Game Changer: A Single Dad/Nanny Romance (Change of Hearts Book 1)

by Sierra Hill

  “Garrett, I love being here with you and Caleb. This summer has been nothing short of perfect. But now that Caleb is in school, and I’m back in school, I think it would just be easier that we separate our time.”

  She quickly looks down at the floor, as if there’s something extremely interesting on the carpet near her feet and more important than the topic at hand.

  “Hey,” I demand rather crisply. “Don’t do that. Look at me, please. Does this have something to do with me acting like a world class asshole the last night? If so, I can’t apologize enough. I was just…”

  She takes a sip from her wineglass and shifts on the couch, our eyes meeting and locking in on one another.

  Brooklyn stares me down as she speaks. “It’s just that you have a lot going on and it made me realize that I’m just a complication in your way.”

  She’s about to say more, but I stop her, reaching for her wrists and tugging her close to me. So close our noses nearly touch and my knees connect with hers.

  “Brooklyn, you are not now, nor have you ever been a complication. You’ve been the exact opposite of that. You’re not the complication, it’s this damn lawsuit. It’s just really difficult not knowing how this will end up. You and Caleb are the only solid things in my life right now.”

  I frame her jawline with my hands, fingers spread wide, my thumbs stroking just underneath the buttery soft skin of her chin.

  “Please, sweetheart. Stay with me. Stay with us.”

  Her eyes close as if it’s too much, and I watch the flutter of her eyelashes against her cheek. But when they open again, her eyes shine bright with steely resolve.

  “I’m going home tonight, Garrett. I’ll stay over with Caleb while you’re gone, but otherwise, let’s just give this a break between us. You have a lot to work out and your priority should be on Caleb.”

  My head spins not only from the words she chooses, but the implications behind them. They are almost verbatim to what Becca said to me that night so long ago when she broke up with me. Before we were married.

  Something inside me snaps. Breaks free, as if I’d been housing a block of ice inside my chest and it just began to thaw and defrost, icicles that had formed now chipping free and melting. Snapping apart like broken ice chunks.

  The melting of the ice only secondary to the crack of pain, like a whip across my chest, that flays me wide open.

  I drop my hands from her face, uncertain what I should do with them. They feel foreign to me. An unattached body part. Just like my heart feels at the moment.

  “I won’t argue with you to stay, but I will say this for the record. You are not, nor have you ever been, in my way.” Standing, I move to the fireplace, where a framed picture of me, Becca and a very young Caleb sits, adorning the mantel.

  I pick it up, running my thumb over the ornate silver décor, shutting my eyes against the onslaught of emotion that wants to well up and spill out.

  “Brooklyn, I messed up so much when I was with Becca. Maybe I was young, or just stupid, but I was a worthless prick who didn’t deserve her. She knew it and that’s why she left me when she did. But I turned things around. Refocused my energies on winning her back. Proving to her that I could be a good man and earn her trust back. And things were great for a long time. We were a good family and she was a great mother.”

  I hesitate before returning the photo to the mantel but place it upside down. I turn to Brooklyn, pledging my vow.

  “It’s time I finally let her go. By holding on to her the way I have, I’ve not given you much room in here, have I?” I thump a spot above my heart.

  Brooklyn purses her lips, a crease forming in between her light brown brows. “I…no…that’s not it.”

  It’s all become very clear to me now. The realization of what Becca’s death did to me. My therapist has been telling me for years that unless I forgive myself and let go of the guilty conscience over Becca’s death, and the horrible fight we’d had over the phone that night before she was killed, then, in essence, I’m just dying by living in the past.

  I step in front of her and drop to my knees, sitting back on my heels, toes digging into the floor.

  Holding out my hands palms up, she places her small hands in mine.

  “Brooklyn, it’s okay. And you’re right. I have a lot of shit to deal with and I understand that you have to do what’s right for you. I may be a selfish bastard and want you for myself and for Caleb, but you have to live your life. So, I won’t stop you from this. Let’s talk when I get back and we can figure things out from there.”

  She nods her head and seals the deal with a quick kiss on my cheek before she leaves me, sitting alone on the couch, wondering when my life will finally settle down.

  38

  Brooklyn

  “Slow down, girl! I’m about to die from heatstroke here.”

  I come to a skidding stop, bending at the waist to place my hands on my knees, catching my breath that has been sucked from my lungs from running at such a fast pace.

  “Sorry,” I sputter, gulping in large inhales of air. “Didn’t realize I was sprinting so fast.”

  Peyton catches her breath next to me, panting hard and mirroring my stance at my side.

  “Was the devil chasing you down, or what?”

  An hour earlier, I’d been sitting at the library working on a paper for my clinical psychology class and needing a break, hoping to shut off some of my thoughts whirling around my head with a good run. I sent Peyton a text to ask her to meet me at the track where I could let off some steam. And pent up frustration.

  I hadn’t seen or spoken to Garrett in over a week. The day after our conversation, he’d texted me to tell me there’d been a change in his plans, and he’d decided to take Caleb with him on his overnight trip. I still didn’t know where he’d gone or why, but it didn’t really matter.

  When he returned, he’d called and left me a voicemail giving me the week off, stating he had some time off before the basketball season started and he was going to spend it at home, doing some cleaning and hanging out with Caleb in the evenings.

  None of it seemed too strange, but I was curious as to what he wasn’t telling me. Maybe I was reading between the lines and there was something else going on that he didn’t want me to know about.

  Maybe I’m PMS’ing, but my thoughts fluctuated all week, flipping back and forth between standing my ground and maintaining my independence, to wanting to rush back into Garrett’s arms and stay there forever.

  Each time I was ready to pick up the phone or hop in my car, my mother’s words would echo in my ears.

  “Brooklyn, don’t ever lose yourself to a man.”

  Dammit, mom. Get out of my head.

  Suddenly, I’m exhausted – emotionally and physically – as I drop to the park bench behind us, as Peyton follows suit, eying the donut truck across the grassy knoll from us.

  “I see you drooling over those donuts. You don’t fool me behind your sunglasses and ASU ballcap.”

  She gives me a wide-eyed, innocent look and slaps a hand over her mouth.

  “Me?” she objects dramatically. “I would never.”

  We both laugh at her obvious joke, but there’s always an underlying concern over how she really is doing with her food demons. She once admitted to me that there had been a time in her life when she inhaled an entire box of glazed donuts before purging it all and then doing it all again because she’d failed a biology test in high school.

  I guess we all have our own set of demons that we live with. Mine is the voice inside my head, preventing me from going after Garrett. Logically, I know I shouldn’t. That I really need this time to resolve the issues and complications that could prevent us from being together long-term. If that’s even what he wants.

  Or what I want.

  I’ve fallen in love with Garrett. I have no confusion over that, whatsoever.

  And of course, I love his son, too. With everything I have inside me.

  But committing
to them both now, while I’m young and have my whole future and career in front of me, I wonder if it’s the right thing. Am I even ready for that level of commitment?

  Garrett’s older. He’s lived and experienced things I haven’t yet. He’s traveled the world. He’s started a family. And he may want to begin adding to that family sooner rather than later.

  Do I want that?

  Or do I need to experience life on my own terms, start a career that might take me who knows where?

  Peyton taps me on my temple with her knuckle. “Earth to Brooklyn. Either you’re seriously zoning out about donuts the way I am, or your faraway expression is about a very tall and very handsome coach.”

  I give her a sheepish grin and she laughs.

  “That’s what I thought,” she clucks, shaking her head. “Which means I’ll have to eat donuts all by myself for the rest of my life because my friend is head-over-heels in looooovvve.”

  I playfully shove her in the shoulder, and she topples over on her side across the bench, catching herself with a hand and laughing with her unique high-pitched laugh. No one can outlaugh Peyton. When she does, it’s with verve and gusto and an absolute impossibility to resist laughing with her.

  “You’re a shit,” I gripe, a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth.

  Peyton jumps to her feet, grabbing my hand in hers and linking our elbows together.

  “That’s a distinct possibility, but I’m still your friend. And you’re my friend. And friends don’t let friends eat donuts by themselves. I did you a solid by going on this godawful run, so you get to make it up to me with greasy, fattening donuts.”

  She smirks and gives me a wink, adjusting the bill of her hat while dragging me toward the mobile truck parked near the lot. I suppose she has a point. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t go along with all her crazy-cockamamie ideas?

  39

  Garrett

  I received the offer for the Head Coach position and accepted it.

  I’d have been a fool to refuse because it comes with some pretty huge dollar signs and perks that I’m not receiving where I’m at right now.

  The only problem now is how I’m going to break this to Brooklyn that we’re moving right after the Labor Day holiday.

  But that’s the smaller problem compared to how I’ll convince her to move with us.

  Once I signed the offer, I started getting my ducks in a row, beginning with Caleb’s school. The beauty of moving from one private school to another in different states is that the school in Franklin, Indiana won’t begin their fall session until after Labor Day, which is perfect timing.

  There’s also the housing arrangement in my offer. The university has a home on campus reserved for incoming faculty in the athletic department, so I’ll have time before I need to find a home to buy. And as far as daycare is concerned, my mother has already offered to stay with us for as long as we need her, to allow Caleb to adjust to his new surroundings and schedules.

  What’s left unsaid is the part about “without Brooklyn.”

  But I’m hoping I can change that tonight.

  I’d called Brooklyn and invited her over for dinner tonight telling her Caleb had something very important he’d been working on in school that he wanted to show her. Which is indeed the truth. His class had been making a family tree, and when I asked who the obviously female stick figure was in the picture, he said it was Brooklyn.

  I was going to leverage the shit out of that picture as a means of getting an affirmative answer about moving with us.

  I wasn’t above using underhanded tactics to get what I wanted.

  Just like the first time Brooklyn ever showed up at my house, all hell seems to break loose in the kitchen just as I hear the doorbell ring in the entryway.

  The oven timer goes off, buzzing obnoxiously loud, the scent of Brooklyn’s favorite pizza wafting in the air, and Caleb begins screaming in an overly-hangry temper tantrum for his own dinner.

  “Calm down, buddy. You have to wait for just a few minutes. Let me go get Brooklyn and then we can eat.”

  Part of his irritation is from over-stimulation and a lack of a nap. When I told him Brooklyn was coming tonight, he refused to lay down and that’s where things went rapidly downhill from there.

  Using the potholders, I slide the pizza stone out of the oven, but when I turn around to set it down, I misjudge the distance and instead of landing it on the counter, it slides off the oven mitt and onto the floor with a schlop.

  “Shit,” I curse loudly, the stonewear crashing to the floor and pizza sauce splattering every direction. “Goddamn it.”

  There’s a second delay and then Siri’s voice admonishes me. “Daddy said a bad word.”

  And then on repeat, “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  Laughter rings out from the other side of the kitchen as Brooklyn stands in our midst, looking like a ray of sunshine with her golden hair tied back into a knot and a bright smile painted across her wide, lush mouth.

  “Caleb, that’s an adult word that only adults can use. It’s a bad word for kids.”

  She steps in and gives Caleb a hug, who adoringly hugs her back. Returning her attention back toward me, her eyes lift as if to say, “what now?”

  “Hey, sweet-“ I stop myself from using the nickname I’ve been calling her for months. “Brooklyn. As you can see, we might need to call out for delivery. I’m pretty useless tonight.”

  She laughs, mirth ringing through the sound. “I can see that.”

  Without thinking through the implications, I throw off the oven mitts and open my arms wide to offer her a hug, which she accepts willingly.

  With her soft, sweet linen scent surrounding me, I couldn’t care less about the ruined pizza. My hands shake with the need to hold her tighter. Longer. Without ceasing. If I could, I’d never let her go.

  But she finally steps back and out of my arms, as I take a look around the open kitchen, filled with memories of Brooklyn from the past three months. Memories I cherish and that will be with me for a lifetime to come. And hopefully, if all goes to plan, memories we’ll continue to make together in a brand-new kitchen elsewhere.

  She takes a seat next to Caleb as I place a quick text order to the local pizza shop a few miles away.

  “How are your classes going?” I ask just to fill the silence and hear the sweet melody of her voice.

  “Really good. I had a paper due today. Oh, and I’ve been in the library a lot lately and ran into Lucas the other day.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been a horrible friend. He’s been trying to get in touch with me but I haven’t had much time to return the call. If you see him again, tell him I’m sorry.”

  “I will. And how are things” – she glances quickly between Caleb and me - “with you?”

  Grabbing the back of the kitchen stool, I pull it out to sit down.

  It’s now or never.

  “Can we dispense with the small talk for a second? I need to tell you something, Brooklyn. I’ve been offered a job as head coach.”

  Watching her face light up with enthusiasm for me is akin to seeing the Eiffel Tower at night, sparkling and shining brightly for all the world to see.

  “Really? Garrett, that’s amazing! Wait, what happened to Coach Welby?”

  Clearing my throat, I shift to the edge of the chair, placing my folded hands on the table between us.

  “I don’t mean here at ASU, Brooklyn. The job is in Indiana. That’s where Caleb and I went last week on our trip. I went for the interview and checked out the area. Got the offer yesterday. It’s a really fantastic opportunity for me.”

  Just like a bubble bursting, her excitement dissipates, disappointment coloring her cheeks and lines across her face. I want to reach over and erase those lines with my kisses. Drag my hand through her hair and pull her into my lap, holding her in my arms so she has no question how good it will be if she comes with us.

  “Oh, wow. Indiana. That’s…wow.” It’s said very unconvinci
ngly, which makes me chuckle. “So you’re, like, leaving soon?”

  I nod. “Yes. We need to be there over the long holiday weekend. I’m putting my house on the market tomorrow.”

  She swallows audibly. “I see.”

  Caleb decides to join in the conversation on his iPad app. “Nana live with us.”

  Her eyes snap from me to him, then back at mine.

  Pain. Sharp and crisp filters through them.

  Through a tight smile, I add, “Yes, buddy. Grandma will live with us for a while, at least.”

  I reach for Brooklyn’s hand, but she snaps it away as if I’ve struck her.

  “That’s good that you have family there to help. For Caleb’s sake.”

  Placing my hands in my lap, I lean back in my chair, closing my eyes momentarily in search of the right words. Opening them again, I stare into her marble-colored eyes, swirling with silver. “Brooklyn, there’s something else. I want to invite you along. To come with us. What I mean to say is…”

  Brooklyn pushes back in her chair, shaking her head adamantly, her hand telling me to stop talking.

  “Go with you?” Her voice skyrockets to break the sound barrier. “To Indiana? Are you joking?”

  A frown forms along my lips and my first response is to take offense at the tone she uses in reference to the state I grew up in. But I know it’s not about that or that she has anything against the state itself.

  “No, I’m not joking. I want you to move with us. I love you. Caleb loves you. I don’t want to lose you.”

  Brooklyn nervously paces back and forth taking large inhales and letting out long exhales of breath.

  And then she turns on me, pinning me with a scolding look. “You do realize that my life is here, right, Garrett? That I’m in the midst of my first semester in grad school. That I have a lease on an apartment. That I can’t just uproot my life on a whim.” She ticks all of these things off on her fingers as if I hadn’t thought about them before now.