Love on the Line (Beaumont Legacy #2)

42. Maya

Chapter forty-two

Maya

B y the time Maya and Cooper got back to the house, Lucia and Colton were there with the rest of Maya’s family, and both of them embraced her for minutes until she wiggled free and assured them she was okay. They apologized profusely for not getting there sooner, but they’d used Colton’s connections to get on the first flight out of Charleston. Maya began playing the role of hostess, grabbing stuff from the fridge for people, until Colton set his hands on her shoulders and asked her to follow him.

Maya took in the rooms her family had made every effort to clean up, almost like new, though she knew if she looked up toward her room, she’d still see a splintered door. She followed Colton into the study and sat in the wheeled chair. He looked like he had something serious on his mind, so she waited for him to speak.

“Maya, it took me a lot of thinking recently to realize that you’ve always been so scared of letting other people take care of you. Or maybe scared is the wrong word, but hesitant to allow it.” He paused, his hands fisting into the pockets of his pants. “If that’s because of what happened after Mom, then I want you to know that being there for you my senior year of high school were some of the best moments of my life.”

Maya was startled by the admission. “You had just lost Mom too though. You needed someone there for you, and instead, you had to come home from hard-as-fuck practices—I’m sure wishing for sleep—and make sure I was okay. You talked me through panic attacks for months.”

“Yes, and it occurred to me that you think I viewed taking care of you as a duty or responsibility, and I can’t allow you to keep thinking like that. It was a privilege to help you work through your panic attacks. The time we spent counting your stars as you figured out box breathing and orienting yourself to the world was the only time I really had to grieve Mom. It was my one reprieve from football, football, football. It gave me a purpose I wanted to fulfill.”

Maya’s eyes burned with disbelieving tears. “I don’t understand.”

Colton looked at her meaningfully. “The nights I rocked you to sleep and helped you through your attacks were the nights I felt worthy of being your big brother. I never did a very good job before Mom, and I honestly didn’t do a good job after, especially since I left for Crestview so quickly, but those few months where I could help you were the ones that made me feel worthy of calling myself your brother.”

“But Dad told me I was taking your focus away from football and I needed to stop crying over something that had happened months before. He said you needed to sleep and you didn’t have time to help me like that anymore.”

Colton’s jaw clenched and he sighed, closing his eyes. “I should’ve known it was his doing. That’s why you stopped asking for help?”

“You didn’t feel that way? That I was pulling your focus and you didn’t have time to coddle me?” she asked, repeating her father’s words from that night.

“Never. Not once. I always want to be there for you whenever you need it. I’m sorry you ever felt otherwise.”

It was like the shattering of a glass wall around her. A dam broken.

The tears came and kept coming, and she let Colton hold her until there were no more left to cry.

And for the first time in twelve years, she let the people who mattered most to her take care of her and worry over her as she sat beside them and enjoyed having them all in one place. Devi found boxes of old board games, and they sat around the dining table, cycling through them for hours. Her grandparents held her, telling them all funny stories about her mother. Landon made sure she was well-fed. Colton and Lucia worked on getting the rest of the damage in the house fixed and a security system in place immediately. Devi quoted their favorite sitcom with her and made everyone their drinks of choice.

Cooper never left her side.

Seeing how they’d banded together, how Landon and Colton especially made an effort with their family, healed something in her she hadn’t known was broken.

Maybe they were there to take care of her, and maybe this had disrupted their lives, but it seemed like a worthy disruption.

It wasn’t easy to displace years of feeling like she wasn’t allowed to take up space in other’s lives, but she did her best.

Maya stole a fry from Cooper’s plate, tossing it into her mouth and ignoring his faux annoyance. Everyone else had flown back or agreed to go back home after a couple of days of making sure she was okay, but Cooper had gotten a few days off from football to be with her.

He had finally convinced her to try a new restaurant to get her out of the house, which was incredibly thoughtful. She hadn’t known how much she’d needed to leave until she was sitting across from him, listening to the waves and the chatter of other patrons. It was something to get used to, but she found she enjoyed being taken care of, especially when she’d spent such a long time forcing herself to be independent.

“I don’t want to leave On the Line behind. I feel like I’m abandoning my baby,” she said like it was a brand-new thought, when in reality, they’d been over this ten times at least. She and Cooper had talked about his offers and had decided the Sabers were the better option, which meant figuring out their next steps.

“Sweetheart, if I have to tell you one more time that I’ve already talked to the Sabertooths’ philanthropy department and have gotten funding for a new branch all but approved, I’m going to come over there and give you the loudest, wettest kiss right here on this boardwalk for everyone to see and hear.”

Maya laughed harder than she had in days. “But still, even if I can start a new one there, what about—”

“You know damn well Viola can handle the Los Angeles branch. She’ll absolutely kill it, and she’ll be ridiculously excited about it too.”

She smiled at his newfound ability to read her mind. “Should I bake her cupcakes that have tennis balls on them and ice the top with letters that spell out be my LA director ?”

“You can bake? You wear so many hats.”

She grinned. “You should see my collection.”

Cooper winked. “I plan on seeing it plenty, in my house.”

“What about my lessons? I’ve been making a lot of money by coaching rich people around here.” Her flare-up seemed to be over. She hadn’t noticed the twinge of pain in her daily life, and Grayson had said it was a good idea to get back to it.

“Luckily, I’m rich and I want tennis lessons from you. Coach me.”

Maya rolled her eyes. “Cooper.”

“Fine, I’ll find a few rich friends who want to learn, okay?”

Her grin widened. “And what about my family? How am I gonna be okay living so far from them?”

Cooper chuckled, shaking his head. She’d asked all these questions multiple times already. “Well, lucky for us, planes exist and you can visit them whenever you want.”

“What about during offseason? Will we live in Los Angeles or Charleston?”

“You can live wherever you’d like, sunflower. Once I retire, I’ll go wherever you go. We can have two houses. We can have a million houses wherever you want, I don’t care.” His face grew serious. “But they will all be decked out with a state-of-the-art security system.”

Trying to lighten the suddenly serious mood, she asked, “And how will I repay you for all of your generosity with these million houses?”

He grinned from ear to ear, like he’d caught her.

“Move in with me. That’s the only repayment I’ll take.”

“And what about in a few years?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will that change down the line? What if you want something more? ”

“Maya, Maya, Maya. Now you’ve gone and done it.” His grin grew more mischievous. “The only thing I’m gonna want down the line is you kissing me at an altar and maybe one day giving me some ridiculously athletic children.” He took her hand in his gently, squeezing once. “But only if you want those things then.”

Maya’s heart skipped three beats hearing him talk about a wedding and children. She knew they weren’t ready for it now, but the thought of it sometime in their future excited her.

She obviously had to keep pushing him though.

“You know, if you think about it, we’ve been dating for less than three months. What will you say to the people who will ponder that? About how it’s a little fast to be moving in together?”

“I’ll say fuck them. I’ll say we’ve known it’s us for longer than that. And then, if that’s concerning to you, I’ll buy you the house next door to mine so we can have space apart and time to ourselves whenever you want. Or a tiny bungalow all the way across town from me. Whatever you want.”

“Coop, I don’t deserve th—”

“You deserve that and more, Maya. I didn’t understand the meaning of going to the ends of the earth for someone, but now I know that’s not even a strong enough way to describe what I’d do for you. To keep you feeling safe and loved.”

The part of Maya that hated taking anything from anyone writhed in pain at his words, but she knew with him, it was nothing but the truth. He wanted to give her all these things simply because he loved her.

“I’m going to be making tons of dough coaching tennis to your rich friends. I can buy those things for myself.”

“I know you can. I’m just trying to sweeten the pot here. As long as I get you with me during the season when I can’t travel to see you, I will do anything you want.”

“What about—”

“Sunflower, if I didn’t know better, I would think you’re coming up with all of these flimsy and debunked excuses because you don’t want to live near or with me this fall.”

She smiled, tossing another fry into her mouth. “I guess it’s a good thing you know better.”

“So you’ll come with me to Charleston?”

Maya sat and stared at him for a long minute. She’d already made her decision after she’d asked these questions the fourth time, but she wanted to see him squirm a little.

He didn’t. He knew her answer already too.

“Fine. But you’re doing all the heavy lifting with my boxes.”

Cooper rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Like that was ever not the plan.”

Quietly, she said, “Colton and Landon agreed I should take the pictures on the wall. I don’t know if I see myself ever living in my dad’s house again after everything, and we thought it would be good for someone to take them. They thought they’d be best in my possession, since nobody ever really comes to the house anymore. ”

Cooper nodded, leaning back and rubbing the back of his neck in a way that made his bicep bulge a bit. Maya tried—and failed—not to get distracted by it.

“Did you talk to them or your nani and nana about taking some of your mom’s clothes?”

“Yeah. Colt and Landon don’t care, and Nani and Nana said they’re mine, they just want to look through them one last time.”

She didn’t know what’d happened when her mom had passed and why some of her things hadn’t gone to her mom’s parents. Maya had been too young to pay attention to any of that, and now she certainly wasn’t going to ask her father, who couldn’t care less about Maya or her mother.

If Nani and Nana said they were hers, she was taking them. And she would take her mother’s journals too, because even if it’d been a year since she’d heard her mom’s voice in her head, she still had the sentences she’d memorized written in her mother’s handwriting and her lovely laugh and cheery voice in the form of Maya’s favorite present.

If her mother was looking down at her or could somehow see her in whatever plane she was in, she hoped she was proud of her and her growth. Proud of her for all that she’d achieved on the tennis court in honor of her. Proud of her for clawing her way out of the well of grief after she’d passed, and again after her injury. Proud of her for learning how to let others take care of her, and how to allow herself to take up space when she’d gotten so used to being invisible.

And she hoped she was proud of her for the legacy she hoped to leave behind with On the Line.

None of it would’ve been possible without her.