“That is shocking. Maybe she’s finally growing up.”
“It’s never too late,” he said with a sigh. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head, uncaring that I was aggravating my pounding headache.
“I’ll talk then,” he said. He closed the toilet lid and sat before crossing his arms over his chest. “Losing a child is one of the most painful experiences a parent can go through. Kierra and I suffered a loss after Kieran.”
My head lazily turned towards him. “You did?” I asked, voice cracking from a renewed sense of pain—pain resulting from empathy.
“We did,” he confirmed with a sharp nod. “I had a vasectomy, but your mother and I were always extremely careless when it came to birth control.” He shrugged. “We just didn’t care. We loved children and were wealthy enough to have a basketball team of children if we wanted. Long story short, we didn’t use alternative birth control while we waited for everything to flush out and found out that she was pregnant six months after Kieran. We weren’t shocked, but we wondered how everyone would react. You already know how your grandparents felt.”
Breeding kink.
“We decided to wait to share the news when Kierra passed the first trimester, but she miscarried at Week 10.”
“What happened?”
His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Are you asking what caused it?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “We don’t know. Sometimes, these things just happen.”
“How did you deal with it?” I asked softly.
“Not well. Not well at all, actually.”
“What happened?”
He sighed before leaving the toilet and sitting beside me with a groan about getting too old to sit on the floor.
“I was stuck on the fact that we were supposed to have six children and not five. I went to the urologist to get tested and was upset when he confirmed my sperm count was at zero, and we missed our window to try again.”
“Why didn’t you reverse it?”
“Kierra didn’t want me to because she didn’t want to go through that again. I fell into depression, and like you, I turned to alcohol. You’re too young to remember, but there were many nights I didn’t come home.”
“Were you cheating?” I asked in disbelief.
“God, no. I was getting drunk off my ass at my office. Things between Kierra and me had gotten intense. She was under the impression I was cheating, too. I assured her I wasn’t, but I couldn’t explain to her that I was crying myself to sleep on my office couch with a bottle of Jack. Eventually, she confronted me at my office and threatened to leave. That shook me out of whatever drunk stupor I was in. She reminded me that I wasn’t the only one hurting and that I abandoned her during her timeof need. We were both crying ourselves to sleep, but were miles away.”
“I guess everything worked out.”
“It did, but not without hard work. I started attending AA, and we went to individual and couples therapy. A few months later, we were back to our old selves again. Instead of relying on alcohol, I relied on my partner like the vows you took suggest.”
“She should’ve told me,” I said stubbornly.
“I agree; she should’ve, but she didn’t; now what? What’s your next move, Grant?”
“I signed the divorce papers.”
“Mhm. What next?”
“I don’t know. Sign up for therapy and AA, I guess.”
“That’s wonderful, Grant. Rehab should cover all those bases.”
“Excuse me?”