Our Scars

What If This Is All The Love You'll Ever Get?

51

What If This Is All The Love You'll Ever Get? (Title by Snow Patrol)

"Didn't you change your name when you got married?"

Even the gravestone of her son read: 'Matteo di Varese'. Jay had never heard her being referred to as anything other than 'Rianne Torres' or 'Torres Delgado'.

"Somehow wasn't that important to me. At least not as important as keeping the name everyone I worked with had gotten accustomed to over the years. A name that got me an 'in' with certain groups, a quite common name. Andrea wasn't pushing it. Maybe in hindsight it would have bothered me that I wouldn't have had the same last name as my kid... but I never really got the chance to regret that, did I?"

"Jay? Jay!"

Staring at his computer screen now he caught himself thinking that he would indeed mind what name she carried, if they were married. It surprised Jay how important this little detail seemed to him now that he thought about it. Maybe it was just some stupid illusion, but he loved the idea that everyone could see that she belonged to and with him, to the Halstead family, to his family. That something had changed.

"Jay, are you even listening to me?"

"Am I hurting you by telling you all this? Or... I guess what I'm really asking is: Am I hurting you, full stop?"

Was he hurt by the things she had opened up about? Issues, calamities, stories of her past?

Things he wasn't a part of because they hadn't known each other by then. Things she had shared with another man. Was he hurt by the fact that she was still mourning parts of a life without him? He didn't really know.

Jay could recount every word, every single syllable she had used to describe how it had been to loose her child, her little boy. He had been lapping up everything she let him in on:

How at first after the accident everyone had been surprised that there was still a heartbeat, that the baby seemed to be okay. How hopeful she had been for a few hours that some sort of miracle would come off this tragedy. She would have given her all to hold on to this pregnancy. But when Rianne started bleeding out internally in the middle of the night, there had been no other way than to deliver the baby prematurely. In order to save her life they'd had to sacrifice Matteo. Matteo, who's name Andrea and her had already decided upon, who's crib had been assembled, who's clothes for the first months had been bought or gifted to the parents to be. Who's arrival everyone including Rianne and Andrea had been waiting on impatiently. What would he be like? Whom would he resemble more? This little man had been far too little and too fragile to make it. So Rianne had woken up after surgery only to find that she was no longer going to be a mother. Her body broken and empty, her mind completely at a loss as to how she should deal with this. How to pick up the pieces of a life that had been shattered into a million shards in a matter of hours.

Jay found his suspicions confirmed that she'd gotten a lot of her tattoos on her lower body-half in an attempt to cover up the scars from that night. To color them in, make them easier to look at every time she was reminded of how her heart had been crushed two times in a row within less than 24 hours.

"I am so angry with myself! I can't be mourning this all over again! I've been through this. And I feel so fucking selfish because one of the reason this still hurts so much sometimes is because if I at least had Matteo I would have been able to keep Andrea alive somehow. At least some part of him, you know? I sound like a crazy person, but that's how I feel sometimes..."

Truth was he had been patiently waiting for the day she finally told him more about this chapter of her life. He was glad he knew now, he was. Generally he found himself curious about everything she thought and pondered on in silence, wether in her darkest or brightest hours.