20. Eloise
20
ELOISE
“ I can’t believe you’re leaving next week already. It feels like you just got here.”
“Lou, I was only supposed to be here for a week. One week turned into a month. Maybe if you’d come up for air once in a while…”
“Hahaha, you kill me,” I say flatly. I tap my index finger to my lips. “I believe it was you who said we needed make-up sex to get on the same page.”
“Yeah, make-up sex. Not a marathon,” Dash says coolly as he opens the fridge for a beverage.
I roll my guilty lips. Ever since Cal and I opened that door, keeping our hands off each other has been impossible, not just because we haven’t had sex in years, but because of the intense intimacy. Sure, we fuck. We’ve always been extremely attracted to each other, but now there’s so much more. We were teenagers when we used to hook up. It was all about sneaking around, cars, parties, school, you name it, and we probably hooked up in it, but never at our houses. Now it’s different. I get to fall asleep with him inside of me and wake up with his arms around me. We’re making up for lost time and strengthening a bond that was always there. We know we’re not out of the woods. We can’t outrun our pasts, but we can make sure that our house doesn’t fall and that starts with ensuring the bones are good. That we are good.
“Meh, you sound bitter and jealous. I’m still unsure why you broke up with?—”
“Ah ah ah, don’t say it. Don’t say her name. I don’t want to talk about it.” He settles on a Coke and helps himself to the leftover box of pizza Cal and I ordered for dinner last night.
“Fine…” I say as I walk over to the fridge and grab water before hopping up on the countertop across from him as he eats at the island.
“Any new leads with all the drama surrounding you guys?”
“Not really. Iverson thinks he may have found something. We have yet to uncover any money trails, but he did find something my mother marked as classified from the year before I was born. He’s been doing some research of his own, trying to find a trail that may help him hack into the file. If he knows what the file contains, he thinks he’ll be able to get access.”
He guzzles half of his coke before taking a bite of pizza and asking, “What about Blair and Austin? Anything new there?”
“We now know Blair wasn’t using Austin.” I hold up my hand. “Scratch that. She could very well be using Austin for some other agenda. What I meant to say is we found out their friendship dates back further than her being hired to handle PR for the Kings. Cal hired a PI to look into Austin and Blair’s relationship. Austin is always taking shots at Cal and he never really understood it. He’s positive the bad blood between them is because of Blair. Security footage the PI obtained shows they’ve been seeing each other for over a year.” I anxiously tap my fingers on the countertop, getting worked up the way I always do whenever her name is mentioned. “I don’t believe this is all a coincidence. I still think Blair is Lucas’s weapon since it can’t be him… at the very least she’s a messenger. She was sent here as a reminder of our conversation all those years ago.”
Dash nods and takes another bite of his pizza.
“What, no side this time? You always take a side.”
“Hey, I don’t pick sides. I offer neutral perspectives, but the two of you have good reason to be torn about Blair’s involvement. I could see it going either way, but if I had to choose right now”—he shakes his head from side to side—“I’d lean more toward your thinking, but it’s possible her intentions didn’t start out cruel. Lucas could have come to her after he saw her get close to Cal. We know Cal’s put up impenetrable walls all these years.”
He’s not wrong. I’ve learned a lot about the man who owns my heart over the past couple of weeks, but the most telling and stomach-churning have been the lengths he’s gone to, to cut his father out of his life. All this time, one of my biggest stands was protecting the relationship he had with his only living relative, meanwhile he was dismantling it. It just proves nothing is always as it seems.
“Where is Callum? Practice?”
“He’s right here… thanks for cock blocking earlier. I wasn’t aware too much sex was a thing,” Cal says, walking into the room.
“Do you have bionic hearing or something? Damn, seriously, shouldn’t you be at practice? You literally have a playoff game tomorrow.”
The Kings sealed the wild card seat and won. Last week, they battled the Ice Sharks in the first round and won. Tomorrow is the first night of the second round and the team is pumped as they should be. So far, they only lost one game, but Cal will tell you they never should have been the wild card seat anyway. This is the first time since he joined the team that they weren’t a top three seat.
“Does that mean you’re coming?” Cal asks before pecking my cheek and grabbing a protein shake from the fridge.
“Hell yeah. You’re facing the Stars. Jay Pullman is a legend.”
“Give me that.” Cal swipes the pizza out from in front of him. “I know Eloise is letting you stay in her rental, but I wasn’t aware she was footing the bill for your meals, too.”
He smirks. “Relax. I’m just fucking with you. I wouldn’t dare miss a chance to be Eloise’s date.” He shoots me a wink, and I roll my eyes.
“About that—” Cal starts.
“I thought you said we had somewhere to be by noon.” I hop off the counter. I already know the direction his thoughts were going. While I’ve been attending his games in person. I’ve been doing so discreetly. Cal’s unbothered by Mr. Bronson’s request for a story now that the Kings clinched their playoff seat. If he still wants one, it’s on principle, but I know what Cal wants, even if he doesn’t admit it. He wants our story. He wants to share our story with the world. I want the same thing, too. What he doesn’t know is I have a plan of my own.
He checks his watch. “We do.”
“I hope you’re okay with being blamed if the team takes an L tomorrow because he had to take his girl on a date instead of practice,” Dash teases, taking the last slice of pizza before tossing the box.
“I would have cut out early today regardless of Eloise being here. This date was planned months ago.” Cal turns to me. “Ready?” Cal asks, holding out his elbow so I can wrap my arm through it.
“Yes,” I say, and we head toward the door.
“Sure it was,” Dash adds skeptically. “And I planned on eating breakfast at my place,” he says as he follows us out. “Are we meeting up for dinner?”
“No.” Cal holds the door open for both Dash and me. “It’s not a date if you tag along.”
“Oh no, it still qualifies. I’m just the third wheel if I show up.” Dash flashes Cal one of his megawatt smiles. Vying for my time has become somewhat of a game around here. When Cal is away, I spend time with Dash. Since his new job has been sending him out to find local untapped must-see locations, I’ve been tagging along, but the overlap or transition between spending time with Dash and hanging out with Cal has looked a lot like this. “Fine, your loss. Roe and Moon are better company anyway. Less kissing, more drinking,” he mocks as he walks backward to my place.
“When’s he leaving again?” Cal teases as we walk toward the elevator.
“Stoooppp.” I playfully swat his stomach. Cal is an only child, and while he might put up a front that Dash annoys him, I know a small part of him hasn’t hated having him around now that he knows there’s absolutely no romantic connection between us. “So where are you taking me again?”
“Nice try.” The elevator opens, and he pulls me out. “You’ll see.”
“ Y ou brought me to a hospital for our date?” I ask when Cal pulls into the visitor parking outside St. Margaret Hospital. “If we’re here for a paternity test, you’re about six years too late. Adler’s a spitting image of you, minus the eyes.”
He smiles softly, his lips not pulling high enough to match the playful sarcasm in my tone. I reach for his hand.
“Cal, what’s going on? Don’t tell me you’re dying. You said this was a date you wouldn’t miss even if I wasn’t here. What’s going on? You’re scaring me,” I say, unable to hide the fear in my voice.
“No.” He pulls my hand to his mouth and kisses the back. “It’s nothing like that, I promise.” He checks his watch and then looks up at the entrance. “There she is. Come on.” He climbs out before I can, but when I follow ahead, I see one of the ladies from the lunch we attended at the Bronsons’.
He reaches back for me to hold his hand as we walk through the parking lot. “Does this have to do with the charity gala?”
“Yes,” he says right before he greets the woman. “Sherry, how have you been?”
“I’ve been good. I’m glad to see the two of you are here together. Your mother would be happy.” I’m about to ask if she knew Cal’s mother when she says, “We have ten rooms to visit today. As much as I hate to say, I’m grateful we’re here to shine a little light.”
“Sherry, Mr. Balfour. We pulled some Grace bags from the supply closet and put them on a cart. We have eight NICU moms here today and, sadly, two rooms on the L they were more than lovers. They were best friends until she returned to Massachusetts and claimed her birthright at the helm of High Tower. That move wasn’t reason enough to leave my father.
My entire life, we split time as a family between Copper Falls and Nantucket. Before my parents married, my father bought a failing boat company. He didn’t come from money like my mother and worked hard for every penny he had, and when they met and fell in love, he didn’t give up his business to be with her, and she didn’t want him to. My mother loved his passion. They met on a boat, and she never wanted to change him. If anything, she wanted to be part of his world, not her own, until something snapped, and she turned it all off. To this day, there are still no hard feelings between the two of them, and for that reason, my father still lives in the home they built together in Copper Falls, leaving everything as it was when she used to live there in hopes that she’ll return to him.
“If we’re going to do all the breaking, we’ll get it all done at once. We’re not our parents, Eloise. We get to choose what our lives look like. Is that why you signed away your shares of High Tower? Was it because you didn’t want to be like your mom?”
I run my finger over the spine of the fork on the table. “I don’t know, maybe. If I didn’t have those shares, I’d never have an excuse to leave like she did.” I shake my head and squeeze my eyes closed before turning to him. “I’ve never had a plan. I’m not a planner. I wasn’t the girl who couldn’t wait to get married and settle down. I didn’t dream of weddings, I didn’t have a list of schools I wanted to attend, and I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve been making decisions on the fly for as long as I can remember. I didn’t suddenly get my shit together because I had Adler. I put him first, and the rest is just me faking it until I make it. So when you ask me about my parents, I don’t have some profound response that absolves all my choices. Did my childhood influence my decisions? Absolutely, but as for the rest…” I lean back against the tufted backing of the booth, disheartened by my response. I don’t have good reasons for the state of disarray my life is in. If anything, I’m to blame. “You have real problems. You lost your mother, and your father is a narcissist. I’m a rich girl with divorced parents who are still in love. We’re not the same, so can we please not do this?”
“I disagree.”
“There’s nothing for you to agree with. I simply stated the facts.”
“Well, your facts are wrong.”
I raise a brow in challenge.
“Do you want to be with me?”
“Of course I do,” I answer without hesitation.
“Then you know what you want.” He taps his thumb on the table and then rubs the stubble on his jaw. “Do we have a future together?”
“Yes,” I answer emphatically, claiming his hand in mine.
“Then you have a plan.” His fingers lace through mine before his amber pools sparkle with hope. “Did you fall in love with me the day we met?”
My eyes soften, and my chest tightens. I haven’t told him I love him. Though I know I do, my heart and every ounce of my soul know he’s my other half. However, once I say it, I can’t take it back, not that I’d ever want to keep those words from him. He deserves to hear them, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to piece myself back together if I lose him. It’s selfish and stupid and why I say, “Yes.”
“Then we are the same.”
“Cal—”
My heart is racing as his mouth covers mine before I can offer apologies. All it takes is one swipe of his whiskey tongue to erase whatever nonsense I was holding onto. His hand slides around my waist, igniting a fire that never entirely goes out. “Come on, we’re going home.”
“But they haven’t brought us our food yet.”
His big hand grips my hip. “What I’m hungry for isn’t on the menu.”