I shake my head.
“How old was she?” Presley asks.
“Uh, I was twelve, so my sister was nine.” I set our hands on my thighs. “Sunday came and went. Then another week. Dad kept telling us she would be back when she had gotten enough rest.”
“That’s awful,” she says, but not with pity, more like she’s hurt on my behalf. “Did she ever come back?”
“Once, but she was too strung out, so my dad didn’t let her stay, and he wasn’t about to let her take us. That was the last time we ever saw her. ” I swallow. “He had always wanted us with him full-time anyway, so we just all stopped pretending after a while that it was just a weekend visit.”
“So, he raised you on his own?”
“Yeah,” I say with a smile. Sad and grateful, all at once. “He was an awesome dad. He wasn’t perfect, but he was ours. He always forgot school picture day and knew how to make exactly four meals on rotation. But he always showed up for us. He worked himself to the bone, would come home tired, but still helped us with homework, still learned how to braid Savannah’s hair after a family friend showed him how.”
Presley smiles. “He sounds like he was a great dad.”
“You would have loved him.”
“I’m sure I would have.” The certainty in her voice hits me deep.
I nod and keep talking.
“He died three weeks before I left for college. Heart attack.”
She turns fully toward me now, one arm along the back of the couch. “Saint …”
“He was only forty-four. One minute, he was in the garage, helping me organize my gear, and the next …” I pause. “That was it.”
Her hand slides over mine. Warm and steady.
I look down at our hands and flip mine to twine our fingers together.
“Savannah was only fifteen.” I clear my throat. “I was all she had, so I didn’t want to leave her.”
Presley’s thumb moves across my knuckles. “What happened then? How did you make it work?”
“A family friend took her in,” I say. “One of my dad’s friends from high school. They were good people. They had a safe house, good rules, and all that.” I release a breath. “But she was a kid, you know? And I was across multiple states, trying to act like football mattered the same as it had a month before I left.”
“I’m sure it didn’t.”
“Not until I met you.” I lift a shoulder and give her a soft smile, then let go of her hand and run mine through my hair.
“I think that’s why my sister and I are so close. It’s kind of always been the two of us. She was my purpose, my responsibility, and I never wanted her to feel like I was abandoning her.”
Presley reaches for my hand again. “Because that’s the kind of man you are. You always put everyone before yourself. And you love hard.”
I look at her and see her face soften with understanding. She doesn’t look at me like I’m broken or like she feels sorry for me. I don’t want her to feel sorry for me.
“Yeah,” I say quietly, “I do.”
She gives me a gentle smile, but her gaze is still focused on me. “You’ve never told me any of this before. In all the years we’ve known each other, I never knew the full story. And when I met you your freshman year, I would have never guessed you had just lost your father.”
I shrug half-heartedly. “It was my way of coping, I guess. It hurt too much to talk about, and the guilt over leaving my sister would have eaten me alive if I’d thought about it too often. It was safer for me to compartmentalize it and focus on football.”
“I can understand that. I’m just wondering why you never told me.”
I turn my head to look at her briefly, then at our joined hands. “I’m not really sure. Maybe, deep down, I thought if you knew the whole story, it might change the way you saw me. You have a family with strong bonds, not to mention your wealth. We come from very different worlds.”
“Saint,” she sighs.
