Complicated | Calum Hood (Sequel to Unexpected)

Epilogue

Cal

A small hand wraps around my arm and wakes me from my sleep.

"Daddy, wake up! It's my birthday!" the little boy beside me says excitedly. At five, Ryker has grown to look like a true miniature copy of me. Jes would say she can't see herself in either of our kids. She'd be mad, but I see so much of her in them, maybe not physically but it's in who they are. Paisley walks in not far behind Ryker, she is eight now, an exemplary big sister. She pretty much has held me together since her mother died.

My kids were the only thing I was willing to live for with Jes gone.

"Are we gonna go see mommy today?" Pais asks. Her voice quiet, almost like she's scared.

"Yeah baby, we'll go."

I drag myself out of bed and throw on a hoodie and sweatpants the kids running off to their own rooms to get dressed.

"Y'all ready?" I call and they appear at the top of the stairs moving down them slowly, their usual happy play and banter replaced with a solemness I wish they didn't know.

"C'mon guys. Let's go see mum." I open the door and hold it for them, locking it behind me as they walk out to the car and begin assembling themselves into their booster seats.

"Everybody in?"

"Yeah daddy!" Ryker calls and I wish I could share his enthusiasm.

I make the drive to the cemetery with my Jes playlist drifting softly from the speakers. My heart hurts. Everyone had told me that this would get better, that the pain would fade with time. It's been five years and it hasn't even dulled.

I park the car not far from the place I picked for her. It's the closest cemetery to the place I proposed and her spot overlooks the water.

I squat down in front her headstone reading the inscription on the tombstone.

Jessie Goodwin Hood

Beloved wife, mother, and friend

1995 - 2022

I try to distract myself from the scene in front of me. I try to focus on the happy parts of today, it's Ryker's birthday after all. But it's so hard to do when it was also the worst day of my life.

I close my eyes and it's like I'm reliving it.

I remember the hours after Ryker's birth in hazy pieces. He turned blue and I panicked, racing off after him. I didn't even look back at Jes, I didn't kiss her, I didn't say goodbye.

I blacked out when they told me she was in surgery and things weren't looking good. That part I remember vividly. The way air seemed unable to fill my lungs, how the edges of my vision grew black before the whole world turned dark. I woke up to the nurse, Wendy, giving me water and fanning me trying to help me. Her shift had ended hours before but she had refused to leave until we had news on Jes and Ryker was out of the woods.

I came to just in time for the doctor to come to the room where only hours before we'd celebrated our sons birth.

He'd taken off his surgical mask and the look in his eyes had told me everything I needed to know.

I didn't recognized the scream that fell from my mouth as I collapsed onto the floor, no longer capable of holding myself up.

•

"Cal! Cal! Calum wake up" I hear her voice, it's almost like it's real. Am I dead? Is she here with me?

I furrow my eyebrows in confusion as I drift slowly between sleep and consciousness. My eyes opening to reveal Jes' face hovering above me. I blink furiously trying to convince myself it's real as I feel my chest heave with panic.