CHAPTER 16 KAYLEE
The map app tells me it’s thirteen hours to Montana.
With Ben behind the wheel, it’ll probably be closer to eleven.
He’s not an aggressive driver, per se, but he’s definitely a fast driver.
We’re doing eighty in the bright red Scout filled with my belongings and we haven’t even left Nevada yet.
Buddy’s sleeping across the backseat, and my eyes keep edging over to the speedometer.
“Are you excited to see your mom?” I ask once we’re an hour or so into the drive.
“Not really,” he says.
“You’re not close?”
He shakes his head. “We never really were. We butt heads a lot and she basically forced a ten-year-old boy to choose sides in their divorce. I chose my dad, and she made no secret of the fact that she resented that. And then as soon as I was drafted and the promise of money was in my lap, suddenly she was there for me. Nobody saw through her act faster than I did.”
“That’s awful,” I murmur.
He shrugs. “It is what it is. People always show their true colors, and you can either spend your life dwelling on it or you can move on. I chose to move on, and I really only see her a few times a year now.”
“When you’re up in Montana?” I guess.
“Not always, but when I head into Great Falls to check on my gym, I usually run into her.”
“What does she do?” I ask.
“She’s a career maneater.”
“Tell me how you really feel,” I say, trying to lighten the mood with a joke.
“She’s been married a bunch of times before. She has a hard time committing.”
I wonder for a beat if that’s genetic.
He’s quiet a while as he concentrates on the road in front of us.
It feels like something’s brewing in his mind, like he is a little conflicted with whether he wants to share whatever he’s thinking.
And then, as if out of the blue, he breaks the silence with a confession.
He keeps his eyes focused straight ahead when he speaks.
He clears his throat and his voice is soft as he seems to immerse himself in the past. “I was just about your age when I found out I was going to be a father.”
I suck in a breath but don’t say a word. I don’t even twitch as I realize this is the moment he’s finally going to let me in on the parts of his past he’s kept hidden.
“I didn’t really want kids after what my own parents had put me through.
Tatum and I dated on and off at the end of high school and all through college.
I wasn’t certain I wanted to get married after the example my parents had set, but I knew I loved her.
One day I found pregnancy tests under the bathroom sink.
They were all the way at the back. It was totally by chance—my razor blades had fallen through the back of the drawer.
They always did that, and it seem like every couple weeks I was fishing around back there again looking for them.
Well, this time there was a box of pregnancy tests back there.
They’d been opened. At least one, maybe two had been used from the pack.
I didn’t know whether they belonged to her, but something changed in me.
I had this weird sensation that it was what I wanted.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I wanted something that I never wanted before. ”
He seems to focus more intently on the road. He grabs the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are turning white.
He draws in a fortifying breath as he continues.
“It turned out to be positive. I was scared, especially since I’d just been drafted to the Chargers.
I was scared to be a father, scared to have to grow up faster than I wanted to, scared to make the commitment.
Scared to be a parent even though I had my dad who I knew would always be on my side no matter what.
As time passed and brought me closer to leaving for mini camp, I felt pressed to do what I thought was the right thing.
We had taken precautions and I thought we’d been smart, but I also know these things aren’t fool proof.
Young me figured it just made sense to ask her to marry me.
We’d raise the baby together and the more I got used to the idea, the more I wanted it.
It was the strangest phenomenon that I could love something so deeply that I’ve never met and never held before, and on my really dark days, I can still feel it.
I can remember exactly what emotions were associated with every moment of that time in my life. ”
I want to ask what happened since as far as I know, he doesn’t have any kids…but I am terrified to know the answer. I’m scared for him to dig out these memories that are obviously so painful to him.
I’m scared for him to go back to that place when everything seems to be going so well between us right now.
And I am terrified that his reason for not wanting kids will be so completely justified that there’s no glimmer of hope that he’ll ever change his mind.
That there’s no glimmer of hope for our future together.
He clears his throat again. “I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She said no. She didn’t want to marry me because she wasn’t ready for marriage, and I was devastated.
I didn’t know how much I’d get to see the baby—that’s where my mind went.
I wasn’t as upset that she didn’t want to marry me as I was that she was creating a life for a kid that wasn’t what I wanted for that kid.
She was only a couple months along, and I knew nothing about babies.
But in the weeks after I’d found out, I started learning.
I read books. I looked through blog posts.
I started educating myself as much as I could in what little free time I had.
But the day after I proposed, she lost the baby.
I held her hand in that hospital room and we cried together for our loss. ”
“Oh my God, Ben. I’m so sorry.” I whisper the words, but I know even all these years later, he must still feel it.
His voice is softer as he tries to speak through the emotions he’s trying to hide from me.
“The doctor kept saying that baby was sixteen weeks…it just didn’t compute at the time.
I was too overcome by the loss. It wasn’t until later when I realized two months—which is how far along she’d said she was—is only eight weeks.
I had been out of town sixteen weeks earlier and there was a three week span where I didn’t even see her.
The baby—it was a boy…and he wasn’t even mine.
” His voice breaks. “And that is the realization I still have haven’t recovered from.
I allowed myself to get excited despite the early risks, I prepared for it the way I prepare for a game, and then I mourned a loss that wasn’t mine to mourn. ”
“He wasn’t yours?” I repeat. I want to hold his hand, but he continues to white-knuckle the steering wheel and I don’t even know how to comfort him in this moment. I think about reaching over to rest my hand on his thigh, but I worry about confusing sympathy with a sexual advance.
Instead, I keep my hands in my lap where I wring them together.
He shakes his head. “He wasn’t mine,” he whispers.
“He never was, and that’s when my life took a turn.
I spiraled in a different direction. I left for mini camp early.
I got tight with a group of guys who liked to party.
It was a way to numb the loss, and I built my brand from there as I tried to put the past behind me.
I didn’t just lose my son. I lost my trust in women.
I lost the only girl I’d ever loved, and I decided then and there that I wouldn’t put myself through that misery ever again.
One and done. Easy come, easy go. Those became my trademarks. ”
He finally breaks his focus on the road to glance over at me.
The anguish in his eyes kills a little part of my soul, but it seems to dissipate just the slightest bit as he reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“And then a decade later, when you were standing in the kitchen after a shitty date, I saw you for the first time. I really saw you. I’d known you a long time—the first time we met was only a month after the worst day of my life—but you were just a kid back then. ”
My chest tightens as my heart sinks into my stomach. He saw me as a kid, but I was only twelve the first time we met. I was a kid back then.
But as he continues, my chest tightens for a different reason.
Every sign in the world points to us being meant for each other…all except one.
And it’s a pretty damn big one.
“As you spoke, I saw you for the first time. You were all grown up, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
And then you said some assclown had asked you if you were an accident and…
I don’t know. Something snapped in me. Babies are never accidents.
Surprises, maybe. It certainly wasn’t on purpose when Tatum got pregnant, but I never once used that word even in my own thoughts.
I found myself feeling suddenly ferociously protective over you in a way that went far beyond just caring about my buddy’s little sister.
Suddenly that’s not who you were anymore—not to me.
You were a woman deserving of the entire world, and I found myself wanting to be the one to give it to you. ”
I wish we weren’t in the car. I wish I could wrap myself into his arms as he somehow just knows how to alleviate the biggest fears I hold in my heart with his words.
But as one fear is alleviated, an even bigger one looms ahead.
The more time we spend together, the more we get to know one another, the more we confess our darkest secrets…the harder I fall.