous side. If she’s going to continue to be a little too much like me, I dread high school.
In the room next to hers is a white crib that once held both Macie and Seth. It now holds Oliver, our other redhead. I’m quiet as I approach the bed. If I wake Oliver, Echo will castrate me. Luckily, he’s sound asleep in his terrycloth sleeper, and his little mouth squishes as if he’s sucking on a pacifier.
I search around the crib, and sure enough, the pacifier has fallen to the floor. I pick it up and stick it back within arm’s reach. Maybe he’ll find it in the morning and give Echo and me a few extra minutes of sleep.
Oliver takes a breath in and a breath out. After Echo had the emergency C-section because the cord had wrapped around Oliver’s neck, I spent a lot of nights watching his chest move up and then down. Somehow, I had never appreciated the simple act of my child’s breathing until then.
During the C-section, Echo experienced a blood loss. So many things had gone wrong in a short period of time, and it was awful to do nothing more than stand back and be helpless. My child in a nurse’s arms not crying, my wife’s hand going limp in my mine, and me watching her eyes close against her will. The anesthesiologist asking her to open her eyes and her not responding. The way my heart stopped beating and I grew cold.
My mind cracked with the quietness that had overtaken the doctors as they worked quickly and in desperate determination to save both my wife and my son. Those brief few moments were the longest of my life.
I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t lose her. Without them, I would be lost.
Then my baby cried, Echo opened her eyes and my knees went weak. I almost fell to them, but instead held my wife’s hand, crouched down to her eye level and told her that our child was alive.
I’ll never forget the wetness that filled her eyes, the tears that fell down my cheeks and how good it felt when I pressed my lips to her forehead.
The gravitational pull is now in another direction—toward my siren. She calls to me, always. I keep our bedroom door open only a crack and climb back into bed. Echo’s still on her side. I wrap my arms tight around her and mold my body to hers. Spooning her close, relishing her soft skin, my hands moving along her curves, my nose nuzzling the spot behind her ear. She stirs as I place a kiss on her neck.
Echo leans back into me, her hands gliding along my arms, and as I continue to kiss her neck, she turns to face me and places her hand on my cheek.
“I need you,” I say.
“You have me,” she whispers against my lips.
She doesn’t understand. “I need you.”
“I’m here.” She gently kisses me, and I start to lose myself in her.
“I need you,” I say again, and Echo weaves her fingers into my hair and encourages me to rest my weight on her.
“I’m yours.”
And I’m hers. Forever and always.
Chapter 30
Echo
Noah’s youngest brother, Tyler, will make an amazing father someday. He’s in his early twenties, has recently graduated from college, and is courageous enough to have started his own company, making video games. He’s quiet, single, resourceful, looks just like Noah, and my children adore him.
Tyler’s on the floor, playing a very intense game of dolls with Macie, Seth scales Tyler’s back as if he’s climbing a mountain, and Oliver kicks and blows bubbles on Tyler’s lap while trying to grab for the doll in Macie’s hand. There aren’t many people I’d trust all three of my children at the same time with, but Tyler has made the top of the list.
I’m arranging flowers in the tent where the wedding reception will take place. Noah and I agreed to be in charge of setting up in here. The couple could have afforded to have people set up for them, but they really wanted something small and intimate without a lot of strangers around, so we volunteered to help. Knowing how much work it would be, we enlisted the help of Noah’s two brothers, Jacob and Tyler, and my younger brother, Alexander.
While Tyler is the best babysitter on the planet, our other volunteers have been lacking in the helpfulness department. Noah and Jacob are engaged in a showdown of wills on the other side of the room when they should be setting up chairs around the tables. My brother, Alexander, stands beside me with scissors in one hand and the same bouquet of flowers I handed him ten minutes ago in the other.
I keep an eye on the confrontation between my strong-willed husband and even stronger willed brother-in-law, while also keeping my attention on my sibling. He’s seventeen, in all of its glory. Quite aware that my teen years were complicated for different reasons, and that Dad had a hand in why those years were complicated, I have the urge to call my father and apologize to him for any of the times I might have been a bit overly dramatic.
“Dad’s so unfair,” Alexander says.
He can be, but Alexander doesn’t exactly make his life easier by turning everything into an argument, even when the argument doesn’t need to be had. It’s times like these that I wish for the millionth time that my older brother, Aires was still alive. Maybe he would have known how to handle the war that is my father and brother.
There are times that Alexander looks so much like Aires that it hurts, but most times, I love seeing a bit of my lost brother within my brother who is very much alive.
“I’m going to be honest,” I cut the end of a rose and stick it in the vase, “Noah and I will give Macie, Seth, and Oliver curfews when they are in high school.”
“My friends get to stay out until midnight. Dad and Mom treat me like a baby with a curfew of eleven.”
“Dad was stricter with me than he is with you.”
“You always choose his side, and that’s not fair. Mom said you and Dad argued when you were my age. You should be on my side.”
I sigh, because Dad says the same thing to me about Alexander when I try to talk to Dad about his relationship with my brother. “I choose both of your sides. The problem is that neither of you ever tries looking at it from the other’s point of view.”