by Kyra Lennon
“Radleigh, why did we have to come here now?” Jen whined. “Aren’t we supposed to be having a day of doing fun stuff?”
They stopped in the hallway, in almost the perfect position for me to see them. I had a side view of Jen and a little of Radleigh. If I peered out, I’d get the full view, but then I’d risk them seeing me so I remained where I was, completely still.
They must have missed the epic rain shower because they were both dry and looking great. Jen wore tight fitting jeans and a royal blue cowl neck top with a hint of cleavage showing. She looked as she always did, as if she’d stepped from the pages of a magazine, whereas I looked a tad unkempt with my freshly showered hair still wet.
They looked amazing together, and the twist of my heart almost made me gasp.
“I told you. I need to get some more clothes, and since Leah is out with my mom, now is a good time.”
Oh. So he doesn’t want to see me. And he’s taken the day off to be with her. Seemed like I was the one who’d be packing my clothes up soon, and I tried to keep a grip on my shaking body at the thought.
“Her car’s outside.”
“That’s because my mom picked her up.”
Yes. That had been the plan until she called me and asked if we could go in my car because hers wouldn’t start.
“Fine.” Jen sighed. “Can you just get this over with? We have better things to do than hanging around in here.”
“Jesus, Jen. We’ve only just got through the door. It’ll take me a little while to get what I need. Let’s make a drink and-”
“Radleigh, seriously. I don’t wanna be here.”
“This is my house.”
“It’s your house with her. It’s full of her tasteless decorations. And those paintings in the living room? Please. I don’t know how you can bear to look at those ugly things.”
My fists clenched. I knew she hated them the day she’d sat in my living room, glaring at them as if they’d stolen from her purse.
“They’re not ugly,” Radleigh said, and I noticed how weary his tone was. “They’re of Leah’s home. Maybe if you’d ever experienced being in a place like that, you’d appreciate them.”
Huh. He can still defend me. Where was that when she’d wrecked my damn wedding dress?
“Okay, I’m sorry.” Jen’s whiny voice faded and she switched back to sugary sweet as her hands slipped around his waist as easily as if she’d done it a million times. Which, I guessed she had in the past. But… recently? My heart sped up again because what I wanted to do was run down the stairs and pull her off my man by her bleached blonde hair. But I couldn’t. I had to hold my ground and wait. Because nothing would be a truer representation of how they were when they were alone than this.
A small flicker of hope lit inside me when he didn’t put his arms around her, but it was quickly snuffed out when she pressed herself into him, as close as she could possibly get, and ran a hand down his arm. “Since we’re here,” she said, her voice lowering. “And we have the whole place to ourselves, we could always…” she trailed off and whispered something in his ear.
As if she needed to whisper. It was all for effect, and I hated her for her exceptional seduction skills. What guy could resist her when she was making it so easy? She was beautiful and sexy and perfect.
When Radleigh didn’t move, she said, “Radleigh, come on.” Her hands snaked around him, and I could no longer see where they were, but I could take a pretty good guess. “We’ve waited long enough, haven’t we? Let me remind you how good it was between us.” She tilted her head up, waiting for him to kiss her, and I felt my throat begin to close over. I didn’t want to see this. I couldn’t handle seeing his lips on hers. The only good thing I clung to was that they hadn’t slept together… yet.
“You know what?” Radleigh said, and my heart jolted when he took a hold of her wrists and unwound them from him. “I don’t want to be reminded. I don’t want you.”
She stared up at him. “What?”
He stared back just as hard, and I recognised the coldness in his eyes. Seeing it directed at her would have made me smile if I hadn’t been holding my breath.
“I. Don’t. Want. You. I’m not sure I ever did.”
“But, Radleigh-”
“Stop. I’ve let you do this for too long. I was stupid enough to leave here when I should have stayed. I should have told Leah what I knew all along, but instead I wasted time with you, wondering if she was right. Wondering if I did still have feelings for you.”
Jen stepped closer to him, pressing her body against his again. “You do have feelings for me,” she whispered. “There’s no point pretending you don’t.”
His silence crippled me, and I closed my eyes, hoping to hell he’d tell her she was wrong.
It felt like forever, but then his words cut through the quiet. “You know what I feel for you, Jen? I feel like we could have had everything. We could have had the family you had with James. But that perfect little life I wanted for us back then… it doesn’t compare to what I have now. You don’t compare. You’re still pretty, and you still know the right things to say to make guys want you, but I don’t. I don’t want you.”
He took a step back so I couldn’t see him anymore, but I could still see her, and her face fell as he moved away. “You want her? You want Leah? Who pushed you away at the first sign of trouble? When you needed her? I would never do that to you.”
I heard him laugh. “Right. You would have just gone out and had sex with someone else. That’s your way of dealing with problems.”
“If you didn’t want me, what took you so long, huh? Why didn’t you just come right back here?” She shook her head. “You’re lying to yourself. And you’re taking the easy option. Being with Leah is easy. She’s safe.”
“That just proves how little you know about her. If you think she’s just going to accept me with open arms after all this, you’re wrong. She’s not safe or easy. I’ve never had to fight so fucking hard for anyone in my life, and it was worth every second. Being with her is worth it.”
“Has she ever fought for you?”
“She risked her job for me. She risked people hating her just for being with me. She left her family behind in England to be here with me. So yeah, she’s fought for me. She’s given up a lot for me.”
There was another long silence, and I still didn’t dare to breathe. I didn’t want to break the hope that was building inside me again. God, I wanted to be standing in front of him, having him look me in the eye while he said all this so I could really feel it. So I could watch his perfect lips forming the words I so badly needed to hear.
“You need to leave.”
Radleigh’s words sent a ripple of joy through me, and I looked down at Jen again. If it was possible to see someone shedding their façade, I was certain that was what I witnessed as she squared up to him.
“If that’s what you want, Radleigh, we’ll need to re-think the time you spend with Jayden. I don’t know if I want him around you anymore.”
What a bitch. What an incredibly petty, pathetic bitch. All this time she’d played the caring mother card, as if all this was about Radleigh getting to know his son, when what she really wanted was to regain a hold over Radleigh in the hopes of getting him back. She didn’t want him, she just wanted to prove to herself she could have him if she wanted him.
“I’ll let you think that over,” Radleigh said coldly. “But I’ll have no problem backing up any of James’ claims that you’re an unfit mother if you try to keep Jayden away from me. And since you “lost” your three-year-old long enough for him to ruin a wedding dress, I’m sure my parents will be happy to make a statement about that too.”
Jen’s gaze grew murderous. “You asshole. You wouldn’t dare.”
“Test me and you’ll find out. You need to leave. Now.”
She glared at him for a long time, as if hoping this was some elaborate form of foreplay, and he might eventually throw her against the nearest flat sur
face and shag her tiny brain out, but when he didn’t move, she huffed and stormed out.
I still couldn’t see him, but I heard Radleigh blow out a breath, and then he came into my view. He walked halfway up the stairs before sitting down on them and placing his head in his hands.
Chapter Four - Home
This is it.
Slowly, I stood up and walked the rest of the way down the hallway. As soon as he heard my footsteps on the stairs, Radleigh’s whole body stiffened. If I’d had any doubts about whether he knew I was there, they fell away at his reaction. He didn’t turn around, though. He slowly straightened up but he kept his back to me, and I sat down on the stairs a few steps behind him.
For the longest time, neither of us spoke. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be the first to break the silence, I just wanted to exist in that moment with him, with the things he’d said about me playing over in my head.
“Did you hear all of that?”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Every word.”
“Does this mean I don’t have to explain it again?”
“No. But… thank you.”
“What for?”
“For what you said.”
“I thought you were out with my mom.”
“I was. Got caught in the rain shower and came home to change. Why are you here? Why aren’t you at work?”
“Richard told me to go home until I was ready to put my head in the game.”
“And Jen…?”
“She didn’t do it every day, but some days she came over to the training ground and we had lunch together. I told her I was going home and she asked if I wanted to see Jayden this afternoon. But… when we got here… you know the rest.”
Another silence, just the sounds of our breathing in our quiet house. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His deep red shirt clung to his broad back, and hugged the tops of his arms. His tattooed biceps still had the ability to make my heart flutter, and the scent of him… God, I’d missed it.
“I’m sorry, Leah. I have a million things I want to say but they all come back to that. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
He flinched as if confused. “Why? What do you have to apologise for?”
I moved my feet forward then lowered my butt to the next step down. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said. About the way I made you feel. I never meant to push you away, and I thought I’d done enough to make you understand that. But I guess I didn’t.”
“It’s not your fault I was too stupid to understand the reasons. I hated it, but you did the right thing. And I hope… after everything you just heard, I hope you know the way I feel about you hasn’t changed.”
“I know. But there is one question you didn’t answer. Jen asked you, if you didn’t want her, why you didn’t come home.”
After another tense pause, Radleigh finally turned to face me. He looked right into my eyes, and it was at that second I knew he was back. My Radleigh was back. The honest, open one. The one who didn’t want to keep secrets anymore.
“I know this sounds dumb, but I needed to be sure,” he said. “I can’t… Leah, I can’t tell you I never thought about being with her. I thought about it. But I never wanted it. And anything I used to feel for her… it didn’t come back, but I remembered. I remembered how she used to be when I first met her. She can be sweet, and kind, and funny. But it’s all a mask to hide what a devious bitch she is.”
“So you stayed away because… you weren’t sure?”
“I was sure. But if I came back without really thinking everything through, I don’t think we could have worked this out. And that was what you wanted, right? To be absolutely certain about where I want to be?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. And I knew the risks. I knew there was every chance you’d want her more than me.”
“But you still let me go and figure it out.”
I nodded again. “I know you didn’t want to leave. I just couldn’t get rid of the feeling that if I didn’t loosen my grip a little, she’d win. I’d have turned into a paranoid psychopath, and she’d win.”
“You weren’t a paranoid psychopath anyway?” he asked with a small smile, and I chuckled.
“Maybe. But you didn’t have to deal with it because you weren’t here. And that was the difference. We’d have suffocated under the pressure if we’d tried to fit her in with us. It would have been like adding an extra person into the relationship, and with you trying to get to know Jayden too… it would have been too hard.”
He nodded. “I know.”
Radleigh watched me for a moment, like he was trying to figure out the right words. I shuffled down another step as I waited, and Radleigh gave me another soft smile. But then it faded, taking with it the small amount of warmth that had finally started to flow through my veins again. “I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?” I asked apprehensively. How bad could it be? He hadn’t slept with her; that much I knew for sure. So why did he look so nervous all of a sudden?
“It was me who took your wedding dress out of its cover.”
The reminder of my dress’ fate made my stomach hurt, and I tilted my head to the side. “What? Why would you do that?”
“I got scared. I got scared I’d screwed up so bad I’d never get to see you wearing it. The whole week since I’d last seen you I felt worse and worse about what happened between us. About the way I treated you. I missed you so much but I didn’t know how to make things better. Before Jen came over that day, I went to Mom and Dad’s room and found the dress. I just needed to see it. To imagine how you’d look in it.” He looked up at me. “Leah, it was beautiful. So right for you. But before I had a chance to put it away properly, Jen came over and I just thought I’d put it back later. But somewhere in between that and her leaving… she must have found it. I couldn’t tell you why she thought it was okay to snoop around the house, or why she thought it was okay to tell Harley to paint it, but I’m partially to blame. And I couldn’t feel worse about it.”
I didn’t know whether to slap him for going near my dress, or hug him for the reasons he looked at it. In the end, I did neither. Just stayed silent. His confession explained why he’d been so ashen-faced and quiet the day it happened, though. At the time, all I could think about was why he didn’t leap to my defence and throw Jen out on her arse. I didn’t know it was guilt that kept his lips sealed.
“Do you… do you still want to marry me, Leah?”
The solid wall of ice that had surrounded my heart to stop it breaking began to melt. It wasn’t his words, it was the hope and fear in his eyes. How many times had we been here? The way he was so unsure, and the way I felt like he shouldn’t have been, reminded me of the night we got together. The night we officially became a couple, with him confessing his feelings and me not understanding how he hadn’t known I’d loved him the whole time.
I lowered myself down the final step so we were beside each other and placed my hand on his cheek. “Yes. I want to marry you.”
He closed his eyes and turned his head to place a kiss on the palm of my hand. “I know we have a lot to work through, but I still want to marry you too. Now more than ever. That thing you said about Jen being the love of my life? You couldn’t have been more wrong. You, Leah. You are the love of my life. You’re everything she isn’t. Everything I want. You’re everything.”
Tears filled my eyes as he wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. And in that instant, I was home. We were home. This was us, the way we were before Jen tried to break us. This touch was the one I’d missed – a million miles from the way he’d touched me last. This was him telling me we’d be okay. We had work to do, but we’d be okay.
Chapter Five – Sometimes It’s Chocolate Cake
The two days that followed were some of the strangest we’d ever spent together. Although Radleigh and I were back on track, we were both extremely aware that there had been a mild breakdown in trust and a huge breakd
own in communication, and only time and honesty could fix that. Radleigh told Jen he and I needed to focus on us, and asked her to give us a few days to ourselves. No calls. No messages. No lame attempts to get his attention using Jayden as an excuse. No showing up at the training ground. She wasn’t happy about it, and again, she tried to play the “if you don’t do things my way, you won’t get to see your son” card. Radleigh refused to be dragged into the game, though, and stuck by his promise to back James up if she made things difficult. Even with the Jen ban in place, I couldn’t help flinching every time his phone rang, or he got a new text. While I knew I had to get over it, Radleigh equally knew that him keeping things from me had triggered this, so he was patient and showed me every message he received. After twenty-four hours of that, I told him to stop. I still flinched when the phone rang, but having him show me everything made me feel like a possessive weirdo. Trust can’t be earned that way. In order to trust him fully, I had to believe he was telling me the truth without asking him to back it up every single time.
On Saturday, Radleigh had an away game in Chicago, and he asked me to go with him. Not so I could keep tabs on him, but so we could get away from real life for a couple of days. Since it was a long journey, we were to leave on Friday morning, and we would fly home on Sunday afternoon. The idea of a few days out of Los Angeles – somewhere we wouldn’t have a chance of bumping into Jen – made me happier than I’d been in weeks. A different place meant space to breathe. Where Radleigh and I could just be us without any pressure from anyone or anything else.
So, we kissed Jessica goodbye on Friday morning and hopped on the plane to Chicago. It was late afternoon when we arrived, and I couldn’t stop the little buzz of joy I felt at the idea that I could be doing this more often soon. With everything that had gone on recently, getting my ass back to work sounded better and better. Having something to focus on, plus spending much more time with my friends, was what I needed. I needed to be re-connected with adults more often, and I needed to have something just for me. It had been forever since I stepped off a plane with the team, but I still remembered the feeling of pride that came with it. I needed to get that back on a regular basis.
