Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DREW
“Are you…braiding my hair?” Caitlin asks, turning her head as if to try to see what I’m doing.
“Eyes forward, Catie, unless you want a crooked braid.” Reaching around, I tug off the hair tie she seems always to be wearing on her wrist, holding the braid together with my free hand.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Even with her back to me, I can practically see the eye roll. “Why are you braiding my hair? As a matter of fact, why were you even brushing my hair?”
Leaning forward, I press a kiss to the back of her head, loving the way she jolts just slightly, before seeming to settle farther back against me.
She smells like lavender shampoo, and somehow I know I’ll never be around that scent again without thinking of her.
She owns it now. “You came down here with the brush in your hand, which tells me you either didn’t feel like doing it yourself or you were too tired, both of which would make perfect sense after what your body has been through today.
I can brush. I can braid. I’m aces at braiding as a matter of fact.
” I inject some levity into my voice despite the fact that working my hands in the familiar rhythm has an old ache forming in my chest. “And I really like to do things for you.”
“Why?” she asks again, this time sounding so baffled at the thought that someone would want to help her that I can’t help but smile.
Fuck, I like her. A lot.
Twisting the hair tie around the end of her braid, I put my hands on her shoulders and turn her around gently so she’s facing me.
“I really don’t know. I haven’t taken care of anyone since Av—” I stop myself before I say Avery’s name, not wanting to make this night about me when I want so badly to learn more about her.
Also, because talking about myself still makes me uncomfortable enough to want to get up and run.
But then I look up into Caitlin’s eyes and see her watching me with that steady gaze, and I think maybe, when it’s her I’m talking to, I can be a little bit brave.
When this time she’s the one to reach out, to lay her hand over mine, I think maybe I can do the hard things if I get to do them with her.
“That’s how you learned to braid, isn’t it?” she asks gently, winding her fingers around mine. “When Avery was little.”
Turning my head, I stare into the flickering flame of the moody-scented candle I lit while Caitlin was in the shower.
The sun has long since set, the living room lights still on low, and I realize the ease between us sitting here in her pretty space makes me want to do the opposite of run.
It makes me want to settle in and stay a while. As long as she’ll have me, I think.
Maybe forever.
Forever.
That word flits through my mind, one I’ve never thought before about anyone or anything.
I shouldn’t even be thinking it now. I’m not sure I’m built for forever, or whether I would know what to do with it if I was.
But there’s something undeniably comforting about this.
This night. This girl. Settling in a way that’s new for me.
That makes me want to grab onto this moment and hold it for as long as I can.
With a nod, I squeeze her hand just a little and open up a piece of myself that has been closed for so, so long.
“I used to braid her hair,” I say quietly, my mind sinking back into those late high school days.
“When she was little. Her hair was always hanging in her face, and sometimes her mom was too out of it to care, so I watched a million videos and taught myself how to braid.” I look down at our joined hands, trying to collect my thoughts. “I guess some things you don’t forget.”
Even if some things I wish I could.
“How is she?” Caitlin’s voice keeps me from going down that sad path, so I focus my attention back on her.
And fuck, she’s so beautiful. The color is back in her cheeks and her eyes are clear, the haze of pain gone from their depths.
A few strands of hair that escaped her braid frame her face, and I get the odd sense I could look at her forever and find something new every time.
“You don’t have to tell me. I mean, if you’re not comfortable talking about it. ”
“It’s okay.” I watch as she reaches over for her drink with her free hand, wincing a little when her body twists.
I take her hand and place it gently back into her lap, grabbing her glass myself and handing it to her.
When she takes it without blinking—without telling me she can get it for herself—it feels like a little victory.
“She’s fine, I think. I mean, as fine as a seventeen-year-old girl can be when her mom who wasn’t all that great died eight months ago and she’s living with a grandma she barely knows, who doesn’t seem to be making much time for her.
” I shrug, shifting uncomfortably on the couch as another one of my truths pushes up from my chest.
“I wish she would come live with me.” I say it fast, like I’ll lose my nerve if I don’t get it all out.
“It’s weird, I know. I’m not actually related to her, and I haven’t known her, not really, since I was eighteen.
I’m a professional athlete who travels five months a year, so I’m not exactly a bastion of stability, and I have no idea what to do with a teenager.
Much less one who’s graduating from high school in nine months.
How to be the family she needs. But…” I trail off, not knowing exactly how to finish that sentence.
“But you want to try,” Caitlin says, and the simplicity of her words, the understanding in them, make me say the rest of my truth.
All I can do is nod. “I really do.”
Caitlin smiles, squeezing my hand. “It’s not weird. Not at all. Avery is a part of your story, Drew. The best part of a past that seems like it maybe wasn’t all that great most of the time.”
Doors slamming.
Yelling.
The crash of a glass shattering against the living room wall.
Heavy footsteps on the stairs.
The hiding place in my bedroom closet I prayed he’d be too drunk to find.
My breath hitches, and the tremble in my free hand must be too obvious to hide because Caitlin covers it with her own.
“Breathe,” she murmurs, her thumb gliding over my knuckles, her gray eyes steady on mine. It’s her touch—her attention—that fills my lungs with air. Slows the pounding beat of my heart. Chases the bad memories away. “So, really not great, huh?”
When I laugh, it’s genuine. “No, it was definitely not great.”
I brace myself for the questions. The ones I always assumed would come if I ever hinted to anyone about the darker parts of my past. The ones I’ve never had to answer because I’ve kept everything about my life before college hidden behind a locked door in my brain marked Do Not Open.
Ever. So when all Caitlin says is, “So, do you want to tell me about the drive-in?” her abrupt change of subject gives me metaphorical whiplash, and my mind goes momentarily blank.
“Drive-in?”
Caitlin smiles wryly. “Your estate planning questionnaire. You own a drive-in movie theater which is really cool but also an objectively weird thing to own. So is a bakery, a construction company that builds public playgrounds, a foundation that funds organizations focusing on kids’ health and safety, a water park, and a company that makes youth sports equipment. Care to explain?”
“To you or to lawyer Caitlin?” I ask, mainly to stall for time.
No one knows about all the shit I own, not even Cam.
There are a couple I’ve talked about over the years, but the rest is only for me.
And it also hits a little close to those darker parts of my childhood I try hard to pretend don’t exist.
She shrugs. “Let’s start with me. You don’t have to tell me if you’re uncomfortable with it, but you didn’t have to put those businesses on the questionnaire either.
You’ve been a professional football player for fourteen years.
You could decide today never to catch a football again and still be set for life. ”
Caitlin’s words have dread and relief tangling up in my chest. Dread at the idea of leaving the game that has given me a life and a best friend and an escape and the thought of what walking away from football would mean for that.
Relief at the idea of no longer waking up in the morning aching from head to toe.
Of no longer killing myself at practice and traveling months out of the year and finding something that brings me a less complicated sort of joy, even if I don’t know what that something is yet.
Shoving those feelings back down where they belong, I look at Caitlin to find her watching me intently, like she can read my mind.
“So, what does that have to do with my drive-in?” I ask, going for casual.
By the look on her face I can tell I don’t quite get there, but to my utter relief, she lets it go.
“You could fund a trust for Avery with cash, and you wouldn’t even know it was gone. The fact that you included the businesses on the questionnaire makes me think you want to talk about it. That you haven’t told anyone about the businesses before, but maybe you’re ready to tell me?”
“Shit,” I mutter, realizing how right she is. That I do want to give someone this part of me. Her. I want to give it to her. “I thought I was just following the rules,” I say after a minute.
“What rules?”
“I don’t know. You gave me an eight-page questionnaire asking for everything from the value of every asset I own to my estate planning goals, whatever the fuck those are. I assumed there was some kind of punishment for not answering all the questions.”
Caitlin tilts her head as she studies me, her eyes taking on a wicked gleam. “Would you like there to be a…” She pauses, running her tongue over her lower lip. “Punishment?” she practically drawls, and my entire body flashes with heat, all my blood draining directly to my dick.