Chapter 25
Ren
If someone was healed enough and whole enough and had all the pieces of themselves in order, they’d be really lucky to fall in love with Miller Colson-Burke.
He makes a great teacher, and an even better teammate.
It’s probably not hard to teach someone to barbecue properly—but he makes it look easy anyway.
Standing behind me, not quite touching, but close enough I can feel the stacks of muscle brushing against my back and my waist when either of us moves, he reaches around, almost caging me in, showing me the right level for all the knobs and dials.
His chin even drops to my shoulder for a brief moment when he watches me flip burgers.
He’s there to turn the heat down when I do accidentally let something catch fire.
He tells me more about his childhood. More about Matthew.
More about the things he likes and doesn’t like.
He loves spring training because it’s warm, but he hates Florida even though he lived there for a few years.
He doesn’t read a lot, but he thinks he might try if he found the right books.
He watches a lot of hockey, and the only sports podcast he’s ever done an appearance on is hosted by three guys who played professionally.
He uses the calculator on his phone for anything to do with numbers, except for numbers relating to baseball.
They’re funny details he shares—like he’s trying to paint this picture of who he really is with his interests.
But I already know who Miller is. I like the little pieces he gives me, but I don’t need them to understand he’s so much more—bigger and brighter and better—than people think.
We trade more bits and pieces in stories over dinner—he had another fit of chivalry and took the burger I burnt—and I think, as one bottle of beer turns into two, droplets perspiring in the warm evening air, that I feel more of those fragments of me stirring around my feet.
He leans back in his chair, stretching, and I try not to look at the strip of bronzed abdominal muscle and faint dusting of dark hair when his T-shirt lifts above the waist of his shorts.
“I’ll try to catch better next time, so you aren’t subjected to my poor grilling.” I frown, poking at my empty plate.
“Wasn’t that bad,” he says with a sideways grin, rocking back on his chair before he sits forward, elbows coming down to his knees with a wave of hair curling over his forehead.
I purse my lips. “High praise, seeing as the burger you ate might have actually been able to pass for a hockey puck.”
“Protein is protein.” He shrugs as his phone, upside down on the table, starts vibrating.
A crease digs between his brows, and a muscle twitches in his cheek when he flips it over. Scrubbing a hand across his jaw, he groans into his palm. “It’s my aunt and uncle. They’re Facetiming me. I’ve texted a bit more but . . . I haven’t . . . called them back yet.”
“Answer it, if you want.” I hold a hand towards his phone, smiling encouragingly. “I’m here. It won’t be that bad. I’m a good distraction.”
“Yeah.” His eyes are on mine before the corners crease with a wince, and he turns to his phone, still ringing on the table. His tongue prods his cheek, and some sort of internal war wages before his thumb swipes across the screen and two faces come into view.
“Hey—uh, hi.” Miller smiles into the phone, strained.
Even with the screen angled away from me, I can see his aunt’s face light up.
“Miller,” she breathes, relieved. “How are you?”
He runs a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m good. Busy. Sorry, I’ve—”
“It’s fine, son.” Another voice cuts in, deep, a bit like Miller’s, actually. “You’re having a great season.”
I see his eyes flash, something a bit like a cut of pain when he hears the word, but his smile looks fond.
His grip tightens on his phone, and he nods.
“Yeah, thanks. Been a lot of work. Had a couple bumps trying to figure things out. Pascale has been great. Whole team, really. Joel . . . the new starting . . . pitcher—” He chokes on the word, but he keeps going. “He’s, uh, great. Good guy.”
His aunt takes a deep inhale, lines digging in at the corners of her eyes, readying herself to say something, but she frowns. “Where are you? You aren’t on the road this week. Are you—” Silence falls and I think she realizes. “Oh. Miller, you didn’t have to go there alone. We’d have—”
“I’m not alone.” Miller’s knee bounces up and down. “My friend—she’s here with me.”
“Who?” his aunt practically shrieks at the same time his uncle makes a noncommittal sort of noise, asking, “The dinosaur girl from the internet?”
Miller grimaces, eyes cutting to me, and I straighten my shoulders, nodding in permission. He shifts in his chair, angling the phone so I can pop my head into the screen.
I do, smiling brightly.
“Hi! Dinosaur girl here!” I wave. “I’m Ren. It’s so nice to meet you both.”
His aunt inhales, immediately glancing sideways at his uncle, and whispers, not all that quietly, “She’s pretty.”
“She can hear you,” Miller cuts in.
“It was a compliment.” His aunt rolls her eyes before they flick to me, warmth spreading across the swirls of honey living in them.
She’s beautiful—dark chestnut hair, woven with threads of silver, pulled back from her face, the same slope to her nose I see in Miller and pictures of Matthew, and the same shape to her mouth.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Ren. I’m Emilia, and this is Mitchell. ”
Emilia drops her chin to her hand. “What are you two doing?”
I turn to Miller, waiting, but he’s staring determinedly at the ground, the skin around his knuckles white.
Waving a hand, I look back at the screen. “Playing catch. I’m not particularly coordinated. Miller was teaching me a few things.”
“You did great,” he murmurs, and when he shifts in his seat beside me, his knee knocks against mine.
I leave mine there, pressing encouragement against his skin. Leaning forward, I whisper, “I really didn’t. I could only catch underhand.”
“Everyone starts somewhere,” Mitchell offers, smiling, but sadness creeps in around the corners of his eyes, deep blue like Miller’s, but not quite the same shade of navy.
“I should maybe—start again,” I say wryly.
Miller snorts a laugh beside me, and his aunt and uncle light up again. Not because of me and my bad attempt at self-deprecation—but at the sideways smile carving across their child’s face, like it’s a sunrise they haven’t seen in a long, long time.
Emilia blinks, once, twice, a third time, and she drags her hand absentmindedly across her chest where it rests over her heart, and she stares fondly at Miller through the phone.
Mitchell’s hand finds her shoulder, a gentle prod reminding her not to stare directly at the sun for too long, and her eyes snap back to me.
She smiles brightly before she leans closer to the screen, asking, “So, Ren, tell me—did the dinosaurs really have feathers?”
“Jesus Christ.” Miller drops his head back, groaning.
I cut him a look, and when he straightens again, smiling, and light, and wonderful, and unburdened—I think I have to look away too.
I make a show of folding my hands together. “To answer your question, Emilia, I’m going to have to start by telling you about a very important fossil called Archaeopteryx.”
“The one from Germany?” Miller glances at me before he looks back at the screen, and he turns a new shade of crimson when he tells them, “Ren lived in Germany for a bit, uh, studying that fossil.”
“Oh!” His aunt glows, cutting another look towards his uncle. “She’s smart, too.”
“Come on!” Miller slumps down in his seat again.
I chance another glance at him—the brightest star in the sky most people don’t deserve to see—offering him a tentative smile.
He returns it, a ray of sunlight stretching down.
I have to look away again, or I think I’d stare forever.
Turning to his aunt with a nod and a lift of my brows, I start, “Emilia, you came to the right place. Prepare to have everything you thought you knew about these little terrestrial reptiles known as dinosaurs forever changed.”
“You know,” I say, finally looking away from the flashes of city light stretching out beyond the passenger window. “This stupid car is growing on me.”
“Yeah?” Miller laughs, lazily flicking the signal to turn onto my street.
I smile, nodding. “Yeah. Not terribly practical, and seems like maybe, you know, a big waste of what’s surely a very capable engine that’s probably a feat of engineering to drive it around in a city with some of the worst traffic in North America, but yes, I do have to say, it’s growing on me.
” I shift around in the seat. “Very comfortable leather.”
“Should I?” He throws me a sideways grin, glancing away from the empty street leading to my townhouse, fingers drumming along the gearshift.
I narrow my eyes. “Should you what?”
He shrugs a shoulder, bottom lip dipping right as a streetlight casts shadows across his face that make his jaw look sharper than usual. “Open it up a bit, see what Matty’s stupid car can do.”
“On a residential street? I think not.” I tip my chin but make a show of bracing myself against the glove compartment.
Miller angles his head, eyes glinting and with reflexes so much quicker than mine, he moves his hand, like he’s about to shift gears and really put his back into it. “You sure?”
“Miller,” I warn. “Do not.”
“Just a little?” he teases, one corner of his mouth lifted. He even accelerates, just a little. I don’t have time to fake a protest before he’s lifting his palm in concession. “Don’t worry, wouldn’t dream of risking your safety. The dinosaurs need you.”
But even if he had pressed down on the gas and done something entirely reckless and irresponsible and dangerous, I don’t think I would have felt unsafe. Not with him.
I don’t say any of that, though. I point weakly towards my driveway. “I’m right—”