Chapter 33
[Stone]
As I don’t want to overwhelm the heart patient, I don’t linger long for Trudy’s welcome home, and I’m a little uncertain where I stand with Taxi, which also sends me out the door early.
I don’t doubt that she is surprised to see her van and happy to see me in the driveway, but her decision to place us on pause is troubling.
Strange to think I’d had a public friendship that everyone thought was a more-than-platonic relationship, and now I have what I consider a budding relationship, and she wants us to appear like friends.
I don’t fault Taxi. So much has happened all at once. Trudy’s heart attack and Taxi’s decision to stay a while. I just don’t want to be shut out.
Taxi needs to see that I’m not going to abandon her. For a man previously opposed to commitments of the heart, my heart is certainly screaming at me to keep her.
She’s strong, magnetic, loyal and someone who dropped everything for someone she loves.
She doesn’t trust easily, but I feel her opening up to me.
She understands me in a way few people do.
We share similar experiences with parents and family.
The contrast of her strength and vulnerability attracts me to her. She sees the two sides of me.
I’ve been strong my entire life. Holding up my family, raising them, lifting them, but no one has done the lifting for me. Somehow Taxi does that. Her concern for my arm. Her fear for the risks in my profession. Her attention to me.
So this pause is a little confusing to navigate. Except almost immediately, Taxi acts opposite of what she requested.
I’m invited to stay for dinner when I visit, checking in on the patient and caregiver.
Taxi doesn’t pass me without a simple touch, like she’s confirming with a brush of her hand over my shoulder or a stroke of her pinky beneath the dinner table that I’m present.
We talk on the phone each night like classic teenagers. The ones who used to use the phone for the purpose of speaking to someone else, not just text messages. We even FaceTime, which is even better because at least I can see her.
And it’s in one of these talks that I confess what happened to me.
“You ever been in love, Stone Sylver?” Her tone playful and teasing.
“Yeah,” I admit, twisting my lips and glancing away from the screen. “Once.”
When I look back at Taxi, her expression sobers. “Trudy might have mentioned something. A year ago, during that Fourth of July at your house. She said you’d been engaged.” She pauses. “Want to tell me about it?”
No. Yes. I exhale and scrub a hand down my face.
“It was a long time ago. And I wasn’t engaged.
Not officially.” I draw in a deep breath as I tip back in my office chair.
“I met Bailey my sophomore year of college. And I thought she was my everything.” I openly admit, a weak smile meeting the old memory.
A blonde beauty with an easy smile who seemed as attracted to me as I’d instantly been to her.
“We dated for years and I planned to propose. But then . . .” I pause, feeling my pulse pick up.
“I told you about my dad dying, and my decision to take care of my siblings. Football or family, the choice was easy for me. Not that it wasn’t hard to let go of the dream of professional football, but my family .
. .” I drift off. I hadn’t needed to think about it.
“But I couldn’t ask Bailey to make a choice. ”
“But did you ask her or did you make the decision for her?” Taxi defends, woman sticking up for another woman.
“I didn’t need to ask.”
“What do you mean?” Taxi perches her chin in her hand, staring back at me through the screen with confusion etched on her forehead.
“I didn’t make my decision immediately or lightly. I was still in this state of grieving my dad and trying to figure out what happened to him. What would happen to all of them. Processing what I was going to do. Clay begged me to go. We needed the money.”
The family business—Sylver Seed she’s angry for me. For the betrayal I endured. Her eyes are fierce, protective, like she’s in my corner even if I didn’t ask her to be.
“Their excuse was grief.”
“What the hell had they been grieving? You lost your father, Stone. And your dreams.”
“I know,” I whisper.
And I remember it clear as day. Cortland standing in my yard, in front of the house I’m still living in.
He’d gone to Bailey’s apartment because she called him over.
At first, Cort said she seduced him, but quickly he reneged on the accusation, taking ownership for his part in the decision.
There were two people involved. He’d been weak.
“Cort said he missed our friendship. A wedge had developed around the time Bailey entered my life.”
“So he slept with her?” Taxi interjects, still appalled by the behavior.
I chuckle without humor. “Yeah, well, Cort and I had a relationship first, I guess. He was my best friend. Cradle to college.”
“Stone,” Taxi whispers, her voice softening.
“Anyway.” I scrub a hand down my face and sit forward in my office chair, the damn thing creaking beneath me. “The hardest part was . . . well, there were several. For the first time in my life, I had something that was mine. Someone who was only for me.”
I swallow an unexpected lump in my throat, which makes no sense being there because it has been more than two decades since I lost Bailey.
“I hardly remember much before I was twelve years old, and then I was thrown into raising Vale as a baby and caring for Sebastian and Ford as toddlers. Then my dad dies, and I’m back at it again.
I’d been taking care of others my entire life, and I finally had someone who would take care of me. Or so I thought.”
I choke back that thick lump. “I mean, I thought Bailey loved me. But Cort . . . Cort was the harder hit. He was my best friend. He stood by my side through all of it. He was my person as much as I thought she was, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Taxi confirms.
“Going off to college was the first break I’d gotten in life. A chance for me.” I tap weakly on my chest, having never confessed these feelings to anyone before. “I had a future. I had a plan. And my fucking dad . . .”
The lump is back. Dammit. What is happening to me? Why am I opening up to this woman?
Because she’s listening . . . to me.
“So selfish,” I whisper, instantly chastising myself. He’d been heartbroken and then sick. Alcoholism. What a wicked disease.
“I’d wanted something for myself,” I quietly admit. “And instead, I’d lost one of the most important people to me.”
“Bailey?” Taxi asks.
“Cortland,” I confess. The ache for my old friend was bigger than the loss of Bailey.
I’d never really asked Cort to stand by me either. He just did it. He’d chosen me. As his friend. As his brother from another mother. And then he chose her. One night. One mistake.
“I never had to ask Bailey what she’d do because her actions showed me who she was.”
She’d only wanted the future. A professional footballer’s wife.
“Cort married her instead. He played professional football.”
“Stone,” Taxi whispers again, sorrow in the single syllable of my name.
“They had a boy.” I scrub down my face again, the thickness in my throat gone. “His name is—”
“Josh,” she completes for me. “I’m so fucking sorry that happened to you, Stone.”
She has heard my story.
“You deserve the world,” she says.
“I have it. In my siblings. In my nieces and nephews.”
Taxi watches me, her gaze intense. “But you deserve that one-on-one love, Stone. That red to your blue.” She slowly smiles.
“How about periwinkle? Does that complement beige?”
Her mouth curls higher on one side. “I’ve never really thought about it,” she admits.
“But you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” I just planted a seed. One I didn’t intend to plant.
Like when dandelion seeds drift through the wind and then root somewhere unexpected.
Like in the cracks in a sidewalk or on the edge of a garden.
Taxi is quiet. Her grin growing larger, until another thought occurs.
“And now Cort is dating your sister?”
“Engaged to my sister,” I correct, tipping back in my chair again, staring up at the ceiling despite holding the phone in a position Taxi can see my face.
“They’re in love.” I mimic her emphasis of the word earlier in this conversation.
“I don’t know how you carry all that weight, Stone.
Then I whip my head forward. “What about you? Ever been in love?”
Taxi exhales and sits back in the kitchen chair. She glances to her left and shakes her head.
“No,” she quietly admits, glancing back at me. Her sterling eyes focused. “And I’m sorry I suggested we put us on pause.”
“That’s not why I told you this story,” I lean forward again, placing my arms on my desk top.
“I know. I asked a question and you answered. You always answer honestly, Stone. You give and you give, and you give. You need to take.”
If I thought she meant I could take her, have her, I’d ask her right now to be mine. To give us a chance. Not just for the time she’s here, but for longer. That commitment excuse I’ve used in the past feels like it’s fluttering in the wind as well. Blowing out with the breeze.
We can work something out. Everything always works out.
Instead, I snort, dismissing the idea.
“Don’t you be snorting at me, Stone Sylver,” she teases again. “You take the next time you see me.”
Her gaze remains focused, her suggestion still a little foggy, but her smile grows. “You hear me?”
“What about pausing?”
She licks her lips and glances to the left again before looking back at me. “Maybe I just want something for myself, too. Someone just for me, for a little while.”
For a little while.
I don’t let the words dissuade me from the rest of her statement.
I point at my chest, the jab forceful and direct, arching an eyebrow to suggest, Me?
“Yeah,” she whispers. “I choose you.”
She has no idea what those words do to me. How much I want them to mean something deeper than I’m certain she playfully means.
She picks me.
For now.