The grin on her face when she tells me about her favorite things and the way she takes her snacks so seriously and her laugh that is my favorite song. The way her hand in mine had my heartrate slowing, the sound of her voice an antidote to the panic that threatened to take me under. I’m in deep, and sitting here on this rooftop with her, I realize I don’t want it to be any other way.
Even if we can’t be more than what we are, I’d rather have a fraction of her than have everything with anyone else.
“It’s awfully hard to forget the sight of a bright red Jeep screeching into the parking lot, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ blasting out of the open windows. Besides, Riley was playing Celine Dion on her phone when we got home so she couldsee what all the fuss is about.” I put air quotes around those last words, and Maddy laughs. “Apparently you are extremely cool because you drive a red Jeep and you played hockey, and because you like Celine, Riley has decided Celine is acceptable.”
“The thirteen-year-old stamp of approval. I dig it,” Maddy says with a grin.
“You should be honored by your cool title,” I say, reaching for the bag of popcorn and digging in. “Pretty much every adult in Riley’s world is supremelyuncool, and I’m at the front of the pack.”
“I fucking love teenagers. Especially teenage girls. They’re so smart and funny and fascinating. It’s cool to see them figuring out how the world works and how to navigate that finite space between childhood and adulthood.”
“Do you spend a lot of time around teenagers?”
She shrugs, taking another sip of her drink. “When I was in grad school, I did an internship in a group home for teenage kidswho hadn’t yet aged out of the foster system. And I spend a lot of time with Olivia and Brian’s kids, who are both teenagers now. Jake is a senior and is mostly too obsessed with sports and his friends to give me the time of day, but Zoe still thinks I’m a cool, older sister type, which is really special to me because I’ve had that same kind of relationship with Olivia since she moved to Pittsburgh to be closer to her brother when I was ten, and that’s always how I’ve felt about my mom’s three best friends who pretty much helped raise me.”
The way she talks about her family has her face lighting up, and it makes me want to ask her a million more questions and meet every single one of the people who had a hand in making Maddy who she is.
I want to know everything about her.
“Riley has been talking about Zoe. I think they’re hitting it off.”
Maddy grins at me. “That’s great! Zoe is a great kid. She’s a serious boundary pusher and is in the middle of a love affair with the color black, but I love that about her.”
I give her a wry smile. “I’m familiar with that. At least, the boundary pushing part.”
Her smile widens. “Riley giving you a run for your money?”
Huffing out a laugh, I grab another handful of popcorn. “Raising a teenager is not for the weak, it turns out. The learning curve is steep. I’m trying to just go with it, though. Let her be whoever she needs to be. But it’s…harrowing. Lainey would have been so good at figuring it out. Sometimes I feel like I’m jumping from crisis to crisis, just trying to survive.”
Maddy studies me, and for a second, it feels like she sees the whole of me. “Offer still stands, you know.”
“What offer?”
She tosses an M&M in the air and catches it in her mouth in a way that has me grinning at her. She’s so damn cute. “To tell me about Lainey.”
My chest warms at the way her name sounds coming out ofMaddy’s mouth, and it has the words spilling out before I can stop them.
“She was a whirlwind,” I say with a laugh, thinking back to those early days. “I met her in an economics class early in our freshman year of college. She got to class five minutes late, dropped down onto the seat next to me, flashed me a grin, and asked if she could borrow a pen. I was eighteen and already overwhelmed trying to balance classes and football, but all of a sudden, nothing else mattered because Lainey wanted to go get pancakes at two a.m. at the diner off campus or sneak into the sports complex to stargaze on the tennis courts. We fell in love fast, and college was a blur of days and nights spent together, and football games where she would wear my jersey and scream her head off, and the absolute certainty that we were meant to be together forever. The kind of certainty you can only have when you’re eighteen and sure that your entire life is ahead of you.
“She moved to Pittsburgh with me when I was drafted, and we got married and had Riley pretty quickly. Some people would say too quickly, but I’m happy we didn’t listen. Didn’t wait. Lainey was an amazing mom. It was almost like she knew she wouldn’t be around for long, so she poured so much love and fun into those three years with Riley. I loved her,” I say quietly, feeling the truth of it in my bones. “I loved her so damn much, and then she was gone, and I’ve tried to give all of that love to my kids. To be enough for them, even though they deserve both of us. Sorry,” I say, shaking my head, realizing that talking about how much I loved my late wife is not exactly the conversation to be having with the first woman since my wife that I’ve had big, important feelings for. “That was a lot.”
When she lays a hand over mine I flip my hand over, lacing our fingers together. “Don’t apologize. Not for this. Never, ever for this.”
“It’s not weird?” I ask the question again. “Talking about my wife?”
She shakes her head, thoughtfully. “Not for me. She was yourperson for a long, long time. You should be able to talk about her anytime you want. She may be gone, but the two of you will always be tied together by your kids, and by the fact that you loved her, deeply and completely. Besides, she sounds cool as hell. I, too, enjoy two a.m. diner pancakes and stargazing. Although I used to do my collegestargazingon the roof of the science building.” Maddy puts air quotes around the word stargazing and shoots me a wicked grin. “Stargazing, of course, being code for making out. And…other things.”
“Who were you making out with?” I practically growl.
Maddy bursts out laughing. “Simmer down, Cameron. You know you just got finished telling me about your whole entire wife, right?”
I laugh, too. “Sorry, for a second I was a college guy again, and the girl I like told me she was making out with someone else.”
“The girl you like, huh?” Maddy says with a smirk.
It’s the smirk that does it, I think. Or maybe it’s just her and me and the warm breeze on our faces and the way she let me talk about Lainey and how I think she sees past just the football player or the single dad or the widower straight to my core. Whatever it is has me moving the snacks out of the way, scooting around so we sit side-by-side. Maddy sucks in a breath but doesn’t protest as I put a hand on her cheek, splaying my fingers over her jaw and turning her head so she’s looking at me, my body humming at her proximity.
“The girl I like,” I say quietly, sweeping my thumb over her cheekbone, watching her green eyes grow hazy and dark. “I really like you, Wildcat. I’ve liked you since you opened your purse full of M&M’s and let me kiss you in a bar.”
