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Chapter Fifteen
Malcolm
“Merry Christmas, man.”
I accept the small glass of whiskey Jacks hands me, tapping my glass to his before he sprawls on the other end of the couch.
The house is clean and quiet around us, everyone disappearing to their own beds an hour ago. I’m all that’s left, because I’m bunking in the guest room.
“Where’s your bride? Shouldn’t you be toasting her?” I give a suggestive wiggle of my eyebrows.
His grin is lightning quick. “She asked for an hour alone.”
“You really gonna give her sixty minutes when you haven’t seen her for six weeks?”
He shrugs, sipping from his glass. “I’m planning on having her for the next sixty years, so I can wait a little longer.”
“Christ, you’re getting soft.” I look pointedly toward his anatomy before swallowing back my drink. Jacks just flips me off good naturedly.
“That was quite a move you pulled before dinner. I thought you were going to lose your footing and make sure both of you were in casts.”
“It wasn’t the steadiest I’ve ever been,” I say.
Jacks doesn’t comment. Unlike me, he’s patient. I rarely talk, and when I do, it’s usually to tell someone else what I think about their decisions, not to spill my own guts. If our places were reversed, and they have been, I would be all over his shit right now, asking him what he’s been doing, what that little show was about tonight. And then I would tell him what I thought about it, because I don’t really believe in holding back.
When it comes to other people.
When it comes to my own life…shit, I kind of wish Jacks was more like me at the moment so I had something else to focus on, like being pissed at him for interfering. As if he knows this, he just looks around, sipping his drink, both of us quiet and lost in our heads, me staring at the muted television while I pretend to be paying attention, him at everything.
He’s been gone for four to six weeks, home for one since the fall. Isa does her best to fly and meet him once a month, but he’s never in one place for long, following the Street League schedule, along with his Sponsorship and endorsement schedules, so it’s easier for her to stay put and him to work San Diego into his itinerary.
Watching him look around at the house he’s built with his girl, noting the changes she’s made for Christmas, the decorations and tree and the things that make it theirs instead of just a house, I wonder what it would be like to leave all this behind so often.
I’ve been here less than a month, and already it’s getting harder to imagine picking up my wanderlust lifestyle. Even harder to imagine not being in the same place as Nala, just in case…something.
“How do you do it?”
I don’t take my eyes off the screen, but I see him focus on me out of my peripherals. “What?”
“Leave. Stay gone. Come home and not want to give everything else up so you never have to step foot out of this life, right here, again.”
Hunter doesn’t say anything for a second, and even though I knew he probably wouldn’t, I’m grinding my teeth together because I’ve suddenly realized I’m desperate for the answer. How does he just go, when everything he wants, when the one he needs and loves, is here, where he can’t see and hear and touch her every day.
Doesn’t that just fucking break him?
“Do you remember what you said to me late last spring? I asked you and Brooks how I was supposed to leave, and you told me ‘easy, you pack a bag’.” Jesus, he wants to throw that in my face now?
“Are you reminding me of this to point out I’m a dick, or is there an actual purpose to this reference?”
“Both.” I reach over and swipe at him with my fist, but he’s too quick and I’m too tired to give more than half effort. He stands, grabbing my glass and walking to the bar to pour us each one more. Handing me mine, he sits once again, propping his feet on the coffee table.
“In one sense, you were right,” he begins. “I do have to pack a bag and leave. I can’t think of everything I might miss, or everything that could go wrong when I’m not here to help, of every night I won’t be next to her.”
“So you just don’t think about it.”
He shakes his head, swallowing back whiskey. “Oh no, I think about it. Every day, every damn time I get on an airplane, or have to settle for FaceTime and sexting because there are literal continents between us.”
I think about the two things he just said. “Well thanks, Jacks, that was really fucking clear. Just pack a bag and don’t think about it, but you’re going to think about it every night.” I gulp whiskey, not even sure why I care about this. Nala and I forged a tentative truce tonight, when I trapped her in a bathroom and forced her to talk to me. It’s not like she’s begging me to stay…and I don’t have anyone else to stay for.
