Touching Down by Nicole Williams
My heart was pounding with the kind of speed that made me lightheaded. Rocking my hips closer, I took him inside me. I took as much of him as I could. I wanted more. Just like him, I wanted it all too.
As he started to move inside me, looking in my eyes with every thrust, I managed to spill a few words past my lips. “You have it all.”
His hands curled around my ankles, pulling me toward him until we couldn’t have been any closer unless our bodies fused together. His mouth found mine, and he kissed me like he had no plans to stop.
“Let me feel you, Ryan,” he whispered against my lips. “Let me feel you fall apart in my arms, baby.”
My hands raked down his back, curling into the canyon drawn down the center of his spine. He held me close, giving me what I needed, his entire focus on me. Everything he’d done had been for me or our daughter. His whole existence seeming to have one sole purpose—taking care of us.
As I felt my body reach the precipice of falling apart, I opened my eyes into his. “Why me, Grant Turner?” My nails dug deeper into his back when he moved deeper inside me. “Why me when you could have anyone you wanted?”
He waited for me, watching me carefully as the tremors spread through my body. Then he lowered his face over mine, looking mesmerized as he watched me come undone in his arms. “I’d rather have one day with you than an eternity with anyone else.”
IT WAS THE best sound in the world to wake up to—my daughter laughing. Rolling over in bed, I found the rest of it empty. I didn’t remember crawling into bed after last night’s adventures. The last time I remembered falling against him in a trembling, sweaty heap, we’d been spread out on the living room couch.
As I slid out of the covers, I realized that while he might have carried me into bed last night, he hadn’t clothed me. Not that I could ever expect Grant to willingly put clothes on me when he was such a fan of the alternative.
After pulling his bathrobe from the back of the door, I slid into it and tried my best to make it gather around me so I could tie the belt. Then I moved out of the bedroom and down the hall, following the sounds of the two voices I loved most in the world.
The sight I found when I emerged from the hall made me come up short. Charlie was sitting on Grant’s knee around the kitchen table, a bowl of cereal in front of them that both of them were taking bites out of. Beside the cereal was an open book that Charlie and Grant were scanning as they chomped on their cereal.
“So the chorea is why Mom’s been so clumsy, right?” Charlie tapped the end of her spoon at something on the page.
Grant finished chewing his bite of Lucky Charms. “Well, your mom’s always been clumsy, so she can’t blame it all on the chorea.”
Charlie’s face lit up like she’d just remembered something. “Once, Mom walked right through a screen door at our old apartment. We had to replace the whole entire screen. And then she did it again a month later.”
Grant’s back rocked from his laughter. “Well, your mom used to roll out of bed so much when we were younger, if I didn’t wrap my arms around her tight, she’d wake up the next morning on the floor.”
Charlie giggled as she flipped a page. “Why did Mom have to sleep in your bed? Didn’t she have one?”
I could see just enough of Grant’s face to see the way it froze with his oh shit look. He rolled his neck, his eyes narrowing in concentration. “Sometimes I’d share mine with her.”
“Why?” Charlie shrugged.
I could hear Grant’s drawn-out exhale from back here. A minute later, he answered, “Because sometimes hers wasn’t working.”
Charlie made a face before twisting her head back at Grant. “Mom’s bed wasn’t working?”
Grant distracted himself by digging into the cereal. “Out of commission.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Charlie mused. “How many times did Mom have to sleep in your bed when hers wasn’t working?”
My smile couldn’t be tamed. This ought to be good. Especially since, to answer honestly, he’d have to admit that I slept in his bed most nights. It might have started out innocently—a protector watching over someone who needed protecting—but that had changed over time. From the look on Grant’s face, it looked like he was reliving some of the same memories I was.
“Hey, Mom’s up now. No more snickering about her grace handicap.”
Two heads turned my way as I wandered out of the hall. Grant gave me a look that made my heart stop, right before it made it take off. Charlie just beamed through her bite of cereal.
“Why are you in Dad’s bathrobe?” she asked, inspecting the oversized robe swallowing me. “Is it because you couldn’t find your clothes? Because I found them in here. I found Dad’s too.” She pointed at the pile of clothes she’d collected, like it was a scene of a crime. “You wouldn’t believe where I found his pants.”
Biting my lip, I stared at the floor as I kept moving closer. Actually, I would believe it. I remembered exactly where I’d tossed them once I tore them off of him.
“Thanks for picking them up for us. That was thoughtful,” I said, trying to sound like the mature, responsible adult I was not feeling like at the moment.
“When I woke up and didn’t find you in your bed, I figured you’d be out here.” Her legs started swinging from her perch on her dad’s lap. She was still in her jammies, even barefoot. It made me smile that with an estate as large as Grant’s was, all three of us were clustered together in the same small space. “What were you and Dad doing all night out here in the pool house?”
Grant gave me an amused smile and waved his hand at me, giving me a turn to field the probing questions coming from our seven-year-old.
“Studying things.” Leaning down, I kissed the top of Charlie’s head, then Grant’s. He switched his arms around so he could have one around Charlie and one around me.
“Studying what?” she continued.
Grant’s smile went higher as he let me continue taking the lead.
“Studying all of this stuff.” I motioned at the handful of books Grant and Charlie had spread out on the table. A couple of them were books on how to talk about HD with kids. I felt that warm, happy feeling inside when I was reminded, yet again, what a fantastic human being Grant was.
“You were studying all night long?” Charlie blinked at me.
“Well, some of it, but we were doing other stuff too.” Half of my face pulled up as I realized how guilty I sounded from trying to sound innocent.
Charlie’s nose crinkled. “Doing what?”
Behind her, Grant’s face was breaking with silent laughter.
“Never mind,” I said, clapping as I headed into the kitchen. “Who wants French toast?”
“Me!” Charlie raised her spoon.
“Me, too!” Grant echoed. “Just make sure you down your green juice first.”
I groaned, glancing longingly at the coffee pot I’d been beelining toward. “I’ll make sure to grab you one too. Wouldn’t want you to be deprived of all of that yummy, nutritious goodness.”
“Already got one down first thing after I woke up.” Grant lifted the empty bottle on the table in front of him.
Making a face, I pulled open the fridge and dug out another bottle of toxic sludge. “When did you go and get all health conscious?” I grumbled.
Grant waited to answer until I’d opened the bottle and raised the bottle to my lips. Then he tucked his chin over Charlie’s head and smiled at me. “When I realized I had something to live for.”
This time, I didn’t sip and spew and sputter through the bottle of juice—I downed it in a few sips. I knew better than to believe drinking some healthy juice would cure my HD, but that wasn’t why it was so important to Grant. It was important to him for what came after HD, for our lives outside of HD. We couldn’t live every moment of every day orbiting around a disease. The juice was a symbol of what came after. A willingness to accept that my future wasn’t carved in stone. That there was still a reason to keep my body healt
I had a whole lot of something to live for.
“WHY DOES EVERYONE call Dad the Invincible Man?” Charlie shouted at me, trying to rise above the roar thundering through the stadium.
“What do you mean?” I leaned over, so I didn’t have to scream back.
“He gets tackled. He fumbles. He messes up.” She pointed at the field, where Grant’s cleats were the only part of him showing from the bottom of a player pile. A few of his teammates were tearing off the Hawks players, but I wasn’t worried. I knew he was okay despite the tackle pileup. It would take a lot more than that to keep Grant Turner down.
“I think it’s because nothing can stop him.” I wound my arm around her shoulder when I noticed her worry lines go deeper into her forehead. She hadn’t been around to see what Grant had endured in life like I had. She didn’t know just how tough her dad was—at least not in the same way I did. “No matter how many times he goes down, he bounces right back up. If he misses a ball one play, he catches the next hundred. It’s not so much that he’s invincible as in nothing can touch him, but invincible in that everything has touched him but hasn’t left its mark.”
Charlie nodded, distracted by what was happening on the field. “So he’s more the Resilient Man?”
Her conclusion made me laugh and pull her a little closer so I could kiss her temple. “You can call him whatever you want, I don’t think he’ll mind.”
Charlie stood when the last of the Hawks players had been pulled from the pile. She looked like she was holding her breath for Grant to get up. But he didn’t just get up like a normal person would have. No, that would have been far too expected. Instead, he wound his arms behind his head, planted his fingers into the turf, and popped himself up. The stadium exploded yet again, making so much noise I could feel it vibrate my insides.
Charlie cheered right along with them, waving her foam finger so vigorously it started beating the neighbors around us. “Dad works for me!” she hollered at me, before cupping her hand around her mouth. “Yeah, Dad! GO, DAD!!!”
It was impossible that he could hear us above the roar, but his helmet turned toward where we were settled in the bleachers. From this distance, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were aimed our way. He lifted his thumb, giving us the sign that he was okay. After watching a few games this season where it hadn’t seemed humanly possible that he hadn’t sustained some kind of serious injury, he’d suggested he flash a thumbs-up toward wherever we were in the stands so we’d know he was good.
After the ordeal in the owner’s box, Charlie and I had been sitting out here with the rest of the fans ever since. Grant was still nervous about it, but he always arranged to have a mini security detail staggered in the seats around us. Out of the eight games Charlie and I had made it to, nothing had happened to warrant security intervention though. Unless you counted the danger we were to our clothing. Plus, Charlie and I usually came with friends or sat with other family members of the players.
Tonight’s game was a special one. The big one—the game every player dreamed of playing at least once in their careers. This was Grant’s second time playing the big game, and from the looks of the scoreboard, it was going to be his first time winning it.
“You should be the Invincible Woman,” Charlie said after we took our seats again. For a whole thirty seconds until the next time we had to leap up and cheer or shout or cringe or whatever the next play called for.
“I can’t catch a football to save my life.” I twirled the ends of her ponytail around my finger and shrugged. Charlie had been throwing a better spiral than me from the age of five.
“Yeah, but you get up no matter what.” Her head turned from the game for quite possibly the very first time since kick-off, a smile on her face.
My chest warmed as I leaned closer. “Isn’t that more the Resilient Woman?”
Her dark eyes twinkled as her head shook. “No, I like the idea of you being invincible more.”
I kissed Charlie on the tip of the nose. “Me too.” I kissed her once more. “The Invincible Woman it is.”
Charlie leaned her head onto my shoulder for a minute, and the weight of the moment hit me. Half a year ago, I’d felt alone, scared, helpless, and next to hopeless. I didn’t know what would happen to my daughter when I became too sick to care for her, I didn’t know how to tell her that I was sick, and I didn’t know what to do about my disease other than let it have its way with me.
Six months later and everything had changed. Everything. My daughter would be taken care of, well loved, no matter what. She knew that I was sick, and despite her seemingly daily questions about HD, she’d accepted it better than I ever could have hoped. And despite this disease having no cure, I wasn’t about to let it just do what it wanted to me. I wasn’t resolved to letting it take me away from myself, one day at a time. I was fighting it with anything and everything possible. I wasn’t going to roll over when I was so much stronger on my feet, fighting back.
“What did I miss?” Dr. Patel, aka Ravi, asked as he squeezed past Charlie and me to get to his seat, his hands and arms loaded with food and drink.
When I noticed a camera on the field aimed our way, I gave a cheesy smile and waved, moving Charlie’s foam finger in front of her face at the same time. Grant had announced in a press conference that Charlie was his daughter, and he’d requested that the media and fans remember that she was a seven-year-old girl and not a headline. Surprisingly, most of them honored this. A few needed a foam finger reminder every now and again.
“Pretty much a whole quarter.” Charlie motioned up at the scoreboard where the last few minutes of the fourth were winding to an end.
Ravi groaned and started passing out the goodies. “If anyone would have told me this game would be so busy, a person would have to wait fifteen minutes to order a Coke, I would have stayed home and watched it on my beautiful new sixty-inch flat-screen.”
Charlie snorted. “Are you kidding? This is the best thing ever.” She thanked him for the soft pretzel he handed her before she bit off a big chunk.
He kept handing out the concessions, shaking his head when he handed me what I’d asked for. “You order like you’re Willy Wonka.”
I stabbed my straw into the Icee, clutching my Red Rope and Milk Duds like someone was going to try to rip them away from me. “Grant has eliminated all signs of sugar and processed anything from our kitchen. He’s making me drink toxic sludge and eat all of these superfood things that taste more like super yuck food. The only time I can indulge in my beloved sugar is when he’s out there, a little preoccupied with winning the biggest game of his life.” Still, when I took a sip of my Icee, I turned slightly away from the field, just in case he was looking. Part of me didn’t doubt that he’d see and send someone to take it away.
“He’s making you eat them because those things are healthy for you,” Ravi said, right before he took a big bite of an ice cream bar.
“Hey, when you’re not in your white coat thingy, you’re Ravi my friend, not Dr. Patel my doctor.” I leaned my Icee over so Charlie could take a drink. “And that other stuff might be good for my body, but this stuff is good for my mind.”
“You should see what your brain does when a person eats sugar. It pretty much has the same reaction as someone on cocaine.” He grinned and took another bite of his ice cream bar, which was no doubt loaded with sugar. Or cocaine. Or whatever point he was trying to make.
“It’s good for my mind as in my mental health. It keeps me sane and off the Prozac, so give me a break. The last time I had sugar was two weeks ago at the Divisional Playoff game.”
On the other side of him, Ravi’s wife leaned forward. “Don’t let him give you a hard time, Ryan. You should see this man’s secret stash at home. It would shame a dozen eight-year-old boys.”
Ravi faked an offended look. “That’s my secret stash for the end times. My stockpile for the living dead apocalypse that we all kno
His wife nudged him. “Is that why I have to restock your ‘emergency’ supply every few weeks?”
He answered with a grumble, crunching into his ice cream bar again.
Michelle, his wife, shot me a wink. “Getting excited for your trip?”
Charlie’s attention was back on the field, so I leaned all the way over her so I could talk with Michelle instead of scream at her. “Yeah. Excited-nervous. Nervous-excited.”
She waved at me. “It will be fantastic. You’ll get to see some fantastic sights and meet with some fantastic people with fantastic options for you.”
I smiled at her. “Sounds pretty fantastic.”
She laughed and leaned into her husband. “It will be great. Ravi wouldn’t send you on a wild goose chase. If he says it’s promising, I know he means it.”
“He is right here, sitting between you two,” Ravi said around a bite of ice cream bar.
“Well, wild goose chase or not, we leave Thursday.”
Ravi glanced over as he wound his arm behind Michelle. “You’ll be happy you went. Believe me. Sadly, compared to Europe, the US is in the dark ages of medicine.”
“Are you talking about our trip?” Charlie popped back into the conversation as a time-out was called on the field. “Do you know I get to go too? Dad and Mom are going to take me to see the Louvre, and we get to take a river boat all around a bunch of countries.”
“Sounds like you’re going to be the most cultured seven-year-old I’ll know by the time you get back. Three months in Europe is a long time,” Ravi replied.
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, but I’ll still have to do my school work and keep up with that. So it’s not a total vacation.”
“Oh, the hardships of reading while traveling down the Rhone in a river boat.” I nudged Charlie and tore open my Milk Duds.
She was back to focusing on the game, so she didn’t hear me. A fire alarm could be blaring a foot away, and she wouldn’t have noticed when she was watching her dad on the field.