𝐕𝐄𝐗𝐄𝐃 ❷

𝟑𝟑. ✭ 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐈 ✭

It's moments like these that I regret not keeping my son back when I was in Seattle. Knowing what I know now, that Brooks had been my guardian angel of sorts, I wish I would have kept him. I wouldn't have missed all his milestones, the first of his firsts. His first word or his first step. The first time he cooed or laughed. All of those things I had given away to someone else because I didn't want to be in the exact situation I am currently in.

If I would've kept him maybe I could've been a happier version of myself. Yes, I may have been a single mom and stressed, but I would've had Wolf. Who knows what I would've named him if I had been the one to be able to give him a name. As a girl I had always thought I would name my son or daughter something unique. So I suppose in the end it had all worked out.

But had it?

His laugh as he plays has me smiling at him even though my thoughts are dreary. This is my time, the only time, that I am allowed to be around him. After dinner, before he goes to bed, is all I get. My father cooly reminds me every now and again that I should be happy to have any time with him at all. I had given him away, my son, like he meant nothing to me. I was a bad mother. To him, I am still undeserving of the love my child shows me. By giving love and devotion back to my family, albeit fake love and devotion, I was starting to earn a marginal amount of forgiveness from them.

Wolfie is running up to Tristan now with a big smile, arms wide as his hands flail about, alerting the man he wants to be picked up. Tristan does so happily, placing my little one in his arms and spinning him around making airplane noises. This is something Wolfie loves but the action makes my heart ache, thinking about how Torey was robbed of being a parent, just as I have been.

My mother and father have matched me up with the man in front of me, the one currently doting on my son. A son who looks very much like his father. A father who is still very much alive. One I haven't seen in months. I haven't seen Torey for about as long as I had seen him when he came to find me in Seattle. Before that it had been two whole years. In our relationship we've spent as much time together as we have apart.

"Agn! Agn!" My son says, meaning he wants Tristan to do the airplane again after he'd set him down back on wobbly legs. "Peaseeee Trissssan?" Those big blue eyes bat up the man and Tristan is done for. My son is just like his father and he doesn't even know the man. He gets whatever he wants.

When Torey and I had been back in the safehouse, had Wolfie sleeping in between us, it had been surreal. I had dreamt of that moment time and time again, even before knowing what my son would look like. He'd been in my imagination much the way he is now but with his father and I, living some sort of happy life together. All of us together as a family, Torey playing the part that Tristan currently is.

I miss Torey so much it hurts. I miss the way that, even when things were at their very worst, Brooks could be the most comforting of shoulders. He was solid as a rock and unwavering with his loyalty and love, made me feel more secure than any one ever has.

Tristan was neither of those men but he is like them in very key ways that was unnerving at times. It did lessen the ache every now and again though, which I let happen. I let Tristan mean something more than nothing to me because I had to. Trying to fake falling in love with someone was hard to do if there was nothing there at all.

There were occasions, such as this one, when Tristan was being a father figure to Wolfie, that I felt guilty. I know if Torey saw the happy smiles our son gives this man, the hugs he gives him every now and again, he would be furious. It was a part that both Tristan and I had agreed to play with one another. I do believe he plays his better than I do mine as I find myself having to pull myself out of melancholia day in and out. But somehow I manage and when we are not under the watchful eyes of my parents, or that of other guards, we are not all happy smiles at one another.