I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 240

Rukelion wondered if this feeling would ever go away. If it would ever stop feeling too good to be true. If he would ever feel like he belonged in this world he had landed himself in to find the only person he loved.

He didn’t have the answers to that. All he could do right now was hold his little girl and help calm her down when she was scared.

He let Roselia curl up between him and Daisy under the covers. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep feeling safe and secure with her parents. He wished sleep would claim him so easily.

After a while lying there caressing both of their faces he put an arm over them and was able to fall asleep to the reassuring sounds of their even breathing. His family was right here. He wasn’t going to lose them this time.

Rukelion’s anxiety didn’t get better after that. If anything, it got worse as the birth of his second child, a daughter they had decided to call Peony, drew nearer. He wasn’t able to breathe easily for months until she was born and safely home from the hospital.

She was born nearly two months early after Daisy slipped on some ice and fell on her stomach, going into early labor. She had to spend a few weeks in the NICU as a result.

That had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life, which was truly saying something. From the moment he got the call that his wife was on her way to the hospital in an ambulance he couldn’t stop shaking. He didn’t even have time to find a babysitter and took Roselia there with him. She hadn’t been very happy about that.

Rukelion had barely been able to hold it together that day. It took a ton of reassurance from Daisy and the NICU nurses to calm him down.

His family was his greatest joy and his greatest weakness. If he lost them again…any one of them…he wouldn’t be able to take it. He knew it and so did Amy. After what happened she moved their sessions up from twice a month back to weekly to help him get a hold of himself.

“You’re spiraling again, Rukelion. Your wife and daughter are fine but you say you can’t sleep. Why is that?” she asked.

He let out a heavy sigh. “I’m waking up every few hours anyway because Peony needs to be fed. But then I can’t fall back asleep because I’m too anxious. I go back and forth between checking her bassinet, Roselia’s room, and Daisy sleeping on the bed all night.

“She knows something is going on with me because every time Peony cries wanting to be fed I handle it and tell her to go back to sleep. She’s making me take sleeping pills. They help me fall asleep but I can’t stay asleep. Once Peony cries there’s no going back.”

“How much sleep do you think you’re getting?” Amy prodded.

“I don’t know…two, maybe three hours?”

“And you’re still going to work and handling your responsibilities at home without any issues?”

“Yes,” Rukelion said almost defiantly. He didn’t do anything that Daisy or his daughters wouldn’t like aside from not sleeping. But he couldn’t help that.

“It will catch up to you eventually,” the therapist predicted. “We need to address the source of the anxiety so you can shut your brain off and get the rest you need. My guess is that it has something to do with the rather traumatic way Peony was born.”

“Of course it does! She could have died—Daisy could have died too—and I would have been left alone to raise Roselia while completely falling apart. How am I not supposed to be anxious about that, Amy?!”

“What happened was very scary. There’s no denying that. But it’s over now and your family is safe.”

Rukelion leaned his head against the back of his chair hopelessly. “This time. But what about later? Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life checking that they’re all alive every five minutes? Is that even feasible? Daisy already gets annoyed at my fretting sometimes.”

“You do tend to panic if she doesn’t respond to your texts instantly. I would get annoyed with that too. You can’t reasonably expect a mother of two with a job to always have her phone in her hand,” Amy pointed out.

He knew that. He knew he was being irrational but that didn’t mean there was anything he could do about it. Maybe the anxiety would never go away. It would keep growing until it crushed him.

“Nothing in life is guaranteed, Rukelion. But you’ve taken every precaution you can regarding your family’s safety and you need to take care of yourself as well. You know you can’t help them unless you help yourself first,” she continued.

“I know how much you care about them. Much more than you care about yourself. They need you to be well-rested and not to restrict them because of your fears. Remember what happened when you locked Daisy in the castle?”

Vividly. His wife had hated every second of it and in the end it was all for nothing. She died within the walls of her prison because he was too late.

“She was miserable,” Rukelion admitted reluctantly.

Amy nodded. “Exactly. You can’t keep the people you love in a bubble. Nothing is foolproof but this world is far less dangerous than yours. You don’t have enemies here. Your family is more than likely going to be fine and you need to accept that and quit hovering so much.”

He knew that. He did but putting what he knew above what he felt was still difficult after all this time.

Letting go of his hatred hadn’t fixed him. It had merely changed his focus from avenging the past to protecting the future. And protecting his family was a much bigger job than he had expected.

Rukelion could babyproof his apartment but he couldn’t prevent Roselia from getting cuts and bruises at the playground. He could hold his wife’s and daughter’s hands crossing the street to be sure no cars were coming but couldn’t prevent Daisy from slipping on ice when she was out of his sight.

He couldn’t tell her not to leave the apartment when he wasn’t with her either. That would be the castle problem all over again.

“Quit hovering so much. Got it,” he said dully.

That was much easier said than done. Rukelion had to feel like he was in control. So when Roselia became interested in little league sports he insisted on coaching her teams. He offered to take her to the park on the weekends so Daisy could rest and watched her like a hawk. And when Peony was old enough he did the same for her.

It never quite felt like enough. He was fast, strong, and had good reflexes but he couldn’t prevent every accident. And he wasn’t always around either since he had to work.

Then it happened. A work-from-home statistics position that paid nearly twice what he was making at his current job. He switched to being the stay-at-home parent while Daisy went back to a real office.

When Roselia was five, Peony was three, and she was pregnant for the third (and as she declared, final) time they finally managed to save enough money for that land they wanted in Florida. Two acres and a five-bedroom house had been foreclosed on so they got it for a steal.

Rukelion had never seen Daisy so excited. When they went down to examine the property before finalizing her eyes were alight as she walked around saying what plants she wanted to put where.

He was both thrilled and satisfied to have helped her achieve her dream but moving to the country came with its own set of challenges and dangers. Quite a bit of work had to be done to the property to make it safe from wild animals.

On top of that, he would lose Amy. His so-called voice of reason for so many years.

Rukelion would never be able to tell another therapist the truth about him. If his anxiety became too much again, he would have to resort to telling half-truths to whatever new therapist he managed to find.

He couldn’t be bothered about those things though. Not with how happy Daisy was. She couldn’t wait to start gardening though she had to wait until she had given birth. Her belly was swollen with twins and it was rather difficult for her to bend down.

The doctor said they were both boys so they had decided to name them Lukas and Landon. Discovering that twins were often born early and thus needed to spend time in the NICU had been traumatizing after what happened with Peony, adding to his existing anxiety about it all.

But he couldn’t let that overcome him with how happy his wife was. He lived to see her happy.

This dream of hers had been a long time coming. He knew how much it meant to her to have her own land and be able to plant whatever she wanted and finally have a permanent home after so many years of moving around.. He let her have her moment and kept his fears to himself.