Challen and Addy

Chapter 38 (Challen): Assurance

Copyright © 2025 by GroveltoHEA

Nate and I drove home from the grocery store without saying a word. Figured he'd said what he needed to and I didn't have anything warm and fuzzy to say, so we both sat with our thoughts. My thoughts mostly centered around how many hours were left until he and Shannon returned home.

We walked into the house and found Addy and her mother sitting on the couch, drinking some iced tea.

"Were you able to get everything on the list?" Addy asked.

"I did," I said. "I'm going to marinate the steaks now and after half an hour, we can eat whenever you want."

"I'll do the grilling," Nate piped in gruffly.

OK, I took what he said in the car on the way to the store, but now he was trying to take over my grill? Not happening, because one of the basic, not-to-be-violated rules was never get between a man and his grill. It was Nate's total attempt at a flex of his dominance, and he might not like me, might not want me with his daughter, but he wasn't going to take over the grilling when he was at my house.

"Thanks for offering, Nate, but I've got it covered," I said smoothly. "You have such limited time for your visit and since you haven't seen Addy in so long, I'll grill while you talk with your daughter."

"Thank you, Challen. That's nice of you," Addy said, not realizing she was inadvertently helping my cause.

"It's not a problem. I want you to have as much time as possible visiting with your parents."

Nate's look he sent me wasn't quite as thankful as Addy's. But when I made dinner two hours later, his ass was on the couch, talking with his wife and daughter, and I was grilling our steaks.

That night, I heard a soft knock at the door before it opened to reveal Addy. I'd been reading some work-related emails in bed, and threw the sheet back and got out of bed.

"You OK?" I asked my wife.

"Are you?" she countered pointedly.

"Yeah, why? What's going on?"

"You grilled. You got everything ready for dinner by yourself. You cleaned up after we ate by yourself. Then you came upstairs to give Mom, Dad and me time alone."

"I want you to have time with them, Addy, without me hanging around."

"And it doesn't have anything to do with what Dad said to you in the car when he went with you to the grocery store?"

Damn. Hadn't expected Nate to own up to that, which meant that Addy and I would now be having a conversation.

"I wasn't happy about it, but I could understand where he was coming from. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you have to decide."

I walked over to her, took her hand and led her to the bed so she could sit. I sat beside her and we were angled to we could look right at each other.

"Where, if anywhere, we go next is completely up to you, Addy. So, figured I'd give you time with your parents, let them get everything they wanted to say to you out in the open, give you a chance to really talk things over with them and then you'd have to make a decision and figure out how you wanted to move forward. With me or without me."

"I thought I'd been making that clear, Challen. I'm willing to try."

"I thought so, but that was before your parents arrived with a different agenda."

"Do you understand where they were coming from?"

"I do." But I still think they should mind their own business. This is between the two of us.

"They didn't know everything," she admitted. "When we've talked on the phone, I focused on my rehab, the progress I was making, the challenges I was facing, what my different therapists were saying, what the Center was like, the other patients who were there. That sort of thing."

 "But you didn't discuss me."

"No. And that's because I didn't know how to feel about what you were doing. I didn't know why you were there, and if it was simply guilt or...whatever, and I wondered if you'd get bored and take off. I didn't trust you, so I just didn't mention you and they didn't ask."

"I get it," I said. "You had no reason to trust me."

Her hand took ahold of mine. "I took care of that tonight. I told them everything. About how you'd had to get special permission to work remotely so you could follow me to rehab. How you sold your three bikes so our savings wouldn't take a hit while you rented a place to live near the Center. About the research you did so the gifts you got me would help with my rehab."

She put her other hand around mine.

"I told them about the drives you planned for Grady and me, how you arranged a private plane for him so he could see his wife and daughter, how we've been reconnecting and talking everything out, and I'm seeing the man I married again. What I didn't tell them, because I didn't feel it was my place, was that you were talking to a therapist and working through your grief about your father and how that had a snowball effect."

"You could have told them, Addy."

"That's up to you, if you want to tell them. But I also told them how you'd gotten Jennifer fired and the things she'd been pulling that led to you pursuing a restraining order. I explained how you negotiated a new position at your company with clear boundaries so you wouldn't be working any more crazy hours, and that I now had options to go back to school, if I wanted, and get a degree in something that really interested me."

Smiling at my wife, I brought her hands to my lips and kissed them. "You're much better at building cases than I am, Addy."

"Well, one of us has to be," she winked at me. "Because you're awful at it."

"I don't know how I feel about you defending me. You shouldn't be in that position of having to build a case for me."

With a delicate lift of her shoulders, she shook her head. "It wasn't so much as defending you as filling them in on everything that had been happening with you. They weren't operating with all the facts."

"I appreciate your generosity. You didn't have to fill them in on anything."

"They needed to know so my father could stop acting like a wounded bear every time you opened your mouth." Nudging me with her elbow, she laughed. "The fight for grill dominance almost put me on the floor."

I grinned at her. "I didn't think you picked up on it. I thought it was just a sweet little comment."

Her face got serious. "That was me having your back, Challen, and in case Dad missed that move, I also laid it out for my parents tonight. I listened to their concerns, told them everything I just told you and said they needed to respect that you and I would be determining our future, not them. Then to make myself perfectly clear, I said if they felt the need to continue pressing their point about what they thought I should do, I'd be happy to help them change their return flight and take them to the airport tomorrow morning."

Holy shit. That message she'd delivered was unmistakable.

"What'd they say?"

"Mom gave me a hug and said they understood and would support whatever decision I made. Dad huffed and puffed for a minute and said he would subside."

I no longer felt the need to count the hours until their departure.

"I hurt their little girl terribly, Addy. I understood where they were coming from. Didn't like that they came here to talk you into ending our marriage, but I understood."

"You promised me you'd fix it for us."

"I did. And I will."

"We can learn to love again," my wife quoted Just Give Me A Reason by Pink! with not just hope in her voice but assurance this time.

Leaning close to my wife, I made sure her eyes were on mine.

"I already have."