Wildflowers |h.s|

twenty two

Harry

Sunlight pours into the bedroom, casting the most beautiful golden glow over Devon. Her eyes are shut, but her eyelids flutter as she dreams. Her face is squished against a pillow and she sleeps on her stomach. I like that she sleeps on her stomach. I do too.

Her breathing is steady and I could tell she's deep in sleep, but I just can't take my eyes off of her. Waking up to her in bed next to me felt so... magical. I never want to sleep alone again.

How is she mine? Why did she take me back? I don't deserve her, especially after everything I've done, and yet here she is, asleep in my bed. I can't believe she's here and she's mine.

I've never felt this way about any girl before. I've never wanted to be with someone all the time, every second of every day. Especially since I have the girls and want to protect them. But I just want Devon here all the time. I want her to play fairies in the yard with us and cuddle us in bed at bedtime.

Jamie never felt like this. Jamie was a mistake, and no matter how grateful I am to her for our daughters, I know that she was a mistake. Things were never supposed to be serious with her, ever. She showed up to an orgy one day and got too attached. I thought she was pretty so I gave her a chance since she was always around, but she just wanted to mold me into this guy I wasn't.

She hated that I worked at the store every weekday because she never got to see me. Date nights were never good enough and she always pushed me to get her presents. After about two months of that shit I was over it and tried my best to let her down gently since she was obviously in a fragile mental state, but she just refused to accept it was over. And once I thought I finally got away, she comes to the shop with a positive pregnancy test and demands I step up.

Obviously I wasn't going to be a dick and tell her to get an abortion or leave her to take care of the kid herself. She obviously made up her mind to keep the baby and I thought it was a genuine mistake. It wasn't until she was about to give birth when she told me she was purposely not taking her birth control.

We tried to be a family for Annika, but it was so fucking hard. She didn't think about the demands and how hard it was to have a kid. She was twenty one at the time and she wasn't ready to be a parent. I was twenty five, and even I thought it was hard. She also just had a lot of issues that I could tell went unchecked by her parents. They let her do whatever the hell she wanted with no consequence.

I tried to love Jamie. I told her I loved her, but I knew I didn't. We would fight so fucking much and adding a newborn to that is just even more exhausting. The only reason I was with her was so that I could see my daughter, because I didn't know if she would take her away from me if I ended things.

But as Annika started to get older, and I felt more secure in my parenting and knew I could get a lawyer to fight for rights if Jamie brought it to that, I was ready to be free of Jamie. I wanted to end things more than anything. That relationship just felt like I was suffocating every single day of my life. I wasn't good enough and I believed that. I believed that I didn't deserve love and affection because no matter what I did for Jamie and Annika, it was never enough in her eyes.

I quit smoking for them, I cut back my hours at the shop for them, I stopped hanging out with my friends to be home for them. It felt like I was a prisoner in my own life. Like I did something horribly wrong to deserve a life like this. And just when I felt like I was breaking through the surface, Jamie just dragged me all the way back down into the abyss with a second positive pregnancy test.

It makes me feel guilty thinking back at that time of my life, especially with how things ended. Sometimes I wonder if maybe that last fight didn't happen, she would still be here. Sometimes I even question if I should have just gone through with leaving her even when she was pregnant with Oakley. I know I would have supported her still, and been there to help her with the girls. But she was so good at manipulating me into thinking that if I walked out the door, the girls would never forgive me.