29. McKenna
G-Daddy:
I’m on my way to the airport now to come get my girls! Text me when you land.
Me:
We just landed! Excited to see you soon.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m standing outside the airport in Colorado with a sleeping Cades on my shoulder. She was such a trooper on the flight to Denver. I timed it so it would be around her bedtime, but I had no idea if she would do okay as this was her first flight.
My mom suggested giving her a bottle at takeoff to help her ears adjust, and she fell asleep shortly after we were in the air.
I’ve got our luggage in her stroller, opting to hold her instead of strapping her in the stroller, and I’ve just walked to the curb when a red Jeep Wrangler pulls up in front of us.
Butterflies erupt in my stomach, and nostalgia hits at the sight of his Jeep.
Griff hops out, rounding the hood, and my god, does he look good. His brown hair peeks out beneath his black beanie. I love it when his hair gets a little longer during the season like this. He’s wearing a black sweatshirt with a pair of . . . are you kidding me? He’s wearing gray joggers that cling to his thick thighs, making the back of my neck sweat. He tops the look off with white sneakers.
Once he approaches us, Griff places a chaste peck on my cheek, then kisses Cadence’s temple. God, I wish we could be those people who have a deep, passionate kiss at the airport.
“How did our girl do on her first flight?” Griff takes the luggage and stroller over to the trunk of his Jeep.
I follow behind him with Cadence. “She did great. She practically slept the whole flight, which made it easy on me.”
He swings the back of the Jeep closed and then grabs our sleepy girl out of my arms. He squeezes her tight and whispers, “Good job, sweet girl. Thanks for going easy on your mama.”
My stomach dips, and my chest constricts, just like it does every time he calls me that.
Griff smirks, knowing what he’s doing to me. Placing his hand on the small of my back, he ushers me to the passenger door, opening it for me to get inside.
“I’ll get her buckled, and then we can go to my place to get her settled for the night.”
It doesn’t go unnoticed that he got another car seat for Cadence and already installed it, so it’s rear-facing.
I get buckled just as he opens the driver’s door and gets situated. He turns to look over at me, my stomach swoops when I see his dimples pop. The same dimples he passed on to Cadence.
“I love that she has two of my favorite traits of yours: your brown eyes and your dimples, though she only has one on her left cheek.”
Griff’s answering wink makes me swoon.
“I don’t know. The other day, when the two of you were FaceTiming me, I thought I saw a smaller dimple on her right cheek, though definitely not as pronounced. It was after you made her go into a giggle fit with her stuffed elephant.”
I smile at the memory he’s referring to. These past few months have been filled with daily FaceTime calls and countless text exchanges between the two of us. I’ve tried to keep it strictly platonic, centering solely around Cadence, but that doesn’t stop Griff from asking me about my day and trying to get to know me better each time we talk.
“So, where are you taking us? I’ve actually never been to Colorado. The one tournament Carson had here, I had a volleyball tournament the same weekend in Florida.”
“For tonight, we’ll just head to my place and put Cadence to bed. After seeing your setup for her and doing her bedtime routine with you a few times, I tried to replicate as much of that as I could. I live right in downtown Denver in a two-bedroom apartment near the arena.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” I tell him, and I really am excited to see what his place looks like.
We pull into an underground parking garage and park before Griff gets out, puts the luggage in Cadence’s stroller, and then picks her up out of her car seat. She’s miraculously still asleep somehow. I push the stroller, following Griff into an elevator, where he pushes the button for the twentieth floor.
I suck in a breath, instantly hit with a calming sense of warmth.
Griff notices and says, “I didn’t get a chance to look at the place in person before I signed the lease. The first time I realized I was on the floor that was Katie’s favorite number, it felt like a sign that everything would be okay.”
Tears swell in my eyes. “I feel her around me all the time. She would be so proud of you, Griffin. I hope you know that. She was always telling me how proud of you she was and how much she looked up to you.”
“I feel her with me, too. Like last season when I won the Calder trophy. Or the night I found out about Cadence. Memories of her drive me to push myself harder each day.”
Griff opens the door to his apartment, and I’m not sure what I was thinking his place would look like, but it certainly wasn’t this. It’s much more spacious than I was anticipating, being that it is in the heart of the city.
Along one wall of the foyer, there’s a bench with hooks hung above it for coats and purses. Against the other wall is a long entryway table with a round mirror hung above it. The furniture finish is a warm, natural wood, similar to what I’ve picked out for Cadence’s room and my own at Carson’s house.
Griff walks further into the apartment, and after slipping off my shoes and hanging my jacket and purse on the hooks, I park the stroller next to the entryway table. I walk through the open layout to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows where Griff is holding Cadence.
“This view is breathtaking,” I say in awe of the cityscape in front of us.
“It truly is,” he agrees. I look over at him and am surprised to find him already staring at me intently.
Clearing the uncertainty from my throat, I ask, “Will you give me a tour?”
“Of course, Sunshine. Let’s put Cadence in her crib first, though,” he suggests as he leads us down to the end of the hallway.
“A crib? Griff, I hope you mean a pack and play,” I start but am suddenly at a loss for words as I take in the room Griffin set up for Cadence.
In front of me is the most beautiful nursery. The walls are a crisp cream color, and the furniture has the same warm, natural wood tones as the entryway. The crib is centered along the back wall, which is windowless. The wall to the right of it has the same floor-to-ceiling windows; however, there are expensive-looking beige drapes falling from the ceiling to the floor. The same wide-plank wood flooring that runs throughout the rest of the apartment is in here as well, but there is a large, plush cream rug that takes up most of the floor space. There’s also a large, white neon sign with Cadence’s name written across it in a script font hung above her crib.
I’m still trying to take in the space when I catch Griff watching me from the corner of my eye. Griffin must take my silence as displeasure. He looks unsure of himself as he scratches the back of his neck with the hand not holding Cades.
“I just wanted to get a few things for when you two visit. I wasn’t able to get as many books on her bookshelves yet, but I did get Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and about a dozen of her other favorites.”
I hadn’t even noticed the few rows of acrylic floating bookshelves hung along the wall behind me.
“I figured we could go shopping on my day off for some of the items I may have forgotten,” he pauses. “Shit, Kenna. Say something, please,” he pleads.
Why is it that this man always makes me lose any and all sense?
Shaking my head, I reply, “It’s perfect—stunning.”
“Really? Are you sure you like it? Do you think she’ll like it?” he questions.
“She’ll love everything in here. Griff, you didn’t have to. When did you even have the time to do all of this?”
He moves to the left side of the room and places Cadence on a changing mat that sits on top of a dresser. Griff changes her into a clean diaper, then grabs an armless sleep sack out of one of the drawers for her to sleep in. It looks like just the one I packed for her from home.
Still waiting for him to answer, I take in more details of the room. He’s got a little basket sitting atop the dresser that’s filled with the same lotions, essential oils, and diaper rash balms I have in the diaper bag. He takes out an oil roller from one of them and rubs it along her feet before placing her in the sleep sack. Once he’s got her zipped up, he places a kiss on her forehead and sits down in the glider in the corner of the room. Griff reaches out to the side table beside him, turns on the noise machine, and then connects his phone to a Bluetooth speaker that starts playing “You Are My Sunshine.”
He’s truly thought of every little detail. Tears well in my eyes as I watch him rock our daughter back to sleep while he softly sings our song to her. If you had told me a few months ago that I would be visiting Griff in Colorado with Cadence, watching him take on fatherhood in stride, I would have thought you were crazy.
But here I am, with a man I was once insanely in love with—quite possibly still might be in love with—and he’s trying so damn hard to do right by us. I surprised him with this trip because I wanted to make an effort—to extend an olive branch in our agreement to try to leave the past behind us. But if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve built up walls around my heart and set boundaries for us to remain platonic to protect myself.
Protect myself from what, though? From a man who was once lost, broken, and destroyed, so he pushed me away and broke my heart. If I was in his shoes, can I honestly say I wouldn’t have done the same? I loved Katie like a sister, but at the end of the day, she wasn’t my sister; she was Griff’s.
So now I have to choose. Do I let the fear of past mistakes repeating themselves consume me, allowing me to keep my walls up? Or do I finally let down my walls for this man who has suffered such devastating losses and then worked on himself to overcome his grief?
My heart has already made the choice for me. It’s him. It’s always been him.
The next morning, Cadence does something she rarely ever does: she sleeps in. I roll over in Griffin’s bed—yes, we slept in the same bed—because he absolutely refused to have either of us sleep on the couch. We haven’t talked about us yet, so he kept a respectable distance between us at first, but when I asked him to hold me in his arms, he didn’t protest.
Once I’m done brushing my teeth in Griffin’s primary bathroom, I open his bedroom door and am instantly hit with the smell of coffee. Come to Mama.
Instead of grabbing a cup of coffee, though, I stop in my tracks when I turn the corner of the hallway. A shirtless, tatted, Griffin is sitting on the living room rug with Cadence between his legs as they wind up a Jack in the Box. The box pops open, springing the puppet out, and Cadence’s answering giggle is music to my ears.
Griff catches me staring but doesn’t call me out on it. Instead, he flashes me his dimples and says, “Good morning, Sunshine.”
Cadence peeks up and squeals, “Mama!” Her matching dimple pops on her left cheek. Seeing the two of them together gives me literal heart eyes.
“Morning baby, how did my girl sleep?” I say to Cadence, bewildered by the sight of Griff, trying not to drool at his inked chest and shoulder.
“Remember when you used to call me ‘baby?’” Griff pouts.
“I do.” I chuckle.
“Well, now that you call Cadence ‘baby,’ what does that make me?”
“I was thinking now I’d just call you ‘daddy.’” I didn’t intentionally lower my voice, but it happened, and I’m not mad about it.
“Fuck—shit—oh god, I shouldn’t be swearing,” he places his hands over Cadence’s ears. “What I meant to say was, I love the sound of that, Sunshine. A lot. Probably too much for you to say in public or when our daughter is awake.”
I smile and shake my head at his slip of the tongue.
“Perhaps I’ll take to calling you Hotshot again. You did win Rookie of the Year last season, after all.” I give him a playful wink.
“You can call me anything you want. I made coffee and got some of that creamer you like in the fridge. There’s also a newspaper with the Sunday crossword on the kitchen island.”
That has me stopping in my tracks. How could he have possibly remembered? I used to love doing the crossword every Sunday when I would stay over at their house. Their dad used to save it for me.
“Griff, that was really thoughtful of you. I haven’t done one since I’ve been in college.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize,” he pauses.
“No, it’s okay, really. I told myself I wasn’t going to let fear hold me back anymore.”
“I’m here for you, Kenna. I know I still have to work to prove that to you, but I am.”
“I know you are.”
Nodding his head, he winds the Jack in the Box for Cadence again before he says, “I thought we could go get donuts at one of my favorite places down the street. Maybe we could bundle Cadence up and go for a little walk?”
“I’d love nothing more,” I agree.
“I’ll go get her ready,” Griff tells me as he picks Cadence up off the ground. Before he brings her to her nursery, he stops over to where I’m seated at the kitchen island to place a kiss on my forehead.
Now that he’s closer, I can see what the tattoos on his chest and shoulder are. “Griffin, what are these?”
“They’re tattoos, Kenna.”
“I can see that, but of what?”
He dips his left shoulder, where sunbeams radiate down his arm and onto his chest. Below the beams, he has a rose on his bicep. He moves his arm to show me the Roman numerals near his tricep.
“I got these my first week in Colorado so I could have my girls with me wherever I went. The rose is for my mom, the Roman numerals are Katie’s birthday, and the sunbeams are for you, Sunshine. You were always with me.”
“I love each one so much, Griff,” I breathe as I trace my hands across the outlines, wanting to kiss each detail of them. “You’ve clearly been holding out on me.”
“So you’re a fan of tattoos, I take it?”
He must see my answer when he looks at me because he just gives me that panty-melting smirk-wink combination and heads off down the hall. I probably looked like the literal personification of the heart eyes emoji mixed with the drooling face emoji.
After we get Cadence ready, we walk to the donut store, holding hands while Griff pushes the stroller with one arm. I’m completely lost in my thoughts—struggling with the internal battle going on between my head and my heart, and Griff’s taking notice.
I can’t help but wonder if this is what our life would be like if I just opened my heart to this man. Would we go for family walks together? Would we spend our nights cooking dinner in the kitchen—singing, dancing, and laughing? Would we go through Cadence’s bedtime routine together? Would we be there for each other to lean on on our hardest days? Would we spend every night wrapped up in one another for the rest of our lives, only to start each day the same way?
If so, it sounds like I’m holding myself back from the most beautiful life. My biggest fear in life is not taking risks. I’m done being scared he’ll break my heart again. I need to tell him I’m ready to jump headfirst. Because what is this life if not risking it all for those you love?
I never stopped loving Griffin Turner, and it’s about damn time he knows that.
Today has been one of the best days I’ve had in a long time.
Shortly after we got back from our walk to get donuts together, Griff’s dad arrived in Colorado. Jack didn’t bring his girlfriend, Bethany, this time. He said he didn’t want to overwhelm Cadence with too many new faces at once, and I appreciated his thoughtfulness.
The moment Jack met Cadence, she had him wrapped around her perfect little finger. He cried, which made me start crying, which made Cadence laugh, which got us all laughing.
Cadence and Jack hit it off so well that he insisted he would babysit her while Griff took me to dinner. I was hesitant at first because I didn’t know how Cades would do, and I didn’t want to ruin what had been a great day, but Jack assured me he could feed her dinner and get her to sleep, though he joked that maybe he would stray from some of her bedtime routine just this once.
Griffin was able to get us reservations at an Italian restaurant a few blocks down from his place. He informed me it was cocktail attire, and when I told him I didn’t pack anything to wear to a fancy restaurant, he gave me his black Amex and told me to buy “everything” I liked.
The town car Griff called is just pulling up to the restaurant, so he pulls his hand from mine to get out of the car. I instantly miss the warmth and the feel of his large hand eclipsing mine.
In typical Griffin Turner form, he rounds the back of the car and opens the door for me. He looks downright delectable in his black button-down and gray dress slacks.
“Why, thank you, Hotshot.”
“Always, Sunshine. Have I told you yet how amazing you look?” he asks.
“Only about a dozen times before we left your place,” I remind him. The moment I saw the sleeveless, mid-length red dress with a square neckline, I knew Griffin would love it. He’s always been a sucker for me in red.
“This dress is going to bring me to my knees,” he whispers into my ear before placing his large hand on the small of my back, leading me into the restaurant. My skin heats and a shiver runs up my spine just thinking about how much I love what this man does to my body when he’s on his knees.
We’ve just ordered a bottle of wine when Griff leans over and says, “I got you something,” before handing me a blue gift bag stuffed with white tissue paper.
“Griff! You’ve spoiled me enough today. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Oh, I absolutely did need to. Besides, you know I love showering you with gifts.”
Once upon a time, I did know that Griff loved showering me with gifts. It was his love language.
I open Griff’s gift with shaky hands to find a cobalt blue and white Colorado Summits jersey with TURNER and a number ninety-one on the back. Not even trying to hide my smile, I tell him, “I love it, Griff. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Sunshine. I should be the one thanking you. Now, both of my girls will be at my game tomorrow night wearing my name on their backs.”
Both butterflies and guilt swarm my stomach, battling for the upper hand.
Griff must sense my internal struggle. “Don’t, McKenna. We were young, we made mistakes, but we’re here right now,” he says as he grabs my hand, rubbing reassuring circles over the turquoise ring he gave me. His face lights up at the sight of it.
“I’ve only ever taken it off for volleyball matches.” I’m not even sure why I say it. Maybe to comfort him? Maybe to vaguely remind both him and me that it’s always been him?
Whatever the reason, the moment is stolen from us when a fan recognizes Griff and approaches our table.
“No way, you’re Griffin Turner. You’re my favorite Summits player,” the boy, who can’t be much older than fourteen, exclaims.
Griff holds out his hand for the boy to shake. “I am, and who am I talking to?”
The boy looks like he’s about to swallow his tongue as he replies, “Stinner. Brogan Stinner.”
“Nice to meet you, Brogan. Do you play hockey as well? Here, let’s get a picture together,” Griff says as he stands from the table.
Brogan can’t hold back a grin that takes up almost the entirety of his face. “I do. I also play center.”
They take a few pictures together before Griff says, “It was great to meet you, Brogan. If you don’t mind, we were just about to order dinner.”
“Oh, right! Thank you so much, Mr. Turner. I hope you have a great night,” Brogan practically squeals.
Once the boy is far enough from the table, I can’t help but playfully taunt Griffin for his stardom.
“Is it like that everywhere you go?” I ask, genuinely curious to get to know this version of the man who stole my heart when we were only teenagers.
He just shrugs, trying to downplay the notoriety. I’m not sure if he’s worried I’ll get scared or if he’s just being bashful.
“Hey,” I start before pulling his hand back in mine, “I want to know all your truths, remember?”
“How could I ever forget, Sunshine?” he retorts as his face lights up with a devastating smile.