“No one is keeping you here.” He looks at my mother and then at my father. When they don’t move, he laughs. “I’m here with Dani because I’m in a new season of my life. Today is opening day.”
My eyes blur again and I lean my head against him. I breathe him in, all expensive cologne and male testosterone, and feel safe in the midst of my parents for the first time. For once, I don’t have to battle them. Their ferocity isn’t aimed at me. He’s protecting me and it feels better than I even imagined it would.
“The trophies in the guest bedroom don’t talk back. They don’t keep me company or warm at night. They don’t play catch and they don’t drink coffee with me in the morning.”
He looks down at me and chuckles at the smile on my face. “A mess,” he whispers, swiping at my tears. “A total mess.” I giggle as he kisses my forehead and looks back to my parents.
“You’re just like Ryan,” my father blows. “A kid born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You have no drive. No—”
“Say what you want about me,” Lincoln booms over top my dad, “but don’t talk about her. You know less about her than you know about me.”
“She’s our daughter. What in the hell are you talking about?”
“You can rattle off my statistics, my contract terms, my health report. What do you know about Dani?”
They look at Lincoln like he’s just asked them the equation for world peace. Their silence is so loud, the lack of response deafening.
“If I’m like her,” Lincoln says, “then my mom will be proud. In my family, love isn’t predicated on wins and losses, fame or persona. It’s about who we are as people. What we are all about when all that shit is stripped away.”
“You know nothing about Ryan.” My mother eyes me like I’m an inconvenience. “You need to focus on what matters, Lincoln.”
“I am.”
My father eyes me with the hollowness I’ve come to expect. There’s no love in his gaze, no adoration. No humor or pride like I’ve seen in the Landry family. No empathy like I see in Lincoln’s eyes. “I hope you’re happy, Ryan. You’ve just fucked up this man’s life beyond repair.” He jerks my mother along as they stride towards the front door, anger seeping off of him as his hand hits the knob.
“She will be happy. I’ll see to it.” Lincoln’s voice is loud and clear in the foyer as we step to the side and let them pass. “You can help that out too by not coming around again.”
“You will not tell me what I’m going to do, with my own child at that!” My dad turns on his heel and faces Lincoln, his face red.
“I’m not a child!” I shake off Lincoln’s grip, and for the first time in my life, face my father head-on. “I’m a grown woman, one that has nothing in common with you but some DNA.”
“Listen to you,” Dad seethes. “We haven’t seen you in God knows when and you talk to us like this!”
Lincoln’s hand finds me and he gently, yet forcefully, moves me back. He steps between my father and I. “You need to leave. Now.”
“We—”
“Now,” Lincoln repeats, a vein in his temple starting to pulse. “You will not stand in front of me and talk to her like that.”
“And what are you going to do about it, you little punk?”
“There’s nothing more tempting right now than slamming my fist in your face. But I won’t do that . . . because of her. She’ll just have to deal with it, and you’ve given her a lifetime of shit to work through, you fucking assholes.”
My mother gasps. My father shakes from the wrath radiating off him. Lincoln stands calm and cool.
It’s a scene from a movie, one that makes me swoon when I watch it on the big screen. I’m too caught up in the moment to do much but watch with an open mouth.
“Leave,” Lincoln tells them, flicking the door handle. It swings open, the early afternoon air rustling through the house. “Now. And don’t come back. Whatever obligations you feel towards Dani, consider them taken over by me. She doesn’t need you. Now go.”
My father steps to Lincoln and they square off, their noses nearly touching. Lincoln doesn’t flinch. My father shakes harder until my mother wraps her hands around his bicep and guides him out the door, but not before giving me one final disapproving look.
The door shuts. My shoulders fall with a release of years of stress evaporating. I collapse into Lincoln’s arms.
There are no tears, just an overwhelming sense of relief—that they’re gone. That I don’t feel picked apart. And that he’s here.
“Thank you,” I say into his shirt.
“Stop thanking me,” he chuckles, his body rumbling.
“God, this feels good.”
“I hope you mean that you’re in my arms . . .”
“That,” I giggle, pulling away to look at him, “but also that they’re gone. I’ve never stood up to them. And I guess I didn’t this time either, but you did. For me.”
“For you.” His eyes are so kind, brimming with emotion that it makes my knees feel weak. “I have something to show you.” When I do, I see he’s extending a set of papers towards me. “My contract.”
“Congratulations,” I utter. It pains me to say that. I’d hoped he had walked away from it all, but seeing the sheets in his hand, it’s obvious he re-signed with the Arrows. I want to take the crisp white pages and burn them and then take the ashes and dilute them in water and flush them down the toilet. Those fucking papers are destroying my life.
“Thanks.” He peers into the living room. “What’s up with all the boxes?”
Stepping away, I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I can’t stay here. I’m putting my notice in on Monday.”
“Where you going?”
“Boston. My friend Macie lives there and has a job lined up for me.”
“Boston? It’s too fucking cold in Boston.”
I pull away and head to the kitchen, needing some kind of buffer between me and him. At least in there, I can separate us with the table so I can think straight.
“I was thinking something the other direction,” he says, following me. “How about Savannah? I could get you a job there, if that’s what you want.”
Sighing, I walk around the table and look at him over the top of it. “I don’t need you to get me a job.”
“I know you don’t. I’m trying to sell you on an idea here, Ryan.”
“I don’t know where this leaves us now that you’re staying in Memphis. I mean, on one hand, you’re still here so that makes it easier. But on the other, you’re still you and I’m still . . . me. Aren’t we going to be in this same position sooner or later?” I shrug sadly. “I can’t walk this line, knowing what’s coming, Landry. It has to be all or nothing with you.”
Those beautiful green eyes of his sparkle as his hands find the back of a chair in front of him. He leans his weight on it and smiles. “I pick all.” It’s a simple answer, one that throws me. He slides a stack of papers across the table. “Which is why I was thinking Savannah. But if you have another suggestion, I’m all ears. Just nowhere north of here. I don’t do winter.”
“What?”
He motions towards the papers. “Look at those.”
Everything inside me stills. “Landry . . .”