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“Of course. I’ll come with you.”
Her lip trembles. I might be offended that she didn’t expect me to come with her, if I didn’t know she was already fragile and hormonal and sad.
“Maybe we can stop for breakfast on the way,” I add. “We’ll get those bagels you love.”
She’s a sucker for those old school, red-leather-booth-type diners. The greasier, the better. Something about half-assed breakfast food makes her infinitely happier than anything with a Michelin star. I would know—I’ve tried.
She nods. “I’ll go get changed.”
I initially intended to give her space, but when she’s been upstairs “changing” for more than an hour, I follow her to find her sitting on the floor in the closet holding a picture of her father.
She looks up at me when I enter. Her eyes are full of unshed tears but plenty have come before, and her cheeks are soaked.
“Aww, angel.” I sit beside her on the closet floor and take the picture so I can look at it for a second. “You look like your dad, you know.”
She cry-laughs and nods. “Everyone always said that.”
I stroke my thumb over the picture. He just looks like a man, same as any other. Light stubble, sandy brown hair, a crooked smile to go with a crooked nose. You’d never know just by looking at him how his life spiraled so far out of control.
I’ve got questions, but I don’t ask her how he let himself get into all that trouble with my old man. An addiction is an addiction. Whether or not a person gets help isn’t always up to them.
I’m just sorry that Sloan suffered for it.
She takes the photo again and cups it tenderly. “He wasn’t a great dad, but he was my dad.”
It makes my chest clench up painfully. She deserves so much better. And in my gut, I want to make it all up to her.Iwant to be the one who gives her the world. Her hero.
“How can I help you, sweetheart?”
“Just… stay with me.”
“Always.” She lays her head on my shoulder and I stroke her cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I call in to practice, then text the security team to tell them that the day’s plans have changed. When we finally leave, Spencer is driving us with another of his guys in the front seat as we head to the lower part of Seattle, to the cemetery where her father is buried.
Sloan is stone-faced and quiet, her hand in mine, but her eyes are dry for now. That’s something.
As we get out and walk down the row of graves to where her father was laid to rest, she remains stoic.
Then—there it is.
The headstone is a simple marker with her father’s name and the years of his birth and death. She kneels in the grass and rocks back on her heels. The wind toys with her hair, blowing it across her face like an auburn veil.
She doesn’t speak, but she dusts some errant grass off the base of the headstone. Then she turns to look up at me. “I'm scared, Beck.”
I sit beside her. “Of what?”
She pulls a few blades of grass from the ground and holds it up. “I don’t know how to be a mother. A parent. I never had a good example.”
My heart breaks. She has so little confidence in herself because she doesn’t see the things that I see. She doesn’t know her own kindness, her own compassion. “Sloan, you’re going to be a great mom. You already are.”
“You think so?”
“You bet I do. Look how you handled me when I was acting like a child.”
She laughs again tearily. “Thanks.” She sits for a few more minutes and then looks at me. “And thank you for coming with me. I don’t know if I could’ve come here alone.”
“Sloan, as long as I’m alive, you’re never going to be alone.”
