Page 104 of Silver-Tongued Devil
He had to smile. “You don’t mess around.”
“Messing around doesn’t get anybody anywhere. Want to tell me about it?”
“It’s confusing.”
“Most important things are.”
He tried to marshal his thoughts, but they refused to be herded, so he just spilled them, messy as they were. “When I had to retire, I decided it was just as well. I was thirty-four. I wasn’t going to get many more seasons anyway. And it was time for me to change. Time to move on, do all those adult things.”
“You don’t think you’d been doing adult things?”
“Some, sure. Football’s a game, but it’s hard work.”
“Of course it is. It always has been, the way you’ve done it. So what wasn’t adult?”
He glanced across at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking up at the stars, her hands folded in her lap. It reminded him of the way she’d used to be there, standing in the kitchen after school, after practice. Folding clothes, doing the dishes. Not demanding anything, but there to listen if he wanted to talk. “You’re a good mom,” he said.
“I know. So what wasn’t adult?”
“Oh, you know. Women. And the nine to five. Living like other people live. I made this…” He laughed softly. “This checklist for the right kind of woman. The right wife, the right mom. I was going to find her. I sort of did, but she was never right after all, or I wasn’t. And then I met Dakota.”
“Mm-hmm.”
He sighed and took another sip of beer. “She’s nothing like my list. Not one single thing. But her heart… it’s… I just…”
He got stuck, then, the way he always did when he tried to think about this. “I justlikeher,” he finally said. “It’s better when she’s with me. I leave, or she leaves, and I miss her too much. And it doesn’t stop.”
“I imagine not. I imagine it gets worse.”
“Yeah. It does. I thought it was physical, and it would… burn out, if we could just get started. But then we did, and it hasn’t burned out.” He rubbed a hand over his chest. “It’s worse. Itaches.”
“And? Are you worried she doesn’t love you as much as you love her?”
That knocked some breath out of him. “We just said it tonight.”
“Mm.” She sounded sleepy. “Saying it isn’t the first step. For somebody as cautious as you, it’s probably thelaststep.”
“I’m not cautious.”
“Oh, honey. Why do you think you aren’t married?”
“Because I was having a good time. Because I never found the woman who made me want to give up the good time. Because of who I am genetically, probably. My wild side.”
“I’ll tell you why. Because you wanted to wait to be sure. That’s caution. It doesn’t matter how much you’re willing to get tackled or how many businesses you start. That’s your body and your head, not your heart. Your heart’s in a whole different country. Your heart’s uncharted territory.”
He tried to think of something to say about that, but he couldn’t. She was pretty much right. At least that was how it felt.
After a minute, she went on, “So you love her, and she loves you, and you want to take on that new life. You want to move on. But…”
“But she’s not right.” It was out there, and it was the cold truth. It was impossible.
“Hmm. How?”
“I want to do it the right way. I know it’s time to settle down and have that adult life, where I focus on the business, but I go home to my wife. Where I have kids. And Dakota… she wants the opposite. She wants adventure. She already has the kind of life I want, and it isn’t right for her, and Iseethat. She wants to travel and see the world. She wants to… I don’t know. Swing out on vines into the water in some rainforest. Swim with dolphins. Go to Antarctica, probably. Dream up her glass, and make it, and get somewhere with it. So how do I ask her to choose something else, when I see her dream, and I see it’s right for her? When she’s given it up for Russell already? How do I ask her to give it up again for me?”
“Is that what you’d be doing?”
He felt a stab of annoyance. “I just said. It’s exactly what it would be. It’s bad enough now. I’m restless enough. I need a woman to help me with that, not somebody who’s even more restless than me. She’s the right woman, and she’s exactly wrong. And I think she knows it.”
