Chapter 29
Dunk
Dunk drove away from Daisy’s apartment with his hands clenched so tightly around the steering wheel that his knuckles weren’t even white, they were purple. Daisy had looked so fragile in the truck on the way over, her eyes big and worried, and trusting him to be there, to be good. No one had ever looked at him like that, and the pride that it was a woman as amazing as Daisy warred with sheer terror that he’d never be able to live up to it.
But the good news was, he had some awesome friends, and some of them really had their shit together, both personally and professionally.
Which was why he sped straight from Daisy’s to Aden and Chase’s place, calling Aden on the way to make sure that they were home first.
He rushed inside, yelling a hello, then followed Aden’s voice out to their porch. “Oh,” he said, taking them in, almost feeling bad he’d interrupted what was clearly a relaxing, lazy Sunday morning.
They were on the loveseat, Aden’s feet crossed on the plastic coffee table, Chase sprawled out on her back with her calves draped over his thighs. They were reading, and there was some slow, folksy music on low.
“Hey, Prince Charming,” Aden deadpanned, sliding a bookmark in place and putting the book aside.
Rolling his eyes, Dunk took the chair across from them, dumping his phone and keys near Aden’s feet.
“Thanks for bringing my baby home,” Chase said.
“You know, I should be pissed at you and Leda,” Dunk told her.
“But not Karen and Stephanie?” Chase asked innocently.
“Those girls were hoodwinked by your smooth-talking lawyer argument, no doubt,” Dunk groused.
Aden offered up one of his signature grunts and cocked an eyebrow under his backwards ball cap. “If you were pissed, we’d be getting Super Soakered with Kool-Aid or something right now,” he remarked.
“That… would have been a great idea,” Dunk said thoughtfully. “I’m putting that one in my back pocket for the next time you schemers do something like this.”
“You aren’t really mad, are you?” Chase asked.
Dunk heaved a sigh and crossed his arms. “No.”
“I think we deserve a thank you,” Aden declared.
“I’ll thank you as soon as you thank me for buying you the time to stop Chase from leaving,” Dunk countered with a big wink.
Aden snorted, and Dunk damn well knew it was his smothering-a-laugh snort. “Don’t fucking count on it.”
“Was that your version of I love you, man?”
Chase laughed.
Aden harrumphed, but his hand was absently smoothing up and down Chase’s bare shin and ankle, his thumb massaging the arches of her feet.
“From what I’ve gathered, it all turned out very well,” Chase said, her expression encouraging Dunk to tell them everything.
At that, the last of Dunk’s half-hearted annoyance with them over the whole setup blew away, and he leaned forward, elbows digging into his thighs. “There was an aquarium, a flirty waiter, a mechanical bull, the Grand Canyon, an emotional roller coaster, and I love yous,” he declared.
Chase squealed, “This is going to be such a great story!”
“A mechanical bull?” Aden eyed Dunk skeptically and then a slow smirk spread across his face. “How badly did you hurt yourself?”
Dunk shot Aden an ineffectual glare, knowing he had hurt himself so very, very badly on that damned bull. Then he launched into detailing the trip: the sights, the conversations, his kickass playlists, the rising sexual tension, the intermittent flirting, that life-affirming, life-changing moment at the Grand Canyon, and the night that had changed their lives forever. And then the painful, but wonderful conversation they’d had yesterday.
When he was done, Chase blew out a big breath. “Whew,” she exclaimed, “no wonder you sound like you’re losing your voice.”
“Shelly talked about your dad?” Aden asked, his face set in stern lines, the way it did when he was concerned but trying not to be too heavy.
Dunk rolled his shoulders and nodded once. He’d seen Daisy’s look, the way her mouth had softened in sympathy while her eyes had narrowed slightly, as though his mom’s words had put Dunk into clearer focus for her. It wasn’t something he dwelled on. Mostly he was angry at the man for treating his mom so poorly, and for hurting his sisters, who had been old enough when he walked to remember him.
“She must really believe you and Daisy can make it, if she talked about something painful to offer you two advice,” Chase offered quietly.
“Yeah,” Dunk said a bit shortly.
All of them let that be for a moment, acknowledging the hard thing that Shelly had gone through before she’d met Dunk’s stepdad—his only dad, really, as far as he was concerned—who was the best.
And then Dunk looked up at Aden, hands fisted on his knees, and said roughly, “I can’t fuck this up, Aden. I can’t… I can’t let her down. I get it now, how scared you were that day I stole the keys of Chase’s rental.”
Aden scratched his jaw.
“I’m going to go in,” Chase murmured.
“What? Why?” Dunk asked in alarm, feeling like he was about to get his ass handed to him by one of his best friends in the whole world.
Chase smiled reassuringly, stroking her hand over Aden’s shoulder as she rose. “It’s okay, this just seems like a best friends kind of heart to heart moment,” she said, then took her book and went inside.
“You’re not going to let her down,” Aden said after they’d sat in the quiet mid-morning summer day for a little while. “You’ll screw up,” he added with a fatalistic shrug, “but you won’t let her down.”
“But I’m… me,” Dunk protested as he threw his hands up.
Aden cursed under his breath and rubbed his hands together. “Shit, Dunk. Please don’t make me get all mushy. You know you’re not as… dumb as you come off sometimes. You’ve read a thousand books about love and relationships. And you’d never cheat or turn into a criminal—or run out on her,” he said, his stoic expression weighty with conviction.
Slumping, Dunk muttered, “You’re giving me a pep talk.”
“So what? Are you looking for some magical way to be the perfect boyfriend?” Aden scoffed good-naturedly, a smirk edging his mouth.
“Of course I’m looking for a magical way to be the perfect boyfriend!” Dunk laughed, the tension breaking up in his chest, making him breathe easier. “I’m asking you for advice because even when you were with the ex who shall not be named on and off for years, you didn’t let her down.”
Aden’s head dropped onto the top of the couch back and he blew out a breath. “Of course I let her down, Dunk. But she let me down too.”
Groaning, Dunk whined, “You’re freaking me out more!”
Aden shrugged, then frowned and took off his hat to scratch his head. “Listen, you just… you love her, you want to take care of her, make sure she has a nice home. Bubble baths and a car that doesn’t break down all the time. You want her to have time with her girlfriends and space to do her art. That’s important, but it’s not that hard. Don’t be jealous of the time she spends on the other things she loves. There’s no… end of love.”
Dunk opened his mouth to make fun of Aden, but Aden’s cheeks went rusty under his summer tan, embarrassed by his own sentimentality.
So Dunk tried to simply hear him, especially since he didn’t really want to make fun of Aden for being happy, not when he’d been unhappy for so long. “I can learn how to share her time,” he sighed. “I didn’t like that, before. When she told me that she needed time for herself.”
“And, uh, don’t forget that she wants to take care of you, too, Dunk.”
“I don’t want her to do that,” Dunk interjected hastily, thinking about what she’d told him about her marriage. “Tyler needed her to take care of him, like, emotionally, and it wasn’t good for her,” he explained.
“Love isn’t… a town of one-way streets,” Aden replied.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dunk asked in confusion.
“If you want to take care of her, then she’s allowed to want to take care of you, Dunk,” Aden clarified impatiently. “You can’t stop her.”
That was a complex idea and Dunk frowned, trying to untangle all of the threads. In his mind, it was obvious and simple. People in love wanted to take care of each other, and they should both want to and actually do it. But in his heart, he didn’t want to make her feel obligated to take care of him just because he had all these things he wanted and needed from her. He didn’t want her to give anything up to try to make him happy.
“How do you make sure it’s even? We promised to be an equal partnership,” Dunk finally responded, looking hopefully at Aden.
Aden’s normal stoic expression softened and stretched into a grin. “Well, when it’s out of balance, that’s when you fight, or want to fight.”
“And then what?”
One of Aden’s brows lifted. “You fight it out, you have make-up sex, and then you work it out,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Every time won’t be as bad as your eight-hour negotiation.”
“But I don’t want to fight,” Dunk protested.
That sent Aden into laughter so loud that Chase poked her head out onto the porch and looked between them. “What’s so funny?”
Since Aden was still laughing too hard to talk, Dunk pouted and admitted, “I just said that I don’t want to fight with Daisy.”
Chase giggled and came back onto the porch, curling up next to Aden, who stretched an arm along the back of the loveseat to accommodate her. “Well, that’s admirable, Coach, but you know that’s a big fat pipe dream.”
“I know,” he grumbled, then glared at Aden. “Quit laughing, asshole.”
“Is that all that’s worrying you? Fighting?” Chase asked, gently.
“Dunk’s afraid that she’ll want to take care of him,” Aden offered, “because her ex-husband is Tyler Houston—Jamie’s youngest brother.”
“And you know how their mother is. Tyler leaned on Daisy for love and support,” Dunk added, exhaling heavily, feeling a little bad for sharing the information, even though he knew they wouldn’t gossip about her.
Chase pursed her mouth thoughtfully. “Does she feel like Tyler used her as a crutch, or was just with her to boost his confidence?”
“No,” Dunk said, even though his instinct was to refuse to defend his girlfriend’s ex-husband; he wouldn’t lie and make Tyler out to be the bad guy when he wasn’t. They’d needed each other, and they’d grown up and grown apart. It had hurt Daisy, of course it had, but she had been adamant that Tyler hadn’t been a taker, not like that.
“I don’t think Daisy is afraid of being there for you, Dunk. She’s a sweetheart, she’s generous, she cares about the people she loves so much. We haven’t been really close for all that long, but I can just tell, she’s the kind of person who’s there for you in a heartbeat if you need it.”
“Yeah, but…” He swallowed and confessed, “I’m afraid I’ll just keep being that guy, that jock, that happy-go-lucky coach who rolls with shit.”
“Dunk,” Chase sighed, clearly exasperated. “You are that guy.” Then she held up a hand, preventing him from saying anything yet. “She fell in love with that guy, and with all of the other facets of your personality. She knows how much you love your family, how loyal you are to your friends. She knows you’ve made an ass of yourself and risked your friends’ anger to help them. You told her all your bad things on that road trip. She didn’t say she couldn’t handle it, she didn’t ask you to change. She loves you.”
Dunk’s throat was tight with all these other vague fears that he didn’t know how to put into words. It was only in the last couple of years that his reputation as a fun, fairly clueless guy had started to bug him. He supposed it boiled down to wanting to be more than that guy, because he was over thirty and he was loyal, responsible, and his advice was awesome.
Now, that worry was bigger and fiercer, laced with doubt, because Daisy deserved an amazing man, someone who would never let her down. But he’d never been in a relationship and he didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t even know all the ways he might let her down—other than obvious, terrible things he’d never do like cheat or ignore her—so how could he stop himself from doing it accidentally?
“And, Dunk?” Chase said, interrupting his racing thoughts.
“Yeah?”
Chase uncurled herself and reached across the table. Dunk stretched his hand out and took hers, comforted by his friend’s warm, knowing eyes. “She’s worrying about stuff like this too, even after your long talk in the car about what you’re worried about and what you want to do with your lives.”
Dunk blinked.
When he’d gotten hit with all of these doubts after he’d dropped Daisy off, he’d completely forgotten that they had, in fact, talked about all of this in great detail on the drive from Memphis to Maybelle. He’d gotten so panicked because, despite their hard work putting together their relationship playbook, those plays were all so… big-picture, or theoretical. It was like telling someone about the football play called the Fumblerooski and promising it would work, but not actually telling a player what to do.
“Oh,” he muttered.
“This is why you talked so much and why you have to keep up that open communication,” Chase reminded him reasonably. “It’s perfectly natural to worry; you’ve gotten something you’ve always dreamed of: a woman who’s just as madly in love with you as you are with her.”
“Like if you got drafted,” Aden added.
Dunk breathed out a little shakily, and nodded.
“Feel better?” Chase asked.
“Yeah,” Dunk huffed out a laugh, then rubbed his hands on his thighs and stood up. “I should go home and unpack, take Tugger for a run.”
Chase hugged Dunk, then whispered, “You got this, Coach.”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he whispered back.
Aden grumbled under his breath about the length of the hug and Dunk’s usual carefree joy came rolling back in. He couldn’t help but scoop Chase up and run back inside off the porch, roaring over his shoulder, “Ha ha, my evil, long-term nefarious plan to steal your girl has worked!”
“You asshole,” Aden yelled, “stop stealing other people’s shit!”
“Are you calling Chase shit?” Dunk gasped in mock outrage, setting his petite friend down carefully and laughing from deep in his belly.
With a fond smile, Chase whapped him on the back of the head.
“Thanks, y’all,” Dunk said, flashing a grateful look at them, and then slid out the door before Aden could kick his ass.