"I'm pregnant." she begins, while you're lying together in your bed, her head settled softly on your chest, your right arm draped lazily around her shoulders. Her palm is tracing over your stomach, fingers dipping in and out of the rivets created by the abs you used to be so proud of, but are now just another part of your body that you're more than willing to share with her, for the rest of your life. There is a happiness surging through your body at the announcement she just made, and you finally feel as if you can do it all over again, be there for her the way you should have been when she was carrying Sofia. You vowed silently to be there for every appointment, every craving, every sleepless night between now and the day your children are ready to leave home for good. You smile, letting your happiness overtake you for the moment as you pull her closer to you, placing a kiss on her forehead, breathing softly against her. "And it may not be yours." you stiffen around her, her husband filling the forefront of your mind, and you realize that of course, it could be his as well. You realize that it was stupid of you to automatically assume that the child was yours considering you had been sleeping with her on the weekends for the past couple of months, but that she was still married. She was still living with Mark, sleeping in the same bed. She knew that Mark was cheating, and Mark knew that she was aware of his transgressions, but Penelope...she was still in the dark about your involvement with the exchanging of information. You realize that you have two choices at this moment, either accept the child no matter who its father was, or you could get angry with her and force her from your life entirely.
"But it's yours and that's all that matters to me," you reply pulling her closer to you under the covers, clutching her to your body, placing a kiss on her cheek. "I'm here." you continue speaking as she's shaking her head against your chest. "We can move you and Sofia in, there's more than enough room for the four of us," you say, running your hand down her arm ignoring the panicked way her breathing was coming in, ignoring the way she was trying to distance herself from you, your arms tightening around her body, clinging to every pretense that she was going to stay. You ignore the way the hair on the back of your neck was standing up, the electric charge in the room turning south, but you realize that you love this woman so much, that you're so attached to her that you would ignore every sign of her trying to leave you. You keep whispering to her, promising her the world, telling her that you would happily turn the guest bedroom into a nursery, asking what color she would like, asking her if she hoped it was a boy or a girl. You found yourself getting lost in the span of a few seconds, your mind traveling nine months to when you and Penelope, Sofia, and your new child were happily sitting around the living room and watching some Disney movie Sofia was currently obsessed with. But when you pull yourself from the fairy tale that you've created you look at her, and that's when you notice the tears.
"No.," she says, pulling herself away from you and for a moment you're confused before the realization hits you. By the time you lift yourself up to lean against the headboard, the sheets pooling at your bent waist, she's pulling her clothes over her frame. You watch her as she guards herself against you, reverting back into the woman from five months ago, the woman who could barely stand to look at you from across the lawn as your daughter races towards you and the truck that would be carting her away for the weekend. "I can't uproot Sofia for whatever this is, it's not fair to her," she says, keeping her back towards you. It's in this moment that you realize that you can't go back to having Sofia every other weekend, you can't go back to spending your weekends alone without your girls, you find that you don't want to relearn to live without her, but that's what she was currently asking you to do. The realization washing over you like cold water on a warm day, your senses on high alert now.
"So you're going back to Mark," you say darkly, your eyes meeting hers through the mirror. You don't have to ask her, but you let the words linger between the both of you, letting the hurt in your voice wash over her, letting the betrayal sink into her skin for a few moments. You realize that she has never looked more beautiful to you, hair disheveled, freshly kissed lips… She nods at you and you find yourself cursing loudly, your hands gripping the sheets around you. "Then what the hell was this, Penelope?" you say, standing and pulling the nearest pair of pants onto your frame. The anger you feel rushing through your bones escaping with the words, the biting edge of your tone causing her to flinch away from you, the rise in your voice causing her to gasp, she's never heard you like this before you realize. She's never heard how low your voice gets when you're so angry that your body shakes with the pent-up rage. She's never looked at you like you're deadly. You have to remind yourself that your daughter is asleep down the hall, and Penelope was staying behind to spend the weekend with the both of you like she had been doing for the past three months. You realize that you had deluded yourself into thinking that you were getting your family back. You acknowledge that you have lived your life in delusions for the past eight years and you're gripping your hips with such intensity that you're sure you'll bruise yourself. You're past angry, you've surpassed livid because she knows how you feel about her, you've told her as much each weekend when she fell asleep beside you. You've whispered it to her as you made love to her, you've told it to her as you both sat on your couch with Sofia between you, clutching her fingers in your own behind your daughter's head. You've shown her...
"I don't know," she admits, sounding smaller with each syllable. You're staring at her, mouth hanging open, eyes hard. She's trembling before you, inhaling shakily before she speaks again, your entire world collapsing around you with her words. "I'll always love what we had, what we have, and I hope that we can be better parents to Sofia going forward, but I can't punish him for the same things I did." The words continue to ring in your head, your heart constricting from the knowledge that she was forgiving him, forgiving him because she had gotten her revenge. She had used you, casually destructing your entire existence, giving you a glimpse of what your life could have been like had only communicated years ago, giving you a taste of what it would be like to love her for the rest of your life, only to rip it away from you. You find that the knowledge of her using you like one of her computer systems, you blind enough to play into her hand, doesn't hurt you the way it should have. Instead you look at her, actually look at her, and realize that she doesn't look happy to be having this conversation, and you decide that if she's going to be as miserable as you are, that you can let her go. You can be strong enough to let her go back to her miserable life, but you'd be damned if you weren't going to fight for more time with your daughter.
"Okay," you say, dropping your hands to your sides, the anger leaving you with one word. All you want if for her to be happy and you tell her as much while you run your fingers across your face, tracing your lips that are still bruised from her biting them hours before. You want to tell her that you love her, that you'll always love her but if what she wants is a relationship with a man who will sleep with anything...you'll let her go without a fight. You want to tell her that you want more time with Sofia. You want to tell her that if this child is yours that you want the same amount of time with it as well. You want to tell her that you'll let her walk out of your life, never speaking of these three months you both spent together if it's what she truly wanted. You want to tell her that you'll be there for everything no matter what Mark says if the child is yours. You want to tell her so much, but your words are currently failing you, and so you say nothing at all. You stand there, wanting so badly to articulate the thoughts racing through your mind, but all you can do is smile sadly at her wondering why your heart is beating so rapidly as your dying.
"Okay?" she repeats turning to face you "Is that all you're going to say?" You scoff, laughing darkly at the fact that there was so much that you wanted to say, knowing that now was the moment you could get it all off of your chest, but you remain standing there looking at her. You realize that you have to do something, that she's waiting for you to say something.
"What else is there to say? You've made up your mind," you reply, turning to pick up your clothes off of the floor. "You're going back to your husband, where you will have the perfect family, with the 2.5 children, the picket fence...you want to take Roxy since you're giving him everything that I love?" you lash out, the words rushing out of you before you can hold them back, rushing out before you can censor yourself, because in this moment you don't want to hurt her more than she is already hurting. But you realize that you're hurting too, you remember how you felt when you left, scared and alone. You remember how you felt when you came back, still scared, still alone, but at least you had Sofia. And then four years later you got her back, and you made the most of it with each weekend, secret kisses, secret dates, whispered declarations of love across her skin. Before you can open your mouth to apologize she walks over to you, placing her hands on your chest and shoving you backward, fire in her eyes. There's the Penelope that you know, you think to yourself, the one who only seems to come out now when you're arguing.
"That's not fair," she says, sounding much like Sofia when you tell her she can't have dessert before dinner. She pushes you again, her small hands beating against your chest as you clutch your laundry in your arms, and you notice the tears in her eyes, the ones that fall down her cheeks when she blinks, her voice rising with each blow she delivers to your chest. "You left me!" she cries out, reaching out to slap you. You stand there, letting her hit you, letting her finally get the words out of her mouth, words that she had been harboring for years you realize, as neither of you had gotten closure. You had never explained the letter you left her, never explained that you never meant to fall in love with her, that you never expected to meet her, that you never expected that you'd get called away again. You didn't ever expect to have a family, one that you were willing to die for. "You left a note, a fucking note Luke, and then you left me. You don't get to judge me," she says harshly, pushing against your chest for a final time, her shoulders slumping under the weight of the words.
"I know," you respond, dropping the laundry between you and reaching out to pull her shaking frame into your chest. Your right-hand presses her head to your chest, your left hand sliding around her waist, as you lean your forehead against her hair. "I'm sorry," you mutter into the blonde tresses, trying to soothe her with four words. You can feel her tears against your chest, and you're sure that your own is falling into her hair as you clutch her to you, trying to get her to realize that you've never been sorrier for anything in your life. You've never wanted to take back a single decision you've ever made, not until that one. You've never wanted a re-do in life, but if it meant you could be with her forever, without any interruptions, you would take everything back.
"Stay" you demand, placing a kiss on her cheek. "Just until the morning, we'll have breakfast with Sofia and then you can go and we can go back to how things used to be." You say, your heart breaking with each word that slips through your lips. You know that you'll never be able to get the smell of her out of your house, the feel of her out of your sheets. You'll never be able to get her out of your veins, and you decide that if you're going to spend the rest of your life without her by your side, then you're going to love her for what little time you have left. You press your mouth to hers, tasting the salt from the tears on her lips, and with a shaky breath, you lift her into your arms, carrying her back to the bed. It's not until later that night when she's asleep beside you that you pull a notebook out of your nightstand, pen poised in your hand that you write to her the letter you should have written all those years ago. You decide that if she is leaving you for good this time, she's going to get the closure you denied the both of you years ago. You decide that if she is currently carrying your child, again, you wouldn't leave her with bullshit excuses. You write down everything you wished you had ever said, slipping it into her purse before crawling back into the bed and drawing her closer to you. You lay with your eyes open, preparing yourself for the final night of rest you'll ever get. You doubt you'll sleep as well without her, as you do with her.
"I'll always love you," you whisper into the darkness, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck as you close your eyes, drifting off to sleep. You don't want to wake up in the morning you realize, knowing that she'll be leaving and you wonder if this is how her heart broke all those years ago. You fall asleep with the knowledge that you destroyed her.
A/N: 3 left y'all.
