Chapter 9
Kieran
ALLIE
Hi honey!
will you be around tomorrow?
KIERAN
yes, come over whenever you want!
ALLIE
don’t tell me that, I’ll turn up at the crack of dawn
I can’t wait to meet her Kieran
I know she’s special, she’s half of your beautiful soul
KIERAN
I don’t think I can claim much credit at all but she is very special
ALLIE
then she must be all you
I’ve been sitting in the recliner chair in the corner of Emmy’s room for the past forty minutes, trying to wrack my mind around what I told Layla.
I’ve never told anyone what happened to me.
Not even Grayson. I mean, I think he suspects some things—we met during middle school and there were a few too many marks that I struggled to lie about—but he’s never said anything.
I think by the time he was old enough to understand what was happening to me, I was also old enough to fight back. The matron didn’t like to go against anyone her own size. The moment I sprouted like a weed and started putting on muscle, she left me alone.
The sad truth is, I don’t know what was worse—being under her watchful eye and punished for anything she perceived as an infraction, or becoming a ghost.
There was a very distinct moment when she realized she couldn’t hurt me anymore, a night where I fought back for once. The next morning, her gaze shot past me like I didn’t exist, and until the other day when I was sitting in her office, she never looked at me again.
For nearly four years I was nothing in that foster home.
Peering down at my forearm, I look at the ink I got the second I turned eighteen to try and cover up the burn marks the matron put there with her cigarettes. I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself to count to ten while I slowly exhale, trying to ease the tightness in my chest.
I can’t believe I told her.
And in exchange for a shabby life list wish. She has more on there, I knew it the moment her cheeks flushed and her breathing sped up like she was running, and yet I couldn’t stop the words from rolling off my tongue.
In my defense, I feel like I’ve spoken with her every day for well over a year.
Yes, I sound like a complete and total loser saying that because she never texted me back, but I got enough from the phone calls I could pipe into when I was at Bella and Grayson’s house and the updates I nagged her for. I do know Layla, just through Bella.
Layla is the most down-to-earth person I’ve ever known. I doubt she would even kill a bug, and I think a part of my soul recognizes that, a smaller version of me desperately trying to get close to someone who wouldn’t hurt me like others have done in the past.
I mean, why else would I be hung up on this woman?
Maybe I’m a masochist, but I don’t usually fall for women, let alone ones that ignore me. Usually, I’m the one dodging texts and calls and yet my phone holds a helluva lot of unanswered texts from the one girl I would quite literally do anything to be around.
Shaking off the bizarre feelings running havoc through my chest, I pick up my phone, figuring it’s time to face my situation.
I know myself well enough to recognize that I won’t be able to play well tomorrow at the preseason game with this secret hanging over my head.
It would gut me if my teammates found out through the press and not through me.
It’s why I fire off a text.
ICEHAWKS BITCHES
KIERAN
can everyone come to the arena twenty minutes early tomorrow?
IRVING
why the fuck would we do that
I need my beauty sleep
JOHNSON
clearly you fail miserably at that daily
IRVING
you calling me ugly, Johnson?
JOHNSON
you said it not me
VALENTI
harsh
IRVING
thank you Matteo, always can count on you
VALENTI
I’d say he gets in one good beauty sleep a month
JOHNSON
HAHAHA
IRVING
fuck you
KIERAN
if you dipshits aren’t there early I’ll leak the videos from Cabo
ELLINGTON
damn dude, harsh to hang that over their heads
JOHNSON
I KNEW someone managed to get a video
brOTHER FROM ANOTHER MOTHER
do I even want to know what happened in Cabo?
and of course we will all be there early, right guys?
O’CONNOR
I’ll be there Ashford!
MITCHEL
only cause Cap asked so nicely
ELLINGTON
Matteo and I will be there
VALENTI
we will?
ELLINGTON
yes idiot
brOTHER FROM ANOTHER MOTHER
is there a reason Irving is suddenly silent after the mention of Cabo?
IRVING
I’m just biting my tongue so I can stay on Kieran’s good side
KIERAN
good boy ;)
Biting my fist to stop myself from laughing, I shake my head. These guys are fucking hilarious. Every time I’m feeling low, all I have to do is open up the group chat and suddenly the heaviness in my chest isn’t there any longer.
Grayson was right, they are my and Emmy’s family.
Sliding one earbud in, I pull up the audiobook that was highly recommended on numerous parenting threads online.
I should be asleep in my new bed but, truth be told, even with the child monitors I set up, every time I walk down that hall and away from Emmy’s room, it’s like a hand reaches out and grips my heart, filling it with dread.
I know it’s irrational—this house has a security system and my bedroom is right next door—and yet I am utterly terrified to leave her.
This can’t go on for long, it’ll become unhealthy. But I think while I wrap my mind around the fact that the little human sleeping peacefully in her new princess bed is entirely my responsibility to keep safe, I’ll allow myself some grace and sleep in the recliner chair.
Hitting play on the audiobook, I flick out of the app, the sweet voice of the female narrator filling my right eardrum as I open up my notes and get ready for another night of research.
Because I refuse to fail Emmy.
Grayson cuts his eyes down to my knee bouncing up and down furiously in his passenger seat as we make our way to the arena. Thank God we have a home game tonight; I don’t think I’d be able to physically leave Emmy for a day, let alone get on a flight to a different state.
“You good?” Grayson asks suddenly.
“Clearly not, fucker.”
He snorts. “At least you’re still your cheery self.”
“I would be a lot better if you weren’t out of Froot Loops,” I mutter.
“You know you have your own house, right? And your own money to buy cereal?”
“Of course I do,” I say, blinking back at him.
“Then maybe buy your own?”
“I do.”
He shakes his head. “Fucking cereal,” he murmurs under his breath.
Both his hands remain glued to the wheel, his gaze quickly jumping back to the road. I don’t think he’ll ever be able to feel relaxed driving again, but he’s come a long way since last year. He even earned his eleven-month sobriety token last week.
I text him all the time how proud I am of him and how he’s turned his life around.
Grayson sighs loudly as he flicks his blinker on.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Is he taking a detour?
“You’re going to be a nervous wreck if you don’t have some.”
Before I know it, Grayson is pulling into a gas station and a laugh is bursting from me.
I clap his shoulder as I jump out of his truck. “You’re a legend, Crawford!”
“Yeah, yeah, go get your goddamn cereal and hurry up, you weird freak.”
Practically skipping into the gas station, I finally feel like I can breathe as my eyes land on a small box of Froot Loops. I whistle under my breath, smiling like the damn Cheshire Cat as I pay the attendant and make my way back to the car, my hand already buried in the box.
Grayson just shakes his head at me as I slide into his truck.
“Are you ever going to tell me the fascination you have with cereal?”
“Nope,” I lean back in my seat, my knee finally still.
I check my messages to see if Layla has texted but come up empty. This is the first time I’ve left Emmy with someone else and you’d think I’d be more nervous about that than telling the team I have a daughter I just met, but apparently not.
“I’m telling you, the guys will be nothing but supportive.”
Chewing around a mouthful of cereal, I nod along. “I know, I have no idea why I’m even stressed.”
“I mean, your situation isn’t exactly the norm.” He keeps his gaze pinned on the road as he rolls to a stop at the lights, waiting to turn into the arena parking lot.
Fuck, why couldn’t the car ride be longer?
“How do I even say it though? How the hell do you announce that you just found out you have a daughter who sat next to her dead mother—who, like the dick that I am, I still cannot remember—and now I’m terrified she’ll never speak again?”
Suddenly, not even the cereal is working its magic, and as Grayson places the car in park, my chest heaves.
Grayson turns to me. “They don’t need to know that. They only need to know what you want them to know.” He peers at me, worry lining his face. “Are you sure you want to do this now?”
Shoving my hand in the cereal box, I keep it there, just the mere act of my fingers brushing the Froot Loops calming my breathing slightly.
“No, I want to do it now. Rip the Band-Aid off.” I inhale another heaping mouthful before gently placing the box on the floor of Grayson’s car.
“Just freaking out a little is all,” I confess quietly.
Sliding out, I round the truck and meet Grayson at the trunk, averting his troubled gaze.
“A little freak-out is okay,” he assures me as we grab our kits.
“Nothing about this is okay.”
“W-well no but…” He sighs, closing the trunk and clapping me on the shoulder, no doubt trying to catch my eye. “I’m right here, Ashford. You’ve got this, and if you don’t, I’ll be right there beside you.”
Meaning every word he vowed, Grayson remains by my side like glue as we walk into the arena together. All the while, I chant the mantra over and over in my mind.
Rip the Band-Aid off.
Rip the Band-Aid off.
Rip the Band-Aid off.
Grayson won’t stop staring at me.
Probably because I haven’t been able to rip my tongue from the roof of my mouth long enough to form a coherent sentence. I’ve never been so terrified to let someone down.