Tears swell in my eyes. “I feel her around me all the time. She would be so proud of you, Griffin. I hope you know that. She was always telling me how proud of you she was and how much she looked up to you.”
“I feel her with me, too. Like last season when I won the Calder trophy. Or the night I found out about Cadence. Memories of her drive me to push myself harder each day.”
Griff opens the door to his apartment, and I’m not sure what I was thinking his place would look like, but it certainly wasn’t this. It’s much more spacious than I was anticipating, being that it is in the heart of the city.
Along one wall of the foyer, there’s a bench with hooks hung above it for coats and purses. Against the other wall is a long entryway table with a round mirror hung above it. The furniture finish is a warm, natural wood, similar to what I’ve picked out for Cadence’s room and my own at Carson’s house.
Griff walks further into the apartment, and after slipping off my shoes and hanging my jacket and purse on the hooks, I park the stroller next to the entryway table. I walk through the open layout to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows where Griff is holding Cadence.
“This view is breathtaking,” I say in awe of the cityscape in front of us.
“It truly is,” he agrees. I look over at him and am surprised to find him already staring at me intently.
Clearing the uncertainty from my throat, I ask, “Will you give me a tour?”
“Of course, Sunshine. Let’s put Cadence in her crib first, though,” he suggests as he leads us down to the end of the hallway.
“A crib? Griff, I hope you mean a pack and play,” I start but am suddenly at a loss for words as I take in the room Griffin set up for Cadence.
In front of me is the most beautiful nursery. The walls are a crisp cream color, and the furniture has the same warm, natural wood tones as the entryway. The crib is centered along the back wall, which iswindowless. The wall to the right of it has the same floor-to-ceiling windows; however, there are expensive-looking beige drapes falling from the ceiling to the floor. The same wide-plank wood flooring that runs throughout the rest of the apartment is in here as well, but there is a large, plush cream rug that takes up most of the floor space. There’s also a large, white neon sign with Cadence’s name written across it in a script font hung above her crib.
I’m still trying to take in the space when I catch Griff watching me from the corner of my eye. Griffin must take my silence as displeasure. He looks unsure of himself as he scratches the back of his neck with the hand not holding Cades.
“I just wanted to get a few things for when you two visit. I wasn’t able to get as many books on her bookshelves yet, but I did getChicka Chicka Boom Boomand about a dozen of her other favorites.”
I hadn’t even noticed the few rows of acrylic floating bookshelves hung along the wall behind me.
“I figured we could go shopping on my day off for some of the items I may have forgotten,” he pauses. “Shit, Kenna. Say something, please,” he pleads.
Why is it that this man always makes me lose any and all sense?
Shaking my head, I reply, “It’s perfect—stunning.”
“Really? Are you sure you like it? Do you think she’ll like it?” he questions.
“She’ll love everything in here. Griff, you didn’t have to. When did you even have the time to do all of this?”
He moves to the left side of the room and places Cadence on a changing mat that sits on top of a dresser. Griff changes her into a clean diaper, then grabs an armless sleep sack out of one of the drawers for her to sleep in. It looks like just the one I packed for her from home.
Still waiting for him to answer, I take in more details of the room. He’s got a little basket sitting atop the dresser that’s filled with the same lotions, essential oils, and diaper rash balms I have in the diaper bag. He takes out an oil roller from one of them and rubs it along her feet before placing her in the sleep sack. Once he’s got her zipped up, he places a kiss on her forehead and sits down in the glider in the corner of the room. Griff reaches out to the side table beside him, turns on the noise machine, and then connects his phone to a Bluetooth speaker that starts playing “You Are My Sunshine.”
He’s truly thought of every little detail. Tears well in my eyes as I watch him rock our daughter back to sleep while he softly sings our song to her. If you had told me a few months ago that I would be visiting Griff in Colorado with Cadence, watching him take on fatherhood in stride, I would have thought you were crazy.
But here I am, with a man I was once insanely in love with—quite possibly still might be in love with—and he’s trying so damn hard to do right by us. I surprised him with this trip because I wanted to make an effort—to extend an olive branch in our agreement to try to leave the past behind us. But if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve built up walls around my heart and set boundaries for us to remain platonic to protect myself.
Protect myself from what, though? From a man who was once lost, broken, and destroyed, so he pushed me away and broke my heart. If I was in his shoes, can I honestly say I wouldn’t have done the same? I loved Katie like a sister, but at the end of the day, she wasn’t my sister; she was Griff’s.
So now I have to choose. Do I let the fear of past mistakes repeating themselves consume me, allowing me to keep my walls up? Or do I finally let down my walls for this man who has suffered such devastating losses and then worked on himself to overcome his grief?
My heart has already made the choice for me. It’s him. It’s always been him.
The next morning, Cadence does something she rarely ever does: she sleeps in. I roll over in Griffin’s bed—yes, we slept in the same bed—because he absolutely refused to have either of us sleep on the couch. We haven’t talked about us yet, so he kept a respectable distance between us at first, but when I asked him to hold me in his arms, he didn’t protest.
Once I’m done brushing my teeth in Griffin’s primary bathroom, I open his bedroom door and am instantly hit with the smell of coffee.Come to Mama.
Instead of grabbing a cup of coffee, though, I stop in my tracks when I turn the corner of the hallway. A shirtless,tatted, Griffin is sitting on the living room rug with Cadence between his legs as they wind up a Jack in the Box. The box pops open, springing the puppet out, and Cadence’s answering giggle is music to my ears.
Griff catches me staring but doesn’t call me out on it. Instead, he flashes me his dimples and says, “Good morning, Sunshine.”
