Page 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Carter

“Uncle Carter.”

I try to brush away the tickle of something near my earlobe. There’s a giggle.

“Uncle Carter, it’s Christmas.”

I open my eyes and see the outline of Hallie sitting next to me in bed. When I sit up, I see Darling lying in the center of the bed, snoring.

“Suki said to let you sleep until the sun comes up. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“What time is it?”

Suki’s side of the bed is empty. I pick up my phone from the nightstand and check the screen. It’s 4:11 a.m.

Fuck me, it’s early. But Hallie is low-key bouncing with excitement. There’s no way she’s going back to bed.

“Okay, are we opening presents now?” I ask.

“Yes! I’ll go get Charlotte and Olivia.”

She races from the room and I go to the bathroom. I’m a little more awake after splashing water on my face and brushing my teeth.

I leave Darling to sleep and head downstairs, the lights from the tree creating a soft glow in the family room. Suki is kneeling in front of the tree, doing something with a gift.

The three stockings hanging from the mantle are all filled and there are gifts stacked on gifts beneath and around the tree. I stop and take it all in, a pang of guilt hitting me in the gut.

I should have helped with all of this. I watched SportsCenter in the bedroom until I fell asleep.

“Merry Christmas.” Suki looks up at me and smiles, then stands up.

She’s not even mad. I didn’t help her with any of this and she’s not even mad about it.

“Merry Christmas. It looks incredible in here.”

“Thanks. Did Hallie wake you up?”

“Officially, no.”

She laughs softly. “She’s really excited.”

Footsteps pound on the stairs and I turn to see all three girls racing down. I switch on a light and walk over to sit down on the couch.

“It’s clothes!” Olivia says as she shakes a box.

All three girls are dressed in Grinch pajamas that Suki picked out, and she’s wearing matching ones. Charlotte’s hair is freshly pink after a trip to Suki’s hairstylist the other day. Olivia is getting tall and looking more like her mom.

I wish Rachel could see her daughters and know they’re doing okay. Better than okay. They’re good. They’ll never stop missing her, but they smile more and cry a lot less than they did when they first moved in.

That’s because of Suki. She’s glowing with happiness as she watches them. She’s beautiful and sharp and funny, but the way she nurtures all of us is every bit as attractive to me as the other things, if not more.

She laughs at something Charlotte says and I smile just looking at her. I didn’t plan on developing feelings for her, but I have. When I’m on the road and I lie down in a hotel bed, I wish she was there. I fantasize about her, even when she is beside me in bed.

I thought I was just sex-deprived at first, but the truth is, I don’t want any other woman. Suki wears my jersey to games and has my ring on her finger. She’s my wife. That’s supposed to terrify me, but it doesn’t.

Is it so wrong to want to bang your own wife into next week and not want anyone else? Feels pretty damn good to me, but I don’t know if she’d agree.

“The first gift is for Suki, and then you can go crazy and open your stuff, girls.”

I walk over to the big wood cabinet thing the interior designer said would “anchor the entire room”, whatever that means. I stashed a little box in here yesterday and I take it out.

“Carter,” Suki says the moment she sees the little blue box with a white ribbon. “That’s from Tiffany.”

Her tone is warning me like I don’t know where I bought the gift. I wink and pass it to her.

“Just open it, Suki.”

“Who’s Tiffany?” Hallie asks.

“It’s a store,” I say.

“A very expensive store,” Suki says softly.

She slides the ribbon from the box, my blood pressure kicking up a notch. I hope this is a good idea. My gut tells me it is. My sister always told me I’m good at picking out thoughtful gifts.

“Oh, Carter.” Suki looks from the contents of the box to me, her eyes flooded with emotion.

“What is it?” Olivia asks, beaming with excitement.

“It’s the most beautiful necklace I’ve ever seen. It’s a small vine of leaves covered with diamonds.”

“A plant Darling can’t eat,” I explain.

Suki passes the box to Charlotte and the girls all crowd around it. She gets up from her seat on the floor and comes over to me, putting her arms around my neck in a hug.

“Thank you,” she says softly. “I love it so much.”

I hold her close, wishing for more than a hug. I’ve never been great at communicating about feelings. That’s an understatement--I’m shit at it. Actions, though, I’m pretty good at.

“Put it on, Suki,” Charlotte says.

Suki grins and goes over to the girls, Charlotte helping her get the necklace out of the box and put it on. It takes her a couple of minutes to get the clasp fastened, but Olivia doesn’t jump her about it.

Rachel would be proud of her daughters right now. They aren’t thinking about their gifts. They know Suki deserves this moment just for her.

I clear my throat, some sort of cosmic nudge from my sister telling me that sometimes you have to find the words, even when it’s hard.

“Girls, I know I don’t tell you often enough, but I’m proud of you and I love you.”

Hallie runs over and hugs me. “And Suki, too.”

Suki and I lock eyes as I say, “Suki, too.”

“And Darling.”

With a single note bark of laughter, I say, “I’m not sure about that.”

“He’s part of our family. You love your family.”

“We got you and Darling a present!” The words spill out of Charlotte like she can’t hold them in any longer.

“It was supposed to be a surprise, Charlotte!” Olivia snaps.

“It’s okay, I’ll still be surprised.”

Charlotte searches beneath the tree and finds a box--holding it up. “Is this it, Suki?”

Suki squints, trying to see the tag. “If it says ‘To Carter and Darling,’ that’s it.’”

“It does.” Charlotte runs over to me with the box, her eyes bright with happiness.

It’s wrapped in shiny silver paper adorned with shiny red and green ribbon. I open it and move aside the tissue paper, groaning.

There are two sweaters in the box, both red and cream, with snowflakes and reindeer.

“Matching sweaters!” Hallie cries like it’s not obvious.

“Are you serious?” I mutter.

Suki is holding back a laugh. Olivia and Charlotte are already on the way to the stairs to find Darling.

“Put yours on, Uncle Carter!” Hallie begs.

I shake my head and give Suki an aggravated look. “No pictures.”

“Yes pictures.”

“If my teammates see those, they’ll still be making fun of me when I’m eighty.”

“You have to wear it, Uncle Carter.” Hallie’s tone is no-nonsense. “It’s a present.”

“You’re getting a chicken suit for your birthday, Halls.”

She giggles. “No, I’m not.”

The girls are soon racing back downstairs, Darling waddling into the room in front of them. Suki helps them get Darling’s sweater on, which fits him like a condom.

“It’s a little snug,” Suki says, kissing the top of his head. “But you’re a growing boy, aren’t you?”

I thought I’d get away with wearing the sweater over my T-shirt and pajama pants, but the girls insist I go change into jeans and a dress shirt so I’ll have a collar beneath the sweater.

They’ve got Darling on the couch when I get back downstairs.

“He’s not allowed on the couch,” I remind them.

“Just for the picture,” Olivia says.

“And then another one with you in a wingback chair,” Suki says.

“This is ridiculous,” I grumble.

I can’t believe I agree to it, but I end up on the couch with Darling’s front end on my lap. It takes a lot of coaxing from the girls and Suki to get me to smile.

“Girls, you get up there with them for a picture,” Suki says.

“But you should be in it, too,” Charlotte says.

Suki hesitates. I know what she’s thinking. That this is the only Christmas she’ll be part of our family.

“We’ll do both,” she says. “I’ll take one and then use a timer for one of all of us.”

I can’t believe the girls would rather do these photos than tear into their gifts. Rachel and I would barely let our mom pee on Christmas mornings because we were so eager to open presents.

“Okay,” Suki says when the photos are done. “Do you guys want to check out your stockings now?”

We have the stockings Rachel made for them. She was learning to quilt and she created a quilted stocking for each of them. Olivia’s expression clouds with sadness as she looks at hers, running her fingers over the fabric.

“Those stockings are beautiful,” Suki says gently.

“Our mom loved Christmas,” Olivia says, her gaze on the stocking.

“Especially the Grinch,” Charlotte says. “She made Grinch punch on Christmas and decorated our house with Grinch stuff.”

I never went to Rachel’s to spend Christmas with her and her girls. She invited me every year, and I’d send her gifts and a big check. I wish the pain I felt over that could be physical instead of emotional because it hurts in a way that’s almost unbearable.

When I had the chance to be with them, I chose a workout and football instead. Maybe dinner with a teammate and his family. What a cold asshole I am. If I didn’t have custody of the girls now, would I have ever spent a Christmas morning with them?

The silence stretches, Suki letting the girls sit with their feelings instead of glossing over them. Somehow she always knows when to soothe the pain and when to give it some space.

“It’s Darling!” Hallie squeals with happiness and holds up a little stuffed pig.

Charlotte unwraps a gray beanie from her stocking next, grinning and putting it on.

The sadness slides away as the girls start opening all the little gifts Suki bought for their stockings, wrapped in tissue paper. I went shopping with her once, but she did a lot of it herself. She knows the girls’ tastes better than I do.

I don’t realize how much work she’s done until I see the girls opening gift after gift, each item the perfect size and style. They all get a lot of clothes and they seem really happy about it.

“Uggs!” Olivia is giddy as she pulls a gray boot from a box. “I love them!”

I’m surprised when Suki hands me several gifts. She got me three new biographies, a travel reading light so I can read when I’m flying between cities, a nice leather messenger bag, two new ties and some ‘Cereal Killer’ socks.

She knows me. I’ve never had a relationship with a woman that didn’t start with sex, so this is unfamiliar territory for me. All my other relationships were based around sex and sometimes we happened to get to know each other.

“This is amazing!” Suki holds up the T-shirt that Olivia picked out for her, which has a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and says, “You Can’t Handle the Ruth.”

“You told us you love her, so I thought you’d like it.” Olivia was very proud of finding that shirt online.

The girls helped me pick out all of Suki’s gifts other than the necklace. We got her a scarf, an avocado-shaped coffee mug and a spa gift certificate.

Once all the gifts are opened, Suki tells the girls to move their stuff to their rooms so Darling doesn’t destroy anything. They’re all upstairs and I’m picking up wrapping paper and stuffing it into a trash bag when she approaches me, running a fingertip over the vine on her necklace.

“This was so generous and sweet of you,” she says softly. “I’m overwhelmed.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

Her expression turns to longing. I let go of the garbage bag and put a hand on her lower back, pulling her against me in a fluid motion.

Her eyes widen as she looks up at me, her lips slightly parted. I can’t fight it anymore. I kiss her, only the first few seconds soft and slow. A little moan comes from her mouth as she melts into me, wrapping her arms around my neck.

She fits against me perfectly. Once I get a taste, my hunger for her is insatiable. I kiss her deeper, lifting her off her feet so we’re molded together. She slides her fingers into my hair.

“Darling, no!”

Olivia’s yell as she runs across the family room brings me back to reality and I set Suki down, her expression a little dazed.

When we look over at Darling, he has one of my new ties hanging from his mouth.

Of course. He’s ruined three pairs of my shoes and destroyed the carpet in two rooms of the house. Might as well cockblock me, too.