Chapter 11 Nadine
NADINE
It’s well after nine o’clock, and my tea has long gone cold by the time the door opens, and I attempt to fix my features into a semblance of calm.
But with the way Camden’s shoulders sag as he drops his bag by the entryway, I don’t think he’ll notice or care about why I have a heap of tissues in front of me where I sit at the eat-in counter.
He scrubs his hands over his hair a few times then finally lifts his head, doing a double take when he spots me. “Hey.”
I set my chin in my hand. “Game didn’t go well?”
He shakes his head. It was the first preseason game on their home field, and I can only imagine how he was crucified by the press and fans if he didn’t play well. Probably all up in his head.
Like I am.
“Where’s Paise?” he asks, crossing to the fridge for a sports drink.
“In her room, talking to her best friend, I think.” I turn my cell phone over so I don’t have to see the email anymore. “We watched a double feature of Kate Hudson rom-coms tonight.”
He nods a few times but makes no comment about it. No teasing or sarcasm.
That’s okay. I don’t much feel like trading barbs anyway.
He coasts his gaze around the penthouse as if searching for something out of place. It does feel different, being here in relative quiet with him. Neither of us reaching for the closest verbal weapon. But I’m too exhausted from running mental circles. And he seems exhausted, period.
“You all right?” he asks eventually, tipping his chin to the pile of tissues I push into the garbage can. “Are you sick?”
I shake my head, dumping my tea down the drain. “I’m fine.”
He halts my steps after I load my mug into the dishwasher, his big hands landing on the counter, on either side of my hips. “You look like you were crying.”
I don’t answer, rolling my lips over my teeth, and he bends slightly, waiting for me to meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?”
I lift my shoulder. “Just work stuff.” When he rubs his hand over his mouth and jaw, I turn the question back on him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Work stuff.”
I bite back the growing curl of amusement on my lips and move to push past him, but he stops me once again, this time with his hand on my arm.
His fingers are so wide and long—almost twice the size of mine—they easily wrap all the way around my biceps.
“I can tell you’re upset. Don’t go driving yet. Stay for a little while.”
Stay?
With him?
To calm down?
That’s not a thing that has ever happened in our past. Historically, he has only ever made me upset.
But maybe he needs me to stay for him, what with how he looks like a kicked puppy, so I agree with a beleaguered, “Fine.”
His mouth tips up in a half smile as he repeats, “Fine.”
If I’m going to stay here, I’m going to drown my sorrows with one of the tubs of ice cream. I dig out the chocolate peanut butter but don’t bother with a bowl, then take my seat once again and help myself to a spoonful.
On the other side of the counter, Camden watches intently, arms folded over his chest. When I raise my brows in question, he shakes his head at me. “Barbarian.”
“I just watched you down an entire Gatorade in three seconds flat. Me eating ice cream out of the carton is no worse or better.”
“Germs.” He motions to the spoon I stab back into the frozen dessert after having it in my mouth, and I cough a laugh.
“I’m sure you’ve picked up far worse germs in far grosser places than my mouth.”
I realize only after his attention locks on my mouth what I said, how it’s basically an open invitation to talk about what I’ve put in my mouth, where it’s been. Where his mouth has been.
And suddenly, his 3,000-square-foot apartment feels like three feet. A yard.
Sunk down to mere inches when he leans his elbows on the counter, snagging the spoon out of my hand to scoop some ice cream.
His square jaw is covered in a day’s worth of growth, dark hair that I know would feel like tiny pinpricks against my skin, abrading the softest part of me when he pressed his mouth there.
The idea of him dragging his tongue over me, making sure he tastes all of me, has liquid heat pooling in my belly, and not even the spoonful of ice cream Camden offers can cool it down.
Not with the way his dark eyes are practically black, following my every movement, from the way I part my mouth around the spoon to the lift of my throat when I swallow. His voice is broken glass when he speaks. “I should eat this more often.”
I crawl over the shards to hear more. “It’s not against your diet?”
He holds up the spoon between us. “You should know by now, I like to break the rules.”
Yes, I know.
The whole country knows.
But I’ve never wanted to break rules more than I do with him, which is ridiculous.
The man is reckless and inconsiderate. Arrogant and impulsive. A selfish prick.
At least, he was.
I thought he was.
Now, he’s become…a friend?
Or, at the very least, an acquaintance I no longer wish would drive off the Walt Whitman Bridge.
“What happened today?” I ask, accepting the spoon back from him to scrape up a big chunk of frozen peanut butter.
“I only played a few series,” he explains, eyes cast down on his hands on top of the marble countertop, a bruise forming on one of his knuckles. It’s not unusual for veteran players not to play much in the preseason since the rookies need to battle it out for their positions.
“The fans were brutal.” He saws his teeth across his bottom lip. “I couldn’t…can’t block them out.”
I offer him another bite of ice cream, which he accepts by wrapping his fingers around my wrist to keep it steady as he guides the spoon to his mouth. “Have you talked to the team counselor?”
“Not you, too,” he says around the ice cream.
I shrug. “That’s what they’re there for. Might as well use them.”
He rubs the heels of his hands against his eyes, mumbling, “I’ve got to take my contacts out. Be right back.”
He disappears for two minutes and returns with his thin-framed glasses on like the Clark Kent version of Superman. He places his hands on the counter again, fingers spread out and pointing toward me. “Why are you upset tonight?”
I shove a huge spoonful of ice cream into my mouth, but to keep me from avoiding the question anymore, he steals the tub and the spoon from me. “What’s up, River?”
I press my thumb to the roof of my mouth to relieve myself of brain freeze before asking, “Is it one too many concussions that makes you call me River instead of Rivera?”
He puts the ice cream away, places the spoon in the dishwasher, then faces me again. “No concussions recently to speak of. Why are you upset?”
I tuck my arms around my torso. “Got an email from admin about in-service days before the school year, and I…” Shrugging, I exhale a long breath. “I’m a little nauseous about it.”
“Nauseous about your job?” He studies me for a long time. “That seems like a bad omen.”
“You believe in luck?”
“Not really. But I do always listen to the same song on game days and have to tape my laces down, right foot first.”
“That’s not luck?”
He grins at me. “It’s betting the odds.”
“What’s the song?”
“‘Mama’ by Cam Cole.”
He lifts his cell phone from his pocket and plays it, setting the device on the counter, both of us leaning in close, heads bent together as the guitar riff fills the space between us.
“I like it,” I say once it’s over, and he nods.
“Yeah, so I do what I can to make sure I feel comfortable playing. What do you do to make yourself comfortable?”
I allow my gaze to drift around his apartment.
What used to be as white and pristine as a church now has color and life, random magnets on the fridge, a pair of high-tops in the hall that clearly don’t belong to him, photos I helped Paisley frame, and of course, Jelly and Bean in the corner of the living room.
“I don’t think there is anything to make me comfortable.”
“Why not?” His voice is low, curious, but as if he doesn’t want to admit it. “I thought you loved teaching.”
“I do.” I curl my hands into fists, letting my nails pinch into my skin, keeping my emotions tethered to earth.
I so easily fall into the storm, and I don’t want to break down in front of him.
I clear my throat. “I love teaching and I love my kids, but I don’t love having no support from the administration or the parents.
” I press my hand to my chest, feeling myself losing it.
“I’m the last line of defense for these children, and I’m…
” I close my eyes to the burn in them. “I do everything I can. I give and give and give, and it’s still not enough. ”
When I flutter my eyelids open, Camden is next to me, so close I can smell chocolate and peanut butter on his breath.
He wipes my cheek with his knuckle, and I lean into the touch, telling him, “I had a kid who graduated this past year. He shouldn’t have.
Aside from never completing any work, he was rude and disrespectful, in fights all the time, but he also needed a lot of support and was clearly crying out for help. ”
I huff, thinking of Christian. This kid who told me he trained his pit bull for fights and was proud of it.
I couldn’t stand him, but he was my student.
A child who needed help. “Everyone was tired of him,” I say, “and I got a call from the head of the department, asking me to change his grade because they weren’t going to keep him another year.
They weren’t going to, quote, ‘waste any more resources on him.’ And…
” I exhale a rough breath. “We sent him out into the world unprepared. I passed him on so society can deal with him. But you know how it deals with kids like that?”
Camden shakes his head, sinking his hand into my hair, holding the back of my neck, though it feels as if he’s holding me together. Keeping me from another torrent of tears.