Chapter 39 #2
I shrug, huffing out a laugh. “Oh, I don’t know.
Besides everything? I kept my relationship with Cam a secret from mostly everyone, and then the world learned about it in the most public way possible in an article that insinuated I’m a dirty slutbag for sleeping with a patient and definitely a disgrace to women in professional sports everywhere and mentioned you and Dad and Oliver, dragging you into the mess I made.
I put Brian in a really uncomfortable position and made life harder for literally everyone who knows me. ”
Laughter from around the circle was not the reaction I was expecting.
“Honey, if you were trying to actually keep your relationship with Cam a secret, you did a really bad job of it,” my mom says with a grin. “Your dad knew the second you guys ran into Cam and his kids right here a few months back, and Liv and I caught you…”
“Fucking against the wall?” Maya supplies helpfully.
I wince, and my dad and Oliver groan in unison.
“Fuck no.” Oliver levels Maya with a glare. “We’re definitely not doing that.”
Maya shrugs with an unrepentant grin, pouring herself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. “I just call it like I see it.”
“Maybe see it a little less…graphically,” my dad says with a shudder that makes everyone laugh again, and the sound has the heaviness around my heart melting away just a little more.
“Anyway,” my mom says, looking back at me. “We knew, Liv knew, and so did they.” She waves a hand around the circle. “Anyone else?”
“Hey, I didn’t know,” Oliver says with something perilously close to a pout.
Maya elbows him in the ribs. “Maybe make this a little less about you, baby brother.”
“I’m not your baby brother,” he grumbles.
I ignore them and their tendency to swipe at each other. “Drew Ellicott. Riley and Ethan. Cam’s mom.”
My mom smiles. “That’s a lot of people, Mads.
A lot of people who love and support you.
And now that everyone knows, that’s more people on your side.
More family who have your back. Why would you think we would be anything other than happy you’re happy?
Thrilled you’ve found someone to share your life with?
What is it that made you shut out your family and everyone who loves you for almost a week? ”
The way she asks makes me certain she already knows the answer, and with her warm, comforting eyes steady on mine, I suddenly know too, the truth of it slamming into me like a big, fat fist. “I was afraid you would be disappointed in me. That maybe because of that you wouldn’t…
” My voice breaks and I shake my head, shame tightening my throat, unable to finish that sentence. To say the words.
“That maybe we wouldn’t want you anymore?” My brother’s voice is quiet, but the way the words slice through me, it’s like he screamed them to the heavens.
“Maybe,” I manage, staring down at the carpet, a thousand thoughts racing through my mind, the loudest one, How could I not know I felt this way?
In a flash, strong arms are around me as my dad tugs me into his lap like I’m a kid again instead of a thirty-year-old woman suddenly unearthing an untapped well of unresolved trauma.
My mom is still holding my hand, and Oliver crouches in front of me, his hand on my knee.
And when I look at my friends—my sisters—every single one of them has tears in their eyes and love on their face, and the force of it makes my own tears flow again.
“There is nothing you could ever do to make us not want you, Maddy,” my dad says, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I’ve wanted you since the very first time I met you.
I came over with cereal, and the three of us sat around the kitchen table together.
You asked me about my knee injury, and I talked about it for the first time in years.
Then I read to you, and you fell asleep with your head on my shoulder, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I had found a place to belong.
Like you and I were meant to find each other, and your mom was meant to find us both.
She gave us both a home, and we gave each other a family. ”
“How long have you been feeling this way?” my mom asks, laying a hand on my cheek. “I didn’t see it.” Her voice is a little strained when she says it, like she’s blaming herself for not knowing what I didn’t know myself.
I laugh a little, shaking my head. “I didn’t know I did feel this way.
Sometimes I get…sad maybe? I don’t really know what to call it.
It mostly happens when we’re all together, and I think about how, if my life had gone a different way, I wouldn’t have all of this.
You guys. Grandma and Grandpa, Hallie and Ben, Julie and Asher, Molly and Gabe, Liv and Brian.
This whole family that is the most important thing in my life is mine because of luck and circumstance, and sometimes that thought is too big for my brain to comprehend. ”
My mom rubs a hand up and down my back. “This family has nothing to do with luck or circumstance. We’re meant to be, Maddy. All of us.”
“Fuck yeah, we are.” Oliver leans in and kisses the top of my head. “You’re my sister, Mads. Just as much as Gracie is. Blood doesn’t matter. This matters.” He waves a hand around the circle, and I have to laugh at the earnest expression on his face.
“When did you get so smart, Ol?”
He grins and shrugs. “I’m not just a pretty face.”
My mom laughs and lays a hand on mine. “You were meant to be ours. I was your mom the minute you walked into my office on the day I met you, and I’ll be your mom until I’m no longer on this earth.
Nothing you do or don’t do could ever change that.
You, your dad, Oliver, and Gracie are my whole world.
Your aunts, uncles, and cousins. This family, Maddy.
We all made this together, and no one can take it away from any of us. ”
I turn around to face my dad. “Is Brian upset?”
“Brian is extremely not upset.”
At Brian’s voice, I whip around and see him and Liv striding across the rink as if they’re strolling a sidewalk and not a massive sheet of ice.
Untangling myself from my parents, I stand in my skates and turn just as they approach the carpet, throwing my arms around Brian.
“I’m so sorry, Bry. I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of this mess and make you choose between defending me and defending the team. It was a shitty thing to do.”
“Oh, honey,” he says, giving me a squeeze and then pulling back to look at me.
“You didn’t put me in the middle of anything.
I’ve known about you and Cam for months.
I’m married to the worst secret keeper on the planet and, well, you guys might have thought you were subtle, but no one who knows you would miss the heart eyes you’ve been giving each other since September.
That article may have been trash, but those pictures don’t lie. ”
Liv shrugs with a laugh. “It was good gossip. I know I said it was in the girl code vault, but I had to tell someone. And let’s just call those pictures what they are. They show two people who are crazy for each other, and that is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Brian keeps a hand on my shoulder, wrapping the other arm around Liv’s waist and kissing the top of her head. “I’ve been ready for this for weeks in case the story broke before you had a chance to do it yourself.”
“You’re the reason the article didn’t get much traction,” I say, the missing piece finally dropping into place. “Or, at least, didn’t tank my entire career.”
He shrugs. “I don’t know about that. I just tried to keep the story contained as much as I could.
” He gives me a wry smile. “I’m very, very good at my job.
I don’t want you and Cam to be hurt. You’re my family, Mads, first, last, and always.
And Cam and his kids are family too now.
As for the team…” He shrugs. “You’re what’s best for the team.
We need you, and you and Cam need each other.
I’m the boss. It was easy to make sure that all happened. ”
“He’s so hot when he’s going all GM on a situation.” Liv flashes me a grin, and everyone laughs.
“Wait, speaking of going all GM, shouldn’t you be at the game? It’s kind of important and starting, like, really soon.”
Brian, notorious workaholic who loves the Renegades almost as much as he loves Liv and his kids, just shrugs again, and my heart fills with love for him.
For everyone sitting on this ice. “I’ll get there, and until I do, they’ll be fine without me.
” When he wraps an arm around my shoulders and says, “I had to make sure my family was okay first,” I lose my battle with tears again.
When I pull myself together for the third time, everyone moves over to make room for Brian and Liv and they sit too, Brian grabbing a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and digging in, grinning at my dad’s thumbs up.
“Next time, don’t keep important shit from me, Mads.
From any of us. We protect each other, and we can’t do that if we don’t know what you need protecting from. ”
“Goddamn right,” Sarah says, giving the circle spirit fingers like the good former cheerleader she is. “We protect the fucking family.”
“You could tell me you’re a serial killer in your spare time and I would ask if you need help hiding the body.” Emmy reaches for the second box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and pours her own bowl. “That is how fucking ride or die I am.”
Sophie scoffs. “You would just help bury the body? I’m going with her to commit murder, Bonnie and Clyde style.”
“They weren’t killers. They were the ones who were killed,” Caitlin says. “If you’re going to choose outlaws, at least choose successful ones.”
“Are there successful outlaws?” Maya muses. “I feel like if we know their names, it means they were caught or killed.”
“I think we’re losing the plot,” Sophie interjects.
“The point is, we’re your ride or die, Mads.
We’re the ones you come to when you’re sad or scared or when you need a friend to rail about the injustices of the world.
And we’re definitely the ones you come to when you fuck up and need help untangling the mess. ”
“We love you,” Maya says, her voice softer than usual, and when I look at my oldest friend, there is emotion blazing in her eyes that makes me feel lighter than I’ve felt in days. “I know you needed the time, but I hated not talking to you for a week.”
“Same!” Emmy blows me a kiss from across the circle. “The Smart Bitches aren’t the same without you.”
“We need you, Mads,” Sarah says. “Just the same way you need us. That’s what it means to be sisters.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice raspy with barely leashed emotion.
With the love I feel for my parents and my brother.
For these women. For my entire sprawling, chaotic family.
“I’m sorry I disappeared. My head was in a weird place, and I couldn’t straighten it out.
I felt like I didn’t deserve any of you.
Like I fucked up my life and everyone else’s too, and it would be better if I just laid low for a while. ”
“We deserve each other,” Caitlin says fiercely.
“And if you ever feel like you need to run again, you run to us and we’ll fix it.
No matter what it is, we can always fix it.
None of us ever have to go it alone because we can do it together.
” It’s Caitlin’s words that have me exhaling heavily, releasing the rest of the tension I’ve held for days.
Cait is who you call in a crisis. Our wartime consigliere.
The one who holds us all together if we ever start to drift. The keeper of all of our secrets.
“And you deserve Cam,” my brother says, laying a hand on mine. Hearing Cam’s name makes my stomach clench, thinking for the millionth time about how I left him. All the days in between then and now. “If you want him. Do you?”
I nod. “So fucking much. I…” I hesitate, wondering if maybe I should say these words to Cam first. But these people are my people.
My family. They deserve to hear it too. “I love him. I love Riley and Ethan, too, and I want them all to be mine. To be ours,” I say, looking around the circle.
Because they won’t just belong to me, they’ll belong to my family.
To all the people who love me and who will love them too.
“The way I ran.” I stop and shake my head. “I just hope he still wants me.”
“He does.” The two words come from every single person currently sprawled out on this ice, and they all laugh.
The sound lifts the rest of the burden I’ve been carrying and god, I don’t know how I could have lost sight of all of this.
I know it’s not this easy. I know I have some pretty deep trauma I have to work through, and I probably have some time on a therapist’s couch coming my way.
But right now, all I want is to be right here. In this place. With these people.
“Mads, that man is head over fucking heels for you,” Oliver says.
“How do you know?”
He grins at me. “I may have gone with Ty and Drew to Cam’s house on Friday. He told me himself.”
Sophie raises her hand. “Can confirm. Ty said Cam is practically a World War II wife staring out the window waiting for her husband to return from battle. He’s gone for you, Maddy. That man is yours.”
Mine.
Cam is mine. Ethan and Riley are mine.
Suddenly, the distance between them and me is entirely unacceptable. I need to get to them.
Now.
“I have to go.” I shoot to my feet, wobbling on my skates and practically tripping over a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
“Woah there, Little Red. Respect the Crunch.” My dad rescues the box, standing too. “Where are you going?”
“To Cam. I need to go tell him I love him. I know the game is starting soon, but I don’t care. I need to do this right now.”
“Fuck yes, I love a grand gesture!” Sophie stands and slides her way around to me. “What?” she says as we all look at her. “Ty and I have been on a real nineties rom-com kick lately. A grand gesture always slaps.”
“I have the best idea!” Emmy and Sarah say in unison.
“Same.” Maya looks at Emmy and Sarah. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The three of them trade looks and have an entire silent conversation the rest of us aren’t privy to. I bounce on my toes, feeling like if I don’t get out of here and into Cam’s arms in the next two minutes, I’m going to lose my shit.
“What?” I finally say. I eye them just a little warily because knowing these three, their idea could be anything between a simple, private love declaration to hiring a plane to write the words on the sky over the stadium. They’re unpredictable like that.
Maya gives me a bright grin. “Got a Renegades jersey?”