24. Brynn
brYNN
I smoothed my hands over my dress as Colton’s echo reverberated through my head. I was nervous for tonight. Nervous for what was coming. Not sure why, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know what to expect.
Scratch that, I didn’t have a fucking clue what to expect.
Despite his promise that he’d show me how to do things right, I enjoyed my first date with Colton.
He may have felt a bit self-conscious regarding what happened between us, but I knew it felt right.
And whatever I had to do to convince him that he didn’t take something from me, even if I gave myself over to him again, I’d do it.
The thing that sat wrong with me was the conversation that never happened.
Mom’s heels had saved me from having to say it out loud, and part of me had been grateful for that.
But a bigger part of me had spent the last two days replaying that look on his face.
The way his eyes went hard. The way he said my name in that coach voice that meant business.
He knew. And he hadn’t said a word about it since, which could mean a hundred different things and I’d cycled through every single one of them.
Tonight, I was going to say it. Out loud.
Like a grown woman. I was going to tell him that I’d been a virgin and that I’d chosen him on purpose, and that I didn’t want him to make some big protective deal out of it and go weird on me.
I just needed him to know. Because if we were doing this, whatever this was, I didn’t want us building it on something I’d been too scared to say.
Because let’s face it, giving myself over to Colton was a breeze. I hadn’t even thought twice about it.
Somewhere along the way I had stopped building that particular future for Mom. I wasn’t sure exactly when. I just knew I had, and I wasn’t sorry.
I wouldn’t think twice about it tonight, either.
“Knock knock.”
Mom’s voice came from the doorway, and I turned my head toward her, smiling softly. “What do you think?”
She tilted her head as she leaned against the doorframe. “Haven’t seen you in that dress in a while.”
I shrugged as I turned back to my mirror. “Haven’t had a chance to wear it.”
“Come here, your tag’s out. Let me help.”
I stood there as Mom came behind me, her heels clicking behind her.
Why she wore her heels, even in the house, I’d never understand.
It was one of the things I always remembered Dad commenting on.
“Victoria, honey, you’re home. Why are you still in those shoes?
” He always teased her about it, and I’d always expected the playful banter between the two of them as she clopped around in her heels, even while in her nightgown sometimes.
I felt her tuck the tag back in before she worked my zipper up the rest of the way.
“Oh? Was it not all the way up?” I asked.
Mom smiled tensely over my shoulder. “Just another inch. You almost had it.”
My smile is easy as I smile back at her. “Thanks.”
I crossed my room and sat down at my vanity. “I’m thinking a smoky eye might be a little too heavy with this dress.”
Mom nodded as she followed me, swiveling my desk chair over to my vanity.
“Most definitely. Your gold jewelry is dainty as well, so you’ll want to do a tame look with your makeup.
” She picked up a rich pink lip gloss and unscrewed the top.
“You could go a bit bolder with your lips, though. Keep the neutral around your eyes and—”
I turned to face her. “Will you do it for me?”
The smile she gave me lightened my soul. “Sure. I can do that, honey.”
I sat there for Mom as she did my makeup for my date.
Things were still tense with her shoulders, but then again, I might’ve just been reading into things.
Mom was always tense. If it wasn’t from her emotions, then it was from work.
And if it wasn’t from work, it was from the stadium.
Or the team. Or Rhett harassing her over something.
I still didn’t understand why Rhett chirped at my mother the way he did.
It wasn’t like how he chirped at Jett, which was pure chaos energy with no agenda behind it.
With Mom it was different. Quieter. He knew to stop when she went still.
He knew not to push past a certain point the way everyone else eventually did when they got frustrated with her walls.
I’d watched him do it a dozen times, coming right up to the edge of her patience and then pulling back easy, like he’d mapped where the line was and respected it without being asked.
It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Rhett Hart paid a very specific kind of attention to my mother.
I filed that thought away under things I wasn’t ready to look at directly and went back to watching Mom blend my eyeshadow.
Outside of all that, though, I couldn’t help but smile as Mom gave me soft commands.
“Close your eyes.
“Relax your mouth.
“Do a pout for me, the sides of your face are still tense.
“All right, pucker those lips and clench those teeth. We’re almost done.”
And when I came up for air, I looked in the mirror of my vanity and saw exactly the face I’d wanted to put on for my date.
“I don’t know how you do it,” I said as I leaned forward, inspecting my mother’s handiwork.
She capped off the lip gloss before she stood. But when I stood with her, I wasn’t prepared for the way she took my hand, turning me toward her, and smoothed her hands over my shoulders.
The second she drew in a deep breath, however, I felt my entire body tense. No, I wasn’t reading into the tension in her body. Something was on her mind.
“Is he pressuring you, Brynn?”
I paused, unsure of whether or not I heard her correctly. “What?”
Mom locked her gray eyes on mine. “Is he pressuring you into something?”
I ignored her question and thumbed over my shoulder. “Gold clutch or regular purse?”
“Gold clutch,” she said without hesitation. “Brynn.”
I pulled away from her grasp. “Yeah, Mom?”
She heaved a heavy sigh. “You and I are both adults. So I’m just going to come out and say it: I know what you two were doing in his office the other day. Is he pressuring you into something you don’t want?”
I took a step back, as if her words slapped me across the face. “You think I’m not capable of saying no?”
“That’s not what I asked,” she said as she continued studying me, as if she clocked my every reaction. I hated it when she did that, like she searched for a lie that wasn’t there. Did all parents do that? Or just mine? “I asked you if you were comfortable with the position he put you in.”
If she only knew how much I loved his positions. “And what if I’m the one that put him in that position?”
She snickered. “Don’t be ridiculous, princess. I know you. I know you’d never—”
“Why can’t you just let me be happy?” I asked.
She sighed. “This has nothing to do with whether or not you’re happy, Brynn. He’s an older man. An older man with a history, if the news articles of his forced retirement are any indication of—”
I scoffed and made my way to the small jewelry stand on my vanity. “He’s not taking advantage of me and he’s not putting me into any sort of position I don’t already want to be in with him.”
“Brynn.”
“What!?” I squealed as I whipped around, sliding earrings into my ears. “Mom, it’s just a date.”
Her voice grew stern, and I didn’t like it. “What was going on in that office wasn’t just a date.”
I slipped on the matching necklace and dainty bracelet.
“No, Mom,” I said, giving her a huff, “Coach Colton isn’t pressuring me into anything.
I’m going out on this date because I want to.
There isn’t anything that happened in his office the other day that I didn’t enjoy. ” I turned to face her. “Satisfied?”
She looked me up and down before her jaw pulsed. “Don’t give him something you’ll want to take back later. That’ll do a number on anyone’s self-confidence and self-image.”
“My self-image is fine.”
“Not if you’re—”
I grew frustrated and threw my hands into the air. “And what would you know about it? You haven’t even been on a date since Dad died! And maybe you’ve made the decision to be miserable without Dad for the rest of your life, but that doesn’t mean I have to make the same one!”
The second I watched my mother’s jaw drop open, I knew I fucked up.
“Mom,” I said with a soft voice as I tried reaching for her.
It broke my heart when she stepped back.
The silence between us felt different from the silences Mom usually let sit.
Those were controlled. Deliberate. This one was something she didn’t have a word for yet, and I watched her work to find it, the way her jaw moved once and then stopped, the way her eyes went somewhere that wasn’t the room.
“Mom,” I said again, softer. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
She didn’t answer right away. She moved to the window, just a step, and looked out at the street the way she did sometimes when she needed a moment to decide something. Her hands were clasped in front of her. Her shoulders, always so straight, had dropped by exactly one degree.
“I know you think this is about me,” she said finally. “That I’m projecting, or stuck, or whatever word you want to use for it.” She turned from the window and looked at me directly. “It’s not.”
“Then what is it about?”