Breathe With Me (Playing For Keeps #5)

by Becka Mack

“I met you, and I swear to God, I came alive. For the first time in my life, I craved so much more than what I had, what I’d been working toward all those years. For the first time in my life, I wanted a tomorrow spent just looking at you, listening to you. I wanted a future with somebody’s hand in mine, except that hand had to be yours. I wanted your smiles, your laughs, your tears, and I wanted them all for me. I wanted late nights loving, lazy mornings talking, fighting over movies and what goes in the grocery cart. I wanted you in my T-shirt, nail polish on my coffee table, and lipstick words on my mirrors.” He steps closer, just an inch, his breath warming my lips, my chest heaving. “Do you hear me, Cara? I was existing before you. But since you? Since you, I’ve been living.”

“And this. This was the night we met my parents. Five minutes before this, my mom made some snarky comment about how I abandoned my family for a hobby. You wrinkled your nose and said, What an odd thing to say about your son chasing his dreams and succeeding, when most people don’t even have the courage to dream. Nobody has ever stood up to my mom for me before, but you did, because you always fight for your people. Don’t you, Care? Always fighting for the people you love. So why aren’t you fighting for yourself right now?”

I’m giving you permission, Emmett. Take it! Find someone like that girl, confident and strong and not … fucking … broken!” I sob harder, trying like hell to free myself. “Why are you here, Emmett? Why are you still here when you could be anywhere else?” “Because you’re here!” he shouts, hauling me against his heaving chest, forehead pressed to mine as he breathes. His fingers flex around my wrists, squeezing and releasing, like he’s fighting for self-control. “Because you’re here,” he repeats, barely a breath this time, his hands moving to my face, cradling it gently. “You’re here, Cara, and I’m wherever you are. Do you hear me? I am wherever you are. All of me. I don’t exist without you.”

“Breathe,” he whispers. “Breathe, baby.” “I can’t … I can’t give you what you want,” I argue weakly. “You give me everything I could ever want or need.” “Somebody else could give you more.” “Nobody could ever stack up to you.”

“You aren’t whole. You’re broken. And that’s okay. You have loved and you have lost, and every piece of you deserves its place. You are a home for all your stories, the pieces that have shaped your life, that make you who you are. The steps you’ve taken, the growth you’ve chased. The fears you’ve conquered, and the lessons you’ve learned. The friendships you’ve built, the love you’ve shaped with your bare hands. Your dreams, and every single heartache. You aren’t whole, but you aren’t meant to be. You’re broken. And the beautiful thing about being broken? There’s so much more space for the light to shine in. And in that light, you get to rebuild yourself however the fuck you want to.”

He is … the long haul. He’s the sunny days and the smooth sailing. He’s the top down, the wind in his sun-kissed hair, and what happiness sounds like when he says there’s never been a more beautiful day. He’s the early-morning easy rides that lead into the quiet, peaceful nights. And then he’s the steep hills. The treacherous climbs. The days spent crawling along the edge of an icy cliff in the middle of a starless night, fighting to see the finish line through a blizzard hellbent on blinding you. He’s the any weather, any time. The up-all-night, get-you-home-safe-no-matter-what-it-takes. Emmett is the long haul. With me through the easy, with me through the hard. With me.

“Breathe, baby. Breathe with me. Because I can’t breathe without you.”

I will love every version of her, always. Her soul will always be hers, and it’ll always be tied to mine. I’m sure of it.

“I can practically hear Princess Sophia weeping for me,” Cara murmurs. “Pfft. Wrong. So wrong. You can practically hear The Pussy Pounder 5000 weeping for you.” She laughs, real and hearty and fucking stunning. My entire world rights itself.

“I want us to have a baby, Cara. But if you’re my one good thing—if this love is the only precious thing I get in this lifetime—that will always, always be enough for me. Do you understand? You are enough for me, and I will spend my days treasuring this immaculate gift I’ve been given.”

“No mountain is too high.” “For you, Emmett? For you, I’d climb every mountain.”

“Strip it away, all of it, right down to your bones. The bold, the mouthy, the happy, the strong. I’ve spent this life loving those pieces of you, and I’m going to love every piece in between, too. The scared, the quiet, the sad, and the tired. There isn’t a version of you I’m not going to love, because I love you, Cara. Right down to your bones.”

“There isn’t a world out there, a lifetime that exists from now until forever, where I’m not yours and you’re not mine. I don’t need to dream about a brighter future, because wherever life takes me, I’ll be standing next to you. You’re my life, Cara. My yesterday, my today, and my tomorrow. And I’m going to love you right for every one of those days.”

I want to take my time loving her, doing it right, so that at the end of this life, she’s felt it every single day.

“I love you, Emmett,” she says, with so much certainty the words creep into my brain, chisel themselves there like carvings in stone, impossible to forget. And the way she kisses me next? Desperate. Insatiable. Reverent. I’ll never forget that, either.

“Thank you for being my best friend, Jennie. I love you, and I’m so honored to walk you into this new chapter.”

“Do you always take what you think is yours without waiting for permission?” I bury my smile in her neck as I haul her body flush against mine. “Always.” “Mmm. A common criminal, Mr. Brodie.” “Better to seek forgiveness than permission.” “I don’t believe you’ve ever apologized for taking my heart all those years ago, and certainly not my panties.” “Why would I do that? I didn’t think those things belonged to me; I knew they did.”

“I’m thirty-one today, Cara,” I remind her, and I don’t know what for. She knows how old I am. Woke me up with her version of birthday bumps, which is to say she squeezed the base of my cock in her fist, engulfed the swollen head with her mouth, and then seemed to swallow it whole before dragging her mouth back up, in slow fucking motion, thirty-one times. “Over halfway to sixty. Might as well be a hundred.” “You’re lucky you’re hot.” That must be the only reason I let her get away with everything, right?

there isn’t an ounce of me that’s prepared for the way those tears barrel unexpectedly down his cheeks, or the way he leaps from the chair straight into my fucking arms, wrapping his entire body around me and clinging to me like I gave him the whole world and not an old hat. I’m not prepared for it, but I sink into it, absorbing the way I hear his little heart pounding in his chest, the way his fingers curl around my sweater, the way his tears warm my neck. And then he whispers a single word, buries it against my shoulder, a sound so raw it feels like my heart cracks wide open. “Emmett.”

“I’m ’dis many,” he tells me, holding up three fingers. “Do you know how many ’dis is?” “Hmm, let’s see. Could you help me count?” He nods, and I tap one tiny finger, then the other, counting slowly. On the third finger, he calls out, “Twee! I’m twee years old, but—” He shrugs, palms up. “—I is gonna be four soon, did you know?” “Four? No way!” “Yep, and guess what?” He twists on his knees to face me, crossing his arms over his chest, brows high. “It’s something really cool.” “What is it?” He leans closer, until our foreheads are nearly touching. “When I is four, I won’t be twee no more. Because—because…because when I was a baby, I was twee, but when I’m a big, biiig adult, I will be four.”

hands, I match his wide eyes with my own and say, “Twenty-nine.” Abel gasps. “Is you a gwandma?” Emily snickers from across the room. “Grandpa’s gonna love that,” she murmurs, winking at me, and I know she’s talking about Emmett. “I’m not a grandma,” I tell him.

“Look at the size difference,” her brother had snickered, and without missing a beat, she nailed him right in the balls again, without even glancing over her shoulder, like her foot had built-in dick detection. I knew I loved her then, but when I picked up the bottle of tequila on my nightstand and filled two shot glasses? When I held one out to her, grinning, and her eyes dipped to it before she said, “At ten a.m.?” When I repeated those three words back to her, and her eyes met mine again in a challenge, a spark that lit her from the inside out, stealing every ounce of that fear as she blew a curl off her face, shrugged, and threw that shot back without wincing? That’s when I knew I’d found my soulmate.

“Mama! Auntie Cawa! Wook!” Ireland skids to a stop before us, pointing at the pink glitter Play-Doh hanging from both nostrils. “I gots boogies!”

“We are never, ever gonna hear the end of this from your daddy, are we? No, we’re most definitely not. But let’s go meet your mama, huh? Let’s go meet the most special, beautiful person in your world.”

“Congratulations, Mama,” I whisper. “Two perfect boys.”

“I’m your Uncle Emmett. I love you so much already.” Carter smiles. “This is Brodie.” Emmett stills. He looks up at Carter, Olivia. Tears well in his eyes. “Brodie?” “Uh-huh. Named after someone special.” “Oh, fuck.” I flap at my eyes. “How dare you guys? How dare you? I am not emotionally stable enough for you to name a baby after Emmett.” Carter grins. “Oh, then this is really gonna wreck you.”

“You already know her, buddy, but officially, we want you to meet your Auntie Cara. Auntie Cara, meet Hunter.”

“Emmett?” I whisper into the dark, his heart humming quietly below my ear. “Firefly.” “I’d like to talk about fostering Abel.”

The goal is to help his mother get back on her feet before ultimately reuniting the two of them. That means this placement is temporary, and for me, that was my greatest hesitancy. I know that reuniting when possible is best. I know that. That doesn’t make knowing a goodbye is inevitable any easier. We’re going to have to say goodbye, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that we’ll fall in love along the way. And I just don’t know how many more goodbyes Cara has in her.

She looks all kinds of wild right now, just the way I love her.

Like, I’m really scared of spiders. Every time I see one, I scream and hide. But Emmett always comes and gets it, takes it outside, and lets me know I’m safe.” This time, Abel releases Marlene, stepping all the way out from behind her. He shifts from foot to foot, wringing his hands. “I’m not very much scared of spiders.” He shrugs, and the simple action has absolutely no right being so fucking cute. “Maybe I—I—I… maybe I could help Emmett catch ’em for you.”

Jaxon ok, so len’s the one that got me to try pineapple on pizza in the first place, but so what?? that doesn’t mean i like whatever she likes. If anything, it means I have a wide palate. Me Imagine thinking liking pineapple on pizza means you have a wide palate? Garrett That’s fucking crazy LOL

“Is we a family? Me and you and Cara?” “We sure are. Anyone living in this house is family. So how about we promise each other to always do our best to communicate, which is a fancy word for talking. That means we tell each other when we feel sad, or angry, or scared, and we try our very best to use calm voices, so everyone feels safe and heard.” “And-and-and…” He grips my knee, propping himself up, brows raised as he points a finger in my face. “You not allowed to call me a bad boy, okay? Okay, Emmett?” He shakes his head. “It not nice, my Catharine always tells me it not nice when … when Peter and Elizabeth say, they say”—he puts one hand on his hip, face screwing up as he shakes a finger—“‘You a bad boy, Abel!’”

He shows us his phone—a photo of baby Iris asleep in Lily’s lap, Lily and Connor grinning as they hold up a sign that says How could we be crabby when you’re our daddy? Three small crabs made of little red handprints and googly eyes dance across the sign,

Look at that gorgeous cunt. Why’s it so wet, baby? Thinking about my cock stretching it out, taking what I need, filling you with my cum just so I can lick it out of you after? Or do you want me to use it as lube so I can pull out that pretty little gem and slide into your ass, fuck all that cum right back into you?

“It’s just … fucking look at that handsome floofy marshmallow face.” He shoves his phone in my face, a picture of his huge-ass cat, Mittens, sprawled out on lush green grass, glowing beneath the sunshine in his mermaid costume. “Gran sent him a Valentine’s cardigan, and Len and I can’t even be there with him while he wears it on this special day. Jennie promised she’d put it on him and take pictures, but I dunno. Are Becketts trustworthy? My gut says no.” Garrett tosses his glove at Jaxon’s head. “Jennie’s an Andersen now, you douchewaffle. Get it right!”

It’s a photo of Abel, sitting at the kitchen counter in red heart pajamas that match Cara’s, a smear of pink paint on his forehead and brow, and the biggest, happiest smile I’ve ever seen as he holds up his creation. One red, one purple, one pink, three big, furry-looking monsters, topped with heart sequins, at least eight eyes each, and smiles as big as his. Cara I talked him through making a love monster with his handprint. He wanted to make three, one for each of us. He said “take a picture and show my Emmett” *sobbing emoji* I’m not okay.

“Dear Mr. Beckett. Ha, Mr. Beckett. So formal. Okay, let’s go again. Dear Mr. Beckett. First, we’d like to wish you a very happy birthday. Word has it you’re turning thirty-one, but if we may be so bold, you don’t look a day over twenty-five. All those Oreos must be keeping you young.” He chuckles to himself, skimming his jaw as he murmurs, “So true. We’re honored to be your favorite snack, and are impressed with all your delectable creations. We hear you have some ideas for some flavors, and we’d love to have you—holy fuck.” Carter’s jaw drops. “Holy fuck.” He looks up at me, at everyone, then back to the letter. “Holy fuck.” His eyes move as he keeps reading, and then uses the letter to flap at his face. “Holy fuck. Oreo wants me to … Oreo said … Oreo’s giving me my own flavor!” Not just his own flavor, but a box with his name on it, his jersey number on the cookie, and a commercial too.

“Hi, Ma-bear! Do you m’member me today?” The sweet boy takes a step back, patting his chest as he tells her softly, “I’m Abel, m’member?” Mémère laughs, loud and so bright, and I cherish every laugh line around those brilliant blue eyes. “Yes, sweet boy, I remember you today. You are Abel, not quite four years old, and when you grow up, you want to be a … a … merde, what’s the one with the plates on its—Oh! A stegosaurus!” “You m’member!” He gives her two thumbs-up, and when he tells her with every ounce of sincerity, “Good job, Ma-bear,”

“Cara is not a dinosaur.” Before I can sulk and ask why, his eyes light up. A raincoat emerges, followed by splash pants, rain boots, and an umbrella, all with the same dinosaur pattern. “Cara, look!” He climbs to his feet, jumping up and down, hugging his coat to his chest. “I put it on now,” he says, immediately tugging the splash pants on, stepping into the boots, giving Mémère a close-up when he’s done. “Look, Ma-bear! Look at me!” “I am looking at you, happy boy. You shine just like the sun. The rain clouds won’t stand a chance against you.” “Thank you, Ma-bear.” He wraps his arms around himself. “I love it!”

“Ma-bear, what’s your favorite … what’s your favorite color? Is it … pink?” She gasps. “How on earth did you guess?” He grins, shrugging. “I don’t know! I just guessed it! Maybe ’cause my brain is learned-ing new things every day. Did you know that? Cara says so.” “What do we say at bedtime?” I ask as he spreads pink paint over his paper. “I am smart. I am kind. I am important. And I can do anything!”

Teamwork makes the dream work.” Abel cocks his head. “Teamwork is the dream word?” I tap his nose, cleaning the paint off the table. “Teamwork makes the dream work.” I gesture between us as he wipes at the floor. “You and me, we’re a team.” “And Emmett too?” “And Emmett too.” Abel thinks for a moment, then looks over at my phone. “You can be on our team, too, okay, Ma-bear?” “I would be honored, my darling.”

“The only time I’ve fallen so hard, so fast, was with Emmett.” I don’t know how I’ll ever say goodbye.

he shows off his painting, swirls of pink, purple, blue, and orange, big round faces, long legs, smiles you can’t miss as he names each person. Ma-bear. Abel. Emmett. Cara. “Our team,” he exclaims proudly and with all the certainty in the world. “It’s our team.”

He pats the words, looking up at me with bleary eyes, stars twinkling in a sea of green. “Don’t forget this.” I stare down at the words Emmett wrote over three years ago now, the ones that were meant for the baby we were supposed to have. The passage is smudged now, once-perfect handwriting stained with the splatter of teardrops from nights spent curled up right here in this very window, reading this book, wishing on a star for a miracle.

One day, you’ll be snuggled up in this window, staring up at the stars above. Mama will hold you, singing to you about the way they shine like diamonds in the sky. And I’ll stand back and watch you together, knowing with absolute certainty … If you and your mama were the only stars in my sky, that would be all I needed.

“Cara?” “Yeah, buddy?” “Dinosaurs don’t protect other dinosaurs.” “They don’t?” “No. They only protect themselves. They don’t think about anybody else.” He turns over, a quiet sigh and the ruffle of his blankets filling the air. Right before I shut the door, he whispers, “That’s why my Cara is not a dinosaur.”

all about what it’s like living with us. She asks him what his favorite thing to do at our house is. Making pizza with Emmett, watching hockey with me, reading under the stars with both of us, and being a team. That’s what he says.

My parents didn’t let me read things like romance and fantasy, so I’d spend full weekends there, finding a quiet spot to get lost in them. I needed that escape, I think. It gave me hope for something more, something better.

“I don’t need much,” I whisper, brows raised as I give her a knowing look. “Just an address. I’ve never done it before, but honestly, I think I could get away with it. Nobody would ever know.”