Page 86 of All I Have Left

EVIE

“ Y ou’re so much cuter than your cousin,” Grayson whispers to our baby girl, setting her car seat in the entry of our home. A house he built for us.

I look around the house, the fresh white paint and checkered gray and white country porch. He even built me a porch swing overlooking the field behind our home. “This doesn’t seem real.”

“What? Me holding a baby?” He side-eyes me, carefully cradling her to his chest as he closes the door behind us. The door? Handmade by him and his granddad for us. “Don’t worry. I won’t drop her.”

I smile, my eyes on the floors he milled down from the one-hundred-year-old white oak floors he salvaged from his grandparents’ barn they tore down over the spring. “I know you won’t.”

I set our hospital bags on the bench inside the entry way and kick off my sandals. My ring catches the sun and I smile.

Exactly one month to the day after we were married, I found out I was pregnant. And now, nine months later, two years from the date exactly that he nearly died, Grayson is holding our precious little girl, Taliyah Mae Gomez, in his arms, joking about dropping her.

He accidentally let Wesley slip out of his hands after a bath and it ended in a trip to the ER and two stitches in his chin. Frankie will not let him live it down and anytime he picks up anything, she mutters, “Don’t drop it.”

“I’m not talking about you dropping her,” I tell him, turning to face them. The summer sun filters into the room through the front windows, and this is what doesn’t seem real. He’s bathed in the most beautiful golden rays. “I’m talking about the boy I watched become a man, holding our daughter.”

His eyes meet mine, rocking Taliyah back and forth in his arms. “You know what doesn’t seem real to me?”

I step toward him, on my tippy toes peeking at Taliyah.

She’s sound asleep in her daddy’s arms, so content, so absolutely perfect in every possible way.

She looks… peaceful. As if there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

I know the feeling. Grayson has the uncanny ability to make you feel incredibly safe by the sound of his heart beating.

A sound I’ll never take for granted again. “What doesn’t seem real?”

His eyes slide to mine and he blinks slowly. “That you haven’t left my ass.”

I wink at him. “I kinda like you.”

Leaning in, his lips press to mine. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For giving me her .” Sighing, we share a moment, one where his lips press to my temple and we’re lost in love with the little being in our arms.

That’s about all the quiet time we get before Frankie and Ethan show up with dinner.

“Don’t drop her,” Frankie snorts, walking into the house.

“What?” Grayson teases, as if he didn’t hear her.

Handing Ethan the bags of food, she rolls her eyes at her brother. “I know you heard me, asshole.”

Grayson’s injuries healed, and though he’s had two more surgeries for his hearing this last year, it hasn’t come back completely.

And that’s okay. If that’s the worst of our worries, I don’t think that’s so bad.

Some people are never the same after a traumatic brain injury.

They never have the same quality of life that they did beforehand.

Sure, he struggles sometimes with migraines, ringing in his ears, vision loss, and hearing loss, but he’s recovered really well from a man who couldn’t even tie his shoes after the attack.

Josh and Kelly come through the door, Ethan juggling his son, Wesley, by an arm and a leg.

“Dude, put your damn pants on,” he tells his boy, trying to put his pants back on.

Little Wes, their fourteen-month-old son, can’t be tamed.

He’s as crazy as Ethan was as a child. Unruly and listens to no one.

Frankie holds up Wesley’s foot with his Converse shoes. “Look what Ethan bought him.”

I laugh. “Oh my God, they’re so cute! I need to get Taliyah a pair.”

Grayson frowns. “No.”

“Why? Aren’t they cute? I can get them in pink.”

He shakes his head. “I think we’re going to disagree on what she wears.”

Frankie smiles. “I love that I can walk into a room and make you two fight. Makes me feel better that Ethan sleeps on the couch some nights.”

Grayson looks over his shoulder at Ethan. “Why do you sleep on the couch?”

He’s still struggling with Wesley’s pants and I notice he has applesauce in his ear from the squeezable pouch in Wesley’s hand. “Because Frankie snores.”

Frankie growls at him. “I do not.”

“You do,” I tell her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders.

“Come look at my kitchen. I think I might start cooking actual food in it soon.” I’m not much of a baker.

I hate cooking. Thankfully my mom has been cooking me meals for the last month of my pregnancy because without her, Grayson and I would have starved to death.

I already told Grayson we need to build a mother-in-law house for her.

Frankie looks around the house, her eyes wide as she takes in the shaker cabinet doors, the beautiful rich white oak floors, which expand into the family room with floor-to-ceiling windows. “Ethan, why is their house bigger?”

Grayson smirks, following us. “Because my di—”

“Grayson!” I gasp, not letting him finish and taking Taliyah from him. “Don’t say that around her.”

He gives her to me, winking. “It’s true though.”

“I beg to fucking differ,” Ethan adds, giving up on Wesley’s pants. “Fine, dude. Just run around naked.”

And I think, though I’m not sure, Wesley flips his dad off and takes off toward Grayson’s piano.

Frankie frowns. “I hope your kid is nicer than mine.”

“At least you have a girl on the way.”

She frowns, again. “Try a boy and a girl.” My eyes widen. “I blame Ethan for this one because twins are on his side of the family, not mine .”

“You’re having twins?” I gasp. Frankie and Ethan found out they were having another baby four months back.

Frankie touches her expanding belly. “Yep. Twins. They already fight constantly.”

I don’t think Frankie or Ethan were ready for another baby, but as Grayson and I found out, babies are never planned. I got off birth control two weeks before our wedding and got pregnant that same month. I thought it would take longer but nope, and as Grayson says, “Got her on the first shot.”

Pretty sure that was accurate because it wasn’t three weeks after our wedding night that I started feeling sick and stayed that way throughout my entire pregnancy with Taliyah.

Sighing, I look around our home that’s filled with laughter, family, and babies.

Kelly hands me a plate of food, her eyes on Taliyah. “I’m thinking I might want babies now.”

Josh pipes up with “You have to marry me first!”

Kelly is anything but traditional. She doesn’t want to get married and up until now, she claimed she didn’t want kids either. I can tell by the way she’s eyeing her newborn niece that’s changed.

The night moves slowly, my heart never so full as it is now. Frankie refuses to let anyone else hold the baby and constantly has to tell Wesley no when he tries to push Taliyah away from his mom.

The laughter, the little boy giggling, the softness of my daughter’s cry, it’s perfect.

Later that night, when Grayson and I are finally alone with our daughter, we stare at her tiny features and pouty lips as she sleeps on Grayson’s chest. We refuse to put her down. That’s when I notice tears in his eyes.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, sitting up beside him on our bed. “Please don’t tell me you’re second-guessing all this because my hormones are off-the-charts crazy. I cried cutting a cucumber earlier because it made me sad to know the seeds could have been babies of the cucumber.”

Grayson’s eyebrows pull together as he rubs Taliyah’s back slowly. “I don’t know much about the reproduction of cucumbers, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.”

I roll my eyes, touching my hand to Taliyah’s baby soft cheek. “You know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t.” He shifts underneath me. “I’m confused. We might have to google it.”

“Shut up.” I rest my chin on my knee as I sit next to him. “What’s really bothering you?”

He blinks away the tears and breathes in deep. Taliyah stirs with his movement but doesn’t wake up. “How is it that two years ago…?” He sighs, unable to finish his words as he presses his lips to Taliyah’s forehead, much like he does to mine.

He doesn’t need to finish. I know exactly what he’s talking about.

How was it that she was born exactly two years from the day?

I touch my hand to Grayson’s cheek, to his temple, the scar.

I run my fingers over the bumps the stitches made, reminded that just because his scar healed, doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten.

I try to imagine what he must feel like, to have this day hold so many different memories for him.

I know what it holds for me, heartache, love, and so much more.

I think about that night more than I’d like to admit. And it’s then, two years later, I repeat the names in my head. I can’t forget them. I don’t think I’m meant to.

Lance Wheeler. You’re serving ten years. Your mama passed away last year, and you couldn’t attend her funeral because of what you did to us.

Colt Adams. You got eight years at a local correctional facility. I saw your dad last week. I couldn’t look him in the eye and he walked right by like he didn’t know me. But he does.

Baron Culter. You got a harsher sentence because you held Grayson down. Attempted murder. Your daughter, she’s turning two soon and you haven’t met her yet. I wonder if that eats at you? I wonder what you’d do if when she’s older, a man rapes her? Will you let him?

Travis Miles. Your parents haven’t talked to you since that night. They haven’t visited you in prison while you serve your ten-year sentence. Does it bother you? Do you replay in your head what you saw that night? I do. And your face is one of them.