CHAPTER ELEVEN
TROY
“A ll right, girls. Have a good day.” I leaned across the empty passenger seat of my Jeep, waving out the open window as Maddie and Grace held hands and walked toward the school building in the pre-dawn morning. They both looked back at me, grinning and waving, bundled up in their winter coats.
“Go get that knee checked out,” she said sternly.
I grunted. “We’ll see.”
Maddie held my gaze and I winked at her. I couldn’t tell if the ruddiness of her cheeks was from a blush or the winter wind.
I waited in the drop-off line until they disappeared inside the building. Grace’s daycare was in a section of the multi-use building. I relaxed once they were inside—safe, for now. I smiled to myself as I pulled away, some distant part of me wondering who the hell I was becoming.
Dropping off your girls for school? My blinker ticked as I waited at the intersection. Scheduling your day around school pick up?
The words almost didn’t make sense to me. But it was all I wanted to be doing right now.
I needed to leave for New York by that weekend. So we had at least four days ahead of us to play house and see how things progressed with Jericho. What scared me was what came after I left for Ecuador. Jericho didn’t seem like a guy who would just roll over because a bodyguard stole his baseball bat during an aggressive encounter. Maddie needed a plan…and I intended on helping her create one.
As promised, I spent the day taking care of Maddie’s car. I got it moved safely to her parents’ house, fresh tires and all, and caught a ride share back to the garage to pick up my own car since her parents were working. Then I spent the rest of the day getting things for the cabin during a grocery store run, including a weird cheese board for Maddie and some new coloring books and crayons for Grace.
Because my girls need a treat.
There it was again. That inner voice saying some wild things.
I wasn’t sure when things had gone from ‘just checking on Mercedes’ family’ to ‘my girls’, but I suspected it had something to do with that Christmas party. I couldn’t fucking deny it. I’d fallen for Maddie the second I saw her.
Once three-thirty hit, it was time to pick up Maddie and Grace. I crept through the school pick-up lane, looking around at all the other parents in mini-vans and SUVs. In all my assignments around the globe, I’d never found myself in a school pick-up line before. I tapped the steering wheel as the line moved forward, imperceptibly slow. I scanned the faces of the kids streaming out of the building, heading toward cars, the frazzled pickup attendants trying to keep everyone in order. As I got closer to the school, I heard a shout. Then a tap-tap-tap at the passenger door. Maddie ran up a moment later, looking spooked.
“Gracie, I told you not to run off like that.” She hoisted Grace into her arms from beneath my line of sight. Grace beamed at me through the passenger side window and I leaned over to push the door open for them.
“Hey girls. How was your day?”
Grace hopped into the car, throwing her arms around my neck. “Toy!”
I touched her arm gently, looking over at Maddie. Something warm and bubbly sprang to life in my chest. So this was what I’d been missing out on by avoiding settling down. I swallowed hard, not wanting to think about that right now.
“You have a good day, monkey?” I’d started calling her monkey ever since the Twisty Monkey game. She nodded eagerly, dawdling on the center console.
“Grace, we need to get you in your car seat sweetie,” Maddie urged gently, looking behind us. “The others are waiting for their turn and they can get pretty feisty.”
“Do what your mama says,” I told Grace, jerking my head to the backseat. “We’re gonna go back to the cabin and we can catch up there.”
“Okay.” Grace clambered into the backseat, and Maddie snapped her into the car seat from the rear door. As she was finishing up, Grace added, “I missed you, Toy.”
There was that damn bubbly sensation again. Fuck if it didn’t make my chest a little tight—because I’d also missed her.
“I missed you too, monkey.” I looked at her in the rearview mirror as Maddie slid into the front seat, tugging her door shut. To her, I said, “I missed you too.”
Maddie sent me a shy grin as she buckled up. “Well I’m glad you admitted that first, so I don’t sound like the clingy one.”
A laugh rocketed out of me. I eased out of the pick-up line as I shook my head. “I’ll take the fall. It’s fine. As long as I know I’m not the only one thinking it.”
“You aren’t.” And she sent me a smile that was so pretty I wanted to take a picture of it. To remember not just her, but this moment, and the whole visit to Kentucky. “And speaking of taking a fall…did you get that knee checked out?”
“No. I was too busy with other stuff. And I didn’t fall,” I corrected. “I got hit with a bat.”
“You took the fall for me ,” she pointed out.
I held out my hand, inviting her to give me hers as I drove. “You’re right. And I’d do it again.” She slipped hers into my big palm and I pulled it into my lap. And that’s when I knew the answer to my question:
Just like that.
That was how fast things had gone from ‘Mercedes’ family’ to ‘my girls’.
Something about Maddie clicked into place, just like that, and I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
One full week beneath Len’s buckhorn chandelier was all it took to turn me into a family man. Each day of the school routine cemented me a little further into this new role. Was I a stay at home bodyguard now? An alpha homemaker who made dinner for his girls every night? I didn’t know what the appropriate term was for this new phase of my life, but I knew one thing: I didn’t exactly want it to end.
But the deadline was fast approaching. After a whirlwind week of school drop offs and pickups, followed by lots of play time, family dinner, and then the hottest lovemaking this side of the Appalachian mountains, I couldn’t even remember who I’d been when I showed up in Louisville. By Friday evening, as I unveiled that night’s dinner of ribeye, garlic mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli, all I could think about was that this was our last full day together before I needed to drop the girls off and head north.
And I was fucking sad about it, but determined not to let it upend our last moments together.
“Where’s my girlies at? Time to eat.” My voice boomed through the cabin, and then the giggles came. Gracie-bell loved it when I called her to dinner each night, always in a new way. She scampered into the kitchen, abandoning the work she and her mom were doing in the great room tending the fireplace.
"Oh my God, Troy," Maddie murmured as her gaze fell on the carefully arranged plates, each one with a showstopping ribeye. “You’re incredible.”
“Had to go all out for our last meal at the cabin.”
My words fell like dead weight between us. The stool creaked as she eased onto it, and we shared a look.
“Toy take me to school tomorrow?” Grace asked, looking between us as she settled into her seat.
“Honey, we don’t have school tomorrow.” Maddie pressed a kiss to the top of her daughter’s head then put herself at eye-level with Grace. “But tomorrow we are going back to Nana and Buppa’s house.”
“To live there?” Grace wobbily maneuvered a spoon of potatoes into her mouth.
“Yes, honey, to live there.”
“With Toy?”
“No, honey. Not with Troy.” Maddie stroked her daughter’s hair while an enormous pout erupted on Grace’s face.
“But why not?” Grace whined.
Maddie sent me a panicked look. She tucked Grace against her and mouthed to me, “I knew this would happen.”
“I’ll see you another time, Gracie-bell.” I rubbed her back, unsure what to say to a sad three year old. Her concept of time was tenuous at best. “It won’t be long. I promise.”
Grace pouted, begrudgingly accepting spoonfuls of mashed potato as Maddie fed her. But she never gave up the crossed arms or scowl.
Maddie maneuvered the conversation away from the topic of what came next , for Grace’s sake. We chatted about anything and everything else, until Grace was ready to go back to her coloring books leaving me and Maddie facing each other with empty plates between us.
A moment of silence passed between us.
“Is it wrong to be this sad that I have to go back to real life tomorrow?” Maddie punctuated it with a laugh, but the smile faded fast.
“Not wrong.” I moved into the seat closer to her, where Grace had been sitting. I faced her, pulling her hands into mine. “I don’t want to go back to real life either. But I do want to make sure you’re going to be okay when we do.”
“I’ll be fine at my parents’ house,” she said. “I won’t lie, I’d be a little nervous if I lived on my own right now. But they’ll be with me each night.”
“And then let’s go over the plan again.” We’d been figuring out the specific steps for what came next, as well as contingency plans, when it came to Jericho. She’d done the hardest parts—initiating the separation, hiring the divorce lawyer, waiting the requisite year to formally file. But the longer Jericho dragged his heels, the more gray area he had to do something unhinged. I wanted him excised from her life like a nasty mole.
“Once I’m back in town, I’m filing a report about the car. Then I’m meeting with my lawyer again to talk about going through with the uncontested divorce.” She ticked off her fingers as she spoke. “Then we’ll draft the custodial plan. If Jericho tries anything again, that’s when I file the police report and request an order of protection.”
I nodded as she spoke, encouraging her as she ran down the action plan. Hearing this felt good—but it didn’t entirely appease me.
“And what if he tries to lay a finger on you again?” I asked.
Her throat bobbed, looking at me with hooded eyes. “I call the cops. And then I call you.”
“Good girl.”
The flush in her neck told me she liked that. I smoothed my hand up her arms and then jerked the seat of her stool closer to me in one swift movement. Our knees knocked, but I folded her between my legs, hugging her as close as I could.
“I think I’ll start looking for my own place soon,” Maddie said, nibbling on her bottom lip. “My parents have been nice enough to let us stay with them as I got back on my feet. They want me to save for a downpayment so I can buy my own house, which I’ve been doing. When I’m not paying legal fees that is. But I don’t know…I was thinking I might start looking for an apartment to rent sooner.”
“If that’s what you want,” I smoothed my lips across her forehead, “then that’s what you should do.”
She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
“I should do what’s smart,” she finally said.
“Unless you have a different idea?”
She fiddled with the buttons on my flannel button-up. “There’s a lot of things I want that don’t make sense.”
I felt that statement in every cell of my body right now. I wanted Maddie and Grace to be a part of my life, even though I couldn’t offer what they needed most: a homebase. Stability. Permanence. It felt silly to even think about a future with Maddie.
But I also couldn’t imagine a future without her.
“Like what?” I prompted, wondering if she had the same thing on her mind.
She looked away, seeming to wrestle with something. Before she could answer, Grace scampered over, pushing the newest coloring book page up to our level. Maddie’s face lit up as she beheld her daughter’s work, and I admired it too, genuinely impressed with the attempt to color inside the lines.
“You’ve gotten better at this since we’ve been at the cabin,” I told her.
“For you, Toy.” She held it out to me so I could rip the page out—something of our ritual already—which meant that it was officially mine. I had five other pictures just like it behind magnets on the fridge.
“Thank you, monkey.” I dutifully ripped it out and set it aside, handing her the coloring book back. But she wasn’t satisfied until I ceremoniously hung the picture on the fridge. The stool creaked as I slid away from Maddie, leading Grace over to the fridge so she could select the magnet and the best spot for the new picture. Once all that was done, she happily skipped back to her coloring station in the great room.
“Where were we?” I eased back onto the stool, pulling Maddie right back to where she’d been tucked between my legs. She giggled, nuzzling up to me. “I believe you were saying the not-smart things that you want.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “I need to focus on the smart things.”
“Let’s just hear what you think is out of reach.”
She paused, studying a faraway point across the cabin. “I want to get out of Kentucky.”
Wasn’t quite what I’d been hoping to hear but I liked it all the same. “And why does that seem out of reach?”
“My teaching certification is for Kentucky,” she admitted. “And I need my job. I need to keep Grace in her daycare. She’s happy where she is.”
I nodded, mulling over the information. “Well, I do have an alternative idea for you. You could always roam the US in an RV and ruin Grace’s childhood.”
Maddie burst into laughter, swatting my chest. “Thank you for the suggestion. Though I’m pretty sure you’ve already explained to me why I shouldn’t do that.”
“Just wanted you to be aware of your options.” I gathered her against me, more than ready for the adult portion of the evening. But we had some time before Grace went to bed still. “I’ll think on it. I know there’s something perfect out there for you, Maddie.”
What I didn’t understand was why deep down, I thought that maybe I could be that perfect thing for her.
I didn’t have a home; not even a lease. I had my Jeep and a few duffel bags of shit. Who was I kidding?
I needed to listen to Maddie’s words. I needed to do the smart thing.
And that meant continuing my path as I’d planned all along.