Touching Down

by Nicole Williams

  “Something I didn’t want to give him,” I answered as evenly as I could, not missing the way Grant’s jaw was grinding, almost like he was trying to crush through a sheet of metal.

  “And Grant saved you?” she asked, looking between us.

  I nodded, unable to keep from seeing the look on his face when he’d barged into my room. Unable to keep from remembering the sounds and sights of that fight. Unable to keep from remembering the way he’d looked after, the way his hand had felt reaching for mine, the way I’d felt when Grant told me I was okay and that he’d never let anything happen to me, before he carried me out of that room and hardly let me out of his sights ever again.

  “He did,” I answered my daughter.

  “Is that why you fell in love with her? Because you were like a prince who rode in to save her?” Charlie’s gaze moved back to the photo album, which I could now see was filled with old photos of Grant’s and my life back in The Clink. The one she was staring at right then was the one of him and me at his senior prom.

  “No.” Grant shook his head slowly. “I fell in love with her because she saved me.”

  That answer made her smile. “Who did she save you from?”

  Grant’s head turned toward me. The storm in his eyes calmed instantly. “From myself.”

  “THIS KID GOES out faster than I do after the first day of summer training.” Grant yawned from down the couch, where Charlie had passed out in what I affectionately called her starfish position. Arms and legs straight out, taking up as much space as a seven-year-old’s body could.

  “Don’t know who she gets that from.” I handed him the popcorn bowl, saving the last handful for him.

  After we’d given her a detailed account of every single photo in the photo album, Charlie had managed to talk us into making it a movie/popcorn night because what was another hour and a half when you’d already blown through bedtime?

  She’d made it through half of the movie before she fell asleep just like that. One second she was awake, tossing popcorn into her mouth and commenting on Julie Andrews’s wardrobe, and the next, she was lights-out.

  “Hey, I’m still awake over here. When have I ever gone out like that? One minute wide awake and bouncing around, and the next one in a heavy breathing coma?” When he shifted to sit up, the rice pad fell from his shoulder.

  “I can think of a few instances.” The tone in my voice gave away what I was getting at, but the arch in my brow didn’t hurt either.

  “That’s different. You wore me out. With all of that stamina and flexibility and creativity and yeah . . .” Grant’s face pinched up on one side. “Our daughter is sleeping two feet away. Sorry. I’m not used to being around kids and having to watch what I say. I’m used to being around giants whose brains have been cannibalized by their dicks and have no filter. And I just said dick. In front of a seven-year-old.” Grant groaned as he tipped his head back.

  “A sleeping seven-year-old who wouldn’t wake up to the sound of an ice cream truck playing outside of her ear. It’s fine.” As I sat up, I stretched to wake up my muscles a little. It helped with the chorea after being still for so long. “That’s part of the reason I was hesitant about us being here. You’re used to being alone. Doing your own thing. With us here, you’re not going to have a lot of breathing room. Bachelor life is going to take a definite hit having a seven-year-old running around and bathing in your fountain, instead of the Playmates you’re probably used to.”

  Grant huffed as he tossed the last few pieces of popcorn into his mouth. “That’s the exact reason I want you guys here. I’m sick of being alone. I hate the bachelor lifestyle. And the only Playmates that have tried swimming in my fountain are the same two I had security remove.”

  I felt my mouth fall open. The Playmates had been a random guess. “You had Playmates in your fountain and you called security to have them removed?”

  “They were only interested in me for my money. I don’t want to get mixed up with someone or someones so shallow.” He was smirking at me, loving the semi-shocked look on my face.

  “And what are you holding out for? A girl who loves you for you?” I fired back, wiping the shock from my face.

  “God, no. Nothing as far-fetched as that.” His head shook. “I’m waiting for a girl who wants me for my body. You know, something deep and genuine like that.”

  The level of seriousness he’d managed to express was a true testimony to how he’d honed the art of smart-ass.

  Fighting a smile, I replied, “You’re covered wrist to ankle in ‘compression tights,’ nursing a wounded shoulder, and your thumb’s three times its normal size. And you smell like you just finished a practice during the first week of summer training.” I curled my nose in his direction. “Good luck finding some poor martyr to want you for your body.”

  He jacked his brows at me a few times. “I certainly seem to remember a certain ‘martyr’ who didn’t seem to have any hesitations when it came to my body.”

  The insinuation in his voice made me shift. To distract myself, I reached out to pick up Charlie, not realizing I didn’t know where I was taking her to bed until I had already wrestled all sixty pounds of her against me.

  “Whoa, muscles. Easy, I can get her.” Grant popped off from the couch and reached for Charlie’s limp body draped around mine.

  “No, I’ve got her.”

  “Ryan—”

  “Grant, really. I want to,” I said, winding my arms tighter around her. “It won’t be long before . . . I won’t be able to carry . . .” I couldn’t complete any of my thoughts, all of them too painful to finish. “I’ve got her. Just, would you mind showing me where I can put her tonight?”

  Grant watched me clutching Charlie, probably doubting if I could carry her on my best day without adding Huntington’s into the equation, but I had this.

  “Yeah, sure. Follow me.” He moved across the living room and waited for me in the hall. “Her bedroom’s upstairs next to yours.”

  I followed him down the hall. Thankfully he’d gone to the elevator instead of the stairs because I could already feel the weight of her tiring me out. I’d carried Charlie to bed plenty of nights, but the space in a one-bedroom apartment was a heck of a lot different than the space in a mansion.

  “It’s nice there’s already an elevator built into the house. It’ll save us from having to install one when, you know.” Grant punched the up button a few times, sighing like he’d just said something he wasn’t supposed to.

  “When I’m confined to a wheelchair?” I said what he couldn’t. “Grant, when I get to that point, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want you two to have to see that all day, every day. When I have to go into a wheelchair, that will mean things are bad. My mind, my speech, it won’t just be my body malfunctioning.”

  When the elevator doors opened, Grant let me go in first. When he followed, his eyes were trained on the floor.

  “I want you two to remember me like this, not be haunted by me like that.”

  He took in a slow breath. “Ryan, I’d hire a nurse. A doctor. A hundred of them if I have to, but we’re not just shipping you off to some home. Get that out of your head right now.”

  My eyes narrowed on the elevator panel as I waited for him to punch in the floor number. I didn’t know if we were going to the second or third floor. Finally, he punched the three button.

  “No, you get out of your head the plan to keep me here, because that is not happening under any circumstance. This is my life, and I get to call the shots. There are good facilities for people with Huntington’s. With trained staff equipped to deal with patients with this disease specifically.” I didn’t know why I was explaining this to him. I shouldn’t have to. This was my choice. Not his. Mine.

  “What anyone needs when they’re sick is to be around the people who love them and want the best for them. That place is here.” Grant’s hand curled around the handlebar running around the elevator, his knuckles pressing against his skin.

&
nbsp; “I’m not ‘sick.’ I can’t ‘get better.’ There’s no hospital I’ll ever be able to check into where I can check out and be healed.” My voice shook, but my stare remained unwavering. “I’m going to get worse. Every day, I’ll be worse than the day before. Until one day, you won’t even recognize me. I’ll be a shell, an empty room. That is not how I want my daughter to remember me, Grant Turner.” I backed out of the elevator, so I didn’t have to break eye contact with him. “That is not how I want you to remember me.”

  “Charlie and I will remember you as the woman you are today, Ryan Hale. The strong, loyal, protective one standing in front of me right now. This is who you are, who you’ve been, and who you’ll always be—right up until the day you die.”

  He didn’t say anything more after that. He just turned down the hall and didn’t stop until he’d almost come to the end of it. Opening a door, he stepped inside, and as I walked in behind him, I noticed a soft glow of light spill into the room.

  Other than the glow of the nightlight, it was dark inside the room, but I was able to make out a few things. Like the three-piece matching bedroom set in white, the bed complete with four posters and a canopy. There was a desk lined up against one of the windows looking out front where the fountain was, and a tall bookshelf beside it held a few titles but left loads of space for Charlie to fill. A few footballs were propped up on her dresser, with names scribbled on them that would no doubt make her shriek when she read them in the morning, but there was a good assortment of “girl” toys waiting for her as well. Toys I recognized from the bed of his truck the night he’d first met her. In a week’s time, he’d figured out already which ones were more Charlie appropriate.

  “You already made her a room?” My voice sounded off as I moved toward the bed Grant was pulling the covers back from.

  He shrugged and stepped aside to let me lay her down. “Of course.”

  He didn’t say it as though it had been the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. He said it as though a man who’d just found out he had a seven-year-old daughter had no other option than to invite her and her mother to come live with him, then make a room that was special and unique to who that child was.

  God, the ball in my throat that appeared out of nowhere would not be swallowed. Of all the bad decisions I’d made, of all the wrong choices, at least I knew I’d gotten this one right. At least I knew bringing my daughter and her father together was one of the few right things I’d done in my life.

  After bundling the blankets around her, I backed away from the bed. She was sleeping soundly in her new bed, in her new room, in her new house. I had a sudden flash of her being all grown up, my beautiful Charlie as a young woman, and the image of it choked me up loudly enough that Grant heard.

  “Crazy, right?” He came up behind me, close enough I could feel his chest hard against my back. “Her being here. You being here. I’m still trying to catch up.”

  “Me too.” My head tipped back enough to see that he was looking down at me. “But I don’t think I’ll ever catch up.”

  “Yeah, me either,” he said, pressing a little closer. “But you’re here, and our daughter’s here. That’s enough for me.”

  That feeling was hitting me again—the familiar one from having him close. He was still hardwired to every nerve ending in my body, his touch to my every need.

  I couldn’t keep feeling these kinds of things. I couldn’t do that to myself again, but most importantly, I couldn’t do that to him again. Too much heartache and pain had been spilled in the name of our love, and reopening that book would only lead to tragedy. Just ask anyone who’s ever been in love with a person whose body and mind was consumed by Huntington’s.

  “You said my room is next door?” I stepped away from Grant and out into the hall. It calmed my mind, but my body remained stirred.

  “Yeah, it’s right here.”

  Grant’s shoulders were tense as he moved by me, opening the door next to Charlie’s. By the time I’d stepped inside, he already had the lights on and was moving around, closing the blinds after checking that the locks on the windows were sealed.

  “This is huge.” My eyes widened as I did a slow turn. “Our last apartment wasn’t as big as this one bedroom is.”

  “It’s the master bedroom. It’s supposed to be big.” His shoulder lifted as he opened up a few drawers in one of the large dressers. “I dug out most of my stuff from the dressers and closets, but there’re a few things left. Just toss ‘em into a box or something if you need any more space.”

  He moved toward closed double doors, pulled them open, and switched on a few lights. I thought it was another room, maybe an office or something, but no, it was a closet. Like the place where one hangs and stores their clothes.

  “There’s a chandelier in your closet.” I motioned at the crystal fixture sparkling inside the mammoth closet.

  “It came with the house when I bought it. It’s not like I’m a chandelier-in-my-closet kind of guy.” He shoved a few suits and dress shirts tighter against one of the racks on the wall.

  He’d cleared out the whole closet save for a few things. Which might have been the sweetest thing ever, but I didn’t need all of that space. I’d been able to stuff all of my clothing into a suitcase. Yeah, it was a big one, but even if I hung everything I owned, it might take up one-tenth of the closet space alone, not to mention the empty drawers.

  I’d been so distracted by the closet that what should have hit me first finally registered. “This is your room, Grant.”

  He turned off the lights in the closet as he stepped out. “Yeah?”

  “Your bedroom.”

  “Yeaaah?” he repeated, clearly not seeing this as any big thing.

  “I can’t take your bedroom,” I said like it should have been obvious. Because it should have. For reasons.

  Lots of reasons.

  “But I’m in the pool house now. So it’s your room.”

  “But you can’t stay in the pool house forever.”

  Grant cocked his brow. “Have you seen the pool house? It’s hooked up. Believe me, I could spend my life a happy man in the pool house.”

  “Yeah, but this is your house. Your room. I can’t take it.”

  “Too late. Already done.” Grant wiped his hands together like that-was-that, but that-was-not-that.

  “No, Grant.”

  “How long are you planning on arguing this out with me tonight? Just so I have an idea of what kind of sleep I’m getting tonight so I can prepare myself for the amount of suffering tomorrow at practice.” He crossed his arms and waited. He knew my weak points, and he’d never had a problem extorting them.

  “Fine. Then I’ll sleep in Charlie’s room or one of the million guest rooms tonight until we can continue this ‘discussion’ tomorrow and get my room changed.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause waking up to your mom snuggled up beside you on your first night in a new place wouldn’t be weird. Talk about leaving some emotional scars. Deep emotional ones.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue, shaking his head.

  “You are diabolical. In every way a human being can be.”

  “You’ve known that for years. No need to act so surprised.” He shoved off the bedroom wall and smirked at me in passing, knowing he’d backed me into a corner. Temporarily. “Oh, just remembered.” He snapped his fingers and broke to a stop just before stepping out of the room. “The shower in the pool house is being remodeled. Would you mind if I hopped in the shower real quick before hitting the sack? Since I obviously smell so nice?”

  My stomach fluttered, but I kept my expression unaffected. “Be my guest.”

  “Well, technically you’re my guest, but thanks for letting me use my own shower.” He shot me a wide smile, messing with me, as he headed into the bathroom.

  My eyes narrowed at him. “Dia. Bolical.”

  “You like it,” he retorted with a wink.

  Yeah, I did. That was the problem.

  HOW HAD I gotten her
e?

  New York City. Grant Turner’s place. His room. Hovering by the dresser, trying to distract myself from the knowledge that he was in the next room, showering.

  How had I wound up here when my life had been going in a for years? For seven years, life had been moving in the opposite direction of Grant, and now, here I was, occupying the same small space as him.

  The impact of everything that had happened caught up to me, hitting me square in the chest. The past week, I’d been living on autopilot, dizzy from the rush of adrenaline, but now it had all caught up to me.

  Grant had taken everything better than I’d hoped he would. He hadn’t just stepped up to the plate—he’d made the plate his bitch, dominating it the way he dominated the field every Sunday. He’d shifted into the role of a father like it was a second skin, looking at Charlie with the kind of familiarity that suggested he’d been there for every one of her seven years.

  I’d always known Grant would be the kind of father I’d want my daughter to have, but I’d never guessed he’d forgive me so easily, that he’d be able to move on so quickly, as though he didn’t believe in holding grudges or being resentful.

  Instead, he treated me as he had all those years ago, as though nothing had come between us and kept us apart. He’d gone out of his way to take care of me.

  How had I gotten here?

  That was the question still cycling through my head when I heard the shower turn off. In the minute that followed, I did everything I could not to think about what was behind that closed bathroom door. What being a wet and naked Grant Turner.

  What being the only man I’d ever loved and the only man I ever would. My life was winding to an end, but his was only really getting started. There’d be more for him, despite whatever he said or thought. There’d be love, heartache, and more love. For Grant, I would be one of the many. For me, he was the one of them all.