Chasing Kane (32 page)

Setting the phone down, I slouched onto the bed, hunching my shoulders and rubbing my hands over my face. “Yeah … a
long
night.”

The conversation with my dad only lasted ten minutes, tops. But in reality it had been going on for more than ten tense, silent years. Looking up at Frankie, who situated herself on the queen bed across from me, crossing her ankles in front of her, I realized I could keep pushing her away, scorching any hope of her seeing the reformation I’d been working on or—more terrifyingly—I could be honest.

Leaving my hand perched over my mouth as if to filter the words as they poured out, I spoke. “I called my dad.”

“You did?” she gasped. The pale blush of her cheeks deepened as her eyes took me in, wide and concerned. She swallowed hard, taking a deep breath.

I nodded, removing the hand from my face and lacing my fingers together in front of me as I sat with my elbows on my knees, still hunched over. I didn’t know how long it would take for me to bounce back physically from the toll last night had taken.

“Wh—what’d you say?” She fidgeted, working the hem of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger.

“To leave you alone,” I started with the easy stuff. Honest, but easy, and far away from the hole in my chest he’d carved out long ago.

She nodded, her eyes—brown like mine—darting around the room like she was grasping for the right thing to say. She wouldn’t find it here, and through no fault of her own. There
was
no right thing to say.

“It was this whole thing,” I continued, shaky as the disorganized flashes of last night forced their way into order in my brain. “He wanted to see me … knew I’d avoid his phone calls … there was a lot of yelling.” I pointed to my throat as an explanation of the persistent crackle in my voice.

Frankie shook her head slowly, fixing her eyes on me. I couldn’t make eye contact, but from my periphery I saw her sit on her hands before speaking. “What was it about? Why did he want to track you down after all this time?” She shrugged, searching for an answer.

I wished I could tell her he was dying. That the doctors had given up hope and he had three months to live before the tumors strangled his insides. But, I couldn’t. This was worse. Lingering. Permanent.

Bowing my head, I thought of the boy at the root of the phone call. Not just me—the one he’d left—but the one probably sitting in blissful ignorance in the spacious Long Island home Callum Kane had built for the family he chose. The boy who maybe had dirty blond hair like his mother. The boy I’d never seen, and never met, who haunted my dreams last night. The innocent kid, with a prick of a father, that I threw out with the bathwater of last night’s conversation. The kid I disregarded.

“CJ?” Frankie’s voice rose in panic before I realized I’d been lost in thought and had tears running over my cheeks. In a second she was by my side, her hand breaking mine free from each other as she laced her fingers between mine. “What?” she whispered, giving my hand a squeeze. “What happened?”

“I’ve got a ten-year-old brother,” I forced out before my voice cracked into a sob I couldn’t restrain.

It was all I could say for a long while. Minutes flowed one into another as I left my head in one hand, crying, as if it was something I’d always done. Frankie gripped the living daylights out of the other hand. She was silent, taking her free hand to rub the tense space between my shoulder blades.

In the middle of the agony, a thought swirled into my head. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t remember the last person I’d cried in front of—I’d never done it in front of Frankie, for sure—but I couldn’t remember, no matter how long I searched my memory, the last time I’d cried at all.

The only thing that came to mind was a package that came via UPS a million years ago. A brand new baseball and glove that smelled of fresh leather. There was a small, square notecard that completed the deal.
Have fun, slugger. I miss you. Dad.
My mom watched helplessly as I rearranged the glove with a pair of kitchen shears, and said nothing when I hurled the ball over the neighbor’s fence to let their Yellow Lab eat it for lunch.

It was my tenth birthday.

“I fucking
hate
baseball!” I growled, pulling my hand away from Frankie and scraping both hands through my hair, trying to hold my brains in. “I’ve
always
hated it!”

“Um … I …” Frankie whispered, pressing her hand firm against my back. “I know,” she said, unaware of the memory in my head.

But she knew I hated baseball. She learned that the day she excitedly waved Red Sox tickets in my face like they were unicorn eggs. I had to gently reveal my loathing for the game—an atrocity worthy of excommunication from the State of Massachusetts, but one I rarely hid.

Still, she knew. And he didn’t.

I yelled garbled combinations of consonants and vowels, cursing my father and the bullshit move of dumping a brother in my lap. A brother I couldn’t ignore. Information I couldn’t un-hear. A kid with a heap of shit for a father who was “into music,” whatever that meant.

“Shh …” I heard her gentle whisper through my unrelenting noise as her hand stroked back and forth across my back like the soothing needle of a metronome.

“I don’t know what to do …” I managed a full sentence, lifting my head to find her in the same position she’d been for several minutes—next to me, stroking my back, with one leg tucked underneath her as she pored over me with empathetic eyes.

This wasn’t how I’d planned my first face-to-face with Frankie since our breakup. I figured there’d be a few tears one way or another, but this wasn’t quite the scene I’d pictured. With a long, shuddering breath, I forced the tears dry—which took more effort than expected, and wiped my hands across my face.

“Sorry,” I said in a sigh. “I didn’t plan for … this.” I ground my teeth together, pushing back a fresh wave of despair.

Reaching for my phone, I pressed the home button, grimacing that it had only been a half hour since Frankie arrived at the hotel. By the same token, it had been the longest I’d cried in well over a decade—combined. My head was pounding and I felt emptier than I did the night I was on the phone with Frankie when she found out about Clara. With tired eyes, I forced my gaze to Frankie’s face. Her eyes were glassy, and she seemed to be holding her breath as if exhaling would break the dam in her eyes.

“Don’t be sorry,” she finally forced out, running a hand across the top of my shoulder and down my arm. She set her hand on my forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t be sorry at all.”

I glanced out the window, running the heel of my hands under my ever-swelling eyes. I figured it would be a miracle if I could see at all by sundown. “I’m a real fucking mess right now, Frankie. I didn’t mean for you to fly all this way just for … this.”

Her hand moved to my face as she nudged my attention back to her. “For
you
. Not the you you want me to see, or pretend to be. I came all this way to see
you,
and … You’re giving me you. All of it.” So help me God, her thumb ran across my bottom lip and I stopped breathing.

Reaching up, I grabbed hold of her wrist, turning my face with eyes closed to inhale the garden scent she always sprayed there. I let my lips rest against the silky skin of her arm while I breathed her in. She was as still as could be. Finally, I opened my eyes, and caught her staring directly at me with her lips parted.

“Frankie,” I started, setting her hand down between us, but keeping mine in place on hers, “I had this whole speech prepared … all the things I regretted, and was and wasn’t sorry for, and ways I have changed or am going to change. But … I can’t … I’m kind of beat up right now. I’m empty, and I can’t—”

My macho show didn’t last long as a few more tears announced their presence, betraying my speech. I cleared my throat, determined to at least get through this.

“Just bear with me?” I begged in the form of a question. “I just need a couple days to—”

Frankie grinned, cutting me off. “This is going to take more than a few days.”

“I don’t want to waste your trip out here. I don’t want to blow this, Frankie.”

Shifting her leg out from underneath her, Frankie sat cross-legged in front of me, moving the folds of fabric from her dress around her. She looked kind of like a cupcake in that moment—bright teal with yellow sprinkles from her painted fingernails, which matched her toes. In that instant, I not only missed everything about her that had been gone from my life for the last couple of months, but I missed Georgia and Regan, too. I felt desperately raw and alone and, for the first time in my life, I
needed
someone. And acknowledged it.

“CJ you haven’t wasted anything. I meant what I said. I only ever wanted
you
—not the bizarro you from the stage. We had a lot of good times together—a lot. But, I’ve never felt—” A choked sob cut her off. She cleared her throat before continuing, seeming to ignore the delicate tears trickling down her cheeks. “I’ve never felt more connected to you than right now.”

I managed a grin. “All I had to do was bawl like a baby?”

She chuckled. A light sound that warmed my chest. Shrugging, she grinned back. “Guess so.”

“So what are you saying?” I hesitated to ask, not wanting to push this in a direction she wasn’t willing to go. My heart raced, despite my eyelids protesting being awake. Being so open is exhausting.

Frankie took a deep breath, gently wiping under her eyes with her pinkies, assessing the damage to her makeup by the amount of black mascara on her fingertips. I reached for the box of tissues behind me, handing them to her while she seemed to mull over her answer.

“You’re killin’ me here,” I admitted after what seemed like
forever
.

She smiled, staring at her black-streaked tissue as if it held the answer. “I’m saying …” she trailed off.

I puffed out my cheeks, exhaling heavy.

“I’m saying,” she continued with renewed resolve in her voice, “that I want to start over.”

The words seemed too much for both of us as she broke into a full sob and I couldn’t help the silent tears escaping my eyes. This was totally off the charts for me, and I didn’t know what to do. I lurched forward, pulling her toward me and holding the back of her head as she sobbed into my shoulder. I let my tears stream off my chin and drip on her back.

“I want that more than anything,” I said, resting my chin just off her shoulder, squeezing her tighter. “I am so sorry, Frankie. For everything. Just … fucking everything. God, I was such an asshole.”

Her head shook side to side before she pulled back. “You weren’t always an asshole. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“Why would you forgive me? That’s what you’re doing, right?” I couldn’t remember ever having being forgiven before by anyone besides family. And even then it was often accompanied with a frustrated smack upside the head or a resigned eye-roll. But not here, and not now. She was forgiving me with tears. And love.

Frankie sniffed, roping me into her gaze. “Sometimes that’s all you can do before the anger eats you alive. I didn’t know the depth of what you’d been through with your dad, or that you were willing to be like
this
in front of me.” She gestured to me, chuckling and shaking her head some more, as if trying to prove to herself that this wasn’t a dream.

“I was so pissed, CJ,” she continued. “But seeing you like this …”

I hesitated to press on the point, but I was so tired and confused, baffled that this woman used the word forgiveness in an affirming way with
me
. “You forgive me because I cried in front of you?”

She shrugged. “Because you are being open with me. Raw. And you didn’t plan it. It wasn’t staged or orchestrated. It wasn’t a gimmick or a gesture. You just helplessly offered yourself to me. Why are you questioning me?” she asked with a comical eyebrow arch. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”

“God no!” I answered quickly, causing her to laugh. “No. I just … I’m trying to understand why
you
would forgive
me
for all my bullshit.”

“Knowing you, it’ll take a long while for you to forgive yourself. So, someone has to show you how. You did screw up, in a lot of ways. And forgiveness doesn’t come with automatic trust, CJ—”

“I know,” I cut in, reaching for her hand. “I know it doesn’t. That’s a time thing …”

“It is. But I’m willing to try if you are.” She wiped away the last of the mascara from her cheeks.

I nodded, pulling her to me once more, so overcome by emotion that I could hardly stand it. “Please,” was all I could say before the tears fell again.

“I’m so fuckin’ tired,” I said, trying to cover up the tears. I couldn’t go from never crying to a puddle of mess in the span of a day. It was bullshit and overwhelming—probably as much for Frankie as it was for me.

She yawned almost instantly, her shoulders sinking. “So am I. I had to leave so early this morning.”

I turned around, eyeing the pillows over my shoulder. Looking back at Frankie, the only desire I had was to hold her and never let go.

“Nap?” I asked with a shrug and the only grin I had left in me.

She nodded, slipping her sandals off. “Please.”

At nine-thirty in the morning, my not-so-ex-girlfriend slid under the covers and backed into me where she fit like a glove, our bodies curving together. I draped my arm around her waist, pulling her in as close as I could get her. The last thing I remembered before falling to sleep was kissing her shoulder and telling her I loved her.

I wasn’t awake long enough to hear her response, but it almost didn’t matter. I wasn’t saying it for reciprocity. I was saying it so she knew. Because I did and I’d try my best for her, always.

Georgia and I were in Dr. Weeber’s office for the third time since I’d been home. Our first session was the Monday after I got back, which only gave us a day and a half of awkward tangos around our home before spilling everything to our therapist. As we hadn’t seen her in quite some time, there was a lot to catch up on, and the reminder that regular checking in, both with each other and her, if needed, was vital in “watering the tree of our marriage.” Those were her actual words. Despite the cheesy turn of phrase, not even Georgia rolled her eyes at the sentiment, which was more powerful on its own than the words uttered by our licensed marriage repair specialist.