Fighting For Light: A Dark Sports Romance (The Coldwell Brothers)

36. Cordelia

Kai woke me up early and packed us up all before seven. Yesterday got to him. He couldn’t even smile at his win. He performed to perfection and didn’t even blink an eye.

I’ve been doing my best to be calm and collected, but this doesn’t make it easy. I trust him implicitly. But there is that little voice in the back of my head telling me we, my son and I, just made his life infinitely more volatile. Is it possible to regret something and not regret it at the same time? I don’t regret marrying Kai, but I do regret making myself and my pregnancy his problem.

I look out the window as we make our way to Kai’s house in Cali. It’s quite a drive from Texas, and he’s been silent for most of it. Dad called earlier, saying he’d meet us at the next competition in Cali since it’s only a couple hours from Kai’s house. Two weeks later, the championship is back in Vegas. Until then, Kai and I can work on getting the house ready for the baby. Guilt stabs my stomach again. He has to change his entire lifestyle for me. Everything feels so… backward.

Shaking off the feeling, I refocus on my computer and finish working on the marketing materials for a handmade clothing company. After I send that, I edit my photos from the other night and send them to the sponsors. The few I caught of Kai have me staring. He looks so graceful and effortless up in the air, yet it makes my heart pound looking at it. This sport is so compelling for that reason. Part of it is guts, and the other part is finesse and skill.

This is the first time I’ve seen Kai’s house. He sent me pictures when he first bought it, but I never had the chance to visit. If it was during the off-season, he was with his family while I was with Mom or hanging out with Dad most of the time.

I’ve grown my portfolio quite a bit doing freelance work. It didn’t start out that way, so I didn’t have two pennies to rub together to visit him. He did come to me a few times, though. At that point, I was nineteen, and Kai was twenty. We camped in Yosemite National Park, went hiking and swimming, and even tried horseback riding. Those were good memories with him.

“What are you thinking about over there?” Kai asks. We’re getting close to Arizona, and I’m getting antsy despite the other two stops we made. Kai didn’t complain once.

“I’m wondering what we’re going to do at your house,” I tell him.

“Oh, okay. You’re not thinking about what happened last night?” he asks.

I sigh and look at him. “Yes, I’m worried, but I’m also thinking about that one time you came to visit me when I was with Dad during the off-season.” I giggle a little at the memory. “We were staying in Montana, and we tried to learn how to ride horses.”

He laughs. “I really didn’t think it would be that hard, seeing as I flip bikes over my head in the air for a living.”

I start laughing because it was ridiculous. “You got onto that horse thinking you knew exactly what you were doing before he took off, and you landed right on your butt. You were madder than a hornet’s nest.” Tears well in my eyes. He leapt up off the ground, cursing and trying to run after the horse. I was already on mine at that point. We hadn’t even moved, but Kai got overconfident.

“That horse didn’t like me,” he grumbles.

“Yeah, because you didn’t respect him.”

“That’s not fair! I didn’t do anything, and he…took off, and I wasn’t ready,” he grumbles.

I laugh again. “I just think you’re not meant to be a cowboy, daredevil.”

“You rode that horse like you’d done it your whole life, though.” He glances at me and winks.

“Are you trying to say you like the cowgirl look?”

He shrugs with one hand on the steering wheel and the other leaned against the armrest. “I don’t…dislike it. I couldn’t say it then, but I certainly can tell you now. You were wearing those flair jeans that looked painted on your ass and that hat with your hair flowing down your back. I was admittedly distracted.”

I laugh again and look at him, reaching for his hand. “I don’t think I can fit in those jeans now.” I’ll probably be in dresses for the foreseeable future because nothing else works.

“Then get you some new ones,” he says.

“No, I can’t. I—“

“Gem, I gave you that black card for a reason. What’s mine is yours. Buy what you want.”

“Oh,” I mutter.

He chuckles and lifts my hand to his lips while his eyes are still on the road. “Let me spoil you.”

“Oh, you spoil me plenty. But it has nothing to do with clothes.”

He smiles. “Well then, let me spoil you in a different way.” He glances at the road sign and pulls to the right, getting off the highway. “We’re stopping here for the night before we make our way north. Since there’s no Prada around here, we can shop online. It should be at the house by the time we get there. Or I can call whatever stores you want, and they will bring options to the house. That’s typically what Mom does.”

“This is probably a stupid question, but I need to ask. How rich are we?“ I ask him. My face feels hot because it’s embarrassing to ask this, but it’s probably a good thing for me to know.

He keeps his eyes on the road. “Not everything is liquid. There are a lot of investments. My brothers and I all have off-shore accounts, just in case. We have some things in Switzerland. I was looking into a beach house in Italy on the Amalfi coast I thought you might like, which would have been my wedding present to you, but I put it on hold because I wasn’t sure. We are probably close to the ten-figure mark.”

My jaw drops, and a sound squeaks from my mouth. He glances at me and chuckles. “I told you, you don’t have to worry about anything, Cordi.”

“That’s…a lot of money.”

He shrugs and rolls to a stop at the stoplight in some random town. “Yes, gem, it is. But it’s just money.”

“That’s really easy to say when you’ve always had it.”

He chuckles darkly. “My mom comes from money. The Astor’s roots go deep and wide, but for about six months after Mom got us out, we couldn’t touch the money Mom was able to take back until it was free and clear, and the Costa’s weren’t going to come for us because dad was using the money to pay them to do his bidding. We couldn’t touch the trust funds our grandfather left us because they required that we were married in order to get them. The one caveat was that we could use them to invest, but anything earned goes back into it. We lived in a motel room with two beds, a microwave, and a mini fridge for a while. Mom wouldn’t even let us go to school. She was so worried someone would find us. We lived on bologna sandwiches and apples because it’s all she could afford at the time. Emerson did some underground fights to get some extra cash. Mom didn’t know about that, though.”

“Wow, Kai. I …I didn’t know.”

He shrugs. “It was brief, but we got a good understanding of what life would look like if Mom didn’t plan ahead. Suffice it to say we all made sure we would never be put in that position again.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Anyway, we have money. More than what we can spend for a couple of generations. I never mentioned this because it’s up to you, but you don’t have to work if you don’t want to.”

“I was thinking about taking some time off when the baby comes, anyway.”

“You should. I was thinking I might, too.”

I smile at the thought of being in one place for more than a few nights.

“How will that work with the season starting up a few months after my due date?”

He shrugs. “Maybe it’s time for me to retire.”

“We’ve been through this, Kai. I’m not asking you to do that if you don’t want to.”

“I know. It’s just a thought. Nothing is set in stone.”

My mind goes back to the competition in Texas. I can’t stop thinking about it, even though I’m trying not to. It makes my chest hurt and tears well in my eyes. “Do you think that man was going to hurt us?” I ask him through a thick throat.

He looks at me with a tight expression and turns into the campground. “I don’t know, I really don’t.”

***

I’m leaning up against the back of the bed with my lap desk across my thighs, searching for clothes. I have no idea what’s going to work. There’s going to be a lot of trial and error since I keep growing.

“Find anything you like?” Kai asks. He’s freshly out of the shower with his towel wrapped low around his hips. I stare at him for a moment, and he whistles. I finally drag my eyes back up to his face and blink a few times.

“A couple of things, but I don’t know if they are going to fit.”

He goes over to our closet and reaches in a drawer to pull out his boxer briefs. His towel drops, and he flashes me that glorious butt before covering it again.

“Maybe you should get more grandma dresses,” he growls. “They’re just so sexy,” he says, joking.

I smile, rolling my eyes. “Let me add ten more to the cart.”

He throws himself on the bed and grabs the computer off my little desk. “What is this website?”

“I don’t know, I was googling maternity clothes.”

He chuckles and opens a new tab, typing in a luxury brand I’ve never owned a thing from, setting the computer back on my lap. “Look there,” he tells me.

“This is so expensive. I’m going to wear it so briefly. What’s the point in spending this kind of money?” I ask him.

He smiles at me with something in his eyes but doesn’t answer. Instead, he flips the TV on and lays next to me, one hand behind his head and the other resting on his stomach. I scroll through the jaw-dropping prices and find a few cute things, but it’s not really my style. This is more Esmarie’s speed. She’d look like a queen in it, too. I browse another website I’ve always thought was kind of expensive, but they have more of my coastal look. I add what I want and bite my lip, looking at the bottom line. It’s four digits.

“Ready?” Kai asks.

“This is too expensive,” I grumble.

“Give it to me, gem,” he commands. I nervously slide him the computer, and he doesn’t blink an eye as he slips out another heavy card, types in the card number and his address, and then hits purchase. “I did expedited shipping, so it should arrive the day after we get home.”

“Thank you. “

“You’re welcome, wifey,” he says, kissing my forehead.

“Wifey?” I repeat, scrunching my nose.

“What, you don’t like that?”

I shrug. “Is it stupid to say my favorite name is wife?”

He grins and kisses me. “No, because that’s my favorite, too.”