Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
PAIGE
“And he lost the car, Paige. Your father couldn’t remember where he parked it. I swear, if he would’ve parked it in the same row we always park in, we would’ve been home an hour earlier.”
I laugh. “You two are eventually going to just start driving separately to your date nights.”
“We can’t do that. He’d forget where he told me to meet him.”
I shake my head and pull onto Hollis’s road.
“Where are you going? You didn’t tell me,” Mom says.
“I’m going to hang out with Hollis and Larissa for a while. He just got home from Nashville, so we thought we’d catch up.”
“I love that you have him there, Paige. I can’t wait to meet him.”
The last sentence hangs between us, a thinly veiled suggestion to ask her to come to Savannah. And, for the first time since Hollis came back into my life, I don’t hate the idea.
“Let me ask him today when he’ll be in town, and maybe we can arrange something.”
“Yes. Please, baby girl. You have no idea how much that would mean to Daddy and me.”
“But no brothers,” I say, flipping my visor down to block out the early afternoon sun. “We’re going to slowly introduce him to everyone. You all can be overwhelming.”
I decelerate to give a bird time to fly off the road. I’ve always wondered if it’s their way of playing chicken—getting an adrenaline boost.
“What else is happening?” Mom asks. “You seem happy today. Not that you don’t always seem happy, but there’s a lightness to you today. That and you eased up on the visit thing.”
I think I beam.
Telling my mother about Nate could very well backfire.
She can’t keep a secret to save her soul, and if she goes telling my father or my brothers that I have a serious man in my life, I wouldn’t be surprised if they all showed up with bats.
But the idea of keeping the information away from her doesn’t feel right either.
Nate, and Ryder, feel like a part of my life.
“Well,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Okay. Tell me about him.”
I hear the caution in her voice, the edge of concern as any mother would have, I suspect. There was a time in my life when that would’ve annoyed me, but I appreciate it now. Even though there’s no need for it.
“Actually, I’ve been seeing my boss, Nate.”
“Your boss? From The Gold Room?”
“Yup.”
She pauses. “Well, you’ve mentioned him many times. It’s always been positive.” She pauses again. “That’s where you’re staying. With Nate.”
It’s a question more than a statement, a way of her working through the thoughts in her head.
“Yeah. I’ve been staying with him and his little boy, Ryder. He’s seven and the cutest little boy ever.”
“I have five rather cute boys myself, so I’m going to have to disagree with you there.”
I laugh.
“Tell me about him,” she says.
I go into a long monologue about Nate and how he makes me laugh, makes me feel good—makes me happy. She listens patiently, not interrupting me once, while I word vomit my happiness onto her.
“Well, it sounds like you’re smitten,” she says.
Smitten. “I think I might be.”
“Will he be there when we come to meet Hollis?”
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t.”
“You know we’d love to meet him.”
And there’s the second thinly veiled suggestion from my mother today.
“I bet you would,” I say, pulling into Hollis’s house. “And I will take that under advisement.”
“Paige!”
I laugh. “I’m kidding. Of course, you can meet him.”
The words echo through my brain as I pull the car to a stop. I just said that so easily. Of course, you can meet him.
Well, that’s new.
“I just got to Hollis’s, Mom, so can we continue this lovely conversation where you put your nose into every aspect of my life later?”
“This is my job, and I’m damn good at it.”
I smile. I have to agree. “Well, go shove it in Banks’s life. He needs a good sorting out.”
“Go spend time with your brother,” she says. “Love you, Paige.”
“Love you, Mom.”
I end the call and climb out of the car.
Hollis’s house is nice. I’ve been here a few times before to hang out with him and Larissa. It’s a three-bedroom Art Deco-style home with smooth stucco walls and rounded corners.
I follow the curving walkway to the front door and ring the bell.
Hollis pulls the door open. “Hey, Paige.”
“Hi.”
I step inside. He pulls me into a hug, which is the most comfortable exchange we’ve ever had. Progress. I slip my shoes off by the door.
“What’s been happening?” he asks as he leads me into the living room.
This room is small but warm with a cream-colored sofa and muted-colored pillows. A television hangs on the fireplace. The curtains are pulled back, filling the room with bright sunlight and a view of a green backyard.
I sit on the sofa. “Not a lot. Working. Getting ready to go back to school. The usual. You?”
“I’m taking a couple of days off,” he says, dropping into a brown leather chair. “I was in Nashville longer than I thought I would be, and I’ve been catching up on shit since I got back. Riss asked me to spend a couple of days with her, so here we are. I can’t tell her no.”
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs. She jumped in the shower before you came. She’ll be down soon.”
“Cool.” I glance around the room. “My parents are coming to town. I finally caved.” I grin at him. “You’d be game to meet them, right?”
“For sure. Do you have any dates?”
I shake my head.
“Let me check my calendar and text you. Coy added a few things—or he was supposed to. I don’t want to be out of town while they’re here.”
“Mom would literally kill me.”
He laughs. “Don’t let her do that before September.”
“Why? What’s in September?”
He takes a deep breath. “Well, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay …”
My stomach forms a tight knot.
“Riss and I were thinking about taking a vacation in September. It’s the first time our schedules align, and we can get away, and we were thinking about heading to Mexico.
Booking a resort and just hanging out for a few days.
We thought maybe you’d want to bring someone and come with us. It might be fun.”
This shouldn’t make me want to cry, but it does. I’m turning into a baby. I try to smile, but my lips tremble and that only assists the tears. So I just look at him blank-faced.
“I mean, if you want to,” he says, thrown by the stupid look on my face.
“Of course I want to. I’m trying not to cry.”
“Cry?”
I laugh and pat my eyes with my fingertips. “I’ve been really … I don’t know who I am anymore, Hollis. I’m a crybaby. I feel things. What the hell is this?”
He snorts.
“Don’t laugh at me. I’m being serious. I’m worried about myself,” I say, only half-joking.
“I’m not laughing at you. I’m just … entertained by your spot in life. I’ve been there.”
“You have? So I’m not just a weirdo who suddenly has emotions when it comes to things other than my parents and sad animal commercials?”
He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. Then he sighs.
“When I met Riss, I’d sort of trained myself not to get in too deep with things.
I don’t know if I didn’t think I was good enough for her or what.
It was coming off a terrible football season, and I was just not in a good place.
I didn’t know what to do with my life or where to go.
I was just wandering around trying to find a path. ”
“Dude, that’s me. You just described me.”
He shrugs.
“I’ve started wondering lately if I don’t do it on purpose,” I say.
“I don’t have an excuse not to have my life together.
I work in a bar—one I freaking love, by the way.
But still. I didn’t start college for three years after high school graduation.
I’ve been dating losers with no hope of it actually working out. ”
Hollis pulls his brows together.
“Do you think I might’ve been doing it on purpose?” I ask.
“Why would you do that?”
The tightness in my chest makes me gasp for air. I press a hand on my heart.
The more I talk about this, the more it makes sense. Self-sabotage.
“I almost wonder if I don’t figure life out on purpose because the timer starts for it to end. And ending shit hurts so much that I avoid it by never starting it to begin with.”
He nods slowly. “That’s really interesting. I might’ve been that way too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. In college, I was a public figure around campus because of my football career. But I only had two friends I was actually close to. I sort of kept everyone else at arm’s length.” He strokes his lip with his finger. “I’m going to think about what you said. That’s wild.”
“Did that change for you, though? Were you ever able to stop thinking like that?”
He drops his finger and smiles. It’s pure and raw and genuine, and it makes my heart sing. I love seeing him happy. He deserves it.
“It changed when I met Riss.”
It’s a simple sentence, beautiful and clear. I sit back on the sofa as the tightness in my chest eases.
“How did you fall in love with her?”
“What do you mean?”
I force a swallow down my throat. “How did you know it was okay to be that vulnerable? What made you decide that you could open up and let Riss in? Do you still feel like it could just all end at the drop of a hat?”
He looks at me with understanding. I don’t have to explain my feelings to Hollis because he just gets it. And that’s another reason I love this man and am so thankful for him.
“When you fall in love with someone, you don’t get to choose. You just wake up one morning and realize that this is it. This is your life. It can never go back to the way it was before.”
“But what if it all just ends?”
He smiles softly. “Honestly? I don’t know.
I’d like to think that will never happen.
I don’t think that anyone can ever guarantee to have anything or anyone forever.
That’s not true to the cycle of life. But I do know this.
No amount of heartbreak could ever erase the happiness she’s brought to my life.
She’s made me a better person. She’s given me hope and a life, and …
” He laughs quietly and looks over his shoulder.
Then he leans forward. “I told her I’d wait until she came down to tell you, but we’re having a baby. ”
“What?” My jaw drops before I hold my hand over my mouth. “Hollis. Are you serious?”
He nods with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen—not just on him. On anyone.
I leap to my feet and rush across the room. I pull him into a hug as tears fill my eyes.
He stands, hugging me back. He lets me love on him.
My big brother, my protector, the boy who had all the odds stacked against him in life will now be a father. And he’s going to be the best father ever. I know because he loved me like one all those years ago.
“I am so happy for you,” I whisper in his ear.
He holds me tight, joy rippling off him in waves. “Thank you.”
I pull back and wipe a tear from under an eye.
He chuckles. “You have to act surprised when we tell you later.”
“I’ll be the most surprised I’ve ever been.”
We stand in the middle of his living room, in the house with his name on it—two kids who didn’t have a chance.
“I think we did all right in life. Don’t you think?” he asks.
I look around the room and think about my life. Someday, I want this too.
All of it.
I look at Hollis again. “Yeah. I think we did.”