The face he made said he knew the answer to that question.
But the truth was, I didn’t know how we were going to make it work either. A rugby season was long and brutal. We lived on different continents. Seeing each other only twice a year for a couple months wasn’t enough, but what the hell could you do? We were going to have to figure it out someday, but that day wasn’t going to be this one.
I’d looked at the calendar, and according to what I remembered about rugby season dates, we had a little over a month before he had to fly back to France or New Zealand or wherever the hell he was going to go for his next season.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, only hearing the lump in my throat when it was too late.
Grandpa narrowed his eyes, and I was pretty damn sure he had heard the ping-pong ball that had taken up shop in my vocal cords. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard it. What was it?” he asked again, squinting just a little more, like that was going to help him sniff out my bullshit better.
I lifted Mo into the air and said, “Nothing.”
“I swear on my mother’s life—”
That had me breaking into a laugh.
“Don’t laugh! She was a wonderful woman.”
I laughed even more.
“Okay, she was mean and beat me every chance she had, but she was still my mother… and what were we talking about?”
I blew a raspberry against Mo’s belly, earning me a squeal and a short stream of babble, before lowering her down to settle on her feet. “Do I need to start looking up homes for people with memory impairments?”
Grandpa Gus stood there and shook his head slowly, even reaching for his heart. “After everything I’ve done for you….”
“Just kidding. With your vampire DNA, you’re probably done aging for the next ten years.”
“I’m thinking fifteen.”
I rolled my eyes with a groan and bounced my girl on her feet. “Did you close your bedroom already?”
My vampire grandpa sighed. “No, buy the pay-per-view while I do that.”
I followed after him through the door, hitching Mo to my hip as she babbled from my shoulder. “I know kiddo, Grandpa is crazy. Can you say that? Cra-zy.”
I glanced at the clock, knowing she was going to start winding down pretty soon. She hadn’t napped long enough earlier, and I knew it was going to hit her hard and fast. Everyone said I was so lucky that she slept so much, but it still didn’t feel like enough when I didn’t go to bed at the same time she did.
By the time I had dropped Mo off on the floor in the living room and gone back and forth twice to grab the tray of veggies and the bowl of chips, the doorbell had rang twice. The first time, Vince and another guy from the gym had come in, heading back out toward the back deck after a moment to get the burgers that Peter was grilling, calling out a hi. But the second time, Peter, who had wandered back inside the house, had answered it, coming back with a tall figure.
“Hello,” Jonah’s voice greeted Mo and me from where we were in the living room. She was sitting beside me with three of her big blocks while I tried to buy the pay-per-view via text message.
“Hey,” I replied just as Peter walked off holding a plastic bag. “Where are your mom and sister?”
“Long day. They decided to stay at the hotel, but Natia sends her love. Mum had me bring a plate over. I gave it to Peter,” he explained. “Only me tonight, if that’s all right.”
I made a farting sound that had him smiling as he approached and dropped to his knees, Mo’s face lighting up as two big—and now familiar hands—reached for her middle, the fingers doing something that made me think he was trying to tickle her, but wasn’t too sure about it. I told my heart to close its eyes even as she laughed.
“Does she hate me and decided to stay?” I asked him as I leaned back on my free hand.
A hint of a smile crossed the side of the face closest to me. “Yeah, nah. I think you may have frightened her a bit.”
“Me?”
The side of his mouth hitched up high. “My mum can’t be the first person who doesn’t know what to do with you. I still don’t know what to do with you half the time. But she was falling asleep on the drive to the hotel after lunch. She is tired. They both are.”
I was going to take that as a compliment.
Those trying-to-tickle fingers paused as Mo raised a hand to her face and made an agitated sound. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? I’m sorry I’m late.” He peeked at his watch. “Oh, no. You’re tired. It’s almost bedtime, isn’t it?”
“She didn’t sleep much when I took her back to the office with me.”
“She stayed with you the entire afternoon?”
“Yeah. I left an hour early, but it’s one of the benefits of being the underboss.”
He looked up at me from under those thick, dark eyelashes. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘under.’ Seems to me everyone listens to you just fine.”
Mo decided right then she’d had enough and made another fussy, cranky sound. “Okay, I hear you, kiddo. It’s okay,” I told her, scooping her up. “I’m going to put her to bed. There are veggie and turkey burgers outside, and Peter is manning the grill, so you don’t have to worry that Grandpa Gus will spit on your food or anything.”
He got up right along with me, a lot more nimbly than I did and faster, and I wasn’t going to admire it. “I’d rather come along with you.”
I had a feeling that’s what he would say. Every night, he stayed late enough to put Mo to bed. I lightly patted Mo’s bottom and then ran my hand up her spine as she made a little whimpering sound against my chest, since she’d leaned totally against me, needing me to hold her up. My poor baby. “Come on then, you.”
The three of us headed up the stairs, the sound of voices and laughter from the deck making their way up the stairs as well, the same sound I had heard so many times growing up when people would come over. There were always so many voices at the house it never felt empty. It reminded me of who I was and what I had.
I started humming to Mo, then turned into her doorway—the fourth one on the floor—the one in the middle of all the bedrooms, feeling the heat of Jonah’s body directly behind me when I stopped briefly. Flicking the lamp switch on with my foot, I carried our girl in.
I glanced at him as I moved to lower Mo into her crib. “Can you turn on the sound machine? Just press the button in the center,” I asked him as I started to massage the bottom of her foot the way she liked; that usually helped put her to bed. Every other time he’d been upstairs with us, he’d been the one carrying her. For “practice.”
He did it. And I took the time to move my eyes around the pretty neat room we had all pitched in to set up for her before she’d come along. It was the most well decorated room in the entire house. With light gray walls, a crib that one of Grandpa’s friends had handed down to us for a deal of one hundred bucks, and with a white dresser she would grow into, an enormous stuffed giraffe that had also been a hand-me-down gift, and a rocking chair in the corner… I liked it. I liked it a lot more than my plain-ass room.
Jonah came to stand beside me as I kept on rubbing the tiny foot that had slowly stretched to get closer to me as she relaxed.
“Look how tired she is,” I whispered, trying to stifle a laugh. “Her mouth is already falling open.”
Jonah covered his mouth and nose to muffle his chuckle as he gazed down at Mo lying in her crib, trying her hardest to keep her eyes open even as her little mouth gaped wide enough for a fly to go into it.
It was so fucking adorable.
I wished I hadn’t left my phone downstairs so I could take a picture.
“She’s so cute. I can’t even be mad or annoyed with her for keeping me up last night,” I whispered to him.
“Did she keep you up a lot before?”
Before. Right. “I barely slept the first… four months. She was waking me up every other hour to feed her or change her diaper, and I’d
still constantly wake up to come check on her even if she didn’t make a peep. I worried that she’d stop breathing or someone would climb in the window while I was sleeping to steal her or something. It was kind of bad, but right after that, she started sleeping almost through the night.” I had done some difficult things in my life, but none of them were anywhere near as hard as this parenthood thing. I didn’t know the meaning of pressure until I had the responsibility of keeping a mini life alive.
But hey, she was still here, so I couldn’t be fucking up the job too badly.
At least not yet.
“I had an air mattress in here at first so that I wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to my room.” AKA all the fifteen feet down the hall, which had been more like a mile and half when I could barely keep my eyes open and my body hated me for the trauma I’d put it through after so long of taking care of it.
Jonah didn’t say a word, but I could hear his steady breathing beside me as I kept rubbing Mo’s sole, her little eyes fluttering closed and then reopening with a jolt, over and over again. I’d read her book too early, I guessed.
The sigh that came out of his mouth had me glancing over at him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Those two hands went to the top rail of the crib, fingers curling over the edge, his attention totally focused on the squirming body inside of it. “I can’t help but wonder… if I hadn’t gotten hurt, if I hadn’t gone off to my granddad’s farm to sulk about for so long… if I would’ve hardened up and come before or answered the damn phone or messaged you back or checked my fucking email… if I wouldn’t have felt sorry for myself like a selfish fucking arsehole….”
Oh.
That’s what he meant.
“I don’t know how you can forgive me for leaving you. For leaving you both,” he whispered in a voice rougher than I’d ever heard him capable of before.
He sounded so damn upset, it made my heart hurt, and I wasn’t expecting that.
His right hand reached inside the crib, and his thumb and index finger took hold of the other tiny heel just as he sighed. “I should’ve been here.”
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. One of my coaches had told me once that those were the most pointless set of words in the world. But you learn to live with them, you learn from them, or you let them weigh you down for life.
And maybe I had been pissed off at him for so long for not being around. But he was here now, and, mostly, I understood why he’d done what he did. Not totally, but mostly. He was sensitive and apparently shy.
I knew all about what I expected of myself. So I could understand the expectations someone else would put on themselves too. I wasn’t that much of a hypocrite.
Those shoulders of his were enormous, but there are certain weights that no one could bear.
Especially alone.
And really, seeing his profile, hearing his words, I couldn’t help but forgive him for what he’d done. He was going to beat himself up over it more than I ever would. He’d suffered enough maybe, I thought with surprise. I hadn’t even made a shitty comment to him in a while because there hadn’t been anything to complain about.
He should’ve been here, yeah. But he hadn’t. But he was now.
I didn’t hesitate to lean my shoulder against him, just a little, that ache in my heart still faintly there. “It would’ve been nice to have you around so I could blame you for all those months of morning sickness,” I told him quietly, sucking up the heat of his clothing against my bare arm. “Or to bitch when I was sleepy all the time, didn’t want to eat anything but fruit, and on the nights I couldn’t sleep or be comfortable or hold in my pee. It was rough. I was mad. Then I went through a period of feeling sorry for myself and confused and scared. I was worried the baby and I wouldn’t bond or that I would resent her because I thought my life was over.
“Those months were rough, and I wasn’t the same person. To a certain extent, I’m not the same person I was then or even before then.” That was the understatement of a lifetime. I hadn’t just been mad; I’d been hurt too. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with us, and that pissed me off. But she’s here, and I’m here, and you’re here, and I love her so much I can never explain it, even to you. We can’t turn back time, but I thought we were trying to move forward. I haven’t thought about pushing you down the stairs in at least two weeks,” I tried to joke.
But he didn’t take it. Instead, Jonah murmured, “I’m so damn sorry.”
“I know you are.” Because I did.
“I wish I could go back in time and change it all.”
Was my heart supposed to hurt like this? “Not everything, I hope.”
Jonah turned to me, one cheek hitching up in a grave half-smile. “No, not everything.” His nostrils flared at the same time his other cheek started to go up too.
“Had you even thought about having kids?” I asked him, realizing I had no idea how he’d felt about it.
His features got thoughtful for a moment. “I never thought about it much. I have a big family… but I think I would have been happy.”
I gave him a flat look that had him giving me a slightly amused but pained one.
“All right, I would have been worried too, maybe even a bit scared, but I liked you so much….”
I barely managed to keep the snort to myself. Sure, he’d like me so much. He had liked me so much he hadn’t reached out to me, regardless of how often he’d thought about me and how crazy he claimed he had been over me. But I was going to ignore that slight pain. I wasn’t going to think about it. His career had been the most important part of his life. There was no competition there, and I understood it.
You couldn’t change a person’s priorities. I couldn’t make myself more important. I was lucky enough to have been so high up on at least two other people’s lists.
“I like you so much,” he amended while I kicked my thoughts aside. “It would have been fine. I would have been there, here, wherever you were.”
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.
And then there was that present tense.
“I’m sorry again for the things my mum said today. She thinks she means well, even when she meddles and says things—”
“She’s just watching out for you,” I told him. “She doesn’t know me, and I’m sure you’ve had more than enough girls throwing themselves at you before because they know who you are.” And because of that ass. And that face. And all those muscles. But he didn’t need an ego boost right then, or ever, so I didn’t mention any of that. Much less all the good parts that weren’t visible to the naked eye, like his personality.
He had made a face when I said the last sentence, and I couldn’t help but snicker at it.
“I’ve grown up around men in the spotlight, jackass. I’m not stupid.”
Jonah let out a suffering sigh that made me snort, and I could tell he was fighting back a small grin that he wasn’t totally feeling. “Did you not hear what my sister said?”
“What? About you being shy? I was going to ask you about that. You talked to me like nothing from the moment we met.” I’d thought about that period again in the afternoon while I’d been with just Mo. Jonah had instantly started talking to me, smiling, being playful and teasing….
And just… maybe a little bashful, a little more easygoing by not being aggressive or cocky.
But we’d never struggled to talk or get along. He had been the one who invited me to go to dinner after our tour. The one who had asked me for my number so we could go to the Louvre together. He was the one who’d posted a picture of us together hours after we’d met.
The point was, he had never been shy around me. He had never used that ultra-quiet voice in my presence. But I’d witnessed it around others. I really hadn’t thought much of it when we would go out to eat and he’d lower his voice or just tell me what it was he wanted.
And based on the face that he was making, he was struggling with explaining it, whic
h was actually just more proof that he might be. “I’ve always struggled with strangers,” he admitted with a half-smile. “I didn’t start speaking until I was three. Mum had to take me to therapy for it. Then, when I did start talking, it was only around my family. In school, some of the boys, and the girls, teased me over it, and that made me want to say things less, I reckon.”
The urge to go back in time and kick a bunch of little kids in the ass was really strong then.
Jonah gave me a twisted smile in the darkness of Mo’s bedroom. “I told you I was this skinny wee thing. No girls liked me back then, and I’ll tell you that messes with a mate’s head. It changes the way you see things and people when you get teased for being yourself, like you’ve got some other choice in the matter. Once I grew, everything changed. The only thing that made me special to other people was my size and being good at footy. So, yeh. I had a hard time with people I didn’t know then, and now it’s worse, you know. Not just with talking, but with trusting another person to do… things like that with.”
That? Sex?
And seriously, what asshole had been teasing him back in the day for being skinny and little?
He couldn’t read my mind, so he didn’t answer or explain, but he did keep moving right along. “Everyone is out for fame or for more than that. If I told you the stories I’ve heard about the things some women have done… asking for money, tampering with protection, phone footage…”
Unfortunately, I knew all about that.
“Women don’t want me because they know me, Lenny,” he explained softly. “They only see the jersey. Not me.” He paused. “I’m sure you know that with all your manly knowledge.”
“My manly knowledge?” was what my mouth repeated.
And it made Jonah smile like he hadn’t just told me about being teased for the things he couldn’t change as a kid and how it had affected him then and even now as an adult. He could go out there and play in front of thousands and thousands of people, but talking to strangers was what made his balls sweat. Because somewhere deep down inside, he expected them to make fun of him too, I guessed.
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