Forsaking All Others by Janine Infante Bosco

Author:Janine Infante Bosco [Infante Bosco, Janine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-07T18:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Holly Armstrong

A woman doesn’t realize how strong she truly is until she becomes a mother. It starts during pregnancy, when she watches her body stretch to accommodate the growing life inside of her. That strength amplifies when she goes into labor, when her body feels like it’s being split in two to give birth. Then she hears that baby cry for the first time and all the pain she felt moments ago just fades away.

As the years go by she’ll come to learn that there will be plenty of times when defeat threatens, when she locks herself in the bathroom and has herself a good cry. Her kids will bang on the door, they’ll call for her, maybe even cry for her and she will ask herself how she’s ever going to get through another day. She’ll wonder if the strength she saw in herself was a figment of her imagination. Then she’ll pick herself up from the floor and press her ear against the door. She’ll remind herself that those little voices calling her name need her, they need her strength and all her love. The defeat she felt vanishes just as quickly as the pain she felt bringing them into the world did and her strength rushes back in huge waves.

I didn’t lock myself in the bathroom and have myself a cry, but my strength was tested over the last twenty-four hours, probably more than ever before because I wasn’t tested only as a mother, but as a wife too. But that’s another thing a woman realizes once she has children—every other role she carries becomes secondary and though she loves her husband, her child will always take priority over everyone else.

I didn’t have much time to process all that was going on with my marriage before Theo got sick and I went into mother mode. I thought the problems Colt and I had would still be there in the morning, that we could push our differences aside and put our son first. I mean, if a child becomes a mother’s first priority, doesn’t it become the father’s too? The answer to that question is simple—it depends on the man. They’re not all wired the same.

Some are exceptional.

Take the man buckling my son into his car seat. The man who stood with us until he was cleared for discharge and then lifted him onto his shoulders and carried him out of the hospital. He’s not his father. Not even his stepfather.

He’s just Mav.

The guy who calls himself a Knight but never quits being a king.

“Okay, buddy, you’re all set to go,” Maverick declares.

He tugs on the harness of Theo’s car seat, making sure it’s secure before he pokes the tip of his nose.

Maverick has always been good to Theo, just like Colt has been attentive to Tara and Shepard. But it’s different, isn’t it? I brought Colt into the family I created with Maverick. He knew what he was signing up for when he asked me to be his, but Maverick—when he made me his queen, he pictured a different life.

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