Chapter 16
The Mediterranean-inspired exterior of John’s home was not what I had been expecting.
I suppose I expected some bachelor pad condo outfitted with an over-the-top sound system, remote-controlled lights and blinds, minimal food, top-shelf alcohol, and an oversized television perfect for watching sports.
Instead, what I found was a house full of sophistication and classic charm.
A grand entry behind a wrought iron gate and a wall of stucco, with a private courtyard filled with lush greenery, a bench, and a small fountain.
Inside, white walls, vaulted ceilings, wrought iron fixtures, dark wood floors, an open layout with arched doorways, a stone statement wall, and a lofted upstairs that overlooked the living space.
The house was bright and airy, filled with an abundance of natural light from the rear wall of windows overlooking the backyard and in-ground pool.
There were two garages: one three-car that housed his SUV and Porsche, and a single-car that had been converted into a home gym.
When he showed me around, the one thing I noticed that was missing was a personal touch—no photos, no quirky momentos, no candles, no plants, no keepsakes of any kind.
Everything was a neutral color. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought it was a furnished rental.
“What do you need all of this space for when you spend over half the year on the road?” I asked from across the marble kitchen island the first night I spent here.
I thought it was a reasonable question. We spend over two hundred days a year on the road with EWE.
How did it make sense to have something so…
grand, if he couldn’t be here to enjoy it?
Not to mention it was just him in a six-bedroom, more than five-thousand-square-foot house.
John handed me a glass of wine, checking the time left on the timer for the dinner he’d made. “I wanted something for me, I guess. Somewhere…safe.”
“Safe?”
He sighed, folding his hands as he leaned over the island. “It’s a long story, and I want to share it with you. I will, but not…not tonight.”
“Maybe when I’m older?” I joked. When he saw the smile in the corner of my lips, he couldn’t fight his own with a playful eye roll.
Our age difference has never been a concern of mine, but it has been his.
He’s thirty-one, and I’m twenty-four. Seven years isn’t a big gap, so I’ve never seen the issue.
“You can talk to me,” I said, placing my hands over his.
“I know, and I will. Just not tonight. I want to enjoy turning this house into a home with you.” John came around the island and pulled me into his arms. He kissed me in the middle of the kitchen, only to be interrupted by the timer sounding the alarm.
The emotional weight from seconds before dissipated when he pulled away to check on the chicken, but I haven’t forgotten the look in his eyes when he said. Somewhere safe. What did that mean?
Walking through the foyer into the living room, I find him standing at the top of the stairs just outside his office.
He’s dressed in his gym clothes, but he doesn’t look like he’s even broken a sweat.
I offered for him to join me at the NextGen center, but he said he needed to get some work done before he could hit the weights, including a podcast interview.
“Sorry, I’m late. I had to run by the condo. Grab some stuff for the road next week,” I say, lifting the bag of extra clothes and a change of ring gear options I had picked up at my condo.
“How was the gym?”
“Rae came by. We got some ring time in. I got to work on that new submission move.” I drop my bag onto the window bench of the master bedroom, returning to find him now at the bottom of the stairs.
He pulls me into a hard kiss, and my suspicions are confirmed when I inhale the fresh scent of his skin.
Pulling away, I pinch the fabric of his shirt. “I thought you were going to work out?”
“I was about to, but Ari called.” I don’t know much about his sister, or the rest of his family, for that matter.
They don’t talk much—not on the phone anyway.
He and Ari text a few times a week, catching each other up on necessary information, but never anything long and drawn out.
I’ve wondered if that’s how they are in person, too.
If that’s how the whole family is. John is cautious when it comes to things concerning the rest of the Brookses, and the one time I asked Brody, he said it wasn’t his place to tell.
“How is she?”
“Fine, fine. She was inviting me to the joint birthday party for my mom and grandmother,” John says, sinking onto the brown leather L-shaped couch.
She invited him, not us. “Mom is turning sixty, and our grandmother will be eighty-five. Everyone is going to be there, apparently, which doesn’t happen often, but I suppose the matriarch turning eighty-five is good enough reason. ”
“I suppose it is,” I say, sitting at the far end of the L’s stem.
“They’re planning it for Friday and Saturday before Wrestlefest week.”
“That will be a great way for you to decompress.”
His eyes narrow, and he chuckles, pushing up from his spot on the couch to sit beside me.
“I think we’re having two different conversations here, Sweetheart.
I want you there with me. Of course, if you think it will be too much, seeing as the next week is going to be extremely busy, I understand.
You’re welcome to come back and stay here, get some rest, and I’ll meet you in Phoenix. ”
“You want me to go?” I ask. He wants me to meet his family? And not just his immediate family, he wants me to meet the whole family? This seems out of the blue, considering he’s hardly told me anything about these people.
“You don’t have to if—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to go, John.
I—I do. My concern is that I don’t know anything about them.
We’ve known each other for a long time, but I know nothing about these people.
I don’t even know their names, except for Ari.
” I run a hand over my hair, twisting the end of my ponytail before letting it fall over my shoulder again.
“John, you know my family. You’ve met them, talked to them…
but you’ve kept everything about your family a secret.
The only thing I know for sure is you have a sister, and you would move Heaven and Earth to protect her.
You told me that much the night we met.”
His gaze remains glued to the blue-gray rug beneath the circular glass coffee table.
John rubs the back of his neck before his hand comes down to interlace his fingers together.
They hang between his knees, and with a heavy sigh, he finally looks up at me.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel like I was trying to keep things from you.
I just…When it comes to my family, I don’t—”
“We all have issues, John.”
“Not the Williamses.”
“Trust me, stick around long enough and you’ll see that’s not true. Everyone has something.”
I could laugh just thinking about some of the antics that used to get my older brothers in trouble.
Our parents still don’t know about the time I had to pick Crew up from the middle of nowhere because he and some friends almost got arrested a few towns over for a bar fight, and the kid who caused it left the rest of them to walk home.
Or the time Papá kicked Nash out because they found weed in his room while he was still in high school.
Or the times I heard my parents whispering in the middle of the night in the early stages of the ranch when they were close to going under water.
Sure, it may seem like we’re perfect, but life comes for everyone at some point in time.
I guess we do a better job at hiding it.
“I won’t ever push you to tell me, but when you’re ready to open up about it, preferably before I meet them…I’m here.” I pat his thigh and press a gentle kiss to his lips. “I’m going to take a shower and change. Then we can grab dinner because I’m starving.”
John disappears up the stairs and into his office without a word, the moment we walk through the door after dinner. I stand at the bottom of the stairs, debating whether I should follow, get the conversation over with—or wait.
Waiting sounds like a better idea.
Dinner was quiet, unusually so, but I’m not sure whether it’s because of John or me.
We both seemed to be locked in our own minds, waging different wars on the same topic since the conversation this afternoon.
Sitting across from him, twirling angel hair pasta onto my fork, I decided I shouldn’t join him for the birthday celebration in a few weeks.
I didn’t know what I’d be walking into, and I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable when he already doesn’t see his family often.
He should be free to be whoever he needs to be and enjoy his time, without worrying about me or what I might think.
Sitting there, I made up my mind to tell him as soon as we got back to his house.
Opening the bottle of wine from last night, I take a sip…
and hear the sound of his steps coming down the staircase.
Less than a minute later, he joins me in the kitchen with a shoebox tucked under his arm.
He slides it onto the counter before he removes the glass from my hand and pulls me into a crushing hug.
With eyes closed, his forehead against mine, he says, “I’m sorry, Savannah. I—I don’t want to keep things from you. I don’t mean to, but this has always been a…I guess it’s more of a sore spot than I realized. But I’m ready to talk about it, I’m ready to—”
“John, you don’t—”