CHAPTER FORTY-ONE #2
“She tried in her own way. Notes in my lunch telling me I had a good game. A thumbs-up when he turned his head. Sitting on my bed after she thought I’d fallen asleep, telling me I was going to be great one day. Little things here and there that said what she couldn’t say out loud.”
Scraps aren’t enough to help a kid thrive.
“That wasn’t enough though,” I say.
“No.” I hate the defeat in his tone. “It wasn’t. She knows it. I know it. And as complicated as my relationship with my dad is, mine with her is even more so because of it.”
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m sorry that you had to go through that.”
That you still go through that.
“As I got older, I was mortified and pissed and so fucking embarrassed that I let him talk to me that way but . . . I kept letting it happen. Kept telling myself it was because they were just words and they didn’t matter as long as I played better in the next game and the one after that.
Perfection would make him proud. Perfection would make him stop.
Well guess what, I got as close as I could to it—college MVP, NCAA champs, first round pick . . . and he still fucking does it.”
There are tears in his eyes that he blinks away.
Tears that I can tell feel just as shameful to him as his father’s words.
“The guys tell me to shrug it off. Or at least shrug off the part they know—that he’s tough on me.
They witnessed the end of one of his ‘critiques’ after a college game.
I played it off.” He shrugs. “Self-preservation, I guess. When the appearances at games shifted to calls before the games, it was easier to sell as being just that—a dad who’s hard on his son because he wants the best for him. ”
“Then why do you pick up the phone when he calls?” I ask as his eyes meet mine. “Why do you let him mess with your head like that before a game?”
His jaw tightens and he shifts on his feet. “Because if I don’t, he just keeps calling, and I’d much rather have the phone call than knowing he’s here in person.”
“And?”
His exhale is slow and controlled. “And because there’s still a part of me who thinks that maybe this time it’ll be different. That maybe he’ll say something . . . I don’t know. Proud. Normal. Like I did something right for once.”
“And every time he doesn’t?”
He glances over at me, raw pain flickering briefly before it disappears. “Then I spend the next hours, days, trying to prove him wrong.”
That explains so much. His drive. The pressure he carries into everything he does.
“I know it makes me a weak idiot for not standing up to him. For—”
“Weak is the last word I’d use to describe you, Cole. In fact, I’d say quite the opposite.”
“It doesn’t make sense from the outside.
I know that. I see that. Fuck, it’s frustrating even for me.
” He starts moving again. “But I wouldn’t be where I am without him.
Everything I have . . . this”—he gestures vaguely and I read it to mean football and success—“came from pushing me.” He drops his head and says quietly. “And because . . . he’s my dad.”
Those three words are a gut punch. They’re raw. Unfiltered. Vulnerable.
And he just trusted me with them.
“Cole . . .”
He turns his back to me, and I swear he’s shoving tears off his cheeks, but when he turns around, the wall is back up .
. . and he’s moved firmly behind it. Because he’s had years of practice.
Years of shoring up those walls and accepting his father’s abuse as .
. . normal. Acceptable. “He’s my biggest shame and my biggest motivation.
And I’m fucked up enough that I still want to make him proud. ”
My chest aches.
“Cole, you have to know that’s not true. You were a kid—”
“And now I’m a man and you saw that I still put up with it.”
Because it’s all you’ve ever known.
Because all you want is for him to be proud of you.
It would be so much easier if he was angry. I’d much rather hear anger vibrate in his voice than the shame that currently coats it.
“Come, sit with me. Please?” I ask, needing to touch him somehow. To let him know I don’t think any less of him than I did before he just poured his secret out for me to see.
He shakes his head, but it’s not at me. Confusion etches the lines of his face. Uncertainty might be there too. “Doc Hawley keeps trying to get me to go here. To unpack this.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck, man.”
“She might be able to help. A nonpartial person who might give you a different perspective.”
“Fucking hell, Dublin. It’s hard enough telling you this.” A humorless laugh follows. “Why the hell would I want a stranger knowing what I’ve allowed? What I’ve put up with?”
“You didn’t allow it,” I say quietly.
His gaze flicks to mine. “I didn’t stop it either.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t agree either.
He stands there, shirtless, barefoot, hair sticking up every which way, and eyes pleading with me not to look at him any differently than I did when we woke up this morning.
I don’t.
I respect him even more.
But he won’t hear that if I say it right now.
So I do the only thing I can that I know will tell him it.
I hold my hand out to him.
He looks at it for a beat and then comes to me. I move to sit against the back of the lounge, and I motion for him to sit between my legs, his back to my front.
He leans back as my arms come around him and hold tight to the warmth of his chest, one hand right over his heart. I press a kiss to the side of his head as he rests it back on my shoulder.
Who would have ever thought that the man everyone thinks is Cole Valor—the confident, cocky, untouchable persona he shows to the world—is so much deeper and complex?
He’s a damaged soul trying to do the work to better himself. A perfectionist desperate to fine-tune the repercussions of that damage. A man who just bravely opened up to me when he sees vulnerability as being weak.
Is it no wonder I’ve fallen for him?
“Thank you for trusting me, Cole. For letting me in,” I whisper as the colors slowly streak across the sky.
He links his fingers with one of my hands and brings it up to his lips, pressing a kiss to it.
We sit there for some time, together but lost in our own thoughts. Me holding him together for the first time.
“I could get used to this,” he says quietly.
I smile and squeeze his hand. “What’s that? Baring your soul or early mornings watching the sunrise with me?” I joke.
“Yeah,” he says.
I go still for a second, the meaning setting in slowly.
Not just the mornings.
Not just this moment.
Both.