Chapter 14 #3
I sit there a moment, unsure what to do next. When he doesn’t ask me to leave or say anything else, I ask, “Uh, is that all you needed?”
“Yeah, that was it.”
“Should I…go back to my seat?”
“If you want. Or you can sit up here with me and avoid Lawson for the rest of the flight, maybe actually get some sleep. Your choice.”
I slip my eye mask around my head, ready to pull it over my eyes, then Coach Smith decides to add one last thing.
“You know, Keller, I’ve never really been in the position you’re in before, so I can’t pretend to know exactly what you’re going through.
But what I can say is if, for some reason, I ever found myself right where you are, I would fight.
I wouldn’t give up. Even when it’s hard—which I’m sure it is most of the time—I would be right there in the thick of the battle, and I’d come out swinging every time.
I wouldn’t let anything get between my girl and me, even if it was myself.
” He clears his throat, then folds down his table.
He grabs his notebook, the one he’s always walking around with, and opens it.
“Anyway, that’s all. I won’t get in your business any more than that.
Just thought you might want to hear a little from someone who has had to make hard decisions for the woman I love before. ”
He tilts his head down, pen already in hand, and begins to scribble on the page. I don’t say anything, not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I already plan to do just what he said.
I plan to fight.
By the time we land in Seattle, deplane, and grab our stuff, it’s one in the morning, which means by the time I get home, it’ll be around one thirty…
and that’s if I’m only counting West Coast time and not all the hours I’ve been up on East Coast time.
Even though I was able to get some rest on the plane after moving away from Lawson, I’m still bone tired, and I cannot fucking wait to crash the moment I get home.
I wave goodbye to the team, letting Lawson know if he even thinks about bothering me on our off day tomorrow, I’ll castrate him with a rusty spork, then I hop into my R8 and smile at the sound the V10 makes when I fire it up.
Since it’s so late—or early in the morning, whichever way you look at it—the streets are empty, and I make it home ten minutes earlier than I thought I would.
The night security guard looks up at me as I enter the building but doesn’t say anything, and I’m okay with that.
I just want to get upstairs, give Percy a few back scratches, then crawl into my bed and sleep well past when I should tomorrow.
The second I push open my door, I know something is off, and not just because of the extra set of worn-out boots lying by the door.
It’s Percy. He’s meowing loudly, like he’s been forced to eat hard food for six days straight, and I race toward where the sound is coming from without even dropping my bags.
I skid to a stop when I find him.
Well, them. With tired eyes, Chloe looks up at me from her spot on the floor.
Much like Coach Smith looked earlier, it’s clear she’s exhausted.
Under her eyes are puffy, and her hair is a mess like she’s been brushing her hands through it all day.
Next to her sits a can of Diet Coke and what looks to be a half-eaten chocolate pudding cup, which has always been a favorite of hers.
She smiles softly. “Hi.”
Fuck, even her voice sounds tired.
“Hi, Clover,” I reply, dropping my bags and crouching down next to her. Percy darts over to me, rubbing against my legs, still meowing. “What are you doing here?”
She winces. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstay my welcome, I swear.”
She tries to stand, but I push her back down gently.
“No, no,” I say, brushing back some of her messy red locks. I let my touch linger, enjoying how they feel between my fingers a little too much. “That’s not what I meant. I’m glad you’re here.”
“You are?”
I smile. “Yeah, I am.”
If I’m being honest with myself, there was a part of me that had hoped she’d be here. I didn’t expect it, because what real reason would she have, but I did wish for it. I wished for her.
Meow.
I reach down and pet Percy. “Hey, little man.”
Chloe gives a breathless laugh. “You call him that, too?”
“Yeah, and you stole it from me.” Percy pushes into my hand, meowing again. “I take it he’s why you’re here?” She nods. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Remember how I told you earlier he keeps pawing at the door?”
I look over at the spare bedroom she’s just pointed to with her thumb. “I remember.”
“When I came to check on him and give him a few treats after my interview, he was just meowing his head off. It didn’t matter how many snuggles or snackies I gave him, he wouldn’t chill.
I finally got him calm after a while, but he started up about an hour ago and hasn’t stopped since.
I was going to text Rory, but I was worried it was too late, and you were coming soon, so…
” She lifts her shoulders and hands in an I don’t know kind of way, then slumps back down. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. I should apologize. I should have just told you to let him into the room.”
“Is that what he wants?”
I nod. “It’s his favorite spot.”
“Oh.” She wrinkles her brows. “Why?”
“Because of you.”
She jerks her head back. “What?”
I push to my full height, then stand over her, holding my hands out. “Come on. Up.”
Chloe lets me pull her up, and I wrap my arms around her when she stumbles backward a bit.
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
“Stop apologizing to me, Clover.” I hold her steady. “You good?”
“I’m good.” She looks over at the door, where Percy is scratching and begging to be let in. “Want to fill me in on why that’s my fault?”
I sigh, then dip my chin and step away. “I’ll do you one better and show you.”
I close my hand around the cool knob and push the door open. Percy is inside before I even move it three inches, and I don’t have to flick on the light to know where he’s gone. I do it anyway, then step aside to let Chloe see.
To most, it probably doesn’t look like much. In fact, it might even look a bit disappointing, but not to her.
She gasps. “Callum…” Her eyes scan the room and the boxes stacked haphazardly across the floor. “Is this…”
“Everything you left behind? Yeah.”
She runs her hand over the dresser that used to be in our bedroom, the very one I fucked her on multiple times over. Then she moves to the box labeled Chloe’s clothes and peers inside.
“Holy…” She reaches inside and pulls out a dress I haven’t seen her wear since… “I haven’t seen this since that last New Year’s Eve.”
I give her a tight-lipped smile. “I remember.”
It was the night everything changed, and when I saw that she had left it behind and didn’t pack it for her London trip, I didn’t think anything of it at first. But then she never came back, not really, so I packed it away along with everything else.
“I can’t believe you kept everything,” she says, taking in all the rest of the boxes.
Some contain things from our first apartment together in New York, then our second place in Ottawa, and our third in Chicago.
A few hold items from her life before me, back when she lived with her parents in Tennessee, and a few are ones she doesn’t know about, filled to the brim with stuff I found over the years, trinkets I thought she might like or that reminded me of her.
Then she walks over to our bed, the one we took with us everywhere, even after we could afford a much better one.
The one where I made love to her on our wedding night, then as often as I could afterward.
It was the first thing I got rid of when she left.
I couldn’t stomach sleeping in it alone.
It smelled like her and reminded me far too much of everything I had lost, so I ditched it and slept on the couch for a solid six months before I got a new one, only because the team chiropractor threatened to tell Coach if I didn’t start sleeping in a real bed.
It’s where Percy is curled up, right on her side.
“I told you it was his favorite place,” I say as she approaches the cat, who looks entirely too happy right now. “He comes in here all the time.”
I used to as well, but now I only come in to collect Percy and get out. This space holds too many painful memories for me to spend time in here.
Chloe stands in the middle of the room—as close to it as she can get—and looks around. “I can’t believe you kept all this. I thought…I thought my parents came to collect it.”
I remember that day well. It was the second worst day of my life, right after the one where she told me she wasn’t coming back. They showed up on a game day, and though I knew they were coming, I still wasn’t ready to sit there and watch them pack up our life together.
“They did, and they were pissed as hell when I sent them packing.”
Her eyes widen. “You did what? They never told me that. They said it went fine, and we never really spoke of it again.”
I shrug, not the least bit sorry about it, then tuck my hands into my pockets. “I told them to get lost. I mean, I was a lot nicer about it than that, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them take all this away and pretend we never happened. Not when I believed you’d come back.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, the first time either of us has acknowledged that I never gave up hope. The room is quiet, and only the soft sounds of Percy’s snores echo through it.
“Look,” I say after a few tense moments, taking a couple of steps toward her. “I’m sure you’re mad at me for telling them to leave after they drove all the way to Chicago from Tennessee, but I just couldn’t, Clover. Okay? I couldn’t. I—”
My words are cut off by her lips, and I’m so stunned that at first, I don’t move. Chloe is kissing me. She’s kissing me. It’s the first time she’s made the first move since she’s been back, and I’m so fucking elated by it that I forget how to function. How to breathe. How to simply exist.
Then she runs her tongue against the seam of my lips, and it all comes flooding back to me.
I open for her but take control of the kiss, sliding my hands into her hair and tugging her closer.
Her arms go around my neck, and she pulls at me just as hard as I pull at her.
We’re pressed so close together, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.
I need more. I need her.
But first, I need to know if we’re on the same page. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep being taken to the edge and never fall over it. I wrench my mouth away, and she whimpers at the loss.
“Clover…” I whisper. “Tell me you want this like I do. Tell me you want more. Tell me…”
Tell me you love me still. I want to scream those words out loud, but I can’t.
“I do. I really do.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
Then I kiss her again, just because I can’t stop. She tastes too sweet, and I know it’s because of that damn soda she loves so much, but I can’t even complain about it. I’d take this over her leaving any day of the week.
“Fuck, I missed this,” I say against her lips between kisses. “I missed you.”
She pulls back, her lips swollen, eyes glassy like she’s a little drunk. Then slowly, she drops to her knees in front of me, and it’s not until she reaches for my belt that I realize what’s happening.
“Whoa, whoa…” I grab her hands, halting her movement. “You don’t need to do that.”
She looks up at me. “I know, but I want to. I want to show you how much I missed you, Callum.”