by C. B. Stagg
I devoured her.
The sweet taste of mint and Vaughn coated my tongue and set fire to my heart. Using the wall as leverage, I plunged my hands into her hair. We poured everything into each other we’d been trying to tamp down since all this started.
We needed to stop.
We needed to breathe.
I pulled back from her just a fraction, inhaling her breath as if it were a lifeline. She caught my eyes and smiled. Lowering her feet to the ground, she pulled me in for one more soft, sweet kiss, a whisper across my swollen lips.
“Our rules start now. I’ll see you in the morning. Pick me up about 7:45. We’ll get coffee on the way.”
I love this bossy woman. I watched in awe as she half-walked, half-skipped back to her apartment door.
“Oh, and Casey? That kiss was WAY better than the one in my dream.”
11-Vaughn
THE WEATHER PATTERNS in Texas are unlike any other place in the world. There are only two real seasons—summer and not quite summer. September still fell under summer, so to avoid dying of heatstroke or becoming a lobster, I prepared accordingly: shorts, tank, baseball cap, new soccer shoes, 100 SPF sunscreen (my first gift from Casey), and a giant, half-frozen water bottle. It was entirely possible I was more excited than the kids for this first soccer game of the season. I wasn't yet ready to admit how much of my excitement was due to their hunky coach.
I found myself ready for the game way too early, so I sipped on yet another cup of coffee. My new hobby was watching Casey’s apartment through my kitchen window while daydreaming. Replaying the previous night’s events for the hundredth time, my body buzzed at the memory of his hands and lips on me.
Goodbye, self-control! It was nice having you around for the last twenty-one years!
I didn’t date, but it wasn't as if nobody had asked. I just decided long ago that things would happen for me in a certain order. And at this stage in my life, I needed to get through school. My very survival was dependent on my single-minded, almost relentless focus on that singular goal. Determined to never become my mother, I wouldn’t allow myself to be in the vulnerable position of being reliant on a man. A relationship was way down on ‘Vaughn’s To-Do List In Life,’ which was why the whole Casey thing had thrown me for a bit of a loop.
And, I had to wonder, what was I expecting to get from this exactly? I still had almost a year left of school and then I’d need to find a job immediately. I’d spent my life financially supported by a stipend from the trust fund my negligent father had set up when I was born. Upon graduation from college, I would gain sole control of whatever was left. When I asked Mr. Preston anything specific about my financial portfolio, he was always professional, maintaining absolute discretion about dollar amounts. So I lived life knowing that, once the money from my trust was gone, I was on my own.
Movement on the ground across the street caught my attention and any attempt to play it cool concerning Casey had officially gone right out the window. My desperate need to be in his presence overrode everything. I gathered my things, dropping my water bottle twice before locking my door, and ran to meet Casey at the bottom of the stairs.
The night before, after he left, I’d thought long and hard about how to handle myself around him. I’d set personal expectations for this ‘get to know you’ phase we were attempting. And I had mentally prepared myself to resist him, but just the memory of his eyes roaming my body made it difficult to be the person I needed to be.
Rounding the corner at a high rate of speed, Casey caught me by the arms to avoid my momentum knocking him over flat. Now that we were face-to-face, I wished I’d taken a moment to stop and think before running down here like a bat out of hell. My heart was racing, adrenaline pumping.
I wanted him. Bad.
“Where did you come from?” I asked, panting as I tried unsuccessfully to act cool and catch my breath at the same time. “And how are you always in the right place at the right time, RIGHT when I need you?”
His smiling chuckle stole the last bit of willpower I had left. He leaned down until his beautiful lips were an inch from my ear. “I’m a superhero, obviously. I just hide my cape well.”
His declaration made me shiver, then smile, then laugh. I’d never had a protector, someone to come to my rescue when I was in need. I’d led such a boring existence that I’d never really needed one. Until now…
“I believe you.”
I was serious. I trusted this man one hundred percent.
“Good, Vaughn, you should.” His reply was low and sexy, a cross between a whisper and a growl, but it spoke directly to my heart. The sound of my name on his lips would never get old. “I’ll always be here for you, whenever you need me.”
I nodded, believing him when he said that, too.
Casey drove a maroon Ford F-150. The body style told me it was an older model, but the inside looked brand-new. It smelled like him—alpine and minty fresh—and it made me tingle. I secretly hoped his scent would soak into me so I could keep it forever.
We headed out, en route to the soccer park without much fanfare. I was thumbing through his CDs when Casey turned into the impossibly long Shipley Donuts drive-thru line. His eclectic mix of John Denver, Metallica, and Merle Haggard was yet another layer of the onion that was Casey Clark. Resisting the urge to tease him upon finding a Taylor Swift album, I instead seized the opportunity to ask if he’d thought about my non-date idea. Apparently, he had.
“I’m thinking that you and I can take turns doing things we each like and deciding topics to discuss. Just one topic per non-date, and we both have to weigh in. That way, we won’t bring up something we aren’t willing to discuss ourselves.” He looked at me, eyebrows raised. ”No fluffy topics either,” he added. “They need to be raw and gritty, not too shallow and not too comfortable.”
I was all ready to say yes, but the ‘raw and gritty’ bit he added at the end scared me. I wasn’t much of a sharer. I’d been in therapy for the last five years. It was something Mr. Preston had set up and said was non-negotiable. I’d spent an hour every week in high school, then every two weeks in college, spilling my guts, admitting my inadequacies, and voicing my fears.
I was falling hard for Casey, but I wasn’t sure he was ready for me to reveal the extent of my baggage. In the South, it’s customary to ‘hide your crazy.’ And while that expression is referring to crazy relatives and not the crazy in your head, it was safe to say the luggage rack of baggage I carried around needed to stay hidden a little longer.
Or forever.
“I’ll choose the first topic.” Drum roll on the steering wheel.
Ready or not…
“Today, after the game, I think we should discuss our childhoods because, you know, every problem in your life can be attributed to your childhood, right?”
His wiggly eyebrows and broad smile made me go all gooey inside. Oh boy… I wasn’t too worried, though. I had the whole hour-long game to think about what to say. And I’d make him go first, gauging his response before formulating my own. He didn’t need my entire life story, just a few snippets. I could do that.
He ordered half a dozen glazed donuts and got each of us a coffee before heading toward the park. Once there, he made quick work of unloading the equipment bag and water cooler, not allowing me to lift a finger. I walked around each and every field with Casey, devouring more than my share of warm, delectable donuts, while he inspected the turf and the security of the goal stakes.
“Do all coaches do this?” I asked out of curiosity.
“No, just me,” he answered. “It’s my job. I work for the city maintaining the turf for all the sports fields in College Station. I actually have my college degree in turf management.” A man who liked to work with his hands. Swoon.
I smiled at him. “You know, the first thing I noticed about this place was how healthy the grass looked, despite the Texas heat.”
He bumped his shoulder into me, sending me stumbling a little. “You did not. You’
re just saying that to stroke my ego.” The pride he felt for all his hard work and dedication to his job reached all the way to his eyes.
“So, could you tell me more about Julian?” I hated to spoil the mood, but I needed to know what was behind that child’s haunted eyes.
Suddenly, Casey became quiet and stopped walking. I looked back and saw that his lighthearted smile had vanished from his beautiful face. In its place were the pursed lips and pinched brows of a man who’d been deeply affected by the subject matter.
He shook his head, but started talking anyway. “What I know will haunt me the rest of my life.” Inhaling the cool morning air deep into his lungs, he continued. “I think it’s safe to say he did what was necessary for survival. He’s a child who’s shown incredible strength, and we knew breaking through the armor he’d built around both his heart and his mind would be difficult. God knows, I’ve tried.” The silence following Casey’s admission rolled in like a dense fog, enveloping the two of us as we continued our walk across the empty fields.
“But,” he chirped, attempting to lighten the mood, “he’s made slow, but steady progress. And what happened between the two of
you… ” He turned, with his intense eyes bearing down on me, shaking his head like he still couldn’t quite believe it had happened. “Watching him sidle right up to you like that… Vaughn, I felt like I was witnessing a miracle. You didn’t just look at Julian. You saw him, right down to his very soul, and watching that armor start to crack was… well, it was the most magical thing I’ve ever seen.”
I wondered if he could see the pride in my eyes after his sentiment.
One moment all was calm and peaceful, but in a flash, the fields exploded into chaos. Kids dressed in bright uniforms ran, dragging their overloaded parents behind them. I had to laugh when I saw our team’s official uniforms. On a normal day, I would describe them as pink, but Casey assured me I was incorrect
“Pink? Casey Clark, who grunts like a caveman and looks like a lumberjack, coaches a pink team? Of all the colors in the rainbow, you chose pink?” My giggles were rapidly morphing into what I can only describe as a cackle, but it felt so good I allowed it to happen.
Casey clicked his tongue in response. “If you are quite finished, I’ll have you know that these uniforms are not pink. They are watermelon.”
And that was it.
I full-on lost it.
Casey waited a few more seconds before rolling his eyeballs back in his head. "Besides, I'm not the uniform coordinator and I didn't get a choice." His words were laced with humorous indignation, as he walked off to greet the kids coming on to the players’ side of the field.
Once everyone was present and accounted for, the team started warming up just like any other practice day. Although there was an electricity in the air that I’d never felt before, radiating from both the children and their sexy coach. This wasn’t just a practice. This was a game.
Casey kept one eye on our team warming up and another on the opposing team, sizing them up. It was actually quite endearing. Casey has a fierce competitive nature.
The team then joined him on the sidelines and they formed a huddle, where he gave the kids their positions. He sent them out as the refs came to the middle of the field and the game was finally underway. I tried to keep up with all the running and kicking and scoring, but I still had no idea what I was doing. Plus, I found myself scanning the parking lot for Julian, unable to focus my brain on anything else.
Within just a few moments of the ref’s whistle to kick off, Julian and Donna appeared through the crowd of spectators. As soon as that sweet boy saw me, he stopped in his tracks and my heart skipped a few beats as I waited for him to make a move.
Julian resumed walking with hesitant steps, dragging Donna behind him after what felt like a decade. I remained where I was, imagining Julian as an animal in the wild, not wanting to make any sudden movements. He walked right to the corner of the field, where we’d been before, and sat carefully. Then, still looking directly into my eyes, his tiny hand softly patted the grass beside him.
Who could resist an invitation so precious?
I happily walked over and plopped down beside him, where we sat in comfortable silence, observing the herd of kids in front of us. We watched as our team passed the ball, shot on the goalie, and made a few good corner kicks. We also watched as a giant kid from the opposing team, a defender, kicked the ball insanely hard and lost control of it. We watched as it soared through the air right toward us. Thank God I’d been sneaking another peek at Casey from the corner of my eye at the time, or I wouldn’t have even noticed the ball flying at us like a heat-seeking missile.
I was able to react fast. Working on instinct, I tackled Julian to the ground. My body covered his little one, taking the force of the ball directly between my shoulder blades. It was very reminiscent of the night before when Casey had come to my rescue, protecting me from danger. I guess I was just paying it forward.
A white-hot pain shot through my back, leaving me completely breathless. The collective gasp from the spectators was loud enough to reach me all the way across the field to the player side, where we’d been sitting. A few Good Samaritans even started to skirt the field, presumably to check on me. And to add to the utter chaos, the ref blew a double whistle, indicating halftime. Thank God one of the fathers ran to the sidelines to hand out snacks, which left Casey free to process what had just happened. When he did, he ran to me like I was on fire.
I was obviously still struggling to catch my breath, so he turned me over, moving me off Julian. He maneuvered my body to position me flat on my back with my knees pulled up as he checked for injuries. I saw several parents hovering about in my periphery. In reality, the injury wasn’t all that bad, I just needed to get a few good breaths in and I’d be fine. I think the speed of the ball and where it hit on my body created the perfect storm of a fake serious injury. The way Casey ran his hands all over my body was very much like what he had done the night before. Only this time, the team, the parents, other coaches, and spectators were all there to witness it, which made it feel much less intimate.
Donna rushed over in a flash to check on Julian, wanting to relocate him so Casey could get me squared away. She tried getting him to join the team, but he wasn’t having any of it. At some point, Julian had grabbed my hand, rubbing the top over and over, like he was comforting a small, wounded animal. His panicked eyes never left me.
When I finally sat up, the parents on the other side of the field applauded. I smiled and waved, feeling my embarrassment creep up from my chest to the roots of my hair for the millionth time that week. I was eventually able to assure everyone I was going to live, and then shooed Casey away to tend to the team so I could resume people watching beside Julian.
But we did scoot back a bit first.
As soon as we got settled, closer than two peas in a pod, I reached down and grabbed Julian’s little hand. “Thanks for taking such good care of me.” I paused to breathe deeply. “You know, I’ve never been hit by a ball before, and I hope I never am again.” I smiled, poking him in the side a bit. I tried to joke with him, hoping to remove the serious, almost anxious expression he wore stretched across his face.
He grasped my hand like a vise. “I w-was s-s-s-scared.”
It was almost imperceptible, these three little words stumbling from this tiny, formerly non-speaking person. But I’d heard it, and my heart stopped. Internally, I was jumping up and down, celebrating this enormous accomplishment for Julian. I knew I couldn’t outwardly freak out for fear of my little turtle child retreating back into his shell, but there was no stopping the tears that spilled from my eyes.
“I’m so sorry you were scared,” I whispered back, putting my arms around him and holding him close to me. “I was kind of scared too, but we’re both okay now, right?”
Hot tears soaked through my shirt as he shifted, moving his frail little arms to hug them tight around my arm. “Th-th-thank you,” he sniffled, �
�f-for not let-t-t-ting m-me get h-h-hit.”
With that, he owned the only part of my heart I had to give. Between Casey and Julian, there was nothing left.
“You’ll always be safe as long as I’m around.”
He lifted his head to look at me before settling his head back on top of my heart, which happened to be pounding out of my chest. “I-I know.”
I didn’t know if that was meant for me to hear, or if he was telling a secret to my heart. But he believed me, just as I’d believed Casey when he spoke those same words to me a few hours ago.
12-Casey
WE WON.
Winning was good. Spending the morning with Vaughn was great. But watching Vaughn interact with Julian was priceless. He attached himself to her in a way I wasn’t sure was even possible after all he’d been through in his seven years of life. He connected, fully connected to someone… and to Vaughn, of all people. One of these days, I’ll realize that the girl was magical. Anything was possible where Vaughn was concerned.
After congratulatory high fives, I joined Donna on the sideline. Julian and Vaughn walked up from the other direction, her pale, freckled hand in direct contrast to the tiny brown one she was holding.
“Well, how are you feeling?”
The question came out strained, shaky almost. I took a step toward her, wanting nothing more than to pull her into my arms, but thought better of it and stepped back. She looked at me and I could tell she knew what I’d wanted. And she wanted it too.
“I’m okay.”
I didn’t buy it for a second. Her voice was still uneasy and her eyes were red-rimmed. She’d have been better with my arms wrapped around her. I was relieved that Vaughn had finally decided to accept and embrace this unexpected connection we’d formed. I got the impression this was a girl who needed a friend. And to tell the truth, I needed one too.