Chapter 28 #2
“I like it,” she says with a smile, and this time she does hold out her hand. “Lisa Lowry. I’m this one’s mom and responsible for only the best parts of him. Anything bad is something he picked up in the locker room.”
Maddy laughs again, and the way I went from a full-blown panic attack to watching the two most important women in my life meet and laugh together is giving me whiplash. “I’ve spent my entire life around athletes, so I know the deal. I’m Maddy Wright.”
“Oh, I know exactly who you are,” my mom says with a grin.
“I love watching you on the sidelines of the games. You’re so badass and professional and handle those players like you’ve been doing it your entire life.
So…team psychologist dating a player, huh?
I bet that’s all kinds of complicated. I think it’s deliciously forbidden. Like the plot of a romance novel.”
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” I mutter.
Maddy shrugs again, glancing up at me. “I mean, she’s not wrong. You’re not wrong,” she says, turning back to my mom. “And it’s way more fun to think of it that way than to think of it as something that could tank my career before that career even really gets started.”
“It won’t,” my mom says immediately. “It absolutely will not tank your career. I know it must be impossibly hard being a woman in men’s professional sports, and how you have to work twice as hard to get the same respect a man gets for just phoning it in.
But this?” She waves a hand between us. “This is right, and when it’s right, you find a way.
You will both find a way. And if I have to kick any asses, you just let me know.
I’ve been taking kickboxing classes for like twenty years, so it would be my moment to shine. ”
“How do you know it’s right?” Maddy asks, looking at my mom thoughtfully.
My mom’s eyes soften. “Oh honey, Cam might have been looking at you like you’re the last woman on earth, but you were looking at him like you want to be the answer to every question he has. Like you want to hold onto all his broken pieces.”
When our eyes meet, Maddy’s swim with emotion. “I do,” she says quietly. “That’s exactly what I want.”
Throat tight, I say nothing, just lay a hand on her lower back, the warmth of her skin beneath her sweatshirt my anchor.
“Well then everything is going to be fine,” my mom says with a smile. “I’ll hold off Riley and give you two another couple minutes. Maddy, are you staying for waffles?”
Maddy looks up at me like she isn’t sure how to answer, so I handle it for her. “She’s definitely staying.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Ethan!” my mom calls as she walks back towards the kitchen. “Drop the stick and come set the table.”
“Finally!” Ethan’s voice is a little breathless as he pounds up the basement stairs. “I’ve been starving for hours.”
Maddy and I both laugh, and I turn her to face me, tilting her head up and taking her lips in a longer, slower kiss that has the dregs of my panic melting away. “So…that was my mom.”
She laughs, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I’m familiar with her kind. I’m sorry for just showing up here. I probably should have called first—I figured you would spend the day off with your kids, but then the storm started and I forgot about all of that.”
“No way.” I thread my fingers through her damp hair and press a kiss to her forehead. “I like that you showed up here. You can always show up here. This is where I want you to be.”
Stay forever, is what my brain says, but I manage to keep myself from actually speaking those words into the space between us.
“So…it’s not weird for you that your kids are about to see me in your kitchen?”
I shrug because I want to shout to the whole world that Maddy is mine, but I know we need to exercise a little restraint right now.
But maybe that restraint is just for people who aren’t family.
And Brian Simpson. “I think we both know Riley already kind of knows because she’s smarter and more intuitive than a thirteen-year-old girl has any right to be. ”
Maddy laughs. “As a former intuitive, too-smart-for-her-own-good thirteen-year-old girl, I’d say you’re right about that.”
Running my thumbs along her cheeks, I lean in and kiss her again, so fucking happy she’s here.
“Some of your friends and cousins know…and your parents. My mom, now, obviously. Ethan definitely not because ten-year-old boys don’t know anything about anything that isn’t sports or video games unless you shove it directly in their face, but I’m okay changing that today if you’re comfortable with it. ”
Maddy tilts her head to the side in thought. “I don’t want to keep it from your kids. They’re too important to you for that.”
I hear what she doesn’t say. They’re too important to me for that. And the picture it paints? Me, her, my kids, this house. Together. It feels so real, like I can reach out and touch it, and I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in a long, long time. “I can’t guarantee they won’t tell anyone.”
Maddy shakes her head. “I would never ask that of them. I’m not worried this is going to end up on ESPN because Ethan told a school friend how his dad has a girlfriend.
And if Riley tells Zoe?” Maddy shrugs. “I honestly would be shocked if Liv hasn’t told Brian already to soften the ground for when this eventually is public, but if he does know, he’ll wait for me to come to him.
He’s good like that. Maybe we can use this as kind of a…
soft launch? Eventually once the season is over, we’ll have to figure out how to tell everyone, so maybe we can just start here, with your most important people. ”
I have words. So, so many words. But right now, I can’t say any of them.
So instead, I lower my mouth to hers. When I glide my tongue along her lower lip, she lets out a breathy sigh and presses closer, opening for me to sweep my tongue inside.
She tastes like rain and happiness and everything I never thought I would have again.
When I tip her head back to take the kiss deeper, she moans against my lips and my entire world rights itself because this.
Her. This is what I’ve been waiting for. She is my happiest ending.
“Shit,” I mutter against her lips, realizing I’m about two seconds from lifting her up and carrying her straight to my bedroom, locking the door behind us.
“Yeah,” she says, a little breathlessly. “Something, something waffles?”
Laughing, I press my lips to hers one more time, because there is time for everything else. She’s here, and that’s enough for now. “Come on, Wildcat. Let me make you breakfast.”