by Alexis Anne
I’d had the same thought numerous times. Over the last few years we’d rented out several different options that put us squarely between our training in Port Charlotte and the Sox training in Fort Myers, where Cassandra’s husband Timothy was working. None had been perfect, but I had a really good feeling about the house we were trying this year.
Since Timothy and I were both in charge of fan experience for our respective teams, we started working down south well ahead of the scheduled games and our families came with us.
Okay, so now that I thought about it, the house was kind of a big deal.
“And Zoe is all set?” Zoe was our nanny. I hated calling her something so formal, but I didn’t know what other word fit what she did.
“She’s good to go. No worries.”
Zoe picked up the kids from school, fed and played with them until I got off work. She traveled with us when we were on the road for work, and filled in whenever else we needed a hand keeping the kids on schedule. She was a writer, so her schedule was flexible and she could work from anywhere. Our part-time nanny needs were perfect for her and she was perfect for us. She loved kids and preferred to have a steady paycheck so she didn’t have to worry about her publishing schedule quite so much.
June pouted for a moment. She had quickly jelled with the Rays training staff and was now almost as busy as I was, but she still missed being our go-to for help with the kids. It turns out my sister had a mildly jealous streak.
And I had a sneaking suspicion that had a lot to do with her epic breakup with her college sweetheart, but I’d never asked. She made it clear any mention of Roman was off limits.
“I suppose it makes sense since I don’t come until the team does and someone should watch the kids while we’re all working.”
I shook my head. She was a fireball. I didn’t know who I should be more sympathetic to: June or Roman. But then again, I’d never met her mystery man. None of us had.
A scream came from the other rooms and we both waited to hear what happened next.
“Should I go peek?” she whispered.
Since there still wasn’t any indication one way or the other I gave her a nod. She crept over to the doorway and poked her head just far enough through to see what was taking place.
She turned around covering her mouth, then waved me over. “You have to see this.”
I took her place and mimicked her exact motions. Both girls were sitting on the couch, eyes glued to the television, but that wasn’t the adorable part. They had their arms wrapped around each other as they watched.
So freaking cute.
We quietly returned to our posts at the counter. That’s when June hit me with what she’d been holding back.
“I’m worried about you.”
I grimaced. “You’re the second person to say that this week.” Her eyebrows rose in question. “Jennie called last night. What are you worried about?”
She fidgeted for a few seconds before shrugging. “Everything’s about Jake right now. We’re all walking on eggshells so we don’t upset him. I’m worried you’re getting sucked up into Jake-world.”
“And losing myself?”
She nodded. I reached over and patted her hand reassuringly. She may have grown up and become a good friend, but she was still years younger than me. There was a lot she didn’t yet understand about love.
“I’m not losing myself. Yes, we’re all giving Jake space to work through it and that means he’s the captain of this ship for a little while. Rearranging schedules and taking on the extra lifting is temporary. It’s marriage. Obviously you want everything to be balanced and fair, but life isn’t fair. The reality is that things go up and down. You give and you take depending on the shit you’re getting handed. The idea is that there are two of you so you spread it out and handle the load together.”
She worked to find her words, nibbling on her lower lip. “It’s just that before… when he left…”
Oh. Now I understood. “You were really young when he left.”
“He was still my brother as far as I was concerned.”
“He always will be, June.” I found one of the stools tucked under the counter and pulled it out, getting good and comfortable. “You were traveling the year after I had Sam, so you probably didn’t see what happened with my post-partum depression. It was bad, June. Really bad. I didn’t have control over how my body and my brain reacted to so much change and it rocked our world. Full stop. Jake dropped everything. He was Super Dad and Super Husband, even though I was a stranger to him in a lot of ways. The world revolved around my needs until I got through it. Jake’s schedule moved at my pace. He didn’t get sucked up in Eve-World—he took on the majority of our load while I couldn’t bear it.”
“And that’s what you’re doing now? Lightening his load, so to speak?”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “No one is perfect and everyone falls down at some point. Jake’s down, but he’s getting back up. I just gotta keep our little world spinning until he’s on solid ground.”
“Got it,” she said, still not looking quite satisfied.
So I went back to her earlier point even though I always found it impossibly hard to talk about the dark days when Jake left.
“I’m so lucky,” I said. “I have this whole tribe of people who care about me. You and Jennie have both checked in this week to make sure I’m okay. Jake didn’t have that in college. He had me. Just me.” I let that hang in the air for a minute while I swallowed down the lump that always formed in my throat when I talked about this. “No one cheered Jake on. No one made sure he went to class or aced his tests. I did that. I took care of him when he was sick. I sat with him after his dad beat the shit out of him. I loved him when no one else could. So, yeah, I took on a burden that was entirely too large to bear for one naïve college girl, and I tried to be everything Jake needed. It was too much.”
A tear slid down June’s cheek. “I love you both so much. I just want what’s best for you both.”
“I know,” I assured her. “He knows that, too. Now. He didn’t back then. He left me because he saw what was coming. I was ready to throw myself off a cliff to be what he needed. Luckily he found the answers he needed and came back to me. We’ll never have to worry about being in that position ever again—Jake having no one or me losing myself to try and save him—because he has this family now, too. He has me and the girls, but he also has you and Cassandra, Jennie and Andrew, Greg and Marie…he has people who check on him.”
She nodded faster, wiping away the tear. “I get it now. I totally get it.”
We changed the subject to lighter things after that, but in the back of my mind Jake lingered. Images of him struggling through the years. It had been a long, long time since something had hit him like this and he was taking it hard. As much as I wanted this to be something he could easily navigate with our added benefit of near-smothering love, I was afraid it was going to take more than either of us was ready to acknowledge.
IT TURNS out my confidence in Jake was ill advised. Or at least overly optimistic. I’d so happily and easily taken on the role of support staff that I’d forgotten sometimes the best support is a swift kick in the ass.
It all devolved the week before I left for spring training. Jake came home late—again. It was something he’d never done before. Sure, he stayed late from time to time, especially when a big project was coming online or finishing up, but this was chronic. It was becoming a pattern. It felt an awful lot like he was avoiding coming home, and that was totally unacceptable.
So as I sat in bed reading a book, one ear out for a suddenly cranky-at-bedtime Max, and the other ear out for my husband who’d decided the only form of communication necessary was a text message, On the way home.
On the way home? On the way home? There weren’t enough question marks and exclamation points in the world to express how pissed off that one little text message made me. He hadn’t answered my calls, had barely spoken to me in days, and now this? He didn�
��t even bother with an x or a love you.
I grabbed my phone.
“Who’s sick?” Greg’s familiar voice barked through the speaker.
“No one,” I assured him. It had been a long time since I called him at night. Probably since Max was born. I wasn’t actually awake at night very often these days unless I was working. “I need to ask you a question.”
As if he could read my mind he said, “No, there is no fucking reason he needs be working this hard.”
Damn it. I sighed. “He’s still not home.”
Greg was quiet for a moment and it sounded like he was moving in bed, the sound of sheets against skin and the soft murmur of Marie’s voice in the background.
Shit, I was ruining his evening.
“He is working, Eve. Just so we’re clear on that.”
My heart beat a little faster. I hadn’t even realized that question was left unspoken in the back of my mind until Greg said the answer.
“That’s good to know.”
“Tough times call for clear answers,” he grumbled. “What I don’t know is why he’s so damned obsessed with work. It’s ruining my personal life, Eve. He’s never been like this. Not since…” his voice dropped away.
Not since the dark years of working his ass off on his uncle’s contract in the Middle East. Back when he was working through his issues and trying his hardest to forget he loved me.
Shit, shit, triple shit.
We were in deeper than I thought.
“Understood,” I finally said. “What is he doing, exactly? Just so I have an idea of what level of denial I’m working with here.”
There was more sighing and grumbling from Greg’s end of the line and I could picture his rough face pinched in frustration as he ran his fingers through his dirty blond hair. “Well, he’s spending way more time than usual on the prototype contract we’re developing. He usually lets everyone do their jobs, but not this time. He’s in everyone’s face, redoing everyone’s work, micromanaging to the n-th degree. I’ve had two managers threaten to quit if Jake won’t back off.”
The blood drained from my head. This was not like him at all. “Is he working on anything else right now?” I said a small prayer of thanks that he was off from teaching this semester.
Greg grumbled. “Yeah, he’s micromanaging those, too. Using it as an excuse to come in early and stay late. He claims things aren’t getting done unless he stays on top of things, and we both know that’s horse shit. Jake specifically recruited and trained every single one of these people to work independently.”
“So he’s making more work for himself and more stress. Awesome.”
“And he’s taking us all down with him.” Then he sighed. “There’s something else.”
I really didn’t like the sound of that. “What?”
By the pause and sound of Greg swallowing uncomfortably, I knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say next. As in, everything else he’d just mentioned was a shadow compared to the big news. “When he’s not on the factory floor pissing everyone off, he’s in his workshop.”
Some people coped with stress by overeating or drinking, maybe even watching too much television. Jake coped with building things. His beloved truck, the Orange Beast, a completely renovated Bronco, was the result of coping his way through college.
“Do you know what he’s working on?” I was starting to panic.
“Not a clue. He’s being secretive. Eve?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you work your magic and bring my friend back? This asshole who’s replaced him sucks.”
I chuckled. Greg always had a way of making light and lifting a mood with a well-placed joke.
“That’s why I’m talking to you.” I heard the sound of Jake’s truck pulling into the driveway. “So I’m about to go and piss him off.”
“Thank fuck. You take care of things, I’ll play cleanup.”
“God I love it when you use baseball references,” I joked back.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, ending the call.
I pretended to be reading when Jake strode into our room. He gave me a half-smile and went directly to his dresser, emptying his pockets and shrugging out of his suit jacket. Even after all these years he still wore a full suit to work unless he was working on something super hands-on.
He loosened his tie and cracked his neck. “I’m going to hop in the shower.”
“You should peek in on the girls.”
He froze for a moment, his muscles rigid, then he shook his head. “I don’t want to disturb them.”
What. The. Fuck? This man was not my husband. Jake’s passion in life was his family. He took great pride in his role as father and never missed an opportunity to bound down the hallway to sneak a look at the girls—even if he did happen to wake them up. He admitted once to being loud on purpose with the hope he’d get to put them back to sleep.
“Well, maybe if you came home when they were awake you could actually see them,” I bit out.
His shoulders dropped. “Work is crazy right now.”
Excuses. Did he actually believe his own crap or was this intentional? I wasn’t sure. “It’s never been this busy before.”
And you’ve always made it a point to keep your work hours short.
He shrugged, his back still to me. He kicked off his shoes. “The company is growing.” It almost sounded like a question. As if he wasn’t sure of the answer.
“The company has been growing since the day you and Greg formed it. You’ve still never worked this many hours before.”
His shoulders shot back up and he turned, angry. “It’s my job, Eve. My company.”
That’s when it hit me. He was sinking in quicksand—grasping at his work to keep from slipping away—clutching at the solid part of himself that he’d built all on his own. He was so afraid of hurting us that he was hurting us by emotionally abandoning us.
“Sorry,” I said quietly. “I just miss you.”
He lowered his eyes and dropped his hands to his side. “I’m trying my best.”
“I know you are. But you promised you’d try to be more present. And Jake? You’re going the opposite way.”
He winced. “I’m sorry. I—I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you still scared of the anger you feel or is this something different?”
He shook his head but didn’t move or say anything else. “Eve, you saw what I did at Thanksgiving…”
Yeah, I saw. “You mean the one day you’ve actually acted like yourself since we got back from Maine? Yeah, I remember the day.”
He stood there with one hand on his hip and his head down. “Please don’t say that.”
“Why?” I let my voice rise with each word. “You’re a passionate person, Jake. You are driven and you feel so much. On Thanksgiving you smiled and joked and when shit got weird you did something about it. I loved it.”
His head shot up and he glared at me. “You loved seeing me lose control? Can you honestly say you loved watching me act out in anger?”
“Yes! You would never hurt someone you loved, Jake!”
He laughed in exasperation. “That’s an insane thing to say, Eve. It’s okay to hit someone because I don’t love them? Acting in anger is acting in anger, no matter who you direct it at.”
I knew he was right, at least on the surface. I shouldn’t be happy he let his anger control his actions, but given the situation we were in, and knowing the man he was inside, I was comfortable with my feelings.
“You’re afraid you’re going to hurt us?” I guessed.
He clamped his mouth and eyes shut. “Yes,” he finally gritted out.
“That’s bullshit.”
He glared at me, but didn’t say anything.
So I went on. “It is. It’s total bullshit. You would never hurt a hair on my head and you’d kill yourself before you hurt the girls.”
His eyes softened—just a little. Maybe my logic was getting thro
ugh. So I tossed the covers aside and prowled down to the end of the bed, beckoning him to me. If he didn’t find a way to let this anger out, or let it go, it was going to drive him mad.
And I didn’t want to think about what that would do to us.
He paused an unsettling distance away from me so I put my toes on the ground and grabbed his arm, pulling him the rest of the way over. “Don’t put space between us,” I murmured as I rested my cheek against his abs. Normally he’d push a hand through my hair and lightly massage my neck and shoulders, but today he just stood there, arms at his sides.
So I tried something different. I unbuckled his belt.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice barely more than a rough whisper.
I shrugged. “I miss your skin.” I slid his shirt up until there was enough bare skin to rest against. He shivered as we made contact, but he still didn’t touch me.
So I touched him. I kissed the top of his happy trail as I unbuttoned his slacks and unzipped his fly. He didn’t stop me. He just stood there staring down at me as if he were frozen in carbonite.
I undressed him silently and slowly, giving him ample opportunity to stop me. I uncovered every inch of his beautiful body, caressing and savoring it along the way. Maybe Jake wasn’t just scared of his anger—maybe he had accidentally slipped into an old habit of assuming he was unloved and unworthy. I wanted to remind him that he could feel good. That is was okay to let me touch him.
I was afraid of what he’d do when I finally made my big move, so I leveled the playing field first. He was naked, but I was in my t-shirt and boxers. We locked eyes briefly before I yanked the shirt over my head. There was so much doubt in his eyes. A hesitation that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Hopefully the power of naked breasts would be enough to snap him out of it.
His eyes dropped to my exposed skin and he sucked in a breath. Yeah, that hesitation turned immediately to yearning.
“Touch me,” I whispered.
He swallowed and took me in his large hands, palming them both at the same time. Weighing them before squeezing. His cock sprang to life and dang it all, but I couldn’t stop the proud grin that spread across my face.
