Protecting the Boundary (LA Wolves #8)

Chapter 3

THREE

“And then the princess lived happily ever after.”

I hold open the last page of the latest fairy tale Kay’s obsessed with because I know she loves looking at the picture. She’s snuggled under her lavender comforter with daisies on it, her eyelids getting heavy with sleep. I brush her hair away from her face even as a pang stabs my heart.

She looks so much like Sydney.She has the same light brown skin tone and the same corkscrew curls. If it weren’t for Larissa teaching me how to do Kaylee’s hair, it would’ve been a disaster.

Some days I’m grateful she looks so much like her mother and will always have that connection to her. Other days it feels like being stabbed in the gut repeatedly.Not that I know what that actually feels like, but I imagine it’s about as painful as grief.

She gets a little furrow between her brows like she always gets when she’s got something on her mind. “What are you thinking about, Sweetie?”

“Are you going to be gone a lot again?”

Now my heart hurts for a completely different reason. “I’ll be gone about the same as last season, but you know I’ll always rush home to be with you, and Grammy’s already said she’ll bring you to a game if you want.”

She hasn’t been to many, but she always loves getting to watch my games, and she enjoys them more the older she gets.

Her face shutters and she burrows deeper under her covers. “Okay,” she whispers.

For all that she looks like her mother, she acts just like me. I shut down instead of facing hard feelings, and I wonder how much I’m screwing her up already, even when I try to do my best by her.

“You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, Daddy.” Her voice is quiet and I know it’s not just from being tired, but I don’t know how to make it better.

“Good night, Kay,” I say, dropping a kiss to her forehead.

“Night, Daddy,” she murmurs before closing her eyes and rolling over.

I make sure her night-light is on before I turn off the lamp on her nightstand and leave the room. I close the door and then walk to my room at the end of the hall, turning off the hallway light on my way.

Instead of getting ready to go to sleep, I sit heavily on the edge of my bed and stare at my hands. My mind races as that feeling of helplessness settles on my shoulders. I want to be the best father I can be for Kay, but every day I feel like I’ve failed her in some way.

If Syd were here, she’d know what to do.

I lift my head and grab the picture that’s been on my nightstand since she put it there when we first moved into this house. In it, Sydney’s laughing, her gorgeous smile wide, her eyes bright. She radiated happiness. It was the first thing about her that drew me in when we met in college.

A tear I would never let escape in front of anyone else slides silently down my face before I brush it away. “I miss you, Sydney,” I whisper, my voice hoarse with the emotions I try to keep buried during the day. “We were supposed to do this together. I don’t know how to be everything she needs. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve had this conversation with this picture, wishing with everything in my soul that I could hear Sydney just one more time. Just to give me an answer. To tell me how to do this single parent thing so I don’t screw up our daughter. So I could tell her I love her.

I’ll always love her.

Sydney and I met our freshman year of college at the University of Washington. We had the same biology seminar, and out of hundreds of students in that room, she sat down in front of me. I think I fell for her the first time I saw her, and I was a goner for her from that moment on. I asked her out after that first lecture, and by some miracle, she said yes.

We were inseparable after that. She was at every home game and some of my away ones. She was sitting next to me when I was drafted to the NFL, and then when I was traded to the Wolves. We got married right out of college and found out she was pregnant with Kay about a year after we’d moved to LA. She was so excited to hold Kay and show her the room she designed for her—the mural she’d painted of a meadow with daisies on one side and a forest with hidden fairies on the other. She stocked the room full of her favorite books growing up, and we had names for a boy and a girl picked out before our first anatomy scan.

And then about two weeks after that scan, she started not feeling well. She was worried about the baby so she went to go get checked out. Her doctor was concerned about her bloodwork from the lab and sent her to get more tests. And then we got the news that rocked the very foundation of my life.

She had cancer.

Then it got worse when they gave her two choices—terminate the pregnancy and start an aggressive approach to try to fight the fast-spreading cancer, or carry out the pregnancy and risk that the cancer would advance too far for them to save her.

It was our first real fight. I wanted her to pick herself and she refused. I tried to rationalize with her that we could maybe have another baby, but there would never be another her. She didn’t talk to me for a full day before I caved—if my time with her was limited, I couldn’t justify wasting a second.

What was supposed to be a joyous time in our lives became somber and filled with uncertainty. She was in more pain as the pregnancy progressed, and we had to do a C-section because she didn’t have enough strength to push.

I’ll never forget the moment I placed Kaylee in her arms—the love that filled her eyes before the tears. “She’s perfect,” she whispered.

Then she looked at me. “Look what we made, Romel.”

I’m ashamed to admit I struggled to look at Kay for those first few days, especially when Syd deteriorated so quickly after the birth. She only lasted a week before her body gave up on her and she was taken from me—from us.

I was left with a tiny baby and a shattered heart. It felt like being caught in a current under the sea and not knowing which way was up.

And then I looked at Kay—really looked at her for the first time—and it was like she was the light illuminating my suddenly bleak world. She was my purpose, and she was all I had left of Sydney. It was in that moment I understood the fierce and protective love that Sydney felt for her because right then I would’ve done anything for Kaylee.

My parents and Syd’s parents rallied around me. Then Gabe, Dom, and Ty were there. We’d been close before then— the way teammates usually are—but it was when they got me through the darkest days of my grief that solidified our brotherhood.

But grief, I’ve learned, is a fickle thing. It’s not something you go through once and make it out the other side. Like the cancer that killed my wife, it poisons every moment with a bittersweet tang. Nothing is as bright anymore. There is always the sense that someone is missing, that I’m not quite whole anymore and never will be.That every memory made would look different if she was still here.

I’ve learned how to harness my emotions over the years and use them to push myself to be the best on the field. I lay it all out there and then come home to Kay slightly lighter than when I left, even if I always feel it creeping in the background.

Which is why the decision to retire has never been an easy one.

Do I want to spend more time with Kay? One thousand percent yes.

But then where will my grief go? What will help me expel all the loss, anger, and loneliness that cling to my bones and only diminish when I’m on the field?

And who will I become then?