Chapter Twenty-Five
Cooper
The dishes have been cleared off the table. A dim light from the kitchen illuminates the way to the couch where we are sitting watching Frozen again. Thoughts are running through my mind of accidentally scratching the DVD.
Just as I’ve already thought of the crime, a little blond head falls into my lap, her bouncy curls covering half of her face. I smooth my hand over her hair, watching her cute little pout while she slides deeper into her slumber.
Looking over, I see that her mom has also curled up her head, resting on the arm of the couch. She looks thinner. With her eyes closed, she looks peaceful. If she is anything like me, she barely slept in the last four days. Just being here, next to her, it’s like I’m home. It’s crazy how one person can bring you that much peace.
I look up just as Matthew comes back downstairs, looking at the TV and then at us.
“I can’t wait till another movie comes out, then I’m going to bury that movie in the backyard after I break it in pieces, just in case,” he says while going into the kitchen to get himself something to drink.
Coming back, he looks at me. “So are you spending the night or are you sneaking out early?” This kid is too smart for his own good.
“I’m spending the night. The whole night. I’ve been away from her for four days. I’m not doing it again. Now that you know how I feel about your mom, I hope that this is okay?” I’m asking his permission, but yes or no, I’m not leaving. I’ll sleep in my car before I leave.
“Okay. You want me to carry Allison up?” he asks, always willing to take care of his sister.
“No, I’m good, I’m going to carry her up first and then come back and get your mom.”
He says nothing more, just nods and turns to walk upstairs. Getting up and carrying Allison upstairs, I place her softly in her bed, covering her up, and kissing her on her forehead. I’ve fallen in love with her mother, and this little girl that has captured my heart as much as her mom.
After she is tucked in and is sleeping like a starfish, I go in search of my other girl. Creeping down the stairs quietly as to not wake her up, I gently pick her up. I want to just sit with her in my arms. I want to smell her. It’s weird how before I didn’t have the need to always think of someone else besides myself, and now all I think about is her before me.
When I finally make my way to her room, I pull the covers down, placing her under it. Turning around, I go downstairs, making sure everything is closed and stopping at Matthew’s door. Knocking once, I open and let him know we are heading to bed. He doesn’t answer and just nods.
Making my way to the bed, all I see is her small body curled up in a ball. She hasn’t moved since I placed her in the bed. Getting under the covers, I reach out for her, pulling her close to me. No way am I sleeping without touching her.
Once I have her in my arms, she curves into me and adjusts herself to me, throwing her legs over mine. I release the breath I had been holding in since I pulled her into me. With my arms around her, I close my eyes and let the past four sleepless nights catch up to me, bringing me down into a deep sleep.
When I open my eyes, I blink twice to adjust my eyes to the light seeping in. I don’t think I moved positions the whole night. We are exactly in the same place we were last night. The only thing is Parker is up because she is making soft circles on my chest. She must feel me looking at her because she looks up at me.
“Morning.” I squeeze her closer to me, bringing her almost on top of me.
“I haven’t slept well the past few days. I guess it caught up to me because the last thing I remember is watching Frozen.” She pulls herself completely on top of me, making me reach down to grab her ass with both hands, squeezing. She places both arms across my chest, planting her chin on her hand. “I thought I’d never wake up with you again. Every morning I woke up I would look over at Meghan and ask if it really happened.” She blinks at me.
I remove my hands from her and sit up in bed with the headboard at my back, making her sit in my lap straddling me.
“I couldn’t function. It’s as if I was going on autopilot. I was barely surviving. Tom kicked me off the ice twice and cancelled all my activities. So, I had to sit in that fucking house thinking. Thinking I would never get to hold you again. I may have to replace a couple of walls and a door when my four-month lease is up.”
She touches my face for the first time in four days, running her finger over my stubble that I’ve let grow out. It’s like she’s tracing my face for memory.
“That lease is almost up. I think I know someone who you can call. I train his son, so I’ll get his number for you.” She hasn’t made eye contact with me. She is just following her finger while she touches me.
I pull her chin up so I can look in her eyes. “We have to start looking for a house. I already contacted a realtor. Actually, the same realtor Tom used. He said he would have some houses to show us sometime next week.”
Her eyes now go big, not sure she heard me.
“A house? Why are you buying a house? Here? That’s a little silly, don’t you think?”
“Well, since this is going to be my hometown, I thought maybe you would want to get something a little bigger. I mean, I’m okay here, but it is a little bit small for the four of us.”
She starts to stutter, not sure what to say, but I don’t give her a chance to think.
“I asked him to find us a bigger home, with more land, something with a pool because we both know Allison is like a fish. I also wanted a two-car garage. Definitely more than three bedrooms. I was also thinking of a basement gym area. Oh, and a bigger kitchen. When you were gone, I remembered how much I loved cooking with you, so I also asked him for a huge kitchen. Preferably in the middle of the house. Kind of like center ice.”
“You’re moving here?” she whispers.
I laugh because out of all that the only thing that sticks out is that I’m moving here.
“Well, the arena is an hour from here. Not exactly the five-minute drive from my condo, but this is even better. It’s not that bad. I mean, we have forty-one home games a year. The rest are on the road, but it’s usually turn around or there are big stretches sometimes where we go on the road for a week. But we can work on that later.” My hands are now on her legs, holding them, my thumbs rubbing.
“You’re buying a house and moving here? To live here? Why?” Her brows pinch together.
“Babe, don’t know if you are aware of this, but I love you. I almost fucking lost you because of fucking stupidity. It smacked me in the face how much you mean to me. How much I’ve grown to want to wake up with you. How much I look forward to us just sitting down drinking coffee together. You have kids and a business. You can’t just up and move. I can. But more importantly, I want to. I want you here. Or wherever we find a house. I want you there when I get up or get in or come home. I just want you.” And before I can say anything else she leans into me and kisses me full on the lips. Not a soft peck, not a soft kiss. An all-consuming kiss. A kiss I feel right down to my soul, her tongue sliding alongside mine, commanding it to go deeper. My arms move up her back, one staying around her waist, the other making its way into her hair, tilting her head to the side to make her chest get closer to me.
It’s like no other kiss before. It’s a different kiss than before. She pulls away from me. I see the razor burn on her chin. “I love you,” she says while she places her forehead against mine. “I really love you. I was scared. I wasn’t looking for this. I just wanted to get laid,” she says, giggling this time. “But it changed. You changed it. You just wouldn’t take no for an answer. You would be all up in my face each and every time. I realized I was in love with you the minute Barbie opened the door. The pain in my chest,” she whispers, “I felt it to my bones. That night while I sat on the couch in the cabin looking out into the darkness I admitted it. I had come full circle to only end up in the same place as I did before.” And just before I’m about to interrup
I’m about to take her into a kiss again, when right then I hear someone walk in, almost in a half sleep daze. Rubbing her eyes while dragging her rabbit, she walks to the side of the bed.
“Cooper, we had a sleepober? Can we habe pancakes?” she asks while trying to climb into bed with us, and in that moment, I’ve never felt more complete.
Pancakes with chocolate chips,” I agree, dragging her next to us, placing her sitting in front of her mother, hugging them both.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Parker
It’s been two weeks since Cooper decided that he’s moving here. When I say decided, that is a nice way of putting what we went through.
After making pancakes with Allison while I drank my coffee at the breakfast nook, he told her about the day he had planned. He had many ‘castles’ for us to see. At that point, I wanted to rip his eyeballs out for him telling her.
She was all too happy to go in search of Elsa and Anna’s true-life castle. So I glared at him from across the table while they both went on about what things they should have in this said castle.
Matthew didn’t even look up from his plate. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t taking in the conversation.
So, after cleaning the kitchen, Cooper left to go to his house. According to him, he had to pack his shit for the rest of the week. I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, was he here for a week? Was he staying here till he finished? It was all up in the air. My mind was going a hundred miles an hour when Matthew came into the kitchen.
“So he’s moving here? What does that mean? Are we moving in with him?” He stood in front of me, his hands in his pockets. When did he get so big?
“Umm, yes. Yes, he is. He told me this morning. I didn’t know that was what he was thinking.” I wrung my hands together.
“So what? You just forget about the naked girl in his house? You forget that he lied to you about it? Is that what you’re doing?” He was angry, so very angry.
“Matthew, it was a misunderstanding in what I saw. I believe him. I believe in what he says. I shouldn’t have gone off the deep end before speaking to him. It’s just—”
“It’s just that you thought he fucked you over like dad,” he yells.
“Matthew, I will not tell you again, watch your mouth. I am not discussing this with you.”
“Why would you discuss anything with me? You just put things ‘under the carpet.’ You think I don’t know how my dad messed up? You think I want to sit across the table from him and his girlfriend knowing that he hurt you? That he hurt us?”
“Cooper is not your father. He is nothing like your father. I’m not excusing what your father did, but I think in the end maybe we would be exactly where we are right now.” I move closer to him and lean up to grab his face. “Regardless of what or who your father is with, he loves you. He will always love you. You have to know that.” My boy doesn’t want to cry. He doesn’t want to show me that he isn’t the strong kind.
“He left us, without a second thought. Who does that? Who? He didn’t even try to fight. Cooper...Mom, he came here even though he knew you didn’t want him. He came to you and fought for you, he fought me for you. Why couldn’t Dad?” he whispered, letting a tear escape his eye.
“Sweetie, maybe I didn’t fight either. Maybe I just let your dad leave. Maybe I knew it was over. I love him for giving me you and Allison. I love him for making a life with me. I can’t explain it, but what I have with Cooper is so different than what I had with your dad. Maybe it’s ‘cause I’m older, maybe I’m wiser, but I know that I would fight till my last breath for him,” I say to him, making him look me in the eye.
Just when he was going to say something, Allison runs through the room, looking for her princess shoes to wear to all those castles we are going to see.
Matthew and I end up in a fit of giggles.
That day we visited four houses. Four houses fit for families of twenty. One house had ten rooms. Who in their right mind would need ten fucking rooms?
Just when I thought it was a lost cause, we pulled up on Meghan and Tom’s street, stopping three houses down from theirs. This home was massive, but the weeping willow trees in the front lawn made it look homey.
We started in the back yard. If that was what you called it. It felt as big as a football field. Smack in the middle of the yard was a huge pool with a water slide hidden in the rock mountain behind it. Off to one side sat a hot tub adjoining the pool. At the far side of the yard was the biggest wooden jungle gym you could ever possibly see, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. Next to the jungle gym, it looked like a little house with a door and two windows. The house was of course pink and purple, perfect for Allison, who ran with all she had to that house. Opening the door, she shrieked. It had a fake kitchen, a kitchen table, a miniature couch set, and one bedroom with none other than a princess canopy bed. It was like a house. Allison turned around and looked at Cooper with hearts in her eyes. “Can you pwease buy this house, Cooper?”
I don’t know how I knew, but that was the moment I knew he would be putting an offer on this house without looking at anything inside. So ten days later after everything was signed on the dotted line, his stuff from his condo arrived.
I really didn’t know what he was going to do with this monster of a house. It had seven bedrooms, which considering all the other houses it was like a downsize. Ten bathrooms. How many people will be using the bathroom at the same time that they needed ten fucking bathrooms? It had a theater room, which I have to say is pretty cool. A home gym, three-car garage, and a huge kitchen in the middle of the house. It was everything he was looking for.
I also found out during this time that Cooper hates furniture shopping. By hate, I mean he fucking loathes it. The one thing he wanted was a king-sized bed. He didn’t care about the colors of the paint, the style of the furniture. He hired Meghan to decorate the whole house with one instruction. Show it to Parker. She likes it, you buy it. Only one thing wrong with this. I couldn’t decorate to save my life, so I just told her to make it homey. Whatever the fuck that meant.
But she worked her magic and when it was time for Cooper to move in, it was in fact his home.
He never asked us to move in. But when he did get the keys and brought us over to see, I was shocked to see a room designed for a princess. Complete with the same bed from the outside tree house, just bigger. Next to that bedroom was a hockey themed room. All in the colors of Matthew’s school colors. The touches were something that shot right through me. He was making sure we knew that we were going to be here whenever we wanted.
That night over pizza the topic of the conversation was that of the upcoming season, which was due to start in two weeks. Because Cooper was already part of the team, he didn’t have to go to the preseason training.
“I got everyone tickets to the home game. I also rented a hotel suite right next to the arena so we don’t have to drive back home. We can stay there and celebrate.”
Matthew’s eyes jump open. “All of us?”
He gets up from the table, coming back with three gift bags. One blue, one pink, and one purple. He hands the blue one to Matthew, the pink one to Allison, and the purple one to me.
“I got you guys something to celebrate me moving in here. Go ahead, open it.”
“We got pwesents. I like pwesensts, Cooper,” Allison says while digging into her bag, pulling out a small jersey with Cooper’s name on it.
“I want you to wear that when you come and see me play so everyone knows who my girl is.” He winks at her, making her giggle while she puts on the jersey backward at first and then making it right. It’s almost like a dress on her, but that is the smallest he could get.
She walks over to him, climbing onto his lap, kissing him on the cheek. “I’ll alwabs wear this for you.”
“Thanks, kid,” he says, hugging her close. “Go on, you two, open it up.”
Matthew and I look into our bags, pulling out the same jersey, and smile at each other.
“There is something else in the bag,” he says, making us both look in the bottom of the bag. My eye catches a key chain with a key on it.
Before I ask anything, Matthew speaks, “What’s this key for?”
Cooper puts down his water that he was drinking, answering him, “It’s a key to the house. I want you to know that you are always welcome here. If I’m here or not. You can come and go as you please.” He nods at the key in his hand.
“That’s cool. Do you think I can go watch TV in that hockey room?” he asks.
“That’s your room. You can do what you want in that room.”
We hear a gasp that has come out of Allison. “Can I have the pwrincess room?” she asks.
Laughing, Cooper answers her, “Where else would you sleep when you come over here?” He leans down to whisper in her ear, making her eyes go big. Jumping down from his lap, she runs out of the room, saying something about checking the closet and princess dresses.
When it is just the two of us, he motions to me to come to him with his finger. I get up, bringing my jersey with me.
When I’m close to him, he drags me onto his lap. I am sitting on him with my feet hanging on the sides on the chair.
“I’m guessing you want me to wear your jersey also?” I lean over, kissing him lightly on the lips. “You know what I think I’m going to do?” I whisper in his ear. “After the kids go to bed, I’m going to put this jersey on.” I nip his ear, moving in closer, licking his lobe. “And nothing else but this jersey.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I feel him grow hard under me.
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