He patted my leg before nodding to Donovan and taking his leave. He left silence in his wake.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I whispered before a yawn stretched my jaw painfully. There was a strange mixture of adrenaline and fear pushing me to stay awake, which battled the pure exhaustion and emotional weariness that was begging me to give in to the pull of sleep.
Donovan was careful as he inched himself closer to me. His free hand curved along my jaw, stroking back and forth. “We can figure it all out later, okay? Just rest for now.” His fingers trailed along my skin, leeching away my fears and calming my heart.
Epilogue
Staring at myself in the mirror, I wondered how long it would take our new apartment to start feeling like home. Reagan kept saying it would take time. It had only been a few days, after all. Moving on was more difficult than I’d expected, but still good in many ways. The old apartment wasn’t big enough. We needed something we could grow with. Leaving all those memories behind wasn’t easy.
The old apartment was where Reagan and I first spent the night under the same roof, where she told me she loved me, where I bought her home from the hospital—twice. The first time I didn’t like to remember as much. She’d been weak, scared, and consumed with worry about the baby and what would happen with both Ferguson and Keeling. Those weeks and months had been excruciating, yet we had both survived. All three of us had survived.
“Babe, are you almost ready?” Reagan asked. “Brandon’s freaking out that we aren’t there already,”
“The show doesn’t start for another hour.”
“I know, but you know how he is. He’s more excited about this than you are. Like some bizarre proud parent, he wants pictures before it opens to the public.”
Rolling my eyes, I started to say something, but a high pitched scream cut through the air. I rushed out of the bathroom as Reagan laughed and called after me. “She’s fine. That Jack-in-the-Box your mother sent cracks her up every time.”
I knew she was right, but I didn’t want to talk about Brandon, or the show, or the public, or anything even remotely related to why I was dressed in a suit way too fucking nice for work. Despite the price tag of my clothes, I sat down on the rug and stared into a pair of dark-honey colored eyes that sparkled with joy. She squealed and batted at my face.
“What are you screeching about, baby girl?”
Ella giggled relentlessly, drool slithering down her chin to plop onto the bib Reagan had placed over her dress in an attempt to keep it presentable. I realized how ineffective it was when the drool continued down the face of the bib and dripped onto the pale purple satin. At six months old, my daughter couldn’t have cared less that she produced more slobber than a cow produced milk. Her hands bobbed in the direction of the comical toy, wordlessly begging for me to make it jump out at her again.
“Okay, okay, one more time, but then Mommy is going to make us leave.”
“Make us?” Reagan scoffed. “It’s your show, or have you forgotten?”
I knew she was joking, but anxiety threatened to strangle me. After a year and a half of people asking whether or not I was back, I finally had an answer. It was far later than Marie or Brandon would have liked, but caring for Reagan after a gunshot wound would have been hard enough on its own. Add in a surprise pregnancy that was in danger of being lost, and I had no time or energy left to put toward photography. It wasn’t until Reagan was well into her second trimester and the doctor assured us everything was fine and we were out of the woods that I even noticed the cameras and lenses sitting on top of the bureau.
Reagan had always been my muse, my strength to push through the hardest things I ever had to face. Ella became my drive and my fuel as I watched Reagan’s body change and our daughter grow within her. The first signs of Ella’s brave little life pushed me to document her existence. Happy babbling over her toy and ruining her dress with drool, she had no idea of her beginnings, of the fight she had already withstood to be with us.
There was beauty in her existence I knew I would never be able to capture on film, but I felt compelled to try.
Squealing again when the demented stuffed head popped up out of the toy, Ella nearly tipped over in her glee. Reagan scooped her into her arms and wiggled her pudgy little body in front of her. “That’s enough, silly girl. Time to go to Daddy’s show. You want to see the pictures, right?”
I doubted Ella knew what she was talking about, but she shrieked in delight and reached for me. Reagan chuckled and extended her toward me once I was back to my feet. “Such a daddy’s girl,” she said with a smile.
“I wonder where she got that from,” I said as I took Ella into my arms. Reagan grinned and kissed me gently.
Flinching when Ella’s happy gurgling turned into something more akin to spitting all over my neck, I hitched her up a little higher into my arms and made faces at her as we walked to the door. Reagan already had her diaper bag slung over her shoulder, but as she reached for the door Ella let out a wail that made us both grimace. Being that she was screaming right into my ear, I was more concerned with resituating her than figuring out what had caused her meltdown. Luckily, Reagan was more focused.
“Here you go, baby girl,” she cooed. “Is this what you wanted?” She hand over a teething toy shaped like a camera—a gift from Brandon—and Ella immediately popped it into her mouth and grinned. Reagan laughed. “Now, can we go?”
When Ella didn’t complain, we left the apartment and made our way down to the SUV. Reagan’s hand slipped into mine as soon as we were all buckled in and seated. We drove in silence, her comfort and support steeling me for what I was about to face. Whereas once I feared a madman retaliating if I used my talent to share the beauty of the world, now my fears were more mundane. Was I still good enough to deserve a show? Would critics blast me for the style and subject I chose? Would Cyrus cause problems even though it had been him to come to me with the offer to host a show, an act of reconciliation after his inadvertent role in what had happened to Reagan?
I much as I was dreading facing fans and the art community a large, I would take those kinds of fears over whether or not my wife or daughter would survive the night.
As soon as we entered the gallery, Cyrus was there to greet us. We would never be friends, but the hatred we had once shared had been replaced by mutual respect. His assistant took Ella’s diaper bag and offered to watch her for us if we needed any help. Brandon was the next to spot us, brimming with excitement. After a quick kiss for Reagan—on the mouth as usual—he snatched Ella from my arms and jiggled her above his head until she was squealing with joy.
“I still think your mommy and daddy should have named you Beautiful, but nobody listens to me, pretty girl. Nobody at all.” He blew a raspberry at her, which set her off in hysterics again, but only made Reagan roll her eyes.
“Ella means beautiful. Get over it. Be glad we gave you that much say in the matter.”
Brandon made a face at Ella, which she loved, then finally decided to acknowledge me. “Are you ready for this?”
My insides twisted and churned, but I nodded.
“Good,” Brandon said, “take a look around as a final check and let me know if anything needs changed while I entertain my precious little niece.”
Ella was not his niece in any biological or legal sense of the word, but I was more than happy to have him claim her as such. When Brandon first dropped back into my life as a candidate for the staff position at the magazine, I’d loathed forcing Reagan to deal with him. There was no way I could have predicted the close bond they would form before the shooting, though I hadn’t at all been surprised when Brandon stepped in to care for her any time I couldn’t be there.
Not that there was ever a shortage of people to help during those months. I’d been about ready to put my mother back on a plane after two days of her being constantly underfoot, but there was no peeling her from Reagan’s side at that time. Even Derrek hadn’t been that bad.
; “You ready?” Reagan asked as her hand slipped into mine.
I nodded through my uncertainty and squeezed her hand.
The first set of photos we stopped in front of were ones Reagan had chuckled at me for taking. The tiny baby slippers perched on the barely noticeable protrusion of her stomach had been a statement to me. Our daughter was no longer an uncertainty that day. We’d been given the all clear to start picking out names and researching nursery furniture. It wasn’t just the first visible sign of Ella, it was a promise that she wouldn’t vanish from our lives.
We walked through the rows of images I knew most viewers wouldn’t understand. It didn’t matter to me. If I was going to announce being back, this was how I was going to do it, by making a statement that I wasn’t picking up where I’d left off. I was starting fresh.
Reagan never complained even once when I would grab her after work and drag her down to the studio. She patiently sat through session after session of me photographing her changing body. She squeezed my arm when we reached the photo I had begged her to keep her eyes closed through, because I knew she would never sit still once she saw it.
Atop her rounded belly, at twenty weeks into her pregnancy, I’d placed a diamond engagement ring around her newly outie belly button. She’s squirmed at the coolness of the metal, but kept her eyes closed as I shot several macro images of the question I was about to ask her. When I told her to open her eyes and she saw the ring, I’d been forced to catch it as she reached for me, knocking it off her belly. Reagan chuckled next to me as she remembered the moment as well.
“Best proposal ever.” She leaned over and kissed me longer and deeper than she had earlier.
Strolling past several more photos, we stopped in unison in front of one of the hardest images I had ever taken. I saw Reagan’s eyes well with tears as she stared at the photograph. Holding Reagan, her bare back faced the camera, but didn’t completely conceal my chest, also bare, but revealing the marks we each carried from out of our pasts and into the future. The scar on Reagan’s should stood out in more relief then than it did now. Her flesh was still puckered and pink when I took that picture, from where the bullet exited her body. In comparison, the scar on my lower abdomen from being stabbed by Keeling was harder to see, paler and more subdued, but still an echo of the devastation caused.
Reagan pulled me forward to view the last row of photos, the ones containing our greatest happiness overshadowing the past tragedies that had shaped us, shaped our family. A newborn Ella laid over Reagan’s beasts as she slept. I hadn’t placed her hand just shy of the scar from the entry wound purposely, but I almost hadn’t been able to take the picture through the emotion seeing her like that caused.
It had given me the idea for the image that hung next to it, the one Reagan’s glassy eyes were focused on. Ella truly was a daddy’s girl, refusing to let go of my finger in the image of her lying with her head on my bare stomach and her body on the couch cushion. Her pursed lips lay next to my scar as she held my hand to her chest. It was her favorite spot to sleep, as if she were protecting me from sadness the ruined flesh might cause.
We were a wounded family, but the scars were testaments of our triumphs, of what we had survived in order to be together. They would never fade, and neither would our love for each other.
The End
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About the Author
Ainsley Kincade has always been drawn to stories of struggle, growth, and finding strength. If it included a little (or a lot) of romance, all the better! A childhood love of reading and hopelessly romantic view of life drew her to writing romance. For her, romance isn’t just about sex. It’s about relationships, which do usually include sex, but also struggle, self-doubt, mistakes, love, sacrifice, and a lot of learning.
Ainsley’s romance novels attempt to bring together everything that makes real relationships valuable and difficult, while adding in fictional elements that allow her readers to explore their own dreams, fantasies, and “what ifs.” Love is complicated. Writing love stories is complicated. Reading them is also sometimes complicated, but like falling in love, it’s worth it.
To connect with Ainsley Kinade online, visit her website or Facebook page.
https://ainsleykincade.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AinsleyKincade/
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