Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
So, yes, she knew love. She knew how powerful it could be, and how instantly life-changing it was when it came along to strike her back to her knees, and remind her why faith was good, God was real, and life was beautiful.
She had loved Catherine before she was ever even born. But then she was born, and in a blink, it all changed for Catrina again. In a single breath, her life and heart was upended all over again by nothing more than love.
A love so fierce, uncontainable, and unbelievable that Catrina barely even understood how to handle it. Her heart felt too full—too big. How was it supposed to handle all of this? How could she feel all of this?
But she did.
So, she let it reign.
And then as quickly as that amazing feeling had come, it was replaced slowly over the following few days with a deep-seated fear and insecurity that Catrina just couldn’t seem to shake no matter how hard she tried. She was not the kind of woman to feel like the lesser—to find herself put down by silly things like insecurities.
But as she watched the nurses easily bathe, change, and feed Catherine while the very actions felt so foreign and strange to Catrina when she tried to do it, those ugly monstrous feelings made themselves known time and time again. She could take care of her daughter, of course, but not without being shown how first.
And not without feeling as though she were doing it wrong every single time. She always just assumed during her pregnancy that the natural maternal instincts would kick in for her, and she would know what to do. She would already know how to take care of her child, and how to keep this precious little girl alive.
After all, she had a son, now. A toddler, sure, but he was still practically a baby, wasn’t he? Did he need similar things to Catherine?
Catrina figured so.
She was wrong.
A newborn was not the same at all.
And that just created a bigger, and more awful, feeling for Catrina.
Those doubts grew.
They were burrowed into her heart now.
Could she even be a mother?
Was she supposed to be one?
“Cat?”
Catrina glanced up at Dante’s call of her name. Sitting in the hospital issued wheelchair—as she was not allowed to leave the hospital walking due to their policies—she kept a firm grip on the swaddled bundle of pink in her arms.
Catherine’s green eyes—like her father’s—were opened, and staring up at her mother. An innocent stare, yet still seemingly mesmerized all the same, too. It made Cat’s heart hurt a bit. This beautiful little thing was depending on her. Catherine already looked for her. She needed her mother, and very little else.
So why did Catrina feel like a fraud?
“You okay?” Dante asked.
Catrina offered her husband a smile, and nodded. “Yeah.”
It wasn’t entirely the truth. She didn’t know what she was. Dante was a little too busy stroking his palm over the top of Catherine’s mop of dark hair to notice Catrina’s off tone. “Car is all pulled up and ready whenever you are, bella.”
That did make her smile. Even in sweats, and an oversized sweater, no makeup, her hair in a messy bun, and probably looking like she was still a few months pregnant, he called her beautiful.
And she knew he meant it.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She wasn’t.
Dante scooped the baby up anyway to move Catherine into her car seat in the backseat. Catrina finally got up out of her wheelchair, and moved further away from the hospital. Further away from the safety it provided, and the comfort it had allowed. Further away from where she was just starting to learn how to be a mother to a newborn, and closer to something else entirely.
Insecurities.
Wariness.
Fear.
*
“Cat?”
At the slightest whisper of Dante’s voice, little Catherine’s tiny limbs spasmed, and her eyelids fluttered. It was the threat of the baby possibly waking up after Cat had just spent two hours to get her to finally go to sleep that sent her hissing at her husband.
“Shut up!”
So, maybe that was a bad idea.
Instantly, Catherine’s eyes popped open, and the wailing started. Nothing was getting this child to sleep well, or rather, nothing that Cat did was getting Catherine to do anything well. She failed at breastfeeding, the baby had gone through four different types of bottles to no avail, and little else seemed to make the girl happy.
One week after leaving the hospital, and Catrina was still just as lost as the day she had walked out of it. Fucking wonderful.
“Sorry,” Dante murmured. “Didn’t mean to wake her up.”
It wasn’t even him.
It was Cat.
But he took the blame because he was wonderful like that, while she was fucking awful.
Dante quickly crossed the living room, and scooped baby Catherine out of her wicker Moses basket. All it took was a few whispered hums from him, his arms rocking her to and fro, and the baby girl was back to sleep like she had never even been awake to begin with.