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All the shame and guilt I’d felt my whole life crashed down on me and my voice broke. "Of course not, but I was seven. I didn't understand until the next day, when he wasn't home, that he'd been in the middle of leaving us when I caught him. And even then, I was sure he'd come back. It seemed so impossible, in the midst of all that sparkle and glitter and happiness to have lost my dad. For him to have chosen to leave us. My mom cried for the next six months. I had to put away all the decorations myself, and drag the tree outside when it turned brown and the pine needles all fell off. Mom didn't get out of bed for weeks. And when Christmas rolled around the next year, I only asked once if we were going to get a tree. Mom shook her head, and that was it. We just never acknowledged the holiday again."
"You grew up without Christmas?" His voice was pained, tight, like he was angry and hurt on my behalf.
"I mean," I said, staring at my hands. "It was all around us, right? Like it is here. So it was hard to ignore. But all the stuff I saw didn't make me happy—it just made me angry. Sad, and lonesome and a little bit jealous." Admitting this out loud didn’t lessen the feelings, but somehow I felt a little bit lighter having shared them.
"Because everyone else still thought Christmas was a happy thing."
"For them, it was."
"Was your mom okay?" Callan asked.
"Eventually she got out of bed and went on with her life, kind of. She didn't ever remarry. She took up smoking."
Callan dropped my gaze. “Did you ever see your dad again?”
I sighed. “He came back once on my birthday, but my mother sent him away, and then she stayed in bed for a couple more months. My grandmother had to come take care of things.” I raised my eyes to meet Callan’s, surprised to see that his eyes were shining with compassion and sympathy. “He sent a card on my birthday after that. I have thought about calling him, but I’m still so mad. And my mom would kill me.”
Callan nodded.
"And that's the story," I said, my shoulders sagging, as if I’d just gotten to the end of a long journey and could finally relax. "Your turn."
He looked at me for a long moment, and then got to his feet slowly. He moved to where I sat, standing in front of me and then dropping down to his knees so our eyes were level. He took both my hands in his, and our gazes met and tangled up together, caught in the warm intimacy between us. "My story doesn't mean anything," he said. "Not like that. I'm just grumpy and mad about the way my life has changed."
"About soccer?" I asked, feeling like his story was important, that maybe hearing it would help me understand him better, might even help him in the telling.
"About everything." He rubbed his thumbs over the tops of my hands, our eyes locked. And then he chuckled and dropped his eyes, staring at our locked hands. "But I'm tired of being grumpy and mad."
I watched him, noticed the way the dark hair fell across his forehead, the smooth skin that pulled across prominent cheekbones and disappeared in a scruff at his jaw. Something skittered and jumped inside me when I thought about the billboard I’d seen over the freeway a couple years ago—he'd been an icon then, and now here he was in front of me. A man. A man with rich deep eyes and a voice that had dropped to console me, wrapping me in reassurance that my childhood hurt was legitimate, that maybe I wasn't as alone as I always felt.
He looked back up at me then, and moved slowly toward me, as if he was afraid I might change my mind or run away. But I leaned in to meet him, and I pulled my hands from his so that I could slide them around his neck as his lips brushed mine once again. Together, we rose, standing slowly with our breaths mingled and mouths pressed together, until our bodies touched all along the lengths of us, until the warmth I felt in his kiss sparked and ran like fire down my spine.
And then Callan's hands were at my hips, setting me away from him. "I should go."
Disappointment hardened into a little rock inside me. "Oh, well…" It had been a long night, but I found myself wanting to prolong it, to keep this version of Callan Whitewood here, with me.
"I'll see you tomorrow, okay? We can firm up the details for the show. I promise to be cooperative, even without the benefit of the Half Cat." He smiled and my body warmed again, even as he moved toward the door.
"Yeah. Okay."
"Goodnight, April. I had a really nice time with you." His dark eyes glittered in the low light of my room, and a shiver moved through me.
I smiled uncertainly at him. "Me too." And then I was alone in my room, wondering what exactly had just happened.
12
Chinchillas. In Hats.
Callan
There was a time, when I’d been a “soccer star,” that restraint with women was not an expectation. I’d been young—practically famous in my own small world right after college—and girls threw themselves at me on the regular. But with time, age, and experience, and thanks to having had my own heart broken, I found I was less likely to dive into any relationship—even one that was purely physical—without giving it some thought.
And so when I left April's hotel room, my better judgment congratulating me heartily while my balls griped and moaned about my piss-poor decision making, I knew it had been the right thing.
For one thing, April wasn't a soccer groupie. She hadn't come to me based on my looks or my position or my money. Shehadcome looking for something from me, as I’d pointed out in my furious rant to Cormac that day after I’d run her off. But now that I’d had time to think about that, I realized it wasn't the same thing. She'd arrived in Singletree to do a job, had been told my house was under contract with her show, and had been promptly dismissed by a selfish and grumpy guy with a limp. I couldn't blame her for being less than accepting of it, and I was frankly glad she hadn't been.
Because the time I’d spent with April Hall had made me feel things I hadn't felt since those early days with the Sharks. Then, it had been the excitement of a promising career, the enticement of money and women, and the general feeling that I deserved a bright and bountiful future. Whether I had deserved it or not was debatable, I knew now. But that future had evaporated five years later thanks to the injury that had ended my career, and taken with it my belief that I had a shiny bright future ahead of me. But now? In these last few days spent with my nieces, my brother, and April, I felt some glimmer of that expectation rising in me again.
I’d had to give up everything I thought I wanted, and in the vacuum created by acceptance, something else had crept in. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on, could only perceive in glimpses, but something that felt similar to that promise of the future.
