Page 5 of All the Forbidden Things

My heart tears again. It doesn’t just break—it rips, jagged and uneven, right through the middle. “Did you ever love me?”

“I . . . I care about you, Max.”

“I changed for you. I changed my entire fucking life.”

She ignores that comment and continues as if she hasn’t just ended my world as I know it. “I’ll be in touch about the paternity test.” She turns and leaves, slamming the door as she goes.

Once again, I fall to my knees, and as my daughter cries upstairs in her crib, I lie on the hallway floor and cry for the person I was for a very short while, worrying that this morning’s events may have changed me irrevocably and that I may now never be the father my little girl deserves. And that’s when a very small part of me hopes she’s not mine. Because life with a junky for a father might be better than living with the monster I fear Whitney has just created.

Max

Ionce again wake tothe sound of my daughter crying, but this time her cries hit me from a distance, and it takes me a while to work out what the fuck is going on.

Blinking a few times to clear my vision, the large light fixture which hangs in the middle of my hallway, comes into focus. It looks like a chandelier, teardrop-shaped, but instead of being glass or crystals or whatever shit chandeliers are made from, it’s manufactured from black shells or beads. It’s vast, and despite being suspended from the upstairs ceiling, if you reached out from halfway up the stairs, you’d be able to touch it.

I’d seen one in a hotel foyer in Australia and told my interior designer to source me something similar when the house was being renovated. It’s so heavy that a reinforced beam had to be added to the ceiling to take the weight.

I think about all of this while trying to ignore thethump,thump,thumphappening in my head.

Sitting up, I heave as bile fills my throat while the room not just spins but rocks from side to side. A bottle of Grey Goose lays on its side in a puddle of spilt alcohol beside me.

When Whitney left yesterday, I’d pulled myself together enough to feed and change Layla before putting her back in her crib for the rest of the day. She’d had her last bottle at around eleven o’clock. After retrieving a bottle of vodka, I’d gone back to the hallway and sat at the bottom of the stairs.

Why the bottom of the stairs? I have no fucking clue. But I decided that was as good a place as any to drink myself into oblivion.

As I sat in my hallway getting drunk at my pity party for one earlier, I made a semiconscious decision to keep an emotional distance from Layla until I knew for sure she was mine and I would get to remain a part of her life. I’d take care of her, obviously, but I didn’t want to give any more of my heart to that baby girl only to have her ripped from my life.

I’ve no clue what time it is, but the birds are singing, and I know what I’m hearing is Layla’s hungry cry.

Like her dad, she loves her food.

Despite what I’d convinced myself earlier about taking a step back, that cry lets me know I don’t have it in me. I couldn’t stay away, no matter how hard I tried. I love that little girl right down to the marrow of my bones, and whether she’s biologically mine or not, I needherright now as much as she needsme.

I stand and reach for the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. In an attempt to ease the sensation of the room rocking as it spins, I keep my eyes closed. It doesn’t work, and I once again heave as the urge to throw up hits me.

I take a step forward, and my foot lands on something sharp. The spinning room momentarily forgotten as pain shoots through my foot.

“Shit. Motherfucker!”

I open my eyes and take in the remains of a broken bottle of Grey Goose, and it comes back to me that—for some reason I don’t recall right now—I threw the first bottle I opened at the front door halfway through drinking it.

The bottle didn’t break, which caused an unwarranted amount of anger to unleash inside me, and in the fit of rage that ensued, I collected the bottle and smashed it against the bottom stair, glass and vodka spraying across the hardwood floor.

I lift my foot to take a closer inspection of the glass buried in it and watch as blood slowly leaks from the wound. Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I grit my teeth and pull.

“Fuuuuuuck me!” I yell as I remove the offending object. “Motherfucking—shit—bollocks.” I wince and take in more deep breaths in an attempt to control the pain.

I fail.

And then proceed to throw up all over the floor. Blood, vomit, glass, and vodka, mixing together to display a pretty accurate visual of the current state of my life. All the while, my daughter still cries.

“I hear ya, baby girl. Daddy’s sorry. He fucked up. Just give me a minute and I’ll be with you,” I call out.

Holding on to the handrail of the bannister, I leave the mess on my hallway floor behind, and hop up the stairs to my bedroom, still dripping blood as I go.

When I reach my bedroom, I glance down at Layla’s angry, red face when I pass her crib. She blinks her tear-filled eyes as she looks up at me, and as much as it hurts my heart to do so, I have to keep moving.

I reach the toilet just in time to hurl into it. I then wash my hands, clean my teeth, and splash my face with water. Still dripping blood, I search through the cabinets for a plaster or some bandage but find nothing.