Chapter Ten #2
Practice is interesting. It's hard as fuck to focus on the goal when she's sitting behind the bench, her head buried in her laptop. My gaze keeps drifting to her. She looks damn good right there, like she belongs.
I didn't expect her to be this comfortable around my teammates, but every time one of them skates past and says something to her, she laughs or smiles, her body relaxed.
It's like whatever wounds she's been carrying have closed.
She's healing, letting herself forget the mistrust that was forged into her bones in that courtyard when she was still just a teenager.
I fucking love seeing it in real time.
I'm barely back in the locker room before my phone rings. I shed my gear onto the bench before fishing in my locker to grab it. Tye's name lights up the screen.
"What's up, brother?" I ask, still panting for breath.
"Our mother showed up on my doorstep this morning," he growls, his voice tight.
"Fuck." I sink onto the bench, scrubbing a hand through my damp hair. "What did she want?"
Karsen glances at me from across the room, one brow arched. I just shake my head at him, not sure what the fuck to say.
"Don't know," Tye says, "but she was yelling at Vanessa, something about being abandoned, when I got there. I called the cops to escort her from the property."
"Jesus Christ. Is Vanessa okay?"
My teammates quiet down, casting glances my way, but no one says anything. They just continue stripping, pretending to mind their own business.
"She's fine. I'm not. That's my wife, man," he says. "That's my baby. If something happens to either of them…"
"Nothing is going to happen to them, Tye," I promise, my hand tight around the phone. "We aren't going to let it happen. We'll file for a restraining order, all four of us."
Tye is silent for a long moment. "Thought you didn't want to do that."
"Yeah, well, what other option do we have?
" I ask, tilting my head back against the locker to avoid Karsen's gaze.
Maybe we should have done it a long time ago.
I don't fucking know. But she can't keep showing up.
She can't keep stressing everyone out. If getting the courts involved means she's no longer a problem, then we gotta do what we gotta do.
"Come here," I rumble to Tia, sinking my hands into her hips to boost her up onto the island in the kitchen. We've been home for all of five minutes. I'm amped up and jittery, ready to snap. I need my hands on her to settle my ass down again.
She immediately loops her arms around my shoulders, tilting her head to the side. Sunlight spills through the windows, washing across the side of her face. She glows in the aftermath, like it's lighting her from within. "What's wrong, Briggs? You've been off since practice ended."
I trace patterns along her sides for a long moment, trying to figure out what to say. We've talked about my mother before, but this is something else. This is me, asking her for permission to potentially expose her shit to the whole world, too.
"My mother showed up at Tye's today," I say. "He called me after practice."
"What happened?"
"He had to call the police to have her escorted from the property."
She wraps her legs around my hips, shifting closer to me, like she's using her body to shelter me. "I'm so sorry. What can I do?"
I just let her hold me for a moment. I don't think I ever realized exactly how fucking tired I was of dealing with my mother until recently, until Tia. With her, everything is soft; it's perfect. And then there's this massive cloud creeping over it, sucking the life out of me. I hate it.
"We need to file a restraining order, barring her from having contact with any of us," I say. "It's the only way she's ever really going to stop."
"But you don't want to do that," she guesses, her eyes scanning across my face.
"If it were just me, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But it's Hattie." I swallow. "And you."
"Me?" Her brows furrow. "What do I have to do with anything?"
"We won't be able to keep a restraining order out of the press, beautiful," I say quietly. "They'll start digging. And you're with me now."
She's silent for a moment, processing. "You're worried they'll find out what happened with Daniel, aren't you?"
"It's possible." Once they start digging for gossip, they always want more. It's the nature of the beast. When the story is salacious enough, you keep feeding it until people get bored with it. And then you give them the next scandal.
"Let them."
I blink. "What?"
"Let them," she says again, like it's the simplest thing in the world. "You know how long I spent thinking that I was the one who did something wrong? That if I'd just been smarter, or looked a little harder, or not been so na?ve, that it wouldn't have happened?"
"It wasn't your fault," I growl.
"I know," she says. "But it's taken years to figure that out, Briggs.
It took meeting you to realize that it doesn't matter how smart you are or how careful.
When it's men like Daniel, they'll always find a way because that's who they are.
They're good at showing you exactly what they want you to see and then using it against you.
That isn't my fault. It was never my fault.
" She takes a breath. "And I don't have anything to hide.
I'm not ashamed of what happened anymore.
I trusted someone who violated that trust in a truly vile way. That's on him."
"It was always on him, Tia," I murmur, pressing a soft, fervent kiss to the corner of her mouth. "Always."
"I know," she whispers. "If the press digs and finds out what happened, that's what they're going to find, Briggs. His shame, not mine. So, let them dig. If it means that you and your siblings finally have the same peace you've helped me find, I'm okay with that."
"I love you." I don't mean to say it, but the truth just slips out. I don't try to take it back. I fucking can't, not when I mean it as much as I do.
She jolts in my arms, her wide eyes meeting mine.