I lost every single one of my words.

“I don’t need an answer now, or any time soon. I don’t deserve an answer to begin with… but I’m leaving soon. And I have you to thank for it. You were right. If I can keep playing, I should. I want to. I missed it so much while I was out, but now… I’ll have to miss you and Mo if I do. But I’ve been thinking… even if you don’t come… I’ll come back as soon as I can. My contract could be for a year, after that, I could… I could retire. Come here, possibly. Or you could go with me to see home. You and Grandpa Gus and Peter. I’ve saved most of my income. I could build us a house big enough for all of us. I just want you with me, Len. And if I have to wait a year or two or three, I’ll do it, but I would always rather have you now than not.”

I hadn’t even….

Go with him? Mo and me?

I wanted to ask him if he was serious, but this was Jonah. Of course he was serious.

Go with him?

Go with him?

His mouth trailed over my forehead, dry and warm, until his nose was there too, and he was nuzzling me. Then both of his hands were there, under my shoulders, holding them tight. “I don’t make up for everything you would leave behind, but I would try my best, Lenny. I would try my best every day if you’d consider it.”

*

And that was what I did. Every chance I had. Even if it felt like a lead weight that had been dropped on top of my soul.

We did other things too.

I loved brushing my teeth with him beside me in the mornings. I loved seeing him greet Mo first thing, with cuddles and kisses and his lovely voice singing Māori lullabies into her ear. I loved his sleepy face and the way he smelled and how unafraid and open he was to touching me all the damn time. A hand on my hip. An arm over my shoulders. A chin against my head. Fingers threading through my own every chance they had.

If I hadn’t already been in love with him, it would have been over for me in those following weeks.

Regardless of what he was training, he would come and get on a bike with me any time I got on and we’d race.

If I was weight training, he’d come and spot me.

If I was working in the MMA building, he would sit and watch me like he had nothing better to do. When I’d do something he thought was impressive, he would clap, and later on tell me how amazing he thought it was. Then he’d ask me to do it to him to know.

My heart grew and grew with every day with him. And grew even more every night that we were together with Mo. Like a big family.

At night when it was just the two of us holed up in my room like horny teenagers… baby Jesus would have been traumatized. We might have even had an addiction problem. I sucked him off when my period hit, and he’d shoved my shirt up high to suck on my nipples and rub at my clit over my underwear at the end of my period. But mostly, it was the way I woke up with his arm thrown around my waist most mornings that was the best. Or waking up with my face in between his shoulder blades, my toes touching his calves.

And then when the day came that his agent called with news that he’d been signed and would have to leave….

That was the worst day I’d had in a long time.

Chapter 21

Subject: Email me back

Lenny DeMaio:

Wed 4/8/2019 1:29 p.m.

to Jonah Collins

I hate you. I really do.

My heart was heavy as fuck, and there was no use denying it or trying to hide it.

I was moping. Big fucking time. Massive fucking time.

So far, I’d been fortunate enough to never lose anyone really close to me, but I had a feeling that my body was going through the closest thing to grief it had ever known.

And Jonah hadn’t even left yet.

It had been three days since the call had come through confirming that he had been picked up by a team. That he’d signed another massive deal with more than a handful of zeroes behind it. That he had to leave.

Two years. That’s how long his deal was for. Two years with the Kobe Chargers.

The bittersweet smile on his face while he’d held the phone to his ear as he’d laid in bed beside me, bare-chested with Mo sprawled over him with her bottle, had been awesome and painful.

Awesome because he was going to keep doing something that he loved doing. Something that he was meant to do. But… painful because of what it meant.

I’d still slapped a smile on my face and kept it there. I’d hugged the shit out of him and kept on hugging the shit out of him since. I’d booked his plane ticket for him. I had even downloaded the app that may or may not work once he got to Japan so that he could see Mo at daycare through the cameras.

One week was all the team had been willing to give Jonah to arrive since they had already started practicing for the upcoming season.

One week didn’t give me enough time to leave with him. If I was going to.

The fact was: we could go visit him no problem. I knew that. He had already eyed his game calendar and circled off clots of days, times that he could squeeze a quick trip to visit, days when he’d be home for longer than three or four days so we could fly over for a visit. Bye weeks when we could meet up somewhere.

I’ll take any time I can see you both, Jonah had told me when we’d sat beside each other in the kitchen with his calendar. An hour. Three. A day. Whatever you can do, I’ll take.

Whatever I could do he would take.

Two days later, that comment still pounded away at my head. And my heart.

My entire fucking body.

I hadn’t said a word to Jonah about how much my chest hurt every time I looked at him—which was half the day because he’d been picking up Mo from Grandpa and bringing her to Maio House in the afternoons, where they would hang out with me in my office. Half of my family. Half of my heart.

And a fourth of it was leaving me in four days.

This man I fucking loved the shit out of.

He was going.

And he’d asked me to go with him. To fly halfway across the world, away from half of the people I loved with all of my heart, away from my job, my life. And be with him there. In Kobe.

I had no idea what the hell I should do. Leave everything behind or… not. It wasn’t just me I was deciding for. I had a ten-month-old life relying on me to do what was best for her.

I was in the middle of trying not to think about what was going to happen—and how I was being a selfish asshole and didn’t want it to happen—when the knock on my office door came. I called out “Come in” to whoever was on the other side as I minimized the screen I’d been reading, a thousand and a half thoughts going through my head that had nothing to do with Maio House or any of the guys and women in it.

The size of the shadow warned me it was Jonah, and my stupid-ass heart squeezed itself tight at his big smiling head as he came in holding Mo, his fucking mini-me from the color of her hair to her skin and eyes, in one brawny-ass arm. “Busy?” he asked, circling around and coming to stand beside my chair before he dipped his head and brushed that mouth over mine before giving me a peck on each cheek that had me smiling.

I grabbed Mo’s foot and pretended I was about to eat it, my other hand wrapping around the back of Jonah’s knee, giving it squeeze. “Nah,” I answered him once Mo had squealed and told me all about her day. I met my favorite eye color in the world and smiled up at him, even though I was pretty sure he could see right through me and what I’d just been in the middle of doing.

He didn’t disappoint me.

His index finger grazed my eyebrow as he stood right there, towering over me with our girl cradled in the crook of his arm, and asked, “What’s that sweet face for?”

How the hell was I supposed to go so long without seeing him? Could I do it? Yeah. But I didn’t want to.

I really didn’t want to. That was a fact, and it was always going to be, my gut said. What the hell was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to choose between the loves of my life?

“Honestly, I was thinking about how much I’m going to miss you, and how I don’t want to only see you…” I had to think about it for a second. “Eight times over the next eight months.” I’d already memorized the dates he’d circled.