Page 43 of Somewhere Only We Know (Healing in Cincy #4)

“She’s–” Kayla begins, but pauses to find the words.

“How has it been? Really? I don’t want some fabricated story to spare my feelings. I want the truth, Kayla.”

Kayla’s eyes drop and my body tenses because I know whatever she says won’t make this any easier. “It’s been hard, Nate. She shielded most of her hurt from me when I was younger. But I lost my dad. I lost one of the men I looked up to the most.”

I swallow hard, because the implication that Kayla lost me too is not lost on me.

“I could hear her. At night. Sometimes in the morning, too. Our rooms might have been on opposite ends of the house, but her crying still made it through the walls. And it didn’t get better once you were drafted, Nate. You were gone, Daddy died, and Mom wouldn’t even look at me.”

Even I can admit that it’s hard to look at Kayla.

She looks just like Dad, but with softer, feminine features.

But she’s still my little sister. And she lost someone during the important years of her life.

She didn’t have him to watch her go to prom, or graduate high school.

He won’t be there to walk her down the aisle.

“Kayla, I’m sorry.”

Her eyes are glass with tears and she shakes her head. “Don’t do that. You had dreams to chase, Nate. And we are so proud of you. But it doesn’t ease the sting of you leaving us behind to chase those dreams.”

Jax runs a soothing hand up and down my arm.

But I can’t feel it. My body has gone completely numb and I have no clue the steps to take to thaw.

I guess I built them up in my mind. Thinking they were healing just fine without me.

When they would visit, we’d laugh and reminisce on old times.

But I can see how much of a mask that was.

Kayla stands up and I must wear the confusion on my face. “I have to get to work. When are you two leaving?”

“We’ll be here for the week,” Jax answers for me because suddenly my mouth is filled with sand.

My sister nods and says something. But I can’t hear. It’s like I’m underwater and generally not attached to my body. The sound of a door closing finally breaks me out of the haze and I look around seeing it’s just Jax and I. Her eyes are red from crying and I hate that she cried at all.

“I’m sorry.” I tell her.

“No. Baby don’t do that. We knew this was a possibility.”

I gently wipe the tears that have pooled under her eyes with my thumbs and pull her into me. “I had no idea it was this bad. If I’d have known…”

“You would have what? Given up a dream to be here for your family? While I commend that, you would have ended up resenting them for it.”

“The way my mom resents me?” I spit at Jax and I already feel bad for saying it that way.

“She’s sad, Nate. She will always be sad. And people lash out when they’re sad.” Jax says it with such conviction. Like she’s been the one to last out when sad. The realization that I may have been the cause of that is sobering.

I nod. “I’m gonna go see if she’ll talk to me.”

“Okay. I’ll be right here.”

I stand up and wipe my hands off on my jeans.

Walking back down the front hallway, I turn right and take the stairs to head to my mom’s room.

Pictures line the walls. From every stage of my life, my parents' life together, me and Kayla; it’s all here.

I keep walking until I get to my mom’s closed bedroom door and knock lightly.

“Mom?”

Nothing except the sound of the ice maker downstairs dropping ice and the sound of a car with too loud music driving past the house.

“Mom? Will you open the door?” I knock again and wait on my side hoping she’ll let me in. But after standing here for ten minutes with her clearly ignoring me, I give up. “We’ll be here all week.”

I turn around and head back down the stairs.

Jax is waiting in the foyer with my coat in her hands.

Wordlessly I take it from her and put it on before I’m ushering us out of the house.

If my mom is sad, then I’m sad. She’s the only parent I have left and she chooses to behave like this.

I help Jax in the car and round to the driver's seat.

With one destination in mind, I start the car and peel out of the neighborhood.

When we pull up to the cluster of baseball fields, fields I played and grew to love the game, Jax and I get out and brave the cold. This is the one place I can go and not think. Or think until I figure it out.

I help Jax onto the bleachers and take the spot next to her. The cold metal seeps through my jeans and if I can feel it, I know she can too.

I lean forward, propping my elbows on my knees as I look out over the empty baseball diamond.

I blink fast, trying to keep the tears from coming but I fail.

The first one falls and I quickly try to wipe it away.

But then another falls and I lose the battle completely.

Jax takes me into her arms, letting me fall apart as I grieve the man I lost and the mother who refused to acknowledge me mere minutes ago.