I love my job. Love what I’m able to do for families. Love it when that look of pure happiness lights up a child’s face.

But I also hate my job. Hate that there is a reason that these children need some hope. Hate when I see their tiny bodies suffer in the hospital.

And I especially hate it, loathe it, when I get the news that one of my special kids has passed away.

I’m just out of a relaxing bath the morning after our fight, when Paxton knocks on the door. I let him in, not raring for an argument but knowing we have to talk about it. He booked his room, slept next to me, wall to wall, all night long. I’d tossed and turned, rising early to fill the bath with bubbles and didn’t leave until I was pruned, my mind was cleared, and the suds were gone.

I tell him I’m going to get dressed first, and a minute later, my cell phone rings.

He picks it up, because I’m struggling to pull up my skinny jeans, and I hear his excitement as he tells me that Sherrie, Ryan’s mom, is on the phone.

A split-second later, I hear his intake of breath as, I’ll later find out, she relays the details into his ear.

A viral infection. Too late to catch. Compromised his immune system and left him without a chance to fight it off.

We sit on the bed for a while after he gets off the phone with her, sobs coming through the other end as she tells us about the funeral arrangements.

“I hate this world sometimes.” I choke on the tears in my throat, some of them escaping my tear ducts.

I lean into Pax, all thoughts of our fight and every insecurity I’d felt yesterday completely erased. None of it mattered when you were talking about life and death. He was here, we were in love with each other, and we were both in it for the good times and the bad.

“I know, baby. I know.” He rocked me like a child as I wept in his arms, my tangled, damp hair covering his shirt as my nose became a snotty mess.

It was always horrible to lose a child, to see the families suffer, but this one cut deep. Ryan had been … a bright light in this sometimes otherwise dark world. He had been a beam of hope, a galaxy of personality that was funny, sweet and effortlessly likable. And the fact that he’d had the same cancer as Ezra … it was a harsh blow.

“He was so good, such a good soul.” I hiccupped.

“He was the absolute best. It’s not fucking fair.” Pax choked out the words, and for the first time in my meltdown, I looked up to see him in pain.

He’d loved Ryan, too. “He’d brought us together that day in the park. I love you, Pax.”

I meant it. I’d been hurting yesterday, but none of it mattered now.

“I love you so much.” Pax touched my lips to his, an affirmation that we were okay.

When we’d tasted enough, felt our way back to even ground after yesterday’s events, I pulled back. “I’m going to pay for the funeral.”

It wasn’t a practice I usually kept, but in certain cases, I wanted to do it. It not only helped the families, whose medical expenses had usually piled up to insurmountable bills, but it was something that marginally made me feel better. I could do something to be useful, to take the burden off their backs. I did it when I could.

“Let me help, let me contribute. I want to.” Pax nodded.

I wasn’t going to argue, I wanted Ryan’s family to have anything they needed.

* * *

Two days later, we laid a sweet little boy to rest.

The funeral was packed, people of all ages and walks of life that Ryan had touched. Half the Cheetahs team forwent the morning practice days before the Super Bowl to be there, a lot of them remembering the glorious day when Ryan ran around playing catch with them.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the place when his father took to the altar, talking about his son’s radiant personality or ability to see the world in a positive light even when it had dealt him a crappy hand. He asked us all to clap for Ryan, said his son would have loved being the singular celebration of so many people. When the place erupted, I had to lean into Paxton to stop from erupting into tears on the spot.

As we left the brunch for friends and family two hours later, my eyes felt like they needed to close for the next four days.

“I don’t know how you do this over and over again.” Pax shook his head, his eyes bloodshot too.

I took a deep breath. “That’s why I do this. If I can bring some little sliver of good to these families for the short period of time they have together, I want to do that. No matter how much it hurts, over and over again, I know I have to do it. It heals the cracks in my heart, if only momentarily, that formed when Ezra died. I see him in every single child, and if I can give them a minute’s relief from this, I’m happy to suffer the consequences afterward.”

He nodded, The Eagles singing softly on the radio. “I’m so proud to know you, Demi. You are the epitome of good in this world.”

Reaching my hand across the console, I laced our fingers. “Thank you for coming with me today. I’ve done a lot of these on mine own. It helps to have someone you love there.”

“I don’t know how you live after that.” Pax shakes his head, the clutches of the funeral still in him.

I knew how he felt, how he couldn’t let the idea of death and a small innocent child go. It felt wrong, backward. There was no way to make sense of it.

The sun had almost gone down, the day feeling impossibly long and yet it was only seven o’clock. Darkness enveloped the car, and the mild cold of early February in Charlotte seeped into my bones.

“Those parents … how do you go on?” he chokes out, and I know he’s spiraling.

I sigh, squeezing his thigh. “You just do. You’re not a whole person anymore, you and I know the feeling of losing someone. But each day, each year, it gets a little more manageable. It’s never easy, there are moments where you feel paralyzed with the loss, but you survive. And you remember the good moments. Cling to them, feel the pure happiness that happened during those times.”

“When we have kids, I will never be able to let them out of my sight.”

Paxton’s words make me stop breathing, because, of course, I’ve thought about kids, but he just bluntly put it out there. “You want children?”

“A dozen of them, enough to man a basketball team or start our own singing group like that movie in Austria.”

I laugh. “The Sound of Music? Okay. When are we getting started on this troupe?”

The insanity of his statement, and the giddiness I felt when talking about hypothetically starting a family with Pax overtook me. It eased the tension left behind from the funeral, and I wanted to use it to pull him out of his grief.

“I’d have started yesterday if you’d let me. Who knows, maybe my guys will just swim extra hard with some coaching.”

I snort and roll my eyes. “Yeah, because that’s how babies are made. You know I’m on the pill.”

“So let’s pull the goalie.” Pax looks at me, no smile on his face.

I smack his arm. “Get out of here.”

“I’m serious. Let’s have a baby. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll want to try anyway.” Now his face was beaming with excitement, and I knew he was cycling through emotions because of the trauma of today.

Palming his cheek as he swung onto the street where my condo was, I smiled. “Let’s talk about it after we get through the biggest game of your career. Oh, and retirement. I think you have enough on your plate right now.”

We tabled the discussion, but that night as I laid down next to him, all I could think about was a chubby little baby with Pax’s eyes and my hair.