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I take a seat on the park bench after waving at the woman. She waves back but gives me distance, which I appreciate. I’m not really in a talkative mood. I like watching Caleb chase the little boy around to the stairs, climb up, and then slip down the slide. They go one after the other, over and over again before settling in the grass babbling to each other.
I grab my phone out of my pocket, telling myself I’m going to check my texts, but I actually click on the maps icon, typing in the address to the Cahill Center and checking to see how long it would take me to drive there from Beverly Hills. Half an hour. That’s nothing.
I consider it, and it fills me with a complicated combination of anxiety and excitement. I stuff my phone back into the pocket of my jeans and lean forward, dropping my forearms on my thighs.
It would be insane, right?
Showing up to see her?
What the fuck would I say?
I laugh out loud to myself, and the woman looks at me from across the playground like I’m utterly crazy.
Guess what? Apparently I am. Because fuck. I’m doing it.
I just have to figure out how.
I can’t drive over to see Raelynn right now on a whim. For one, I have Caleb with me. I haven’t thought about how I want to introduce him to women I’m seeing—I’ve never had to deal with that issue—but it’s not the sort of thing I want to spring on him, or Raelynn. He shouldn’t be involved when I go to meet her for the first time. Second, I have to contend with my celebrity. As much as I wish I could, I can’t just walk freely onto a college campus. Not even my security detail would be able to keep the crowds at bay.
In Pine Hill, I could get away with pretending to be a normal person, but in Los Angeles, there’s no way. Maybe if I dropped my security, I could blend in better, but then I’d be on my own, and things tend to escalate quickly around excited fans no matter how well meaning they are.
I could never admit it aloud because it would be misprinted and misinterpreted a thousand different ways, but at this point in my career, more than appreciating my fame, I feel imprisoned by it. Every simple act from going to the grocery store to running through a drive-through line is impossible. I can’t live outside of a tight set of parameters, and part of me wonders if that’s why Texas was so memorable. With Raelynn, it was like I could press the reset button. To her, I was just Ben, and looking back, those few weeks seem too good to be true, like maybe it was all just a dream. I want to press the issue. I want to see her now, here, in California.
The fact that I can’t just drop everything and go find her, talk to her—hell, just see her—makes me all the more eager to do so.
I’m forced to sit on the idea. I hang with Caleb at the park the rest of the morning, and we head back to eat the lunch Donna makes us. After, I go in to watch film and run drills with my team, and then I make it home in time to tuck Caleb into bed. While I sit at my dining table, eating alone, I think about my options for contacting Raelynn. I can’t drop the idea of seeing her.
I let two days pass, play and win another game against Sacramento Tuesday night, drop Caleb with Shelby and Mike Wednesday afternoon, and then tell Duncan he and I will take my car out the following morning, just him and me.
“Where to?”
“Caltech campus.”
“Alright. I’ll have Lee and Nikko tail us.”
I frown. “That’s fine, but I’d like them to stay in their car once we arrive.”
“We’ll have to see what the situation’s like. I’m sure I could be more helpful if you told me what you’re planning. Will you meet with the coach or players? Is this a university event? I didn’t see it on the schedule.”
He thinks this is basketball-related, and that’s fine. I’m not prepared to tell him the truth. It’s not a well-formed plan. In fact it’s…mostly idiotic, and I don’t need him to confirm that for me.
“It’s personal.”
He nods, understanding. “Then Lee and Nikko will remain in a car close by. Let me know when you’d like to leave.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Raelynn
After Professor Olmsted’s class on Thursday, I have a dozen students block my way to the door with questions. Most of them would be answered if only they’d read the syllabus, but I feel bad saying that. The sheer desperation in their eyes is a familiar feeling for me, so I’ll respond to each inquiry, but I’ll do it while on the move. It’s lunch time and I’m starving, and I want to get some fresh air. I’ll be stuck in the lab all afternoon, hunched over a computer.
