Page 77 of Fearlessly Us

“I do,” Caitlin says immediately. “Want you, I mean. Here or at my house, but I like it here better. I also want you in all the other ways. You know, once I’m better and everything. I want you to tell me more of what you learned when you did all that research, and then I want to do all those things too.”

I raise an eyebrow at her even as my brain serves me up a whole host of images of Caitlin and me doing so many more naked things together and fuck me, it’s perfect. She’s perfect. “And what else do you think I learned, exactly?”

Caitlin rolls her eyes again. “Don’t make it weird. Everything we’ve done has been so good. Better than I ever thought it would be considering what I have to work with. And I know there’s more I can do. That we can do. I was…” She trails off and looks like she’s arguing with herself before finally speaking again. “I was kind of hoping you would show me. What those things are like when they’re good too, I mean.”

Oh, holy shit. Snarky Caitlin gets me going, but vulnerable Caitlin? Vulnerable Caitlin makes my palms sweat and my knees weak and has me thinking things I’ve never thought before. Words I thought didn’t have any business belonging to me. Words like forever and always and mine.

Mine.

Sitting up on my knees, I lean in and take Caitlin’s face in both my hands, the heart that already knows it’s hers practically pounding out of my chest as I give her the softest kiss. “I’ll show you everything,” I murmur against her lips. “When you’re ready. And it’s going to be even better than before, Catie. I promise it’s going to be so, so good.”

Caitlin lets out a shaky breath, and I sit back to give the inferno in my blood some time to cool down. Reaching over, I grab the plate I brought in and hand it to her. She looks down at it and then back up at me with a smile. “Cinnamon toast?” she asks.

I nod, running an unsteady hand through my hair. “On sourdough I made. My, um…” I shake my head trying to clear the emotion from my voice. “My mom used to make it for me when I was sick. I’ve never really had to take care of anyone before, but this felt like a good place to start.”

Caitlin takes a bite and eyes me thoughtfully while she chews. “Didn’t you practically move into Cam’s house years ago when his wife died? He said once you were the only reason he made it out the other side. That you held him and his kids together while he grieved. Sounds a whole lot like caretaking to me.”

I run a hand over my mouth as I think back to those days. Cam trying to parent an infant and a toddler in the midst of paralyzing grief. Me doing whatever I could to help. “It’s…complicated,” I say slowly, trying to figure out how to explain this. Wanting to explain it to her. And maybe to myself too. “After my mom died, my home life wasn’t the best, and when I went to college it felt like I could breathe again. Cam and I met the first day of freshman year, and we hit it off right away. Best friends and teammates, and for the longest time Cam and football were the only constants I had. I think maybe they’ve been my only constants all these years.”

Until now, I think, watching Caitlin watch me.

“Anyway, Cam’s wife Lainey was my friend too. I was there when Riley was born and I was the one at his house with Riley when Cam and Lainey went to the hospital to have Ethan. The night…” I stop, swallowing hard as I remember that night. The wrenching pain in Cam’s voice when he called to tell me what happened. The way he broke down over the phone, crying so hard I could barely understand his words. “The night Lainey died.” I sigh, reaching over and taking her hand, lacing our fingers together and sinking into the comfort I feel sitting here with her, even talking about something sad. “Staying felt like the right thing to do,” I say, for lack of a better way to explain the way I felt like Cam’s house was where I needed to be. Like nothing in the world would have made me leave.

“You love him,” Caitlin says quietly, and when I look at her, there’s softness all over her face. “He’s your brother the way Soph, Maddy, Emmy, Sarah, and Maya are my sisters. Family, in every way that matters.”

My chest pinches with emotion, and the words are spilling out of me before I can stop them. “Sometimes I worry if I lose football, I’ll lose Cam too.”

“Are you afraid of losing football?” Caitlin asks, speaking slowly, like she’s being careful with her words.

“I’m afraid of what losing football means. I think about walking away all the time,” I admit for the first time, feeling almost giddy with relief at putting voice to the thoughts that have until now only been in my head. “Recovering from game days gets harder the older I get, and I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired. Fourteen years is a long time to play professional football, and sometimes I’m sure I’m ready to figure out what’s next for me, but then I think about it and my brain shuts it down because I’m terrified of what my life looks like on the other side. What I might be giving up if I walk away from the game.” It’s not the entire truth of why I keep playing even though my heart isn’t in the game anymore, but it’s enough of one for now. I look at the woman sitting next to me, and I know there will be more days and nights and times for bigger truths. Seeing her sitting across from me makes me feel like maybe if I walked away from the game and walked to her, leaving wouldn’t be quite so scary.

“You won’t lose Cam.” Caitlin says the words with absolute conviction. “You couldn’t. Your friendship with him might have started with football, but it doesn’t end that way. If I know one thing from growing up in a family like mine, it’s what real friendship looks like. The true, forever kind. That’s what you and Cam have. You’re family. You couldn’t get rid of him if you tried.”

I sigh, taking her hand and letting the warmth of her skin against mine ground me. “I know. I mean, logically I know, but I’ve always struggled to get myself to believe it for real. The way I grew up…” I trail off, blowing out a breath and shaking my head, unwilling to let those thoughts invade this moment. The way we sit, Caitlin’s eyes on me and her hand in mine, the lights on low and the glow of candlelight cocooning us in its warmth, feels almost sacred. “It’s just hard sometimes, to feel like I could be a part of any family.” The admission is an ache in my heart and a weight off my shoulders. Like it’s a lighter burden to bear because I’m sharing it with her.

“I know,” Caitlin says quietly, the two words infused with understanding. “But you do have a family. It may not be the one you came from, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Cam and his kids. Maddy. Tyler and Soph and the rest of the girls. Jack and Oliver.” Caitlin pauses, something warm and true swimming into her eyes. A kind of something that makes my pulse race and my stomach swoop. “And me,” she finishes, her eyes widening just slightly, like she wasn’t quite sure she would actually say the words until they were out of her mouth.

My heart squeezes at her admission, and I think about how much I like the sound of that. Me. Her. Us. I think maybe it’s kind of a miracle that out of all the people in the world, somehow, Caitlin and I found each other.

I run my thumb over her palm, the feel of her skin on mine grounding me to this moment. To her. “I like the way that sounds,” I say simply, and when I see warmth flow into her eyes, I know it was the right thing.

“I like it too,” she says. It’s not a lot of words, but somehow, they feel like the most important ones of my life. Like all the time we’ve spent together over the past weeks has been leading up to this moment, on this couch. The two of us as wide open as we’ve ever been, sitting together and sharing secrets and saying to each other, This is me. Building something unexpected. Maybe even beautiful. Something neither of us thought we would ever find.

Caitlin yawns, and my attention snaps back to her. Everything she’s been through today is catching up to her, and her eyes look like they’re on the verge of closing. Setting aside her glass and the half-eaten toast, I stand and then bend down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Let’s get you to bed, baby.”

She gives me a sleepy nod and shifts like she’s going to try to get up before sucking air through her teeth. “It fucking hurts,” she mutters, furrowing her eyebrows in concentration like she’s going to try again.

“Let me help,” I say, pulling the blanket over her legs down and lifting her up into my arms. I expect her to tell me to put her down. That she’s perfectly fine to walk on her own. But instead, she snuggles into me, dropping her head onto my shoulder and letting out a contented sigh that does funny things to my heart.

When we get to my room, I set her on the edge of the bed and carefully take off the leggings and sweatshirt she’s wearing. I open one of my drawers and dig out a T-shirt, and when I turn back around, she’s staring down at the incisions on her stomach, unreadable expression on her face.

Dropping to my knees in front of her, I take her face in my hands, tipping her chin up until those gray eyes are on me. “You’re beautiful, Catie. So fucking beautiful it stops my heart and makes it hard to breathe.”

She closes her eyes, like she needs a minute. “It’s always been on the inside,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something not just to me but to herself too. “What was going on with my body, I mean. I had doctors tell me over and over again for years that what I was experiencing was normal, even though I knew it wasn’t because none of the women I know get cramps so excruciating they pass out or sometimes bleed so much they end up in the emergency room. They told me periods getting worse over time is normal as you age and made me feel like I was to blame when medication didn’t work for the pain or when going on birth control didn’t help the bleeding even though I knew that couldn’t possibly be true. But because I couldn’t see it with my eyes, I started to believe the doctors. I thought maybe it really wasn’t all that bad, and I was just being dramatic. Making everything up even. It’s a real mindfuck to be told over and over again for years by people who are supposed to be the helpers that the thing happening to your body isn’t actually happening the way you’re experiencing it or it isn’t that bad when you know it is.”

Caitlin shrugs, like she’s accepting all of it, and I feel a hot rush of anger for all the years she spent alone and in pain, for all the doctors who didn’t take it seriously, and all the work she had to put in to get to this point. I want to burn down the fucking world for her, and for all the women like her. But especially for her. “I guess it’s just a whole other kind of mindfuck to see the incisions. That for the first time in all these years, my outside matches my inside.” She shakes her head, her shoulders drooping with exhaustion, and when she says, “I’m just so tired,” I know she’s not only talking about right now.

“I know, baby,” I say quietly, leaning my forehead against hers and knowing with more certainty than I’ve ever known anything that if I could take all of this from her and carry it myself, I would do it without a single second thought or an ounce of regret. I unfold the T-shirt and pull it over her head, helping her push her arms through the sleeves before pulling the tie out of her hair and unraveling her braid, raking my fingers through the silky strands before braiding it again, just to feel the way she sighs back against me. “Let’s get you into bed.”