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“Like that old lady and her grandkids.”
“Mrs. Heffernan, yeah,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I like putting families in homes. Or keeping families in their homes.”
“Which is the opposite of selfish and immature.”
“I like making homes for people, Zoe. That doesn’t mean that I want to be part of them,” I told her, raising my voice. She wasn’t taken aback, but I lowered it anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. I just…”
“Just tell me what’s going through your head, Carter,” she asked softly. “Tonight, I had to tell Rex that you weren’t going to teach him to play ball. I had to break his heart because of something you said, a promise you made that you didn’t intend on keeping. And then I come home and find you in my kitchen doing… all that. I just… I… I said it before, I know. Just… make it make sense.”
“Zoe…”
“I’m not trying to drag up your deep, dark secrets, Carter. I just want to understand.”
“Zoe, it’s not what you think.” I sighed. I did owe her an explanation for my behavior. “My father was a great father. Literally the best man I’ve ever met. All of my brothers and my sister will tell you the same thing. Best dad we could have asked for. He built the house I grew up in. He built his business from the ground up. He… he kept my whole family together. And when he died…”
Zoe said nothing, but she did reach over and place her hand on my shoulder. It shouldn’t have sent a shock through my system, but it did. I swallowed.
“When he died, my family fell apart,” I admitted.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… my brother Luke was off living with his ex-wife, but suddenly Elias was looking at schools out of state,” I told her. “Henry moved out the second he turned eighteen and hasn’t been back since. Max just got super withdrawn and pulled away from the family emotionally. And my youngest sister, fuck, we were all so wrapped up in our own shit that we barely noticed what she was doing.”
“What was she doing?”
“Amazing things, actually. She was killing it in school and was president of, like, seven clubs. Graduated first in her class. She started Yale last fall. But at the point in her life that she should’ve been celebrating that, we were just all… gone.”
“That’s really sad.
“I know.” I ran my hands through my hair. “The worst, though, was my mom. I mean, all my life, my mom was warm. Loving. Like, she gave everything for our family and gave her kids this perfect, beautiful life. But after my dad died, she just… she was never the same. She got really needy and bitter. She’d snap at me and my brothers over the slightest thing. She pushed everyone away but got mad when we didn’t want to see her. I still can’t figure her out.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes. “So… is that what you think is going to happen? If, in some hypothetical world where we got together, you’ll leave and suddenly, Rex and I will just… cease to be a family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because Rex and I will be fine whether or not you or any other man is in the picture, Carter,” Zoe continued.
“I know.”
The thought of Zoe being with someone else made my heart sink.
I looked away from her, directing my words to a spot on the carpet. It was too hard to say this to her face.
“Being with you and Rex, like… helping out here and everything… I felt like… I felt like him,” I whispered. “I thought this is what Dad must’ve felt like when I make a catch in Little League or when he came home to my mom after a long day. And it made me… I don’t know. I felt this… thisfullfeeling.”
I didn’t look at Zoe to gage her response. There was a reason I didn’t have deep conversations like this. I didn’t always have the words that made sense.
“But I know that I’m going to let you down someday. It’s just… it’s what I do. Something’s going to come along that I can’t handle, and I’ll do something stupid, and you’ll tell me to go and that feeling, thatfull… that’ll just be gone,” I said softly. My voice was so small I barely recognized it.
It took Zoe a moment to speak. “Carter, I don’t know why you think so little of yourself.”
She closed the distance between us and brought my hand to her lips. She opened my fist and kissed my palm. The simple gesture made me swallow hard. My heart pounded. Every nerve in my body was on fire.
“I’ll never understand,” she continued. “Because… I see the man you’re supposed to be, Carter. I see the man you’d be if you just let yourself believe it’s possible.” She placed her palm over my racing heart, feeling it thunder in my chest. “He’s in here. Somewhere.”
I shook my head, but she caught my cheek in her other hand and stopped me. She forced me to look into her deep blue eyes, staring back at me so intensely, it was like she could see through me. Through all of my layers, my defenses, to whatever she believed was underneath.
I hated and loved it in equal measure.
