Page 158 of Nutmeg + Mistletoe
Marlow
It’s Thanksgiving, and the arena doesn’t look anything like an arena anymore. The banquet hall has been stripped bare of its usual formality and transformed into something that feels like a giant living room in a log cabin. Warm golden lights strung across the ceiling. Long tables lined in mismatched linens, covered in steaming bowls of collards, mac and cheese, turkey, cornbread stuffing, candied yams.
Family photos hang on the walls, baby pictures of players mixed with shots of them on the field, so it feels like we’re in somebody’s home.
Caterers wear jeans and flannels instead of uniforms, blending in like aunts and uncles at a family reunion. Players sit shoulder to shoulder, playing spades and dominoes at the corners oftables, passing plates down with easy familiarity. It feels loud, messy, chaotic. It feels like family.
Declan came early to avoid suspicion, like he always does, and I love how easily he moves through the crowd, how his quiet charisma seems to disarm everyone in his path. Even with the tattoos winding up his arms and that brooding edge he sometimes carries, people feel at ease around him—Ifeel at ease around him. Where others see ink and shadows, I see the man who steadies me when the world feels like it’s waiting for me to stumble. And somehow, just by being here, he makes it easier for me to breathe.
The press is circling me like vultures, feeding the rumor mill about who’s secretly married and who’s hiding what. They want me to slip up, to confess. To give them something to prove I’m failing at holding this team—and myself—together. Add that to the fact that we lost our last match, and suddenly, every glance feels like a judgment. Every headline feels like a knife.
I’ve been wound so tight I’ve dropped five pounds without trying, my nerves chewing away at me while Declan urges me to just tell the truth so no one has a secret to hold over me anymore. And I want to. But fear is stubborn, and mine has teeth.
I remember how long I waited to tell Daddy about Jeremy. How I clung to him longer than I should have, convincing myself that time would make him real, that all his red flags would somehow soften into Christmas lights if I just waited long enough. But deep down, I always knew Jeremy wasn’t it for me. He never stirred that part of me that wanted to give my whole heart, the way Daddy once told me the right man would. So it feels almost poetic—cruel,but fitting—that just when I was finally ready to push past every screaming instinct to cut Jeremy loose, to finally let Daddy into that part of my life, Jeremy went and knocked up another girl.
Declan isn’t Jeremy. He couldn’t be further from him. Where Jeremy was selfish, Declan is steady. Where Jeremy crumbled, Declan stands solid. He’s everything I never saw my father be with a woman. He’s… him. And yet here I am, holding on to this secret like it’s my salvation, when maybe it’s nothing more than a chain tightening around my own neck.
Because as I watch him now—sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by the players’ kids, letting one of the admin’s little girls tug at his curls and twist them into uneven ponytails—something inside me aches. He doesn’t care about how it looks. He doesn’t care about pride, or appearances, or whether people think he’s too serious to sit there and giggle with children. He just…is.
And maybe that’s what scares me the most—that I’ve been molded by years of watching my father, a man who plays hard but dodges love even harder, and I’ve mistaken that as the blueprint. That Declan couldn’t possibly be different. That marriage, love, men, would always mean keeping part of myself locked away for safety. Because I was never sure what love was supposed to feel like, only that it never seemed real enough to surrender to completely.
But Declan isn’t my father. He isn’t Jeremy. And right now, the only person standing in the way of my happiness is me.
“Boss lady is here!” Eslin chirps, grabbing a couple of the ice bags from my arms before they cut into my fingers.
I grin at her hair, light catching in the braids. “I see you couldn’t wait to get those braids back in!”
She flips one over her shoulder like she’s on a runway. “Girl, you know I can’t stand combing my hair every day. Soon as that gala was over, I called the Africans and told them to take meSTAT.”
I frown. “The Africans?”
She laughs, shaking her head. “Sorry—it’s what I call the African hair salons. They’ve perfected this assembly-line technique where multiple stylists braid your hair at the same time. I was in and out of the chair in two hours flat.”
My eyes widen. “That’simpressive.”
She shrugs, a smirk tugging at her lips. “The Africans usually are.”
We both laugh, the sound bubbling between us as we weave through the kitchen with our bags of ice.
“I swear, Eslin Saunders,” I say, shaking my head. “I learn something new from you every day. Usually some cultural gem I’ve always wondered about but never had the nerve to ask.”
It’s true. Having her in my life feels like a gift—her stories, her quirks, even the ache in her past. She carries the hard things like they’re blessings, and being around her makes me grateful for the reminder that you can.
We set the ice down by the drink station, caterers streaming in and out behind us. Eslin leans against the counter, eyes glinting with mischief. “Sooo,” she sings, “how are things at home, Mrs.Dodging-the-spill-of-her-secret-marriage?”
I groan, burying my face in my hands. “Don’t remind me! Things are fine at home. More than fine. And Declan doesn’t understand why I won’t just let the secret out. But…” I lower my voice. “I don’t know how to tell him I’m waiting for some magical sign. Something to prove he won’t hurt me. That he won’t turn out like—like so many men do.”
I stop short of sayinglike my father.For some reason, I still give him grace because of the love he so obviously still carries for my mother, the thing that’s kept him closed off to the possibility of anything new.
Even with the bustle around us, Eslin wraps me in a hug, tight and grounding. She pulls back and searches my face, her eyes sharp but soft.
“Let me ask you this,” she says. “When you picture the man worth your whole heart—the man you promised yourself you’d wait for—what does hefeellike? Not what he looks like, not what reporters will see. What does he feel like for you?”
The answer shoots out. “Safe.”
She nods. “Good. What else?”
“Understanding.”
