Parenthood

[:::: Authors Note ::::]

If you have previously read any of my stories, you know that I love writing drama, the emotion that makes us feel rage, sadness, joy and everything in-between as we follow and hopefully empathize with our central characters, be them good guys or villains. Within many Loving Wives stories, we all know it's inevitable, seeing the train wreck that's coming. But what if there was no way to avoid the train. What if it had passed the station and you had pretty much no choice but to deal with what happened?

In this story that's where we start, broken and in a no-win situation, then again is it really a no win?

I'd like to thank a new editor that has stepped up to the plate but has asked to stay anonymous. Thank you for your help. I also had the chance to read this to my wife before posting it, and she needed a couple of tissues, so you have been warned.

This is a long story, there is lots here, so if you're after a quick read or not a fan of how I write, then I advise you to move on. But if you want to run the gauntlet of emotions, then refill your drink, make sure you have snacks and strap in.

I hope that you enjoy Parenthood.

[:::: Parenthood ::::]

I felt peace and contentment as the soft undulations of gentle waves lapped against my legs, the beach was bright and the sky a beautiful azure blue with soft clouds arching through the atmosphere on their journey from nowhere to oblivion. In the background, palm trees made their way up high, bent slightly at the top, laden heavy with fruit. It was a veritable tropical paradise.

I laughed as I observed the nubile young maidens dancing around me dressed in nothing but sheer transparent satin. They teased me with their curves, their hidden treasures, their stunning smiles alluding to the promises of what could happen if I could give them my attention long enough. I smiled in return as I looked to each woman, flawless in form and appearance.

I enjoyed the feeling of a tropical drink, some type of Piña colada in my hand, cold to the touch, the aroma was pineapple and rum, the sweetness mixing in my nostrils making my mouth water in anticipation of sipping the cool mixture. The drink combined with the scenery made me feel content, I couldn't imagine a better place to be. The summer breeze through the air, the bright sunlight pouring down on us, the tropical location.

Perfect.

I grinned when one of the beautiful ladies swayed through the ankle-deep water towards me with more than a suggestion of a tropical rendezvous. Her dusky skin, and the hint of a nipple; oh so tantalising underneath her sheer clothing had my heart racing. I smiled as she reached out to touch my cheek and our eyes met. Her smile would have me wrapped around her little finger, denying her nothing in no time. For a moment I wondered if she was the one. She beamed at me, alluring, beautiful, elegant. As we stared into each other's eyes, she came within inches of me, I took in a deep breath, waiting in anticipation.

Our lips were almost touching, when suddenly and without warning, her expression contorted, and she screamed in my face.

[:::: 1 - Welcome to Reality ::::]

I was awake instantly, the dream fading quickly from my mind as I glanced at the dark red LED display of my twenty-year-old bedside alarm clock. The time had to be adjusted every couple of months on the old thing, but it was a present for my fifth birthday from my grandparents, so it held sentimental value even if it didn't keep consistent time.

Two-thirty in the morning, perfect.

I sighed, understanding that I had the same word go through my brain a few minutes earlier and it held an entirely different meaning. I calculated that I had only been asleep for a little over forty minutes when the scream of the woman in my dream echoed to the screaming female that was not two armlengths away from me.

Groaning slightly, I threw the covers back and sat up trying to rub the sleep from my tired eyes. For a moment I marvelled how the substance called 'sleep' could accumulate so much so quickly at the corner of your eyes, while I was lacking in the very meaning of the word.

A momentary breath from her caused me to understand why I had awoken so suddenly. Squinting, I looked at her as she looked at me wide eyed and continued her crying, her look pleading for help. I smiled at her. For a moment she stopped, seeing my face in the dim light and that I was smiling as we locked eyes. But it didn't take long before she couldn't hold it in, and she started again.

I kept the forced smile on my face, as I shifted my weight so I could hold her. Over the next few minutes, I continued to smile as she cried, her tears staining my arms as I held her and she settled down. I found it difficult to be so receptive, so open to holding someone that I never asked to share my room, someone that I was struggling to love.

I looked over at the clock again and noticed it had been fifteen minutes since she roused me from the dream. I must have been tired; I would have sworn that it was only three minutes since I woke. I heard her sniff and looked back at her, our eyes locked once more and I felt something move in me, those baby blue eyes, innocent and wide. She began crying once again now she had my attention.

Britney Other, was looked on by the world as the cutest, most adorable baby they would have ever known. To me though, Britney represented failure.

On one hand, Britney was my sobbing infant daughter, only a few months old. Perfectly formed with chubby cheeks, those pink fleshy hands that would grasp anything placed into them. She had deep blue eyes that had managed to capture the hearts of everyone around me over the past month. Those same people telling me that her eyes were just like mine, even though mine were brown. Looking at her as she cried, I guess if I squinted hard enough, I could see it.

I stood, holding Britney in my arms like the nurses had shown me, making sure her head was supported and slowly walked towards my bedroom door. I could now smell the nappy, knowing this was what had woken her. Everyone told me that it would get easier, that being a dad was hard and that I could do it, but the reality was that I didn't want this, I didn't want the responsibility, I didn't want her.

I turned on the bathroom light and lay her down on the change table that my parents bought me. As I unwrapped my daughter, she stopped crying, the movement causing her to wonder what was going on. I gagged as I undid the tabs on the nappy, once again wondering how someone who just drank milk formula from a bottle could produce something that would likely rival the waste product coming out of a nuclear reactor.

I cleaned Britney up and she coo'd as I re-wrapped her nice and tight before carrying her into the kitchen and warming up a bottle. I was getting good at doing things with one hand. Formula in the bottle, water, shake. Then a brief trip to the microwave and lastly, test on my wrist ensuring it was the correct temperature.

With Brittany snuggled against my chest, I moved from the kitchen to my small lounge, sitting down on my old second-hand couch. The drab brown material felt slightly cool, yet a little uncomfortable from years of wear and tear, most of them happening before I bought it. Nestled in my arms, Britney gratefully accepted the bottle and immediately began feeding. While sucking on the formula for all that she was worth, she was gazing deeply into my eyes.

Yes, I reflected. Brittney had my eyes and she had my nose as well. But she also had her mother's chin. What was worse though, is that even as a baby, Britney had that woman's lips. I gave an involuntary shudder as I tried not to think, tried not to go back to those memories.

Brittney soon finished her bottle and following a gentle pat on her back and an un-lady-like burp, she began to fall back to sleep. As gently as possible I carried her as I placed the bottle into the kitchen sink before turning off the lights, and slowly made my way back to the bedroom. Placing Britney into her bassinet situated right beside my bed I looked at her as she settled and slipped back to her innocent infant slumber, blissfully unaware of my internal turmoil.

My daughter was a reminder of the woman who had turned me into a shell of a man. Scared to go outside unless I had to. I struggled to talk to anyone I didn't know and was always looking over my shoulder at any perception of unknown movement.

Britney's mother had done that to me. But now being a single father that had to look after an infant and still pay the bills, I had to fight against those feelings every moment of every day. The feeling of humiliation, of unworthiness, the genuine pain I felt almost daily in my limbs where I had been bound. My doctors told me I had a type of PTSD that was common with victims of sexual abuse. This made sense as twice I had tried to end it all. But both times I had been fortunate, and someone had found me before I expired.

A single unbidden tear ran down my cheek as I watched Britney. Even with some of my features, she still had a strong resemblance to the woman that gave birth to her. My torturer, my rapist.

A little over twelve months ago, Britney's mother, Sheila, had gone and done something so horrific that she ended up in prison while causing me to withdraw from the world. Now I was a single father and Sheila wasn't in the picture. In fact, she was no longer alive, passing away in the hours following childbirth due to complications, leaving me her daughter to look after and raise.

As I laid back down, I pulled the sheet over myself, rolled on my side and stared at the bassinet. I could hear Britney's breathing deepening and she would give a little shuddering breath now and then as if to let me know she was really sleeping, not just lying there awake. I had picked that one up in the first week.

As I lay there, I contemplated that my feelings towards my daughter's mother were complicated, but definitely not positive. I had not been in love with Sheila, and she knew that. From almost the get go, Sheila knew I didn't love her, and that was a small part of what caused this path of life I was now living. I didn't even know that Britney had been a result of that night until Child Services turned up on my doorstep early one Saturday morning, my infant daughter with them.

They knew very little of what had happened, only that Sheila had died, and they had managed to locate me, naming me her father. The two ladies that visited me, were shocked to find out I had no idea Sheila was pregnant, let alone had given birth. They were again shocked, when I showed them my scars, explaining I wouldn't know anything due to the court orders and twice weekly counselling I was still undergoing.

But be that as it may, I was now a father, and it was obvious from the outset that I was her father.

I called my mother, and she was at my front door within an hour, talking with the Child Services team and telling me it was going to be okay as I just stared blankly at whomever was holding Britney at the time.

I did try to say no a few times, but between my mother getting upset that I wouldn't want to raise her grandchild, and the other two ladies telling me that the childcare and foster systems just weren't adequately disposed towards looking after a newborn when a biological parent was available, I was pretty much told to stand up and be counted. When I tried to tell them that I wasn't capable of being a father, my mother scoffed and told me that no parent is ever ready. But ready or not, right or wrong, I was her biological father, her only surviving parent and I found I couldn't say no.

My parents, especially my mother, helped as much as they could. I was taught how to change nappies, how to wrap a newborn, how to support an infant's neck and how to carry them. I was provided tips on how to know what different cries meant, when they should sleep, when they shouldn't and a litany of other advice including medical care, help numbers and the like that first time parents spend the entire pregnancy preparing for together.

Me, I got a three-day crash course before Mum left me alone with Britney for the first time.

Of course, I was overwhelmed within an hour and that first night I panicked at every movement, each noise causing me to doubt myself. I resented being responsible for someone when I could barely look after myself.

I sighed coming back to the moment, the clock now read a little after three am and not for the first time, I softly cursed Sheila. I was sure, that even in death she was likely laughing her ass off. Our daughter, her last brutal gesture to a relationship that I never really wanted, but had resulted in the sleeping babe beside me.

As I felt my self-drifting at last, I was still contemplating how it could all go so horribly wrong. My dreams once again taking me back to that night, to the months leading up to it, our first meeting and the night that Sheila stole my innocence and trapped me in this nightmare.

[:::: 2 - 18 months earlier ::::]

Before I became the recluse I am now, if you ever passed me on the street or walking down the middle of a shopping mall, most likely you would never have given me a second glance. My unkempt hair and almost pasty complexion, overlayed with remains of acne that I had not grown out of even in my early-twenties, had me as just one of the crowd.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't ugly. In my own view I just wasn't someone who stands out. I would describe myself with average looks, a shock of brown hair, with hazel to brown eyes. I had an average build, wiry but I did have a few muscles thanks to spending a couple of hours each week in the gym at work.

I suppose work was likely the most interesting thing about me. In school I had been a geek, interested in computers and gaming online. I also dabbled a little in programming at home in my spare time. This interest landed me a job in the Information Technology department of the Queensland Police Service. I got the job when my father's brother, a Senior Constable with QPS, got me work experience at headquarters in my senior year of high school. That turned into some part time work and then a full-time junior IT position with the department.

Within six months of joining the department full-time I was also studying part time towards a bachelor's in technology. It would take me almost five years at the rate I was completing modules, but I believed that by the time I had my degree I would also be senior within the technology team and perhaps there could be a manager's position in my future.

I also liked to think myself as a little more thrifty than the average person, because while most of my peers were out partying, drinking, and having random hook-ups, I saved most of my pay check.

Six months after I started my job, I was still traveling almost an hour by train into work. It was an easy commute but a fair distance out of town. But then my parents noted a townhouse for sale on the outskirts of the city. It was little more than a couple of bedrooms and a small kitchen with a lounge. But it was close to the city and the office, so it worked for a single guy like myself. With a hefty loan from my parents for a deposit and bartering my soul to the bank for the next thirty years, I became a homeowner.

Overall, though, as I said, you wouldn't pick me out from the crowd, I had a number of friends that I hung out with, but they were all better looking, partied harder, laughed more and the pressures of a full-time job and mortgage payments were still in the distant future for them. So, while I went out, I was conservative with what I spent, knowing that I had my next home loan repayment looming.

It was with one of these groups of people that I first met Sheila.

I was out for an evening with friends. We were doing one of those Saturday pub trivia nights, everyone was enjoying a few drinks as we hastily scribbled down the responses to classic questions like, 'What is the longest river in New South Wales, Australia' and 'How Long is the Great Barrier Reef'.

Everyone had taken a break following the questions until our host would reveal the correct responses, so several of us headed to the bar to refresh our drinks. I had just gotten a pint and turned round when she ran straight into me, knocking a portion of my new drink all over me.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she told me. "It's my fault, really I'm sorry."

I brushed the beer off my shirt and smiled back at her, noticing that she was quite attractive.

"That's alright, it's not the first time and likely won't be the last," I replied to the nervous looking woman. We both laughed and I moved back to the table with my friends.

I don't know how it happened, but after that, by the end of the evening, my group and hers were sitting together chatting like we had all known each other for years. Her group had actually won the evening and they were revelling in their trivia prowess while our group, coming fifth, were just enjoying the booze.

Somehow, Sheila, as she introduced herself, sat next to me from the time our groups merged. She again apologised for earlier and I again waved her off before we listened to my friend Tony tell us the story of how he got caught running buck naked from his girlfriend's house while her father chased him with a cricket bat in one hand and his underwear in the other. He told us how the next day he went back and got a large serve from her Dad, and then her Mum, before dropping to one knee and proposing to his girlfriend in front of them.

We all roared with laughter as he told the story. Mind you, so did his now betrothed who was sitting beside him blushing but happily sporting a small rock on her engagement finger.

I will admit that at the time I thought it was a good evening. Looking back though, I sometimes wondered if I had made a real attempt to separate from her at that point would our lives have gone differently. Throughout the evening Sheila and I talked on innocent topics, the things that strangers do. What we did, people that we might have in common, the weather over the coming week, and the like.

I need to also admit at this point that Sheila really was an attractive woman. I would never have believed at that point what was lying in wait under the surface, but she was easy on the eyes. She had light sandy blonde hair to the middle of her back. And for a woman in her twenties, she had an attractive build with hips that flared out nicely, cleavage that would draw your eyes and a face that while not a super model, wasn't unattractive. Sheila had a bubbly personality that was always smiling and laughing at whatever conversation was happening around the table, yet there was a slight vibe to her that I couldn't quite identify. It was almost as if there was a desperation for attention, combined with a fear of being rejected. But when she looked at me, it was almost like the fear was intensified tenfold.

That first night, she was constantly around me, touching my arm or my shoulder. A couple of my friends gave me a look and by the end of the evening Sheila and I had agreed to soon go out together on a date. The smile she gave when we agreed on the time and place could have lit up the room when I also, with slight hesitation, gave her my phone number.

At the time I hadn't gone past second base with a girl. While, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn't the best-looking guy around, neither was I the worst. I did have a few girlfriends throughout high school and a little heavy petting wasn't out of the question. However, sappy as it was, I was hanging onto my virginity until I found a woman I knew would cherish the gift, because I felt, once I found her our love would be shared forever.

Sheila and I texted a few times throughout the week, connected on Instagram and shared a few reels. If you haven't seen reels before, they are the short videos that Instagram users, put together and get shared on the platform.