Chapter 9 #2
“It’s awfully hard to forget the sight of a bright red Jeep screeching into the parking lot, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ blasting out of the open windows.
Besides, Riley was playing Celine Dion on her phone when we got home so she could see what all the fuss is about.
” I put air quotes around those last words, and Maddy laughs.
“Apparently you are extremely cool because you drive a red Jeep and you played hockey, and because you like Celine, Riley has decided Celine is acceptable.”
“The thirteen-year-old stamp of approval. I dig it,” Maddy says with a grin.
“You should be honored by your cool title,” I say, reaching for the bag of popcorn and digging in. “Pretty much every adult in Riley’s world is supremely uncool, and I’m at the front of the pack.”
“I fucking love teenagers. Especially teenage girls. They’re so smart and funny and fascinating. It’s cool to see them figuring out how the world works and how to navigate that finite space between childhood and adulthood.”
“Do you spend a lot of time around teenagers?”
She shrugs, taking another sip of her drink.
“When I was in grad school, I did an internship in a group home for teenage kids who hadn’t yet aged out of the foster system.
And I spend a lot of time with Olivia and Brian’s kids, who are both teenagers now.
Jake is a senior and is mostly too obsessed with sports and his friends to give me the time of day, but Zoe still thinks I’m a cool, older sister type, which is really special to me because I’ve had that same kind of relationship with Olivia since she moved to Pittsburgh to be closer to her brother when I was ten, and that’s always how I’ve felt about my mom’s three best friends who pretty much helped raise me. ”
The way she talks about her family has her face lighting up, and it makes me want to ask her a million more questions and meet every single one of the people who had a hand in making Maddy who she is.
I want to know everything about her.
“Riley has been talking about Zoe. I think they’re hitting it off.”
Maddy grins at me. “That’s great! Zoe is a great kid. She’s a serious boundary pusher and is in the middle of a love affair with the color black, but I love that about her.”
I give her a wry smile. “I’m familiar with that. At least, the boundary pushing part.”
Her smile widens. “Riley giving you a run for your money?”
Huffing out a laugh, I grab another handful of popcorn.
“Raising a teenager is not for the weak, it turns out. The learning curve is steep. I’m trying to just go with it, though.
Let her be whoever she needs to be. But it’s…
harrowing. Lainey would have been so good at figuring it out.
Sometimes I feel like I’m jumping from crisis to crisis, just trying to survive. ”
Maddy studies me, and for a second, it feels like she sees the whole of me. “Offer still stands, you know.”
“What offer?”
She tosses an M&M in the air and catches it in her mouth in a way that has me grinning at her. She’s so damn cute. “To tell me about Lainey.”
My chest warms at the way her name sounds coming out of Maddy’s mouth, and it has the words spilling out before I can stop them.
“She was a whirlwind,” I say with a laugh, thinking back to those early days.
“I met her in an economics class early in our freshman year of college. She got to class five minutes late, dropped down onto the seat next to me, flashed me a grin, and asked if she could borrow a pen. I was eighteen and already overwhelmed trying to balance classes and football, but all of a sudden, nothing else mattered because Lainey wanted to go get pancakes at two a.m. at the diner off campus or sneak into the sports complex to stargaze on the tennis courts. We fell in love fast, and college was a blur of days and nights spent together, and football games where she would wear my jersey and scream her head off, and the absolute certainty that we were meant to be together forever. The kind of certainty you can only have when you’re eighteen and sure that your entire life is ahead of you.
“She moved to Pittsburgh with me when I was drafted, and we got married and had Riley pretty quickly. Some people would say too quickly, but I’m happy we didn’t listen.
Didn’t wait. Lainey was an amazing mom. It was almost like she knew she wouldn’t be around for long, so she poured so much love and fun into those three years with Riley.
I loved her,” I say quietly, feeling the truth of it in my bones.
“I loved her so damn much, and then she was gone, and I’ve tried to give all of that love to my kids.
To be enough for them, even though they deserve both of us.
Sorry,” I say, shaking my head, realizing that talking about how much I loved my late wife is not exactly the conversation to be having with the first woman since my wife that I’ve had big, important feelings for. “That was a lot.”
When she lays a hand over mine I flip my hand over, lacing our fingers together. “Don’t apologize. Not for this. Never, ever for this.”
“It’s not weird?” I ask the question again. “Talking about my wife?”
She shakes her head, thoughtfully. “Not for me. She was your person for a long, long time. You should be able to talk about her anytime you want. She may be gone, but the two of you will always be tied together by your kids, and by the fact that you loved her, deeply and completely. Besides, she sounds cool as hell. I, too, enjoy two a.m. diner pancakes and stargazing. Although I used to do my college stargazing on the roof of the science building.” Maddy puts air quotes around the word stargazing and shoots me a wicked grin.
“Stargazing, of course, being code for making out. And…other things.”
“Who were you making out with?” I practically growl.
Maddy bursts out laughing. “Simmer down, Cameron. You know you just got finished telling me about your whole entire wife, right?”
I laugh, too. “Sorry, for a second I was a college guy again, and the girl I like told me she was making out with someone else.”
“The girl you like, huh?” Maddy says with a smirk.
It’s the smirk that does it, I think. Or maybe it’s just her and me and the warm breeze on our faces and the way she let me talk about Lainey and how I think she sees past just the football player or the single dad or the widower straight to my core.
Whatever it is has me moving the snacks out of the way, scooting around so we sit side-by-side.
Maddy sucks in a breath but doesn’t protest as I put a hand on her cheek, splaying my fingers over her jaw and turning her head so she’s looking at me, my body humming at her proximity.
“The girl I like,” I say quietly, sweeping my thumb over her cheekbone, watching her green eyes grow hazy and dark. “I really like you, Wildcat. I’ve liked you since you opened your purse full of M&M’s and let me kiss you in a bar.”
“We shouldn’t,” she says, her voice ragged. But despite the protest, she doesn’t move.
“I know.” I lean in just a little closer, her vanilla and lavender scent surrounding me and her skin warm under my palm.
“I know this is complicated as hell, and I know you have your reasons for wanting us to keep our distance. Your job is important to you, and it should be. It’s important to me too.
But fuck, Maddy, I can’t get you out of my head.
I’ve replayed our night together a million times.
I think of you, even when I shouldn’t. When I dream, it’s you I see. ”
“God, Cameron.” Maddy’s voice is a plea. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not?” I ask, my free hand taking hers, winding our fingers together.
“Because it makes me want things I shouldn’t.”
“What things?”
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she opens them, there’s a kind of determination in her gaze that has my stomach swooping. “To kiss you.”
I smile, running my thumb over her bottom lip. “So, kiss me, Wildcat. I’ve been waiting weeks to feel your lips on mine again.”
She pauses for a beat, and then the space between us slowly disappears until her breath flutters over my face and my heart gallops in my chest. The world around us slowly fades away until it’s just her and me and this perfect slice of stolen time.
The blaring from my phone has us jerking apart. Maddy exhales heavily as I grab my cell from the ground, panic lancing through me as the weather notifications come pouring in. Severe thunderstorm warning. Flash flood warning. Pittsburgh, PA.
No missed calls from my family.
My breath backs up in my lungs and my vision blurs as my brain serves me up a thousand worst case scenarios in a spiral that’s worse than the last. Worse, that is, until Maddy moves fast to wrap her soft arms around my waist from behind and holds tight.
Until she lays her cheek on my back and rests her legs alongside mine, her flip-flop clad feet brushing the outside of my calves.
“Breathe, Cameron. Breathe with me, okay?” she says softly, splaying one hand directly over my pounding heart.
I feel her chest rise and fall against my back, and my own breath stutters out once, twice, three times, until it starts to match the cadence of hers.
Leaving my phone on the ground, I cover her hands with mine, and as my brain starts to clear, I have the wild thought that nothing would ever be wrong again as long as I could have Maddy’s arms around me.
“Good,” she murmurs, bending her hands back to weave our fingers together. “Just keep breathing. I know you’re scared, but you’re not alone. I promise you don’t have to be alone.”
I close my eyes, taking another deep breath and letting her words soak in.
The softness in them. The care. I’ve been dealing with these little panic attacks alone for a long time, and it’s a relief and a revelation to have her with me now.
I focus on that, on her, until my ringtone shatters the stillness.
Grabbing the phone, my breath whooshes out when I see it’s a video call from Riley.
And when I swipe to answer and see she’s sitting in my living room at home, the relief that crashes through me is so strong it’s almost painful.
“Hey, Ry,” I say, trying to make my voice more upbeat and less like I’ve spent much of the last three hours freaking the fuck out about weather.
Riley’s hair is damp and her eyes are bright. “Oh my god, Dad, it was insane. It’s raining so hard that a ton of streets are flooded, so it took us forever to get home from play practice.”
“We saw, like, ten trees that fell down on the way to pick up Riley after hockey!” Ethan’s head pops into the screen, his eyes so comically wide that I laugh, relieved as fuck to see my kids’ faces.
“We’re fine,” I hear my mom call from the background. “Everything is under control.”
“I’ll leave you alone,” Maddy says quietly, trying to scoot away from me.
But the last thing I want is to be alone.
I want her. Right here. Possibly forever, but at the very least, for now.
So, I clamp my hand down on hers, making it clear that I don’t want her to move an inch, and when she doesn’t protest, instead sliding the hand on my chest back down to my waist, my heart does an achy roll, my fingers tightening on hers.
I’m tall enough that the top of Maddy’s head isn’t visible behind me, and I angle the phone so my kids can’t see her arms around my waist as they regale me with stories about their days.
And with my family on the phone, and Maddy pressed up against me, my free hand covering both of hers, my world rights itself, and right now, in this moment, everything is perfect.