“Is that actually a thing for Maverick? You know what? Don’t bother answering that. It’s irrelevant to this discussion, and we can come back to it later. Or maybe never. Now, tell me the but side to this.” The right side of her mouth quirks up at the way she stresses the word but.
“Stop being such a twelve-year-old boy.”
She taps her temple. “My maturity level is at least fifteen. What’s holding you back?”
“It’s far from home and my family and friends.”
“We’re a plane ride away, and I love shopping, so I’ll come visit all the time and bring the people you love and miss with me.”
“Kodiak will have training camp in August, so I’ll be out here on my own.”
“But you’ve made friends, and he was always going somewhere, honey. So the way I see it, you have two options. You come back to Chicago and finish school there, or you stay here and take this amazing opportunity to do something you truly, wholly love.”
“What do you think Dad will say?”
“He’ll say the real estate is a good investment once I calm him down. Don’t worry about your dad, Lavender. He wants you to be happy, and he realizes that in order for that to happen, we can’t helicopter-parent you or smother you. You came here for a reason. It looks to me like the universe is giving you something else to stay for.”
____________________
My mom, Lacey, Lovey, River, and Josiah leave for the airport midafternoon. Kodiak isn’t due back until later in the evening, so I sit in front of my sewing machine, unable to relax. We made a deal that he wouldn’t tell me where he was going until he got home. But he did message me a picture of his very neat signature written on a contract.
Which brings with it equal parts relief and terror.
Now I just have to prepare myself for what’s coming next, which is a lot of change for both of us.
It’s almost nine when he walks in the door, looking exhausted. He drops his bag on the floor and opens his arms. I’m wearing socks, so I skid across the slippery hardwood into his hard chest.
He folds me into his embrace. “I missed you so goddamn much.”
“Same.” I breathe him in—his cologne, the scent of his laundry detergent, stale airplane, and possibly some kind of pizza. His heart thunders, and mine matches the frantic rhythm.
He cups my face between his palms, tips my head back, and covers my mouth with his. I sink into the kiss for a few minutes, allowing myself the fantasy that this isn’t going to come to an end in a month, that every day he’s going to walk through that door and kiss me like this for the rest of our lives, that I won’t have to go weeks at a time without him.
Eventually I pull away. “You signed with a team.”
He nods. “For three years.”
My heart skips a few beats. That will feel like an eternity. “We’ll make it work.”
“We’ll have the off-season, and the flight to Chicago isn’t that long. We’ll be able—”
“I won’t be in Chicago.”
“Wait. What?” His brow furrows.
I swallow my fears. “While you were away, I got an offer from the production company. They want to keep me on.”
“Here? In New York?”
I nod. “I really love it, Kodiak. I love what I’m doing, and if you’re already going to be all the way across the country, it makes sense.” I run my hands over his chest, working to find some calm when my nerves are going haywire. “New York and Chicago are pretty close to the same distance from Vancouver.”
“I won’t be in Vancouver.” He sweeps a thumb across the hollow under my eye, wiping away a tear.
My heart stutters. “Where will you be?”
“Close.” A massive grin breaks across his face, popping the dimple that makes him look so boyish. “I signed with Philly.”
“Philadelphia? That’s really close.”
“Drivably close,” he agrees and lowers his voice to a whisper. “We’re gonna be okay, Lavender. We can make this work.”
I break down in tears, the relief overwhelming. “I was so scared you were going to be on the other side of the country.”
He wraps his arms around me and carries me over to the couch, arranging me so I’m settled in his lap. “I was fucking terrified.” He brushes my hair away from my face. “I didn’t want to be that far away from you.”
“Me either, but I couldn’t let you walk away from your dream.”
He nods, eyes soft and warm. He wraps me in his safe, strong embrace, dips his head and kisses me breathless. “Thank you for making sure I didn’t mess this up for us.”
“I love you too much to let something like distance break us, but I’ll admit, I’m so glad you won’t be far away.”
“Well, I’m always right here.” He draws a figure eight over my heart. “But I prefer when I can feel it beat for me.”
Epilogue
Keeper of My Heart
Kodiak
Eighteen months later
IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT when I get home. And home isn’t Philly anymore. The planets aligned, and I was traded at the end of last season. But home isn’t a spot on a map for me anyway. It isn’t the two-story brownstone with a garden full of purple flowers in the summer and a door the color of my girlfriend’s name.
Home is the feeling I get when the plane touches down in New York City. It’s the spike of anxiety mixed with anticipation as I slide into the back seat of the cab, knowing with every passing mile, I’m that much closer to the one person who makes me feel whole.
Home is wherever Lavender happens to be.
And currently, she’s curled up on the couch, having fallen asleep while crocheting. Her brother Robbie’s girlfriend is due any day, and Lavender decided before I left for my away series that she was going to teach herself to crochet because so many cute things!
One of her favorite albums is playing, probably on repeat. She does that sometimes, plays the same album on an endless loop when she’s trying to concentrate. She says she stops hearing it, and it drowns out the noise in her head.
Based on the rainbow of bunnies populating the arm of the couch at her feet, the mission was a resounding success—either that or the crocheted bunnies have learned how to multiply on their own.
I take a moment to appreciate that Lavender is willing to deal with the insanity that is my life, and sometimes me. I love her so fiercely, it can be overwhelming at times—for both of us. But we’ve learned how to find our own version of balance. It isn’t always easy, and the long stretches during my away series test me more than they test Lavender, but we manage. She’s proven to be the stronger and more resilient of the two of us in that regard.
I pad back to the kitchen to gather the items I left on the counter, and I arrange them carefully on the end table before I kneel on the floor beside her.
Her lips are parted slightly, the scar from her childhood forever a reminder of the night that cemented our souls together. No matter how far away I am, I feel that connection, like a tripping switch, an invisible energy that only seems to grow stronger the longer we’re together.
I brush my thumb across her bottom lip, and she sighs, head turning in my direction. She swipes at her face with an uncoordinated hand, and when it connects with mine, she finds my pinkie and curls hers around it.