Page 34 of Fearlessly Us

“How is she?” Caitlin’s voice keeps me from going down that sad path, so I focus my attention back on her. And fuck, she’s so beautiful. The color is back in her cheeks and her eyes are clear, the haze of pain gone from their depths. A few strands of hair that escaped her braid frame her face, and I get the odd sense I could look at her forever and find something new every time. “You don’t have to tell me. I mean, if you’re not comfortable talking about it.”

“It’s okay.” I watch as she reaches over for her drink with her free hand, wincing a little when her body twists. I take her hand and place it gently back into her lap, grabbing her glass myself and handing it to her. When she takes it without blinking—without telling me she can get it for herself—it feels like a little victory. “She’s fine, I think. I mean, as fine as a seventeen-year-old girl can be when her mom who wasn’t all that great died eight months ago and she’s living with a grandma she barely knows, who doesn’t seem to be making much time for her.” I shrug, shifting uncomfortably on the couch as another one of my truths pushes up from my chest.

“I wish she would come live with me.” I say it fast, like I’ll lose my nerve if I don’t get it all out. “It’s weird, I know. I’m not actually related to her, and I haven’t known her, not really, since I was eighteen. I’m a professional athlete who travels five months a year, so I’m not exactly a bastion of stability, and I have no idea what to do with a teenager. Much less one who’s graduating from high school in nine months. How to be the family she needs. But…” I trail off, not knowing exactly how to finish that sentence.

“But you want to try,” Caitlin says, and the simplicity of her words, the understanding in them, make me say the rest of my truth.

All I can do is nod. “I really do.”

Caitlin smiles, squeezing my hand. “It’s not weird. Not at all. Avery is a part of your story, Drew. The best part of a past that seems like it maybe wasn’t all that great most of the time.”

Doors slamming.

Yelling.

The crash of a glass shattering against the living room wall.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs.

The hiding place in my bedroom closet I prayed he’d be too drunk to find.

My breath hitches, and the tremble in my free hand must be too obvious to hide because Caitlin covers it with her own.

“Breathe,” she murmurs, her thumb gliding over my knuckles, her gray eyes steady on mine. It’s her touch—her attention—that fills my lungs with air. Slows the pounding beat of my heart. Chases the bad memories away. “So, really not great, huh?”

When I laugh, it’s genuine. “No, it was definitely not great.”

I brace myself for the questions. The ones I always assumed would come if I ever hinted to anyone about the darker parts of my past. The ones I’ve never had to answer because I’ve kept everything about my life before college hidden behind a locked door in my brain marked Do Not Open. Ever. So when all Caitlin says is, “So, do you want to tell me about the drive-in?” her abrupt change of subject gives me metaphorical whiplash, and my mind goes momentarily blank.

“Drive-in?”

Caitlin smiles wryly. “Your estate planning questionnaire. You own a drive-in movie theater which is really cool but also an objectively weird thing to own. So is a bakery, a construction company that builds public playgrounds, a foundation that funds organizations focusing on kids’ health and safety, a water park, and a company that makes youth sports equipment. Care to explain?”

“To you or to lawyer Caitlin?” I ask, mainly to stall for time. No one knows about all the shit I own, not even Cam. There are a couple I’ve talked about over the years, but the rest is only for me. And it also hits a little close to those darker parts of my childhood I try hard to pretend don’t exist.

She shrugs. “Let’s start with me. You don’t have to tell me if you’re uncomfortable with it, but you didn’t have to put those businesses on the questionnaire either. You’ve been a professional football player for fourteen years. You could decide today never to catch a football again and still be set for life.”

Caitlin’s words have dread and relief tangling up in my chest. Dread at the idea of leaving the game that has given me a life and a best friend and an escape and the thought of what walking away from football would mean for that. Relief at the idea of no longer waking up in the morning aching from head to toe. Of no longer killing myself at practice and traveling months out of the year and finding something that brings me a less complicated sort of joy, even if I don’t know what that something is yet.

Shoving those feelings back down where they belong, I look at Caitlin to find her watching me intently, like she can read my mind. “So, what does that have to do with my drive-in?” I ask, going for casual. By the look on her face I can tell I don’t quite get there, but to my utter relief, she lets it go.

“You could fund a trust for Avery with cash, and you wouldn’t even know it was gone. The fact that you included the businesses on the questionnaire makes me think you want to talk about it. That you haven’t told anyone about the businesses before, but maybe you’re ready to tell me?”

“Shit,” I mutter, realizing how right she is. That I do want to give someone this part of me. Her. I want to give it to her. “I thought I was just following the rules,” I say after a minute.

“What rules?”

“I don’t know. You gave me an eight-page questionnaire asking for everything from the value of every asset I own to my estate planning goals, whatever the fuck those are. I assumed there was some kind of punishment for not answering all the questions.”

Caitlin tilts her head as she studies me, her eyes taking on a wicked gleam. “Would you like there to be a…” She pauses, running her tongue over her lower lip. “Punishment?” she practically drawls, and my entire body flashes with heat, all my blood draining directly to my dick.

“What the fuck?” I mumble, shifting on the couch, trying to keep my cock from punching a hole in my goddamn pants.

Caitlin bursts out laughing, and the sound is so surprising, so perfectly beautiful, I forget about my cock entirely. All I can focus on is the way she grins and the delight in her eyes and the unexpected, simple joy that comes from being the one to make her happy. I have the wild thought that I could live on this feeling and nothing more and be perfectly content for the rest of my days.

“Men,” she says, lips still tipped up in a grin. “So simple. So ridiculously easy to figure out.”

I point at her. “Hey there, Princess, I’ve got depths.”