Page 48 of Honey Undone (The Hornets Nest #5)

JENSEN

A present

W e had gotten the photos back from the photographer for the new calendar, and the shot of Van and I was insanely embarrassing, but Adeline would die for it. Van hung over me with two water bottles squirting it into my upturned mouth, both of us drenched in water and covered in sand.

I’m printing this and hanging it on my wall.

Don’t you dare.

“Mom?” I dropped my baseball bag at the front door, shoving my phone away and wandered through the house exhausted from the midday practice before tomorrow's series started. It was going to be one of the hardest ones we’d have to play this season, but we all believed that if we overcame this, pulled out a series win.

The rest of the playoffs would be a wash.

“Here!” Mom yelled, from somewhere in the house.

“You know this house is too big if I can’t find you after searching three rooms,” I said, finding her on the floor in her office surrounded by paperwork and two open laptops. “What are you doing?”

“Running a billion-dollar hotel franchise, Kai,” she grumbled, flipping over her phone when it started to ring.

“Not important?” I asked, lowering to the ground, being careful to avoid all her work, and sitting with her. I’d spent years of my childhood doing my schoolwork on the floors of hotels and offices across from her while she ran her business. It had always been our time together.

“Not more important than you,” she said, looking up from her work. “Shouldn’t you be at physio?” She asked, brushing her hands through her hair.

“Doc moved me around to make space for Josh before tomorrow's game. I’m low priority,” I responded with a soft smile.

“Your knee hasn’t been sore?” She asked like I knew she would. I shook my head and it was the truth. Three years ago I hurt it playing recreation hockey and it never healed properly. We only did therapy to keep it loose for ball.

“What’s with the small talk?” I tapped her foot with mine.

“I can’t ask my son normal questions now?” She tilted her head to the side.

“When have you ever?” I laughed leaning back on my arms.

“Don’t give me attitude boy,” she scolded with a soft laugh. “I should be asking you what’s with the impromptu visit.”

“I can’t visit my mom now?” I countered and she threw a pen at me. “Alright, alright. I need to hash something out.”

“I feel used,” Mom smiled but rose off the floor to grab an old notebook from the top drawer of her desk.

“We haven’t pulled this out in a while.” She waved it at me and sank back to the carpet.

Mom’s approach to a problem was always logic, while Dad was the guy I went to when I wanted a yes or some good old toxic positivity.

“Last time was when I had to make a decision about what I wanted to play,” I said.

“Hockey or baseball,” she said, flipping it open. “I’m glad it was baseball, hockey gear stinks and you always have such a lovely tan.”

“Okay, this time it’s a little more serious than a tan,” I sighed.

“Is this about the very pretty, very intelligent girl you brought into my house last Sunday?” Mom scribbled across the top of the page.

“You can’t write stuff until I tell you the problem,” I scoffed and she just raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean it is about her but…”

“If you’re just about finished tip-toeing around the conversation…” she teased. “What’s wrong?”

“I like her.” I shrugged and it caused her to laugh .

“Is that all?” She teased.

“Come on, Mom,” I wet my bottom lip. “I mean like it started because she’s hot—”

“Malachi,” she huffed.

“It’s true, you’ve seen her…”

“Choose a different adjective,” she said calmly and went back to writing notes.

“She’s beautiful,” I said, my tone softening and not my choice, it was something that happened when I allowed myself to think about her like that. Beautiful was correct but it was a heavy word in my mind associated with heavy feelings. “We were having fun, we’re supposed to be having fun.”

“You brought your… booty call to my house?” Mom looked up at me and I threw my hands up in surrender. “You are not my child.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I disown you,” she joked.

“It started like that,” I reminded her. “I think we both know it’s not that anymore considering I'm sitting on your floor.”

“So what is the problem, because all I’m hearing is you’re toying with a very beautiful, incredibly intelligent girl's heart and if that's the case, I’m closing this notebook and beating you over the head with it,” she said, and that time she wasn’t joking.

“Keep writing,” I laughed, scooting back on the carpet. “She plays rugby and she's good Mom, really good. It’s almost scary how natural she is at it.”

“More problems, less compliments, Kai.” Mom rolled her hand in a circular motion to hurry me up with an annoying smirk on her face.

“The problem is she got scouted, for another professional team.”

Mom looked up at me finally and the humor faded away.

I wasn’t stupid and the reason I wasn’t was because neither was she.

We both knew what that meant and I watched as she put together the pieces of my crumbling heart.

Up to that point I hadn’t been brave enough to say it out loud, silently sleeping with it to try to get over the sting of her possibly leaving but telling my Mom.

The look on her face. No glue, cement or nails could hold me together anymore.

I loved Adeline Sarah, and I would be an idiot if I ignored it any longer .

“So your problem is, your casual fling—” Mom rolled the words off her tongue and they hit me like a dagger. “—Is traded out of Harbor.”

“That casual fling is going to fly out of Rhode Island with my heart in her back pocket.” I dropped my head to stare at my hands.

“It sounds like you’ve already come up with a solution,” Mom said after a long beat and I looked up at her confused. I had definitely not solved anything… what the fuck was she on about? “Letting her go, being sad about it and not doing anything to stop it.”

Oh, “Sarcasm, thanks Mom.” I sighed.

“Malachi, over the course of your life you have never quit anything without a serious conversation and this notebook.” She held it up, “it’s got notes in it all the way back from kindergarten when you decided that soccer wasn’t the sport for you.

It took us two weeks to decide that you wanted to quit. ”

“This is different,” I said.

“Exactly, and whoever is sitting in front of me right now is not my son. Because he would never just give up on something because it was too hard.” Mom pushed. “What are the pros of her leaving?”

I swallowed down the urge to argue, “She’s been working toward this for her entire career, it’s all she’s wanted. It’s her dream.”

“And cons?”

“It means I’m not,” my tone was heavy and cold. I was upset but not with Mom, with my own foolish heart for getting us into an impossible situation.

“Give me a real con and stop being dramatic.” Her smile was soft and encouraging.

“It’s in California,” I said and ran my hand through my hair.

“Long-distance relationships can work, Kai. They do all the time,” she was quick to swoop in with an answer.

The issue was, we couldn’t do long distance.

Even now my fingers were tingling, absolutely itching to get my hands on her.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since I saw her last and all I wanted to do was be close to her.

Facetime and weekend visits would be hell.

“Not for us,” I said because I knew .

Mom didn’t flinch at the conviction, her dark eyes watching me carefully before she spoke again, “I need you to be very honest with me for a second,” she said and I didn’t even blink, my entire body stilled. “Do you love her?”

I didn’t say a word, saying them out loud would make them real, true…

tangible. Right now they were just words bouncing around in my mind like a rogue tennis ball.

But they were honest, raw and honest. Fear wasn’t an emotion I experienced often, I just found the adrenaline in every scary situation, but to love someone? That was fucking terrifying.

“You know what you need to do,” Mom said after a beat.

There were unspoken ideas ricocheting around us.

“I can’t just leave,” I said after mulling on it for a while.

“Why not?” Mom chuckled. “You’re taking one class a semester to play baseball, maybe it’s time you graduate for real and find a new thing to love .”

“Aren’t Mom’s supposed to warn their sons against chasing girls across the country or something?” I said, prompting her to give me a reason for why I was being dumb and reckless.

“None of this,” she looked around at the office, “would exist if your father had listened to his mother when she told him exactly that. He followed after me because I knew my dream, and I knew how to get my hands on it. There’s nothing wrong with your dream being Adeline.

You’ve never been one for staying put in anything, you love what you love, and I’m proud to say that you love with everything you have.

” She set the notebook down. “Look at your time with the Hornets. You only had one reason to take more classes this year and it was simply because you loved playing with them. It had nothing to do with baseball. You just wanted to be around your friends.”

There’s nothing wrong with your dream being Adeline.

“What the hell would I do in California?” I laughed, it was ridiculous to even be entertaining the idea.

Mom looked around at her office with a bewildered look on her face.

“Oh, yeah. Right…” The new hotel in San Francisco.

It had always been the plan to follow her into the business, it wasn’t exactly my dream to wear a suit every day but I knew the ins and outs and had more degrees than I needed to be qualified to do it .

“You’re too smart to be this slow, Kai.” She smiled, leaning forward to pat my face with her hand. “You’re looking at the situation like it's the end all, but it’s not. Nothing in life is that serious unless you make it so.”

“I’m serious about this Mom.” I said, practically cutting her off.

“Then do something about it.” She nodded and I knew that was the end of the conversation.