Mistake’s Melody: Unquiet Mind Book Four

by Malcom, Anne

  He gazed at it with reverence, a worship so deep I didn’t even have it in me to feel self-conscious.

  “Since the moment you started growing our daughter inside you, you’ve been the best mother I’ve known.” He glanced back up at me, eyes haunted. “You protected our daughter from...me. From my bullshit. You were strong enough to make the decision to keep her when I was actually up my own ass far enough to think there was another option. I’m forever in your debt for saving our daughter. For carrying her. For giving birth to her.” He paused, clenching his jaw. “For almost dying bringing her into this world.”

  He stroked my jaw and his hand tightened at my neck as if he had to make sure I was still here, in this bed.

  “You’re givin’ yourself shit because you’ve taken three days in bed while you spent nine months caring for her?” he asked. “That makes you a bad mother?” He shook his head. “Yeah, fuck that. I can’t even imagine what’s going through your head right now, I’m thinking those thoughts are thorns, created and grown by those asshole parents of yours. I wish I could rip them from you, so you didn’t have to bleed. But I also know you’re not the beautiful fucking rose you are without your thorns. That they make you who you are. You’ve had a lifetime of bleeding from them. And now you’re giving yourself time to heal, and still you’re givin’ yourself shit about that. I’m not gonna let you do that.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek. His words puncturing through the layers of numbness and self-pity.

  “But what if I’m like them, Wyatt?” I voiced my greatest fear. “What if there was a part of me, a part of me that’s them, something ugly and evil that’s lain dormant, waiting to grow and change me, and hurt...” I trailed off. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even finish that sentence.

  “Nothing inside you is ugly,” Wyatt said without hesitation. “Not even the ugliest of your memories. Because you’ve turned them into something painfully beautiful.” He paused. “The fact that you even uttered that sentence, the fact you’ve been making yourself sick for days out of fear that you’ll somehow hurt our daughter proves just how unlike them you are. Bad people rarely take stock of their actions, they don’t mentally flagellate themselves with fear of hurting people. Only good people do that, Em. Good parents. You’re both of those things. And I’m gonna make sure I remind you of that, every day. And our little girl will also remind you of that.” He leaned forward to lay his lips on mine.

  I relaxed into the touch, into him.

  “You don’t have to rush to get your shit together. I’m not going anywhere. Neither is Rae.”

  I blinked at him, more tears ran down my cheeks.

  * * *

  Wyatt’s pretty and ugly words didn’t jerk me out of my depression.

  It didn’t work that way.

  But they helped a lot.

  So did his constant presence. His patience.

  And the constant presence of everyone in my life that cared about me, that never let a day—with Mia, an hour—go by without a phone call, a text, a funny cat meme—Sam—or a delivery of various health food—Lexie.

  Love didn’t insulate you against pain, but it made you able to live with it that much better.

  I worked up the courage to hold our daughter.

  It was the middle of the night, Wyatt was finally sleeping, after who knew how long existing on snatched naps and a lot of coffee. He hadn’t complained once. Then again, his lifestyle gave him experience with functioning with sleep deprivation. I extracted myself from his arms without him noticing, which was a feat in itself, considering he never let me go without waking. A testament to how tired he was.

  I crept into the nursery, where Rae was whimpering quietly. She was yet to scream like we were promised newborns would.

  I stared at her in her crib for a moment, and she quieted, her large blue eyes focusing on me with too much comprehension for a human being that was only a week old.

  I reached down slowly, hesitant to stroke her head. My entire body relaxed with the contact.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  Without hesitation, I leaned down, lifted her from the crib and into my arms. She fit perfectly. I was terrified of how tiny she was, how breakable. But I was also aware of how perfect she was in my arms.

  I walked her over to the rocking chair in the corner, carefully sitting myself down with mild discomfort.

  “This is your fault,” I whispered. “I can’t even sit in a fucking chair right now because of the havoc you wreaked coming out.” I started to rock slowly. “I probably shouldn’t say ‘fuck’ around an infant, but with me and your dad, I’m guessing it’s going to be your first word.”

  I continued to rock, and she continued to stare at me, not crying, just watching. I cataloged every inch of her tiny face.

  “I’m scared to be your mom,” I whispered. “Scared I’ll do it wrong. But I love you. And your dad says that’s enough. And he loves you. I know that’s more than enough. Just promise me you’ll go easy on me, I’ll do my best not to drop you on your head.”

  I laid my lips on her tiny, delicate head, inhaling the pure and simple baby smell.

  I didn’t know how long I sat there rocking for.

  Hours, probably, since the sun was coming up by the time Wyatt found me.

  Rae was asleep in my arms.

  “If I wake up to this every morning, I’m gonna be the luckiest fucker on planet earth,” he murmured from the doorway.

  I blinked at him, sleep-rumpled, shirtless, wearing sweats slung low on his hips.

  My stomach dropped with love. With desire.

  He walked over to us, moving me ever so slightly so he could sit beside me on the large rocking chair he’d likely bought for this precise reason.

  I restrained a flinch.

  But he caught it. He was Wyatt.

  “Fuck, sorry, Em.” He kissed my temple.

  “It’s not you that’s got to apologize,” I said. I nodded down to the universe sleeping in my arms. “It’s her. But I guess I’ve got to forgive her.”

  He grinned, looking down at our daughter. “Guess so.”

  We were silent for a long moment, the pocket of peace from the beach house proving to be portable once more.

  “You know that night, how I said I was only figuring out how to be a human being so I couldn’t be a father?” he asked finally.

  I nodded because I didn’t want to speak. I couldn’t.

  His hand settled on the small tuft of hair on the little being that held my whole heart—my whole world—in her tiny fists. “I think it’s becoming a father that shows me how to become a human being,” he whispered. “I would never have asked to be a father. To be responsible for another human.” He glanced down. “The universe saw fit to give me a lot of shit I asked for. And thank fuck it gave me the one thing I didn’t. Because it was the only thing I really needed. Will ever need.” He looked up from our daughter. “Well, almost.” He laid his lips on mine. “Em, will you marry me?”

  I kissed him back, long and slow. “No,” I whispered against his lips.

  He blinked, but his eyes twinkled. “I’ll keep asking you, even if it takes forever.”

  I smiled. “Good thing I’m prepared for forever of you.”

  Epilogue

  Three Years Later

  “Marry me,” he murmured, hand on my stomach, bass slung over his back, seconds away from going out on stage.

  Sam and Gina were trying to wrangle their son—who was always stage-side when his daddy was playing. Killian and Lexie were setting Ava up with her brother in their dressing room, and Wyatt and I were having a familiar argument.

  I covered his hand with my own, over the swell of my almost eight-month pregnant belly. This pregnancy had been much easier than the first—for me at least. Wyatt had been almost giving himself morning sickness with the worry he went through. And he’d almost made me have a nice twenty-five year long stay at a state penitentiary for his murder he was that protective. And considering the way
he was the first time around when we weren’t even together, it was a lot.

  Granted, I wasn’t the one that had to watch me have a mother effing stroke minutes after delivering our daughter nor did I have to see me in intensive care just like he did.

  So I cut him some slack for being an overprotective asshole.

  That slack being not killing him.

  “No,” I whispered back in the face of his proposal. It was the same answer that I’d been giving him for three years.

  We were together. We had a daughter. A son on the way. We shared a home, lives, I told him I loved him every day, fought against the urge to sabotage that happiness that he spread through my bones. That was a lot. I was terrified marriage would be the tipping point. Like it would alert the universe to the fact that the woman who was meant to have eternal misery was actually being treated to a beautiful life and then it would take it all away.

  Though our life wasn’t beautiful. We fought constantly. Mostly as foreplay but other times about big things. The paparazzi was relentless, and we had to constantly guard our daughter against the uglier forms of fame. To her credit, she was the sweetest human being to grace the planet and nothing ever fazed her. It was kind of a running joke that she came from two parents who couldn’t go a day without fighting and she’d never so much as thrown one tantrum. She was the peace to my and Wyatt’s chaos. The exact thing that everyone told us she wouldn’t be.

  Because like Wyatt and I, our daughter didn’t play by the rules.

  Instead of getting disheartened by yet another refusal to his proposal, Wyatt grinned, kissing me soundly and enough to make me want to drag him away from the stage. My desire had not waned for him in the years we’d been together. Time had not rubbed off the heat between us, the need for each other. If anything, it made it more intense. Every day I got with him I was greedy for more.

  “You’re gonna say yes eventually,” he said amongst the roar of the crowd waiting for Unquiet Mind to hit the stage.

  “No, I won’t,” I lied.

  He kissed me again. “Love you, Emma,” he said, like he did every time he walked away from him, whether we were smiling at each other or scowling.

  “Love you,” I replied like I did, no matter what.

  * * *

  “Momma?” my daughter asked in her sing-song voice that I considered to be the cutest fucking thing on planet earth.

  I looked down from the cake I was trying to bake for some stupid fucking preschool graduation. It was not going well.

  Who invented preschool graduations? Asshole housewives with nothing better to do, that’s who.

  “Yes, angel?” I asked, bursting with love for the little being with white blonde curls fastened into cute little pigtails atop her head. I didn’t do them. I didn’t bother with trying to do a toddler’s hair, even our peaceful daughter wasn’t still enough to keep them beautiful and tidy for long enough to warrant the effort. And I wasn’t the mother who put fucking bows in her daughter’s hair.

  Wyatt was the kind of father that did, though.

  The tough, tattooed, black-clad, silver wearing bass playing rock star spent half an hour every morning doing our daughter’s hair in various different styles with different accessories.

  She loved it. It was their special time. She was neither a daddy’s girl or a mommy’s girl. She was both. So she gave her dad moments in the morning where she’d yabber on about anything and everything. And then she’d come up to me in moments of the day and just sit and hold my hand, do something almost unheard of in a toddler, stay still and silent, because she sensed I needed it.

  Every day I loved her more, and the dark cloud that had covered me for the first week of her birth returned every now and again, but my daughter was constant sunshine to chase it all away.

  I lifted her up on the counter, glad Wyatt wasn’t there to see and yell at me for lifting her in the eighth month of my pregnancy. I handed her the spoon of icing. “I feel like you’re gonna do a better job than me.”

  It was true. I did not have the mom baking gene.

  She grinned and licked the spoon instead of trying to decorate. “Can I ask you something, Mommy?” she said after she’d licked the spoon clean. Our daughter had a sweet tooth and Wyatt said it was because of all the things I ate while pregnant, I said it was because neither of us could say no to her.

  “You can always ask me anything,” I replied, kissing her nose.

  “Will you marry Daddy?”

  I blinked at her wide, blue and beautiful eyes. And realized I’d just been played. Of course Wyatt knew I could say no to him forever, but I wouldn’t say no to my daughter ever.

  He emerged from where he’d been hiding, video camera in hand—he fulfilled his promise and he captured every moment of our life together, the evidence peppering the walls of the beach house we’d moved into a couple of weeks after Rae was born.

  “You’re using my daughter against me,” I said to the camera.

  “I would never do such a thing,” Wyatt said and looked to Rae. “What else is in the script, angel?”

  She straightened her back looking very serious. “Daddy will promise to love you until forever ends and to be the most annoying and awesome husband to ever live,” she said, clearly, obviously having rehearsed it.

  I couldn’t help but give into a smile that stretched across my face.

  “And you don’t have to do any of the wedding planning,” she added, little brows furrowed as she obviously struggled to remember it all. Then her face beamed. “Can I pick out your wedding dress, Mommy? And walk you down the aisle?”

  Wyatt reached us. “I didn’t even tell her to say that bit.”

  “You’re an evil man,” I said, scowling.

  He set the camera down on the counter beside Rae, reaching into his pocket to give her a red box. She grinned and took it in her little hands, dutifully opening it—obviously something else they’d practiced—and gasping when she saw the sparkling diamond. “Mommy you have to wear it. I’ve already tried, it doesn’t fit on my finger.”

  I laughed and took the box from my daughter.

  Wyatt went down on one knee.

  My heart stuttered.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked the question he’d asked since our daughter was in my belly.

  “Yes,” I answered for the first time.

  Acknowledgments

  Unquiet Mind holds a special place in my heart. It started with Killian and Lexie and it’s going to end with Noah. But in the middle we’ve got Sam & Gina, and now Wyatt and Emma. I knew their story would be frustrating. Hard to write. Hard to read. I also knew it would be worth it.

  And it was.

  It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing that this series is going to be coming to an end soon but I know that our favorite rock band is well taken care of.

  As always, I never write a book alone. They say it takes a village to raise a kid, and I don’t have much experience (or any) with that, but I know what it takes to write a book. My books are my babies are I’m so lucky that I have people to support me while I write.

  Mum. You’re always going to be here. Right at the top of this list. Because without you, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have turned my love of reading into writing if you hadn’t told me I could be anything I wanted to be. You’re the one I can call at one in the morning, in hysterical tears and you tell me it’s all gonna be okay. You’re also the one that makes sure there’s a basket of cheese and wine at my front door the next day. Thank you for your faith in me. Thank you for always being my best friend.

  Dad. Another person that’s forever going to be at the top of this list. A list you’re never going to read, but I know you’re around, somewhere. You taught me to be a bad ass little girl before the world stole you away. I carried those lessons with me and now I’m a bad ass woman. Because of you. I miss you every single day.

  My girls, Polly, Harriet, and Emma. The truest of friendships take no notice of postcodes, of time spent without
speaking, and that’s what I’ve got with the three of you. I am so very lucky to have girlfriends who are always there for me as a shoulder to cry on, a partner in crime, or someone to drink wine with.

  My #sisterqueen, Jessica Gadziala. What would I do without you? No, seriously, what in the heck would I do? You are always there with support, wisdom and a kick up the ass when I need it. I can’t wait to take over the world together.

  Amo Jones. I’m so lucky to call you a friend, a sister, a soulmate. You’ve been with me since the beginning and I’ll be with you till the end. Ride or die.

  Michelle, Annette, and Caro. You ladies are something special. I cannot tell you how much your support has meant to me this past year. I love you all, to the moon.

  Ginny and Sarah. Thank you for putting so much work into this book, for helping me turn it into what it is now. You ladies are everything to me.

  Ellie. Thank you for taking me on and for staying true to my voice while editing this book. Thank you for being awesome. I love you. Strong independent women for life!

  And you, the reader. Thank you for reading this book. You have made my dream come true just by taking a chance on me. I will be forever grateful.

  About the Author

  ANNE MALCOM has been an avid reader since before she can remember, her mother responsible for her love of reading. It started with magical journeys into the world of Hogwarts and Middle Earth, then as she grew up her reading tastes grew with her. Her love of reading doesn’t discriminate, she reads across many genres, although classics like Little Women and Gone with the Wind will hold special places in her heart. She also can’t get enough romance, especially when some possessive alpha males throw their weight around.