Page 44 of Run Home

Danae’s smile is grateful yet tired as she watches him, and I say, “I’ll get the dishwasher loaded while you go tell him good night.”

“Samantha, you do not need to do the dishes,” she objects. “Sit down and relax. It will only be a couple of minutes.”

I don’t budge. “No way. It will only take a couple minutes. Then you’ll be able to sit down and relax as soon as I leave.”

“Fine.” She stands up and lowers her voice to say, “As long as you give me a detailed update about you and Adrian, I don’t care what you do for the next few minutes.”

I cover my eyes as blood rushes to my cheeks. She snickers as she walks past me, following Jason upstairs. It doesn’t take long to load our plates into the dishwasher and hand-wash the sauce pan Danae used to heat the ravioli.

I take a seat on the couch, attempting to keep my breathing calm as I mentally play through what I’m going to tell Danae. Despite the summer temperatures outside, a cold sweat makes me shiver, and I grab one of the cream throw blankets to cover my legs.

Danae descends the stairs and practically floats over to the couch. She sits on the opposite corner, angled toward me with her knees tented in front of her. There’s a smile on her face when she says, “Okay. I know you have specific things you wanted to tell me that you said are difficult. But first, I need you to give me the full rundown of how you and Adrian went from friends to more than friends.”

A reflexive grin takes over my face as I look down at my hands. I give Danae the story in reverse order—starting with last night and working my way back through my own recognition of my feelings after the gala, concluding with a summary of our interactions over the past several weeks.

She beams at me. “I can honestly say I didn’t see this coming. I was probably too wrapped up in all we have going on to pay enough attention. But now that I see it, I can’t unsee it. It’s too perfect. How do you feel about it?”

Sighing, I allow my head to drop back against the arm of the couch. “Happy. Surprised. Giddy,” I say, then sober. I look back to Danae when I add, “Really, really afraid.”

She offers me a gentle smile. “I assume that has to do with whatever things from the past you wanted to tell me about?”

I nod, fidgeting with the fringed edges of the throw blanket. “Yeah. You know bits and pieces of my story, but there are a lot of gaps. I could spend the next month filling in gaps, and you still wouldn’t have the full picture. But I do need to tell you my history of dumpster fire relationships.”

Closing my eyes, I picture myself detaching from my body, separating from the emotions of all I’m about to revisit. “So, you know I was nine when Ian and I went to live with David, Cinda, and Griffin,” I say, starting with a simple known fact. Danae nods. “For the first few years, I was nervous around men. You know how incredible David and Griffin both are, and they were patient with me, not ever pushing to have more of a relationship than I was ready for.”

I smile, thinking about some of the happy memories. “Even when Griff was away at college, he still made little efforts. Taking only me out for ice cream when we’d be in Texas watching one of his games. Asking to talk to me on the phone whenever he’d call Mom. Watching girlie Disney Channel shows with me when he was home on breaks in exchange for watching The Sandlot over and over.”

Danae laughs, and I allow myself a second to laugh too. Before transitioning to the harder memories.

Clearing my throat, I say, “By the time I started college, I had a good relationship with David. I’d started calling him ‘Dad’—and meant it—my freshman year of high school. I watched his relationship with Mom, recognized the healthy ways they interacted with each other and us kids. Sawyer also got married in those years, so I saw positive loving relationships modeled to the point that I wanted that same thing.”

Exhaling a long, pained breath, I say, “Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to create a healthy relationship. I just knew I wanted one. So badly. I wanted to have someone love me and care about me. I wanted it too badly.”

Danae leans forward and takes my hand, giving it a firm squeeze of support. I tell her, “Almost immediately after I got to college, I started dating the first guy who showed any interest in me. I was so excited to have someone want me, you know? Maybe you don’t know. Maybe that was a me issue.”

“I do know,” Danae cuts in. “That’s not a you issue. It’s not even an issue. I think it’s normal to want to be wanted. Don’t feel embarrassed by that.”

Nodding once, I continue, “Tucker. That was his name. We wound up dating for my entire freshman year, but I was convinced he was ‘the one’ after the first week.” I emphasize with air quotes and a throaty voice. “I rearranged my entire life to fit his. I’d skip my classes to help him with assignments or bring him lunch when he forgot. I’d help him study for his tests instead of my own. I was constantly worried that he would dump me and I’d go back to being alone, so I did everything I could to convince him he couldn’t live without me.

“Unfortunately, he eventually felt like all of my help was more like smothering. At least, that’s what he said when he ended things right before finals week. I didn’t even go to any of my finals—I couldn’t. I left campus completely. Needless to say, my GPA for the year started with the number one, and I arrived on my parents’ doorstep for the summer completely depressed.”

Danae’s eyes glisten as she leans forward and squeezes my knee. “Samantha. I hate that you went through that.”

With a wry laugh, I say, “Oh, it’s not over! It gets worse from here!”

Her eyes are full of compassion as she gives me a nod of encouragement to continue.

“I spent a lot of time with my therapist, Amber, that summer. I’d seen her off and on since I was about fourteen, but I’m pretty sure I saw her twice a week that summer. She and my parents agreed that I wasn’t in the right mental or emotional state to go back to college that fall semester, so I stayed home working a random job and continuing therapy.”

Detangling my fingers from the knot I’ve made in the fringe of the blanket, I say, “I really did get back to a good place in that process. Amber helped me understand that I developed an anxious-preoccupied attachment style due to my childhood trauma,” I say, then huff a breath through my nose. “I learned all sorts of fancy terms to explain my messed-up thought patterns and approach to relationships. I could see how I had thrown myself into the relationship with no healthy boundaries because I craved the feeling of being wanted so much.”

Shaking my head at the memory, I say, “I thought I had myself figured out by the time I went back to school for the spring semester. And I did well for several weeks. I went to my classes, started getting okay grades. I hung out with my new roommate and some of the other girls on our dorm floor. I tried studying. And then one of the guys on our floor started flirting with me. And the spiral started again.”

I look down at the blanket in my hands, once again a tangled mess. A lot like I was.

“Thankfully, after a few weeks, Griffin caught on to what was happening. We’d talk on the phone every couple of days while he was at spring training, and I brought my relationship up to Griff even though I hadn’t told our parents that I was dating. He sensed things were getting worse each time we’d talk on the phone. Somehow, he knew I was about to drown myself in another unhealthy relationship. The day he got back from spring training, he drove down to my college in Oklahoma and brought me here to KC with him. I think he originally intended for it to be a temporary thing until I was stable enough to go back home to our parents. But”—I hold out my hands to my sides—“he never could get rid of me.”

Danae rolls her eyes with a smile. “Like he would ever want to get rid of you. Griff loves having you around. And look at you now,” she says, gesturing toward me.