Page 90 of Anti Player

I make some grilled cheese sandwiches using the French bread I bought from the bakery Kaleb introduced me to. I keep Asher’s simple and add a little twist to mine and Kaleb’s using smoked gouda cheese and bacon.

We all eat our meal together and it feels so easy. The conversation flows between the three of us. Asher can’t stop talking about his sleepover. I bought him a Batman sleeping bag a while back and he wants to take it with him. We finish lunch and then Kaleb drives us over to Rebel and Wolfe’s. We don’t stay long but I give my boy a big hug and tell him to have fun and when I finish hugging him, he hugs Kaleb. Kaleb is thrown for a second but then he wraps his arms around Asher and tells him to have a good time.

We leave Rebel and Wolfe’s and drive back to the apartment.

“I think I need to go home,” I state. “There are things I want to ask him. Things I want to understand,” I say to Kaleb.

“I’m coming with you, Maddie,” he says, surprising me.

“You can’t do that. You don’t like going home. When was the last time you were in Cliftwood?”

“Eight years ago. Went home the year I drafted. I don’t know what I was thinking but my mom was barely even there. I just went to pick up clothes,” he says with a distant look on his face.

“You can’t come home with me. My brothers will think something is up,” I bring to his attention.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he says and then he pauses and licks his lips. “I always thought about what I would say to my dad if I ever saw him again. . .” he begins. “Then when I did, it didn’t make me feel better. I just realized my dad was an ass. . .”

“I’m sorry.” I reach out and touch his arm when he’s driving.

“I realized none of my success mattered because I didn’t need to prove my dad wrong; I just needed to feel good about myself,” he says and it makes so much sense.

“I spent a lot of years feeling bad about myself. Thinking that there was something wrong with me,” I confess, and that’s why Dad left.

He removes one hand from the wheel and takes my hand in his. “There’s nothing wrong with you, beautiful. It was your father who had the problem.”

My heart splatters to the car floor. “I’m starting to see that.”

“We all need to start somewhere.” He smiles.

“What about you? Are you over the stuff with your parents?” I ask him.

“I don’t think it’s something we get over. It’s something we carry probably forever, if it’s as a lesson, a way not to be, it’s built us into who we are, but we get to make our own choices and live on our own lives.”

“And that’s why you remain single?” I ask, even though I know I shouldn’t. Not when I’m feeling the way I do.

“Yeah, I just never thought I’d go down that path. My life is good. Why rock the boat?” he says, and there I have it. This man does not want me the way I want him.

I sigh and lean my head on the headrest.

“You really don’t have to come home with me,” I reiterate.

“Maybe it’s time I face my past too. It wouldn’t hurt for me to check in with my mother. See how she is,” he says. “There’s Jack and Jane that I’d like to see too, but last I heard they were both in college.”

“Crazy that those two didn’t stay in touch,” I say.

“Pretty sure their dad demonized me and Mom,” he says. My heart hurts for him because he was so young, and he took care of them so well.

He blows out a breath.

We head back to the apartment building, only Kaleb leads me to his bed, and he makes slow love to me. He does things to my body I’ve never felt before, and in that moment, I forget all our problems. There is only him and me. His fingers entwine with mine as we both come undone together. He looks me in the eyes, and I want to tell him how far gone I am on him, but I don’t because I remember his words from the car ride about staying single and not wanting to rock the boat. I keep my mouth shut, knowing my heart isn’t coming out of this situation in one piece.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

Kaleb

I’m boarding a plane with Maddie and Asher back to Cliftwood, Michigan. My head is spinning, but there was no way I could let her face her father on her own. I know she has her brothers there, but I wanted to be there for her too. Only, I couldn’t tell her because we made a pact. We aren’t falling for each other. We are having fun. Only it doesn’t feel like just fun anymore, it feels real. I wasn’t going to scare the shit out of her and tell her that, so I told her I wanted to check in on my mom. The very woman who doesn’t respond to my calls when I only call at Christmas. But this trip home is for Maddie because not all of us are lucky to get closure. And I want to make sure that the woman I. . . The word in my head jars me and my heart rate kicks up. That can’t be right. We are just having fun. I’m confusing all the good sex we are having for something else.

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