Finding Love At Life's Crossroads_An Interracial Novel by Skylar Ward

Author:Skylar Ward [Ward, Skylar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2017-11-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Ace ran an unsteady hand across the ultrasound of his daughter encased in her cocoon. The next photo brought a deep exhalation and a broad smile as he traced the perimeter of Efia’s bulging stomach.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. “I should have been with you every step of the way.”

Slowly, he turned the well-documented pages of his daughter’s memory book, absorbing the tiniest detail from her hospital bracelet, her first photograph with her mother, grandparents, and godmother.

As he turned each page, his chest tightened with love for the child he hardly knew but already felt connected to. Each photo serving to reinforce how much he had missed—how much he had been denied. When Ace reached the final page, a picture of Yasmine sitting in a high chair with Efia standing beside her, greeted him. A single-layered, bright pink cake stood on the table with a candle in the shape of a One.

Choked up, he whispered, “I love you, Yasmine Acelyn Davenport.”

Ace closed his eyes for a few minutes, committing every detail to memory. Next, he fired up his computer and searched Efia’s YouTube channel.

He did a double take. “Over eight hundred thousand subscribers?” He shook his head in disbelief. “She shared my daughter with everyone—except me.”

The Popular Uploads section caught his eyes. Yasmine’s birth had garnered more than seven million views.

“What the hell is Efia doing parading my daughter online?”

He clicked the video. The vlog unfolded with Efia in a hospital bed with her mother at her side. He winced watching Efia shriek with pain. His hard stance began to ease. Efia cried out. Ace’s hands tightened around the edges of the desk. She cried once more. Ace’s anger slipped further. By the third time, Efia cried, Ace’s anger was fast receding.

“Come on, sweetheart, you can do it, push, Efia,” he said, joining Rosina as coach. He held his breath when Efia grabbed her mother’s hand.

“Ahhhhh! Mom, I think my daughter has a big head like her dad, she is ripping me apart.”

Between the tears which had landed on his cheeks and his racing pulse, Ace chuckled, “A big head? My head isn’t that big, is it?”

When the doctor declared, ‘the baby was crowning,’ Ace’s chuckles morphed into gut-wrenching spasms. Intellectually, he was acutely aware that Yasmine was now four years old and appeared to be in perfect health, however, physically he was a father experiencing the bodily pains of the birth of his child.

“Push, Efia, push, sweetheart.”

“She is here,” he heard the doctor say. Ace held his breath—waiting.

A few minutes later when the camera zoomed in on his newborn daughter resting on Efia’s chest, Ace caressed Yasmine’s head over the computer screen, grateful that Efia’s mom had been at her side.

“I am sorry, sweetheart,” Ace said. “I am so sorry you felt the need to exclude me.”

“What is that beneath Yasmine’s right eye?” Ace heard Efia’s mother asked.

When Efia ran her finger beneath their daughter’s eye and declared, ‘You have the same birthmark as your daddy, Yasmine,’ Ace’s heart swelled with pride.

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