Page 27

27

EMMETT

I ’ve thought about that night for weeks.

What would have happened if I had stayed there. If I had closed the rest of the distance between us and just did what I wanted.

But my head and my heart have been at war, and no decision has felt easy or correct.

A large, looming part of me wants to move on. I want to live my life and figure out who I am from here. Something changed within me that night at the sound bath. Something was let go.

The other part of me never wants to move on. I feel like letting go is forgetting, and I don’t want to forget.

I had an entire life before football. A wife. A family. And every since that night I lost McKenna I’ve been missing a chunk of my soul. A piece of my heart that I don’t have to give someone else.

As much as I desperately want to find happiness in my life, I know that the higher you climb, the further the fall. The more I love someone, the more I have to lose.

I survived it once, but I’m not sure I can survive it twice.

The weather is getting colder as the fall sets in. Heidi and I find ourselves in an easy game of tag. We barely speak. Instead, the second she’s done her shifts with Juniper she tags me in, and I begin mine when she goes home. We stopped our morning runs, and I actually miss them a lot.

Her absence doesn’t prevent me from thinking about what could have been if I wasn’t as closed off. If I didn’t harbor my pain like impenetrable armor.

But the problem is, it’s not impenetrable.

I’ll tell myself that until I’m blue in the face.

Until I’m exhausted with my own thoughts.

Until I’m ready to give up.

But it’s not. Because there’s a chink in my armor. I just don’t want to acknowledge it.

I spend a lot of my nights laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling thinking about the view from above Heidi, watching as she fell onto the hood of my car, her red hair splayed out on the black paint, her green eyes staring up at me.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t wish she was in my bed.

Or that she didn’t wrap her legs around my waist.

Or that she didn’t act sooner or close the distance completely.

Work has been fine. We’ve been winning games, coach has laid off us… some, and the guys are great.

Juniper, on the other hand, has been a terror.

The latest has been a call for her school letting me know that she just got in trouble for attempting to bring a snake inside.

I don’t know what to do. I feel completely unprepared for teaching these kinds of lessons and clearly, I’m not good at it.

It’s been a long Wednesday, and when I get home I immediately sink into the couch, throwing my arms over the cushions.

Which happens to also be the precise moment Heidi makes an appearance.

The first thing I should have seen the second she walks through my front door should be the creature in her arms, but instead, my gaze is firmly on the way the Thing’s gross little claws pull her shirt down just enough to reveal the top of the lacy maroon bra under her v-neck, his body held tight to her chest just enough for the curve of her breast to be pronounced.

My mouth runs dry. I can’t seem to shake the thoughts from my head, and I hate myself for it.

Heidi pauses upon seeing me, her eyes giant as she slowly looks down at the thing in her arms.

And I’m shaken from my haze.

“What the fuck is that?” I yell, leaping up.

She shoots me an abashed smile.

“This is Theodore,” she informs me, holding him out in front of her.

His little feet dangle in the air as his black, beady eyes look into my soul. His rat tail curls upward.

“That is not Theodore,” I correct her, backing up.

She looks at him and, to my horror, kisses his head. “That’s his name!”

“How do you even know it’s a man?”

“Doesn’t he look like a little man?”

“Heidi,” I deadpan.

“Okay well I haven’t actually checked,” she admits with an eye roll. “He just looks like a little man.”

“A little man?” my voice comes out a pitch too high. “That’s a rodent, Heidi.”

“Theodore is a marsupial , Emmett. It’s basically like me holding a kangaroo.”

I feel like I’m going insane. “Heidi that’s possibly the last animal you want to hold . How is that supposed to make me feel any better?”

But in the worst possible scenario, Juniper walks out from her bedroom. “Oh you have Theodore?” she asks Heidi.

Heidi grins in response, holding him up “He’s gotten even friendlier.”

I feel the color drain from my face. “Friendlier?”

“Well,” Heidi says, tucking him back into her arms like a god damn baby. “They’re not as mean as everyone says.” I open my mouth to argue, but she cuts me off. “And they don’t carry diseases! Did you know that, Emmett? That’s amazing!”

“What are you doing?” I hiss, gripping the back of the couch.

“Well,” she kisses his head again and I want to gag. “He got caught in that hailstorm the other day and was scared. We took him in and warmed him up.” Heidi smiles. “He wasn’t a huge fan of us at first but he’s been so friendly.”

“And he’s in my house.”

“Yes.”

I blink at her, trying to figure out the best response to having this… thing in my house.

He turns his head back to Heidi, setting it carefully on the curve of her breast.

“Is that thing sleeping?” I ask incredulously.

Heidi looks down, her smile widening as she cradles the thing tighter. “I think so. He’s adorable, Emmett. I really think you’ll grow to love him.”

Before I can say anything, Juniper is in front of her, petting his fuzzy little head.

Fuzzy little head, god dammit Emmett, get your shit together.

“Okay this is a little out of hand,” I say finally. “I assume you guys are going to ask about keeping him and the answer is no.”

Juniper’s eyes whip toward me. “Dad.”

“Juni.”

“Look at him.”

I do. His little ears twitch.

“I don’t think it’s legal to have him,” I try.

Juniper and Heidi look at each other.

“He can live outside,” Juniper says.

I throw up my hands. “Wasn’t he outside when you found him?”

“You could build him a house.”

“That would be owning him.”

“Dad.”

“Juniper.”

“Puh-lease.”

No matter what I say or do, this is going to end badly for me.

Sighing, I watch as Juniper turns to Heidi, reaching her small hand up to run her fingers through… Theodor’s… fur, his small beady eyes closing at the contact.

Heidi’s bottom lip pops out in a pout as she watches, her eyes finding mine across the room.

“Fine,” I break. “But we’re making a home for him outside. That thing isn’t living in here, and you guys need to be quiet about it, got it?”

The two women nod, their smiles big enough it seems like they could fall off. “Thank you dad!” Juniper screams as she rushes me, throwing her arms around my leg.

I wasn’t expecting to spend my day going to the hardware store and holed up in my garage building a god damn house for an opossum.

“Do you need help?” Heidi skips down the stairs into the garage, a faint smile still on her lips from getting her way.

“I feel like you’ve helped enough,” I mutter, drilling two pieces of wood together.

She falls silent, instead jumping up onto the work bench to watch me work. “What is this?”

“It’s an opossum house.”

“It doesn’t look like he can get in there very easily.”

I put my drill down, leaning against the bench myself. “That’s kind of the point. They need to be protected from predators.”

“So he doesn’t have a real entrance?”

I shake my head. “No, I have to make little notches going up to the entrance up top. He has to climb to get in.

Heidi bites her cheek. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“Heid, he’ll be safe.”

She raises a brow, a slow smile slinking across her lips. “Heid?”

I feel my face heat, and a heaviness settles on my shoulders. “What are we doing here, Heidi.”

She gestures to the drill. “Making an opossum house.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” It comes out like a whisper, as if I’m trying to convince myself that this conversation is even happening in the first place.

She shrugs, and in a move that I know I’m going to regret later, I close some of the distance between us, my fists resting on the surface on either side of her. She stares up at me, her eyes shining as they drift slowly down to my lips. “I’m not the one who runs away,” she whispers, her breath caressing my skin.

“But you want to.”

She shakes her head, her red hair falling into her face. “I think that’s what you tell yourself in order to sleep at night.”

“You have no idea how I sleep.”

She makes a face. “Like a baby, apparently.”

“How do you know?”

She smirks. “I may be shy,” she starts slowly. Her head tilts slightly as she holds my gaze. If it weren’t for the way her chest rises and falls with each breath that hits my skin, I’d think she was going wholly unaffected. “I may not even think I deserve you. But I don’t think it’s a secret that I wish I did.”

I shake my head, feeling almost annoyed that I have to say this. “You deserve everything you want.”

“And you don’t?”

I can’t say anything in response, the wind being knocked out of me.

Because I do want her.

I’ve wanted her ever since that summer night under the sunset.

I’ve wanted her so much that I ran away from her in a god damn bar instead of facing her.

But that doesn’t mean I can have her, and it doesn’t mean that I deserve her. Because in reality, whether she knows it or not, she deserves so much better than me and all my baggage, trauma, and hurt.

Heidi licks her lips. “I know that you wouldn’t sleep well at night if you let me in because I know how I love, Emmett. And in relationships I do know what I’m worth. And if you let me in,” she shrugs, “you would be thinking about me.”

“Who’s to say I haven’t been?” I say before I can stop myself.

She purses her lips, her eyes drifting down to mine again. “You would be kinder to yourself.”

My fists tighten.

Heidi shrugs. “All I’m saying is that one day I hope you let yourself be happy. You’re a good guy. You deserve it.”

With that, she places a hand on my chest, pushing me slightly back so she can jump down.

And she’s gone.

I’m left alone in the garage staring at this opossum house, realizing that she’s completely right.

But I don’t think what I think I deserve is the problem. It’s what I think I don’t deserve.

Everyone deserves someone to love them. They deserve everything they put out into the world. I had that once.

What I didn’t deserve is that happiness taken away from me once. No one deserves that pain, and it’s not something that everyone experiences, either.

But I did.

For whatever reason, I did.

I do deserve to find love again. I deserve to live a happy life. But life has already shown its cruel hand once, and I know with certainty that I won’t live through it twice.

And I don’t deserve that.