Mistake’s Melody: Unquiet Mind Book Four

by Malcom, Anne

  “Wyatt,” I whispered, my voice broken. I wanted to salve his wounds with pretty words, promises of love, of how amazing he was, anything a softer woman would’ve been able to conjure up. But I wasn’t soft. And I knew better than anyone that words couldn’t cure anything. “We really are a match made in psychologically fucked up hell,” I said instead.

  He kissed me again. “You make hell feel like heaven, babe. So I’m okay with that. Long as you don’t decide to walk away from me again.”

  “I don’t think I can,” I admitted, unable to be dishonest to Wyatt after he’d exposed himself like that to me.

  His eyes flared. “Good.”

  And the anesthetist that I’d been cursing chose that moment to walk in. I hated her for the intrusion. I didn’t give a shit about numbing the pain now. Not when I had Wyatt’s inside of me. I wanted to feel pain. Wanted to feel him.

  But even after she injected me in the spine, and my lower body numbed, the pain didn’t go away.

  I hoped it never would.

  “Ready to have a baby now?” Wyatt asked once I was situated on my back, the strange pinching feeling subsiding.

  “No,” I admitted.

  He kissed my hand. “How about we do it anyway?”

  And we did.

  Chapter Twenty

  Wyatt

  “I did it?” Emma’s voice was weak and dreamy, the first time Wyatt had ever heard her utter words without a backbone attached to him.

  He kissed her head and could barely contain how much he fucking loved her. And their daughter.

  Their. Fucking. Daughter.

  “You did it,” he whispered.

  She struggled to lift her head. “She’s okay?” Her voice was slightly frantic, panicked.

  Wyatt pushed the hair from her sticky head. “She’s fine. She’s perfect.”

  It wasn’t a lie. She was covered in stuff that Wyatt didn’t want to think about, she was red and splotchy and screaming, but she was the most perfect thing he’d ever seen in his life.

  Emma exhaled, sinking back into the pillow like she’d only been holding herself up out of sheer force of will, needing to know her daughter was okay. And she had been worried about what kind of mother she’d be. The best fucking kind. Wyatt knew that for a fact.

  “You’re going to take care of her, right, Wyatt?” she asked.

  The tone of her voice suddenly terrified Wyatt. It was too light against the air. It seemed too fucking temporary.

  He snatched her hand, if only to make sure he had a hold onto her. “We’re going to take care of her, equally, I know how much that means to you, fourth wave feminism and all that,” he teased, trying to keep his voice light.

  She smiled, and again, that scared the utter fucking shit out of him. Because it was a lazy, peaceful smile that wasn’t at home on Emma’s face. “No, you’ll do it the best. I know you’ll be a good father.” She paused. “I love you, Wyatt. I said it wasn’t love at first sight. But I lied. I always lie about the important stuff when it comes to you. But just remember that.”

  He leaned forward, needing to look for a doctor to check on Emma, but also too scared to take his eyes off her. Like she might fade away if he moved his gaze, if he breathed too fucking hard. “I don’t need to remember it because you’re going to remind me. Every day.”

  She smiled and his bones chilled. Then her brows furrowed, her eyes went horrifically vacant and her grip suddenly tightened on his hand. And then her entire body started to jerk, violently.

  “I need some help!” he screamed at the doctors who were already rushing around Emma, pushing him out of the way. But he didn’t want to let go of her hand. He couldn’t. Because he had a strange kind of certainty he’d never hold it again.

  “Sir, we need you to let go and move aside so we can help her,” one of the nurses said.

  Wyatt held onto Emma harder.

  It turned out they needed three orderlies to get him to let her go.

  And then Noah and Sam had to be called in after he punched one trying to get back to her after Emma flatlined.

  He didn’t remember much after that. The hours were a graveyard where the only living thing was his daughter lying on his bare chest.

  “It’s important for you to form a skin to skin connection to her when she’s first born,” Emma said, her face screwed up as she read on the iPad. It was balanced on the bump that almost needed its own zip code.

  Not a description he’d used out loud.

  Emma threw a can of soup at Sam when he said something along the same lines.

  It hit him square in the forehead and the fucker still had a bruise.

  She was big, but the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Big with his child. His daughter. And she was softening. Not enough to let him kiss her, to take the shutters from behind her eyes, to cross the distance between them, but enough.

  “Skin to skin contact is important,” he said.

  She scowled and it hit him in the dick. It was fucked up, but the more withering looks she gave him, the more it turned him on. But then again, it was Emma. Everything turned him on.

  Plus, he was sleeping in bed with her every single night, aching to take her, to kiss her, to be inside her again. It tested every inch of his willpower to wait for her to realize he wasn’t going anywhere. To forgive him. She had to make the first move. He’d taken control from her by leaking the story, he was going to give it back, even if his balls exploded.

  “Well here it says that skin to skin contact with the newborn actually rewires the father’s brain...just in time too,” she muttered. “Even though you’re being an asshole now and in general, you’ve got to promise to get your shirt off right when she’s born. It will help her have a good connection with you and you with her.”

  Wyatt furrowed his brows, hating the shadows in her eyes, in her voice. Shadows he knew were from her fucking mother and father.

  “Emma, I’m gonna have a connection with her.” He moved to put his hand on her belly, he couldn’t help it. Going from having full access to Emma’s body and then having nothing was enough to drive him crazy.

  She didn’t push his hand away. Another victory.

  “I already have a connection with her,” he said, voice low. “She’s my world.” He met her eyes. “One half of it at least.”

  He had one half of his world sleeping soundly on his chest.

  The other half was fighting for her life in ICU.

  * * *

  Three Days Later

  “This is like fucking Groundhog Day,” Sam muttered, running his hands through his hair in frustration. In grief. “I’m going to make Emma so miserable when she wakes up for doing this.” He looked to Wyatt with red-rimmed eyes. “She’s gonna wake up, you know.” His voice was firm. A prayer. “She’s gonna wake up and her first words will be an insult to you and it’ll all be good.”

  Wyatt didn’t have the energy to fight him on that. Easy for him to say, he was holding his wife in his arms. He woke up with Gina today, Gina who was not hooked up to life support, who spoke, breathed and held their son on her own.

  Emma hadn’t even held their daughter.

  Wyatt was beginning to forget what she felt like. What her voice sounded like. It scared the fuck out of him. Like she was fading from his memories the harder he tried to hold onto her.

  No one had left the hospital since they all arrived expecting to welcome a new life into the world. Instead, they just fucking waited while the world decided if it was going to take a life from them.

  Wyatt didn’t have it in him to talk to anyone, to acknowledge Lexie or Mia as they tried to comfort him. The only thing that comforted him even slightly was their beautiful daughter. He held her every chance he got, sitting beside Emma’s bed, watching her, glued to her heart monitor, terrified it would flat line again. He told himself if he just sat there and stared hard enough, it would stay steady. Emma would stay. It was bullshit, but everyone clung to bullshit instead of reality when their world w
as falling apart.

  Dr. Adams appeared in the room the band had claimed, closest to ICU as they could manage.

  Wyatt was up immediately, his stomach was in his boots.

  “Emma?” he demanded.

  “She’s awake,” she said. “Has been for some time, but it takes a little for patients to get back their faculties after something like this.”

  Wyatt inhaled and exhaled twice. The first time he’d breathed easy in three days.

  “And she’s mad at you,” she added.

  He grinned, but it was weak and empty. “Of course she is.”

  He all but sprinted into the room where Emma had been fighting for her life.

  “Emma,” he exhaled the second he laid eyes on her, sitting up in bed, scowling. The most beautiful scowl he’d ever fucking seen. He was at her side in a heartbeat, holding her face in his hands, cataloging everything he’d been so sure he was going to forget, sear it into his mind.

  “You promised me that you weren’t going to let them put me in one of these fucking polyester gowns,” she snapped.

  He sighed at her voice. Fucking music. Better than any melody he could make up. He answered her by kissing her, long and hard and full of all of his panic from the past three days.

  “You promise me you’re never gonna scare me like that, I’ll make it happen,” he murmured against her mouth.

  Her eyes were lazy. “Okay,” she whispered. “Where is she?” she demanded after a second. “Raven?”

  “Raven?” he repeated.

  They hadn’t given her a name yet. And obviously he and Emma had argued too much before the birth to decide on one.

  “Did you just name our daughter, and yell at me after waking up from a coma?” he asked.

  She grinned. “Of course. I never play by the rules, you know that.”

  He kissed her again.

  And then he was interrupted by the nurses bringing in the other half of his world.

  Emma’s eyes were wide in wonder and love as he placed their daughter on her chest, her little fists clenched and wide blue eyes taking in her mother for the first time.

  A tear trailed down his cheek.

  “She’s perfect,” Emma whispered.

  “You both are,” he told her honestly.

  People called him lucky ‘cause of his image, bank balance, fucking hairstyle. But that meant shit. Right here, in this hospital room, after the worst three days of his existence, he knew for certain he was the luckiest fucker to ever live.

  * * *

  Emma

  Life after having a baby isn’t joyous, no matter what Hollywood or Hallmark tries to tell you. This is leaving out the part where I almost died from a stroke and had to be put in intensive care for the first three days of my daughter’s life.

  Though I was unconscious and oblivious to that horror, waking up to see what it had etched into Wyatt’s face told me it was bad.

  But no, even after I was given the all clear from the doctor and allowed to go home with my so-beautiful-she-hurt-to-look-at daughter and my rock star...whatever Wyatt was, it was the most horrible time in my life, which was saying a lot, considering my childhood.

  It wasn’t just the pain, the fact that going to the bathroom was an event so painful I almost passed out and the nurses had to basically force me to pee.

  No, that was fucking horrific too, and the very real realization that my vagina would never be the same again. The diapers were something I didn’t even want to think about.

  The physical stuff wasn’t great, but it wasn’t it.

  I had a beautiful, pure, absolutely fucking magnificent little human being. One that was mine. One that relied on me to protect her from the world, to teach her about it, to nurture her.

  And that terrified me to my bones, the weight of that so heavy I couldn’t get out of bed in the first days coming back from the hospital.

  I knew that I had to. I knew that my crying, fragile baby needed me to get up and feed her. Change her. Take care of her.

  But the thought of doing that made me physically ill. The thought of even touching my beautiful daughter filled me with so much revulsion that I couldn’t keep down anything more than water. Because I’d corrupt her. I didn’t know how to love. To take care of a human being. She deserved so much more than me. She deserved a Mia. A Lexie. A Gina.

  Not a colossal fuckup like me.

  The doctors—the ones that Wyatt forced to come to my house because I couldn’t get out of bed—said it was post-natal depression.

  “Common in new mothers,” one said.

  Common. The word hit me physically. As if this feeling wasn’t unique. As if I wasn’t. As if all new mothers experienced it, but managed to rise above the heavy and lead-like fog that set upon them with the birth of their child.

  And I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t hold my fucking child.

  More proof that I wasn’t meant to be a mother.

  “Especially with your history,” the doctor continued, glancing at the iPad which contained my details.

  Dr. Adams had been called away to another patient on the other side of the country. So I’d been treated by the best doctor in L.A., one who knew nothing about me apart from my ‘history’ neatly summarized on his screen.

  My history being my own depression that no one apart from Wyatt—not even Lexie knew about.

  Wyatt knew already, and he demanded to be in the room while the doctors spoke to me, and I didn’t have the energy to force him out. I didn’t have the energy to protect my pride, something I’d guarded so fiercely before. All of my strength was going toward carrying the truth of the fact I’d made the biggest mistake of my life having Rae.

  Wyatt had been silent when the doctor spoke about how people suffering from clinical depression often experienced a stronger bout of post-natal depression.

  When the doctor left, after giving me a prescription, of course they had a quota to keep, a percentage of the population that needed to be numbed from reality because it was too fucking brutal. I was now safe to take those little white pills again, should I wish it.

  Wyatt didn’t speak for a long time, didn’t probe me. But then again, Wyatt had changed since our daughter was laid in his arms—since he turned up at Lexie’s six months ago, if I wanted to be honest—something had clicked in him. He hadn’t said a word about the fact I couldn’t get up to our screaming child. That he had to feed her formula because the thought of breastfeeding my beautiful daughter with something that came out of me filled me with terror.

  He changed every diaper.

  He held her in his arms, lying beside me in bed, watching movies and TV shows with me, not speaking, apart from to murmur at the baby every now and then. He didn’t ask me why I wouldn’t hold her, didn’t press me.

  Well, until he called the doctors in, of course. But I think that might’ve been more for the fact I collapsed trying to use the bathroom and it became apparent that I was acutely malnourished. Yeah, that got him doing something.

  “You need to say something,” I blurted after Wyatt’s silence was unbearable.

  His gaze was even, soft. “Will it help if I say something?”

  I chewed my lip. “Yeah, because then I won’t think you’re standing there judging me for being a weak person...a bad mother,” I whispered the last part because the truth of it screamed in my skull.

  He was across the room in a second, sitting on the side of the bed and clutching my neck, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You’re not gonna say that shit,” he hissed. His grip tightened to the point of pain, it almost nudged away the numbness that had settled over me.

  Almost.

  “You’re one of the strongest people I know,” he growled. “You are also the most stubborn.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “You refused to let the people help you when you were struggling because you wanted to make it on your own. Making it on your own has always been the hard way, when no one would’ve judged you for taking the easy way, fuck I prayed for it
sometimes when I saw how skinny you got, and how it had nothin’ to do with some stupid diet and everything to do with the fact you couldn’t afford to feed yourself.”

  He gripped harder. “You couldn’t afford to feed yourself, yet you flew to L.A. on your own dime to support Lexie, support us at award shows. We shoved our fuckin’ lifestyle in your face, eatin’ at pretentious restaurants, stayin’ at fancy hotels, whittling money away like water while you were wasting away.”

  He shook himself. Physically shook himself.

  “Damn near killed me, seein’ that,” he whispered. “Know it fucked with everyone who cared about you. But everyone who knew you knew that there was no way you were getting out of that other than yanking yourself out. And I had faith.”

  His gaze was unyielding. “Not once did I doubt it. I hated that your journey had to be such a hard one, babe. Hated it. But I knew you’d make it.” He looked around my bedroom.

  One that was pretty much his, now. I’d refused to go back to the beach house, and he hadn’t said a word in protest. Though, I had carte blanche to demand things after almost dying having Wyatt’s baby.

  “You made it,” he continued. “You work at a job that is usually cushy and safe and somehow turned into it into some adventure seeking shit that takes you to war zones. Because you’re comfortable in war zones. You thrive in them. I fucking hate it. I hate that I love it about you more than anything.” He paused. “And in regard to that bullshit about you not bein’ a good mother...” He trailed off, moving his hand down to expose my belly, still sporting a bump and evidence of what I’d grown inside it.