"She doesn't know I work for the Bears, Declan." I let out a hollow little laugh. "She doesn't know I work insports.At all."
There. It's out.
The pathetic, humiliating truth. A grown woman who can't tell her own mother what she does for a living.
"My whole life, it was the same thing.Why can't you be more like your sisters, Josie. Why do you have to be so different." I do the voice. That clipped, disappointed tone carved into my bones since childhood. "And my sisters did everythingright.Married. Kids. Big fancy houses. Book clubs and Facebook posts with exactly the right number of exclamation points."
I take a long drink.
Declan just sits there, listening as he shakes his head.
"Jesus, Josie."
"And she's not evenwrongthat I'm different." The words are coming faster now, spilling out of a wound I've kept stitched shut for years. "I am. I always have been. I was the girl who'd rather memorize draft stats than learn a smoky eye. The one who skipped the mall to watch tapes of old playoff games. And every single person in my life made me feel like that was aflaw.Like there was something broken in me that had to be fixed before anyone could love me."
The room goes quiet, just the soft hush of the ocean against the glass.
"Everyone except my dad."
Declan shifts beside me, the leather creaking under his weight. "What happened to him?"
"He died." My voice goes strange and flat, the way it always does when I have to say this. "It was sudden. A heart attack. He was… he was fixing the garage door. Just an ordinary Tuesday. He'd called me that morning, and we talked for like twenty minutes." I press my lips together. "By that afternoon he was gone. No warning. No goodbye. Nothing. One day he's there, calling me Jojo, cheering me on no matter what I did, and the next..."
The tears spill over before I can stop them.
Declan sets down his drink.
He doesn't sayI'm sorry.He doesn't fumble through some hollow line about how it'll get better.
He just reaches out, wraps one massive arm around me, and pulls me into his chest.
"My mom blamed it on the stress." I wipe at my face. "And because I was closest to him, it was likeIwas somehow part of that. And I've spent eight years trying to prove that his belief in me wasn't a waste. That I was worth all those nights in the basement. And I still can't even tell her I did it."
His chin comes to rest gently against the top of my head as I press my wet face into his shirt.
"She's missing it," he says, his voice a low rumble I feel through his chest. "You know that, right? Every brilliant fucking thing you do, Jose… she's missing all of it. She's missingyou."
I shudder against him, a fresh wave of tears cresting.
"That's the saddest thing about parents," he goes on, his hand moving slow up and down my spine. "Sometimes they think they're protecting you. They tell themselves they're doing theright thing. And all they actually do is make it worse. They build this whole story about what you're supposed to be, and then they can't see you standing right in front of them being somethingbetter."
I go still.
Because there's something in the way he says it, with thatedgeunderneath that sounds almost likeanger.It makes me sit back and think…
He's not only talking about my mother.
Is it possible that somewhere behind those stormy blue eyes, he knowsexactlywhat it feels like to be failed by someone? Someone who was supposed tolove you?
But before I can chase the thought, he pulls me back into his chest.
"Come here," he murmurs. "You know what I think?"
"What?"
"Your dad saw it," he says quietly. "He saw exactly who you were gonna be. And I'd bet everything I have that wherever he is, he's losing his goddamn mind right now. Screaming louder than your friends. Prouder than anyone in that whole building."
A sob breaks loose, and I press my face into his shirt again.
