AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Isla?”
“I… um.”
“Fuck, Isla. We had a plan, don’t make me disappoint her.” I don’t want to be harsh with her fragile anxiety. This is new territory for me, however. And I sure as fuck don’t want to let my daughter down.
“Do you think I want to do that?” She gains back a little color on her cheeks as her temper ignites. Good. Maybe that’s the key, keep her mad and she forgets about whatever else she’s feeling.
“No, I don’t think that’s what you want. So, what’s the problem?”
“I’m fucking scared,” she whisper-shouts at me.
“How do we get past this?”
“I don’t know,” she says. She sounds defeated, like she’s battling something I can’t see, and she’s losing.
“What if you come?” This might be a horrible idea, but Sadie’s been wanting to sleep in her new room so badly. Besides, maybe this is a step in the right direction for us. We’ve been getting along fine but there’s always that edge of… something lingering below the ease we pretend to have.
“What?”
“Come with her,” I say. “You stay over, too. Try and let me handle everything that comes up without interfering, so you can see that I can do it. That I can keep her safe.” It’s a good idea. Even if having Isla sleep in my house turns me on in ways that it shouldn’t.
I’ve made love to her a hundred times. That’s not what we’d have now, though. It would be something more like hate sex and that thought has me fighting a stiffy.
“That seems… excessive.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes me feel stupid and childish, and like, I can’t let go.”
“If it will make you less stressed out about her spending time with me, then who cares if it seems stupid or silly?”
“I don’t like not having my shit together.”
“You never have,” I say. “We’re forever family because of our girl. That means I’m going to do what you need, too. If this is what that is, then let’s do it and not make a big deal out of it. Okay?”
Look at me being all grown up and shit.
She mulls it over, nibbling the inside of her lip.
“Just say okay, Cole. It’s not a big deal unless you make it one.”
“Okay,” she blurts out. “I’m sorry, I’m just nervous. But, okay.”
“Don’t worry about it. Go pack up a bag, grab our daughter and head over.” She nods and rushes out the door.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” The familiar deep voice comes from a short distance behind me.
“Only time will tell, I guess, Coach. I’m not going to do anything to hurt my daughter,” I say, turning around.
“What about mine?”
“I don’t want to hurt her, either.”
“You sure about that?” Coach glares at me, daring me to lie to him. He’ll know if I do, I was never able to hide anything from him.
“Some days, it’s difficult to not be angry with her. Sadie is amazing and I’ve missed so much. All her firsts; steps, words, her birthday… I should have experienced those with her. I should have been there when she was born,” I say, honestly choking up a bit on the words. “So, yeah, some days are fucking hard. But at the end of it all, I still have a lot of love for Isla. I’m trying to work through everything, same as she is.”
“I probably never told you, but I missed Isla’s birth. She came two weeks early and I was in Montreal. Marney gave birth sometime in the second period. I hated everything about it and held on to that guilt for a long time. Marney, of course, wasn’t fussed about it at all. This career can be hard on families.”
