Brady comes out of my bathroom and slips under the covers, pulling me over to lie on his chest.
For the past two weeks, he’s snuck into my bedroom every night he’s been home.
Well, snuck is not exactly the right word when I invited him. He comes over after my son goes to bed and leaves before Stryker wakes up. Needless to say, we’ve both been sleep deprived. We’ve discussed more than once that as soon as he’s back playing, he won’t be able to do it. It’s a bittersweet thought.
How have I gotten used to sleeping with a man in my bed in just a few short weeks?
“You’ll be playing soon,” I tell him. “And despite how much I want that to happen, I will hate for this to end.”
“Who says I’ll be playing soon?” he asks, holding up his hand. “The damn thing is practically useless.”
“Listen to me, Brady. Listen to your doctors. We all think it’s only a matter of time. Be patient.” I put my hand on his chest and balance my chin on it as I look up at him. “You are going to make the biggest comeback in Hawks history.”
“God, I love how optimistic you are.”
‘God, I love you, Rylee,’ is what I want him to say. I think he does. I can feel it. We spend every minute together that we can. Will he ever say it? Can he say it? I realize it’s only been a few weeks since we’ve officially been together, but it’s been the most intense few weeks of my life.
He kisses me on the tip of my nose. “Who says this has to end when I start playing again?”
“We do,” I say. “We’ve talked about this. You’re burning the candle at both ends. We’ll figure something out. Maybe I can find a sitter who can stay the night and we could sleep at your place once in a while.”
“Once in a while isn’t good enough,” he says. “I want you every night.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is if you live with me.”
I sit up, stunned. I scoot back and sit against the headboard and pull the sheet up to cover me. “You have got to be kidding.”
He shrugs. “What?”
“One: we’ve only been a couple for two weeks—”
“That’s not how I see it,” he says, interrupting me. “We were together last fall. And we started dating more than two months ago, Ry, and you know it.”
“And two,” I say, “There’s my son. Brady, he doesn’t even know we’re together.”
He shifts around uncomfortably. “So, we’ll tell him. He likes me, doesn’t he?”
“Only because you bring him animals.”
“We’ll put him in the office, or I’ll get rid of the weight room. Hell, we can move and get a bigger place.”
“Wait. No. We are not discussing this. It’s ridiculous.”
He pulls me to him. “It’s not ridiculous, Rylee. You know how I feel about you.”
I pull away and get off the bed. I wrap a robe around my naked body. “Actually, I don’t. You’ve never told me.”
“Well, you’ve never told me, either, Ry.”
“You want to hear me say I love you?” I say, trying not to cry. “Fine. I love you. Now you say it.”
He looks at me, panic-stricken, as if he’s lost the ability to speak – or maybe just the ability to speak those three little words.
I hear Stryker call out and I run into the other room. “Hush, baby. Were you having a nightmare?”
He whimpers in my arms for a few minutes while I tell him a story. I tell him a story we made up about the animals Brady brings him. I rub his back and speak to him softly until he falls asleep.
When I go back to my room, Brady is sitting up in bed.
“Are you ready for that?” I ask, pointing to Stryker’s room. “Nightmares. Bed-wetting. Preschool. Babysitters. Illnesses. Birthday parties. Boo-boos. Are you ready to take it all on?”
He looks horrified.
“See that look on your face? That’s why we can’t move in together. I need my son to more than like you, Brady. I need him to love you. But more importantly, I need you to love him. I’m not about to bring a man into his life who won’t be there permanently. Do you want to be there permanently?”
It hurts me to say these things to him. I know exactly why he can’t love Stryker. I’ve known it for months. Yet I still let myself fall for him knowing he could never be who Stryker needs him to be.
He looks at the door to the hallway and then down at his hands. “I … I don’t know.”
I feel like the worst kind of bitch knowing what happened but being so selfish that I’m giving him ultimatums. “And that’s why you need to leave, Brady. That’s why this won’t work.”
Tears stream down my face as I hand him his clothes.
“You’re kidding, right?” he says. “You’re ending this because I asked you to move in?”
I shake my head. “I’m ending this because I should have known better from the beginning.”
“Rylee, please.”
“I’m sorry, Brady. I have to do what’s best for my son.”
He dresses in silence, the whole time pleading with me with his eyes.
“Change your mind, Rylee. We can make this work.”
“I just don’t see how.”
My eyes sting and my throat burns as I watch him walk out my bedroom door and then my front door. He looks back before closing it. And he looks as broken as I feel.
I run back into my room and collapse onto my bed, pulling my pillow to my face so Stryker doesn’t hear my sobs.
I cry until my stomach hurts and I have nothing left but hiccups.
My phone pings and I wonder who would be texting me after midnight. I check it.
Brady: Open the door, Rylee. I need to talk to you. Please let me back in.
I dry my eyes and walk to the front door. When I open it, I see a man who’s been crying. I pull him inside. I lead him back to my bedroom in case Stryker gets up again.
He has something in his hands.
I sit down on the bed and pull my robe tightly around me. “What did you want to say?”
He sits on the bed and hands me a picture frame. It’s the picture from the box that day.
“I was married once,” he says with a shaky voice. “And I had a son. But they’re gone now. They’re dead.”
My hand covers my heart as it breaks for him. “Oh, Brady. I’m so sorry.” More tears spill out of my eyes. I know how hard this must be for him. I’m glad he’s finally telling me but at the same time I feel terrible that I pushed him into it.
He studies my face. “Did you know?”
“Your reaction at the hospital last fall. I suspected you lost someone.”
He nods. “It’s why you’ve been so understanding.”
I laugh sadly. “I just kicked you out. I’m anything but understanding. I’m a selfish bitch.”
“No, you’re not, Rylee. Everything you said was exactly what you should have said. Your son should be your priority. You shouldn’t settle for someone who won’t make him a priority, too.”
He takes the picture back from me and looks at his boy. His eyes close and a tear rolls out. “Keeton was only three when he died. The same age as Stryker. I … I want to love your son. I think maybe I could love him, but I need time. I need you to give me time, Rylee. And I hope that you will. Because” —he looks at the picture again and then back at me— “because I love you. And as crazy as it sounds, I tried really hard not to. I feel like I’m trading my old family for a new one. And that makes me a bastard. I’m a bastard because if I love you, I’m betraying her. And if I love your boy … I’m replacing Keeton.”
I move over on the bed so our legs are touching. “Brady, you’re allowed to love again. You could never replace them. And I would never ask you to.”
“It’s more than that. What if I love you … love him, and then …” He puts his head in his hands. “What if I fail you like I did them? What if something happens to you, too?”
I put a hand on his back and rub it around gently to try and comfort him.
“They are gone because of me. Because I was a self-centered asshole who didn’t even think about them when they needed me the most.”
“Did you leave them?” I ask.
“No. God, no. I would never have.”
I take the picture from him and run my finger over their faces. “What was her name?”
He looks at me like he’s not sure he wants to say it. Like he’s scared to open up to me. Like maybe he thinks I will replace her if he lets me in.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it.”
I hand the picture back to him and get up off the bed. I need a drink of water. All the tears I’ve cried have dehydrated me. But Brady takes it the wrong way.
“Rylee, wait.”
I walk to my bedside table and pick up my water bottle. I take a drink and then climb back on the bed, settling myself against the headboard. Letting him know I’m ready to listen if he’s ready to talk.
He looks relieved. He thought I was going to throw him out again. He takes his shoes off and scoots up the bed. He reaches over me and turns the light off. Then he pulls me to him, spooning himself behind me. He breathes into my hair. He rubs a hand along my arm over and over and over. He finally stills. He’s so still I wonder if he’s fallen asleep.
“Her name was Natalie,” he says softly. “But I called her Nat.”
I don’t say anything. What is there to say?
“We met in high school. She followed me to Nebraska when I got a baseball scholarship there. We knew we were going to be together since we were sixteen. When she got pregnant our freshman year in college, I wasn’t even mad. It was always in the plans to have kids, it just happened sooner than was ideal. But we made it work. We lived in student housing. She only went to school part time after Keeton came. She was born to be a mom.”
I grab his hand to let him know I’m listening.
“My junior year I became somewhat of a celebrity on campus. I broke all kinds of records and got a lot of media exposure. But with that came unwanted attention.”
He takes in a deep breath and I can feel him tense up behind me.
“There were a few break-ins at our apartment. Someone stole a family picture once and then some of my clothes another time.”
“That must have been awful,” I say.
“It wasn’t such a big deal for me,” he says. Then he pauses. He pauses for a whole minute or more. “But I had them to think about so I convinced the athletic department to put a security system in our apartment.”
His breathing becomes erratic and I’m worried he might hyperventilate. I hold his hand tightly and his grip around me becomes almost unbearably strong, like he’s trying to hold onto them.
“I forgot to set it,” he says, his voice cracking with desperation. “I always set it. I never left without doing it. But that day … It was the last game of the College World Series. It was my glory game.” His voice is thick with emotion and shaky with fear. “We all left at the same time. She was going to run some errands and then come home before dropping Keeton at her sister’s so she could drive up for the game. I never knew she didn’t make it there.”
He buries his head into my hair and I can feel a hot tear roll onto my neck. “Nobody even told me until after the game. After we’d won. If her father just would have called me earlier I would have had hours with her, not minutes. By the time I got to the hospital, Keeton …”
I turn around and embrace him as he breaks down and cries. “Shhh,” I murmur into his hair. I let him hold me as tightly as he needs to as he relives his nightmare.
“It was the same person all along,” he says. “One crazy woman broke in all three times. She’d tried once after we got the alarm, but the alarm scared her away. But that day—I forgot. My mind was on the game and I just walked out the door without thinking about it. And she got in. That day of all days, she got in. She went through our stuff. And when Nat and Keeton walked in on her …”
He moans out a cry of pure devastation.
“Oh, Brady. I’m so sorry.”
He shakes uncontrollably in my arms, sobbing into my shoulder.
“She never intended to hurt them. It said so in her suicide note when they found her body later that night. She said she just wanted my stuff. She said Natalie scared her and the gun just went off. It went right though Nat’s neck. And …” —his body stiffens and he can barely get out the words— “And when it happened, Nat’s body went limp and she dropped Keeton. He fell against the corner of the counter and struck his head. They said he died instantly.”
My sobs mix with his. The horror of not only losing a child, but the love of your life, is unimaginable. He lived through hell.
“I got to say goodbye to her. She couldn’t talk to me because of her injuries, but she could hear me. And I lied to her. I told her Keeton was alive and waiting for her. But the truth was … he was dead and waiting for her. I knew it the minute I saw her. I knew she was dying, too. And two things battled in my mind in those last minutes. I wanted her with me. But I wanted her with him.”
He cries out. “Goddammit! First I let that crazy bitch in my house and then I practically prayed for my wife to die. I killed them, Rylee. They are dead because of me.”
He sobs into me. He cries harder than I’ve ever heard any man – any person – cry. I’ve never been in the presence of so much pain. I comfort him the only way I know how, with my hands. I work my hands around his neck and massage him. His sobs become weaker and his breathing evens out. I think he falls asleep from exhaustion.
I lie here and hold him. I think of a young family that never had a chance to grow. I think of a young man who had to endure more than any person should have to endure. I think of the man lying next to me who I love with all my heart. And I know I will give him as long as it takes to heal his heart. Because he’s worth fighting for.
Hours later, he stirs in my arms. “Their funeral was the same day I got drafted by the Hawks. I walked out of the reception and never looked back. I took one small picture, the framed photo, a few of my old baseball mementoes, and a shirt. I left the rest of the details to her parents. They packed up our apartment. Put it all in storage. I couldn’t do it. I just ran away. I guess I’ve been running ever since.”
“I’m so sorry, Brady. I can’t even imagine your pain. But thank you for telling me. Thank you for trusting me.”
Light starts to shine through my curtains and he pulls away. “I should go,” he says.
“No. Wait.” I reach over to my nightstand and pull out my photo book from the drawer. I open it and show him a picture. “This is a picture of my dad. We were very close. He had me late in life and I was his only child. And then when Mom got sick, well, all we had was each other. And, Brady, I know it’s no comparison to what you lost, so please don’t think I’m trying to measure my loss with yours, but I’m not sure you’ve ever gotten closure. You left almost immediately. You never had time to grieve them properly. When my dad died, I was devastated. I felt so alone. It took me more than a month to get myself to go through our house and his things. But packing up his things was exactly what I needed to start healing. Every shirt had a memory. Every trinket had a story. And as hard as it was to go through his belongings, it was what I needed to move on with my life. I think you need closure, too.”
He studies my face. He lifts his hand and cups my cheek. He traces my jaw with his finger.
“Would you go with me?” he asks. “Would you go with me if I go back to Nebraska?”
Tears sting the backs of my eyes as I nod my head over and over. “Just say when.”
The light is bright through my window now, and he gets off the bed looking guilty that he kept me up so late. I stand up and grab his hand. “Come on, I’ll go make us some coffee.”
“But …” He nods in the direction of Stryker’s room.
“We’re not going to parade around naked or anything, Brady. But I think it’s time he gets used to having you around.”
He smiles. “Thank you, Ry. I promise I’m going to try with him. I’m going to try hard.”
“I know you are. And I promise I’m going to be patient.”
He pulls me into his arms. “I love you, Rylee Kennedy.”
I wrap my arms around him. “I’ve waited my whole life to hear someone say that.” I look up at him. “I’m so glad it’s you.”