Talking to Ryan wore me out, and I'm not sure if it's from the length of the conversation, the topic, or the stress they induce. Whatever it is, fatigue has a firm grip on me, and I drift off to sleep not long after my head hits the pillow. My dream is bright and vivid, a stark contrast from the gray and gloomy nightmares of late. I'm in a field of tulips, the sun providing a golden glow across my skin, my hair flowing in the breeze. I gaze out over the fields, enormous bulbs in bright reds, yellows and pinks. A hand is rubbing my belly, and my attention is drawn to the man who sits before me, his hand gently caressing the large roundness that protrudes out so far my feet are hidden from my view. Alex gazes up at me, his eyes full of love and hope, and the widest grin I have ever seen.
His lips are moving, but I can't hear what he's saying. It's not until the breeze circles around my head that I can hear his whispers. You are giving me the most precious gift I could ever wish for. A child. Our child. Now our love is complete.
My hand goes to my stomach as I’m drawn from the dream. Smooth, flat, no trace of any baby bump, and I'm not sure if it's relief I'm feeling or regret. What if Alex wants a family, and I can't give him one? Not only that, but I have no desire to be a mom. I know I should feel some sort of guilt over that—I know many women I've met certainly like to make me feel as if there’s something evil about me not wanting to raise a child—but I'm happy with my life. I don't find it selfish not wanting to have children, just the opposite. What's selfish is bringing a child into your life you cannot commit to one hundred and fifty percent.
Alex's hand is on my hip, I quickly wipe the tears from my eyes, and I roll onto my back so I can see his face.
"Hey, baby, I didn't mean to wake you." He leans over and gives me a chaste kiss on the lips.
"You didn't. I was starting to wake up, anyway, just hadn't fully gotten there."
He runs his fingers through my hair, his eyes looking deep into my soul, as if searching for an answer to a question he hasn't yet uttered. "I feel like I stumbled onto something I wasn't supposed to know today."
I narrow my eyes, my mind trying to discern what he means.
"When I mentioned I thought Ryan was asking you to be a surrogate," he says.
"Oh." Fuck. We need to have this discussion, but on the heels of my dream, I'm feeling more than a bit trepidatious about it. I pull myself up to sit and lean my back against the headboard. "I should have talked to you about this from the very beginning—when I knew we were getting serious—but so much was happening, and it honestly slipped my mind. I need you to know upfront that I never meant to keep this from you."
Alex sits next to me, his eyebrows tightly knit together. "Jesus, Kylie, you're making me nervous. What the hell is it?"
I take a deep breath that does absolutely nothing to calm my nerves. I'm petrified this will devastate him. We've never talked about having kids, so I have no idea what his thoughts are on the subject. I take his hand in mine, running my thumb over the back of it.
"I can't have kids." Internally, I cringe, and wait for his response. The few times I have had a serious enough relationship which warranted this discussion, well, let’s just say there are a lot more men out there who claim not to want kids but actually do. Maybe not right at that moment, but faced with the scenario of never being able to spread their seeds, they run away. Fast. Head-spinning fast.
And I was always left to feel as if I was less than a woman. At first, anyway. Now, it is who I am, but it doesn’t define me as a woman.
Alex’s expression is blank, and his eyes aren't giving anything away, either. He takes a breath in through his nose. "What do you mean, you can't?"
"I lack any of the necessary equipment to make a baby."
"And by that, you mean, you—what? Had a tubal ligation?"
Oh, if only it had been that easy, but nothing has ever been easy for me, and my reproductive organs have been no less complicated.
"Full hysterectomy."
"But you take birth control."
What? I shake my head. "Um, no, I don't."
"Well, what's the pill you take every day?"
"Hormone replacement—to prevent me from going through menopause."
He continues to stare at me, emotionless, not giving anything away and it's about to kill me. I need to know what he's thinking—what he's feeling. I need to know if I have just put the final nail in the coffin of this relationship.
"So, maybe you should start from the beginning and explain?"
God, where is the beginning of this story? Certainly not when I had the procedure done. It goes farther back than that. Way back. A flood of emotions rushes through me as I recall my youth. It's not the most pleasant of memories, and ones I don't often revisit, if I can help it.
"Okay, well, you know I grew up poor. It was just my dad and me, after my mother took off. Dad didn't handle the break-up well, and his life pretty much spiraled out of control, and he took me along for the ride. Long story short, he was a drunk who couldn't keep a job. No job—no health insurance and no doctor's visits. I was embarrassed to talk about it with the scant number of friends I had, so I never knew there was Planned Parenthood which offered exams for free."
I glance at Alex, his features have softened a bit, and he's stroking my hand. Such simple touches from him, but they always give me an enormous amount of strength.
"From the start, my period was not what doctors would consider normal. It was wildly sporadic—sometimes once a month, sometimes twice, often spotting in between. I guess I knew something wasn’t working like it should, but I also didn't know what I could do about it. Fast forward to college, I started having pain, but pretended it would go away. It didn't, and by the time Ryan and Paul figured out something was wrong, they were driving me to the emergency room. The doctor's discovered I had severe endometriosis—as in, life-threatening at that point. Since I was not anywhere close to menopause, they did a full house cleaning."
"Jesus, Kylie." Alex runs his hand over his face, staring at something or nothing on the wall opposite us. "So, that would definitely make it impossible to be a surrogate." He turns towards me, and his eyes are a mix of wary hopefulness. "But that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have kids."
This is exactly what I feared. He wants kids, even if I can't actually carry them. "Do you mean have someone be a surrogate for me? Or adoption?"
"Both options are available to you," he answers.
I shake my head, sigh heavily, and squeeze his hand. "Alex, I've had a long time to think about this, and I don't want kids. I'm happy in my career. With our lives—now and in the future. I love dreaming about where life will take us, all the things I want to experience with you, and I can tell you unequivocally I do not want to raise a family."
I lift his hand and kiss his knuckles, knowing this next part could end everything between us, and destroy all my hopes for a future with him. "If that's something you want—a baby, a family—then we need to re-evaluate our relationship, and where this is going. I won't change my mind, Alex, no matter how romantic the notion of sharing a bond with you through a child might be, it's not enough to make me want that life."
I inhale slowly and hold it, watching him, waiting for his reaction. My heart pounds, my hands tremble, and a thin layer of sweat breaks out over my skin.
Finally, he looks at me, and a smile lifts the corners of his mouth. "Baby, I don't want kids, either. If I did, I'd have them by now. My life is my company and my charities—at least, until you came into it. If there is any woman I'd want to have a child with, it's you, but I am perfectly happy just having you. Building our future and sharing dreams. I can't imagine my life being any more complete than it is now, with you. I don't want or need more."
I nearly burst into tears. At least this won't come between us, but this is not the only thing standing in our way. I might as well address the elephant in the room and make him tell me why he hasn't touched me in any meaningful, intimate way since before the shooting.
The little bit of relief I felt has evaporated, and tension wracks my body once more. I need to know what's going on—but that doesn't mean I necessarily want to know.
"Alex, I need you to be straight with me about something."
"What?"
"I need you to tell me what's going on with us. I need for you to be honest…and tell me why you don't want to make love to me."
Alex drops his head back, closes his eyes, and rubs the bridge of his nose. "Kylie, it's not that I don't want to make love to you—I do. You have no idea how much—"
Well, that's true…
"Are you scared for some reason?" I ask.
He opens his eyes and gazes at me. They're so blue and beautiful, but the dark circles detract from them, and the corners dip down. "Many reasons."
A chill runs through me. "Why?" I hate that my voice is shaky. My fingers toy with the double heart pendant Alex gave me hanging around my neck.
He closes his eyes again, takes a deep breath, and slowly releases it.
"Please talk to me, Alex. Whatever it is, no matter how hard it might be for me to hear, I need to know what's wrong." I wrap my hands around his. "Are you afraid of losing me?"
"Yes."
"I'm fine, Alex. The doctors say I've made a full recovery, and there's a low risk of me developing any complications from being shot or hitting my head."
"Well, I admit, that did worry me at first."
"And now?"
He drops his head, his thumb making a circle on the back of my hand, and he's quiet for a moment. "You don't need me anymore—don't need me to protect you. The reason you fell in love with me is gone now that John can't hurt you anymore."
A sudden coldness hits me square in the chest, my extremities tingling with disbelief. "You think I fell in love with you because you protected me from John?"
He nods.
I sit, time seems to stand still for a moment while I gather my thoughts. "Alex, I love that you protected me, but that's not the reason I fell in love with you, and certainly not why I'm still so in love with you."
"But will you ever be able to truly forgive me for failing you?"
My mind races to find answers. "What are you talking about?"
"John shot you—almost killed you—while I watched it all unfold. I swore to protect you and I failed."
"God, I hate this—even from the grave— he can still come between us. But, baby, you did not fail me. I wish I could make you understand all the ways you have saved me. I know you're scared, but if you give up on this part of us because you're afraid you'll lose me somehow, then you've already lost me. I'm doing a really horrid job of explaining this—it's just that—anything can happen, at any time, or nothing could happen. We could have thirty years together or thirty minutes."
"I watched you die," he whispers, and my heart breaks.
"I came back to you, Alex."
His hand caresses my cheek, his eyes reach into my soul, his lips press against mine. He gently sucks my lower lip, releases it, and murmurs against them, "Can anything this good really last forever?" His hand cups the back of my head, and he pulls me into him, our lips crashing together.
I rest my hands on his thighs, not sure what I should do, how far he will let me go before he shuts this down like he has every time we get to this point. He's going to have to take the lead on this, I'm not sure I can handle the rejection again.
He pulls his head back, his eyes dark and lusty, but his eyebrows gather together. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I blurt out a little too quickly. He sighs and drops his head. "It's just…it's hard for me to start down this path—think we're going to make love, and—" My voice cracks, and trails off.
"And I never let it go there." His hand is still at the back of my head, and he tilts it back so he can see directly into my eyes. "I'm not perfect. I make so many mistakes, but I'm trying to learn, also. I have come up with so many reasons lately to keep you at arm's length, to deny that part of me that is so desperate for you, because I thought it would somehow hurt both of us. It's flawed thinking, I realize that, especially after hearing it out loud, but it's what I've been clinging to. What I lost sight of is, even with all the reasons I've come up with, the one reason I'm ignoring you—is you. You're the reason I changed who I was in the first place. The only reason that should matter to me is you…and it is."
My chest rises and falls more quickly, and my head is swimming in a sea of lust and need and want. I grab at the button of his jeans, fumbling with it until I finally work it free. I slip out of my jeans and top and slide onto the bed. Tossing his jeans to the floor, Alex crawls on top of me, suspending himself above me, his eyes roam over my body. His tongue licks along his bottom lip, the blue of his eyes darkening.
The muscles in his arms flex, and he slowly lowers his naked body on top of mine. He drags his lips along my neck and shoulder. A low, luscious moan escapes from somewhere deep within me, and I raise my chest to meet his, pushing my breasts against his taut chest muscles. I run my hands over his back, feeling every curve, every dip, and every muscle of his tempting body.
Our lovemaking is slow and sensuous and so overdue. The thrill throughout my body is almost more than I can handle—I'm on sensory overload—and I'm desperate to have all of him. It's been so long since we've been this close—this intimate.
Once we have both found the magical release that had evaded us for so long, his lips find mine again and we kiss, softly, our bodies coming down from their highs. He collapses on top of me, and I run my hands into his hair, as his head falls to my chest.
"You okay?" He asks.
I laugh. "I'd say much better than okay." I place my hands on the side of his face. "I trust you…I know you will never hurt me like—like I've been hurt before. This is not just sex. It's never just been sex with us. It has a deeper meaning for both of us."
He kisses me, runs his fingers into my hair, his hand grasps the back of my head. "You showed me how to love, and be loved, and share this kind of intimacy. No one will ever hurt you again—I will never take anything from you that you're not willing to give. I love you, and I respect you and your body."
I smile, his words wrap around my heart like a shield, and protect it from harm. I never thought I would trust a man again, be able to give myself fully and completely. Alex changed all of that. I trust him with my heart, and my body. And I am all his. Forever.