Page 103 of A Million Times, Yes
I got up from the couch, and when I reached her purse, I pulled it open to grab the thick stack of envelopes, and in the process, the tips of my fingers hit something hard. Something that felt like stone. I couldn’t imagine what it was, and I pulled out the paper to get a better look. On the bottom, sitting next to her wallet, was a rock.
One that was familiar because I’d given it to her.
I held it up in the air. “I can’t believe you still have this.”
Her eyes narrowed as if she was squinting to see what I had. “The paperweight? I could never throw that darn thing away.”
With the bills in one hand and the rock in the other, I returned to the couch, turning the stone to view each side. I’d painted it in kindergarten in splashes of jewel tones that all blended together, and I’d brought it home after it dried, so excited to show Mom what I’d created. Even though that felt like a lifetime ago, I could still remember it. How she had teased me that the yellow and green, where they overlapped, looked like mud and how theoblong shape made it look like a big teardrop. The rock had sat on one of our counters, exactly where I’d put it, for several weeks until we got evicted, and I never saw it again.
“Mom, we moved a dozen times since I gave you this rock, and you’ve moved just as many after I left for college. How has it survived all that?”
Her exhale came from her nose, sounding like a little puff. “I’ve never taken it out of my purse.”
“You mean, even when we were living in your car it was in there? And it has been this whole time? That’s twenty-five-ish years of carrying this around.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I was proud of it. I still am, and ...” Her head slanted to the side. “I’m proud of you. That’s something I probably haven’t said enough.” She took it out of my hand and turned it around, looking at the sides like I’d done. “This is the first present you ever gave me.” She glanced at me again. “You could have given it to anyone. Shit, you could have kept it for yourself. But you didn’t. I’ll never forget that.” She put the rock back in my hand, and when her fingers grazed my skin, she smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jordan
My office door flung open without so much as a knock or even a hint that someone was about to barge in. My jaw clenched as I waited for the face to appear in the doorway, and once it did, I growled, “So help me God, if you don’t start knocking, Gavin ...”
“What are you going to do, brother?” He chuckled. “I love nothing more than to rile you up, and I know how much the lack of knocking gets on your nerves.” He shut the door behind him, a smile covering his entire fucking face, and he took a seat in front of my desk. “Tell me ... what’s good?”
I forced myself to calm down and checked the time on my monitor. “It’s been a fucking day. But Maya should be arriving at my condo in the next twenty minutes, and that’s the only thing that’s getting me through.”
“And you’re here and not home. Why?”
I squeezed the back of my skull, where a headache was erupting. “I’ve got a little bit more work to wrap up before I leave.”
“When are you going to ask her to move in with you?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“She’s basically already living with me.”
“But she’s still paying rent at her apartment, yes? So if a fight happens between you two, she has somewhere to go that isn’t, say, your man cave upstairs?”
I nodded.
“You know that’s not the same as her moving in.” He paused. “Are you afraid of rushing it, or are you afraid she’ll say no?”
“Things between us have been in fast-forward since we started hooking up. I want her to live with me. Shit, I want her to marry me. But we’re good right now, Gavin. Really fucking good. There’s no reason to mess with that.”
“I hear you.” He bent his arms and locked his hands behind his head, elbows pointed out in either direction, and relaxed into the chair. “And Ben’s in love with her. So there’s that.”
“I fucking love seeing them together.” Every time she smiled over that boy, when she hugged him, when she leaned down and spoke to him eye to eye, I couldn’t stop picturing her doing the same with our child. “She’s going to be one hell of a mom.”
“She is, for sure.” He crossed his legs, his foot bouncing in the air, another smile eventually coming over his face. “I just want to point out that it’s wild seeing you like this after all these years of being single and anti-relationship. I know you were just waiting for the right woman—and Jordan, you found her.”
I closed my eyes while taking in the deepest breath. “I did.”
“I’m happy for you, my man.”
I hissed out the air I’d inhaled. “I appreciate it. But you know what will make me happy? This Clover transition to be over.”
“It’s kicking your ass, isn’t it?”
“The details, the decisions, the bullshit that keeps piling up—I’m over it.” I pounded my fists on top of a mound of folders that held over two hundred pages of nonsense regarding the team’s new uniforms, words that could have been summarized into a paragraph. “I was still in the NHL when Dad bought the other teams. I was too deep in a hockey bubble to know what really went down and what changes wereimplemented when the buyouts went through, so I don’t know if what I’m dealing with is normal or not, but this is some heavy shit.”
