“And you somehow don’t think that’s more offensive than point-blank asking my one-weekend stand if her baby is mine?” I scoffed as I pulled into my designated parking space.
“No, that’s just being smart legally. She’ll get that.”
I put the car in park and sat there silently for a second.
“What’s going through your head, Nixon?” Nate asked me. We always knew when the other wasn’t giving up the full story. Call it twin intuition or whatever. We knew.
“She told me I could sign my rights over,” I said quietly.
“Damn.” A few breaths passed. “You thinking about it?”
“What? No!” If that baby was mine, there was zero chance I’d walk away. But the last time I’d made that commitment… Don’t go there. “It just made me think that she might be telling the truth. Someone trying to extort money isn’t going to offer an out.”
“Solid argument. Where did you leave it?”
“We exchanged numbers, and she told me not to wait too long to decide if I want a role in the baby’s life because she’s not planning on sticking around.” What kind of mindfuck was that? Who the hell told you in one breath that she was having your kid, and in the next informed you that you weren’t worth staying around for? “Anyway, I asked for some proof. Was that too insulting, oh wise one?”
Another sigh filled my speakers. “No, that’s smart. You need me up there? I can hop on the next flight.”
Some of the anxiety twisting my stomach into knots lifted, but I knew I couldn’t pull him away from Harper. These were the only months they got together before the NHL season started. “Nah, I’m good. I’ll call you as soon as I know for sure what’s going on.”
“Okay. Offer stands…Oh, and…uh….are we telling Mom?”
“Fuck no!”
“Just making sure.” He laughed.
I hung up with my twin and headed inside for our weightlifting session. Thirty minutes later, I was covered in sweat as Roman spotted me for the bench press.
“Any news?” he asked quietly.
He and Hendrix were the only guys I’d told besides Nate since they were the ones who had found me standing in a daze in the middle of the training field after Liberty left.
“Nope,” I grunted.
“Well, the good news is if it’s true, at least it’ll be a good-looking kid.” He offered me a smile as I put the bar back.
“If there even is a kid,” I muttered as I sat up slowly. Would it have Liberty’s green eyes or my—hell no. I stopped myself cold. Something this huge could only be handled one emotional step at a time, and until I had proof that she was actually pregnant, there was no imagining any kid.
“Hey, did you guys see the new trainer?” Hendrix asked with a grin, then threw a wink at the blond with a clipboard.
“Don’t.” Roman and I answered simultaneously. No doubt he still would, and then we’d have to deal with that shitstorm, just like we had with the last two grad students who’d done their internships with the team.
“What? It’s not like she’s a minor or anything.” He shrugged.
“For fuck’s sake,” Roman muttered.
My cell phone vibrated, and I whipped it out of my pocket.
Liberty Jones.
My stomach hit the floor as I showed the screen to Roman and Hendrix, then made a beeline for the side door. This wasn’t the kind of call I was going to take in the fucking weight room.
“Hey,” I answered as the sun hit my face, and the door swung closed behind me. The air was sticky with humidity.
“Nixon?” she asked, her tone slightly hesitant.
“Yep.”
“This is Liberty.”
“I know.” The corners of my mouth lifted in a slight smile. “You put your name into my phone, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” I pictured her shaking her head. “I have the proof you asked for…if you still want it. If not, my offer stands. You can sign your rights over and delete my number. There’s zero pressure.”
Damn, my chest felt like it was in a vise at those words. “I want it. The proof,” I rushed the second part and wondered just how awkward this conversation could get.
“Okay. I’m free tonight, but my car is in the shop so I can’t come—”
“I’ll come to you,” I interrupted. “What time do you want me?”
There were a few heartbeats of silence. “You’re willing to come to my place?”
“Do you really think I’m that big of an asshole that I wouldn’t come to your house when you’re telling me that you’re carrying my child?” My temper flared, and I looked both ways, making sure no one heard me nearly shout that. Where was my trademark control?
“Well, no. You just didn’t seem interested.”
“I’m interested.” I pressed on the spot between my eyes, feeling a headache coming on.
“Well then, okay. I’ll text you my address. Seven o’clock work for you?” Her voice perked up.
I mentally ran through my schedule. The last thing I would do to Liberty was make any commitment I couldn’t follow through on. “That works for me.”
“I’ll see you then.”
* * *
There was no way my baby was going to grow up here…if I was actually having a baby. The floors of the stairwell that led to Liberty’s fourth-story walk-up were filthy, and there wasn’t even a lock on the exterior door. Anyone who wanted could walk in, and the only barrier would be Liberty’s own door.
Did she feel safe here? How was she going to carry a baby up those steps every day? Or a stroller?
The hallway reeked of beer, which was pretty typical of the buildings close to any college campus, but now it made me cringe. There were at least six different songs being played from six different systems down the hallway. Could a baby even sleep here? Could Liberty? Didn’t pregnant women need sleep?
I reached apartment 419 and knocked, then curved the brim of my Reapers baseball cap. It was the only hat besides my Raptor one in the car, and that one had been blatantly obvious.
“I’ve got it!” I heard Liberty shout.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and those green eyes hit me like a punch to the stomach when Liberty looked up at me. Fuck, she was beautiful.
Stop it.
“Hi.” I swallowed. Barely.
“Hi.” She stared for a second—we both did. Then she shook her head rapidly and smiled. “I mean, come in.” She stepped back and swung the door wide.
“Thank you.” I walked in and removed my hat, shoving the fabric into my back pocket, bill-out, because even though I hadn’t lived at home for eight years, I still subconsciously feared my mother’s arched eyebrow. It was the same at the dinner table. There was zero chance that Nate, Nick, or I would have risked getting caught with a hat on. But that was before Nick died.
Wait…where was Liberty’s dining room table? Where was her dining room?
I scanned the cramped surroundings as she shut the door behind me. We stood on a square of linoleum that served as an entry. The carpet was worn and frayed. A basket of mail overflowed in the pass-through to my right that looked into the small, galley kitchen, and the living room began where the linoleum ended. There were three women who looked to be about Liberty’s age on an avocado-green sofa that looked like it had survived at least a handful of presidents, but thankfully they were engrossed in whatever major league baseball game was on TV.
This was the type of place I’d lived all through college, but I couldn’t imagine raising a baby here.
“Sorry, my roommates already had plans to watch the game,” Liberty said quietly from behind me.
“No problem.” I turned sideways so she could slide by and tried like hell to keep my eyes off her ass in those tiny, cut-off shorts. I failed. My hands clenched as if they remembered the feel of grasping that ass tightly and swinging her into my lap. Had that actually happened, or were my fantasies of her that vivid?
Her brow puckered as she glanced from he
r roommates to me and back again. “Maybe we should—”
A guy with a shaggy haircut walked around the corner from the kitchen, carrying a couple of beers, and glanced our way. His eyes widened in a way I knew all-too-well, and he startled.
“Holy. Shit. You’re…you’re Nixon Noble. Guys, that’s Nixon Noble!” He juggled the beer cans, trying to recover from the sudden jolt, but it was a lost cause.
One flew free, and I snapped my hand out and caught it before it could hit Liberty.
“Whoa. Your reflexes are insane,” he praised, drawing out the last word.
“They’re all right.” I stacked the caught can onto his pile.
“Cory, why don’t you go watch the game?” Liberty told more than asked. “Heather, help me out here?”
“Wait, how do you know Liberty?” Cory asked, clearly bewildered.
Don’t snap on the kid, I reminded myself, but it was hard. I just wanted to get Liberty alone, not deal with a star-struck grad student.
“The charity auction thing, remember, honey?” a worried redhead said as she reached for Cory’s hand. Her gaze bounced between all three of us. “Come watch the game.”
“Wait, so you two are like…dating?” Cory asked.
Liberty tensed.
“That’s none of our business,” the redhead—Heather—snapped, then tugged him into the living room.
“I saw three of your games last year!” the kid called back.
“Thank you.”
“Quick, follow me before he starts citing stats or something,” Liberty urged, grabbing my hand and rushing down the hall to the left.
How many people lived here? I dodged piles of laundry like they were tackling dummies and nearly froze at the sight of their bathroom. There were towels and makeup and girly shit everywhere. Everywhere.
She pulled me into the first bedroom and shut the door behind us.
“How many roommates do you have?” I asked, spotting two twin beds, two dressers, and a mountain of shoes. Books lay in heaps on top of a spindly, mismatched desk, and clothes oozed out of the closet.
“Three. I share this room with Heather. Monica and Julie share the other one.” She squirmed past me and flushed at the sight of the closet. “Sorry, I was at work until about an hour ago, and I chose a shower over cleaning the room.”
“I don’t care,” I said, noting that one bed was made and one wasn’t. Please let hers be the made one.
She shoved the pile of clothes back into the closet and threw me a disbelieving look. “You look like you do.”
“I don’t.” I lied. It wasn’t that I was judgy. I didn’t care how other people lived. But in my life, everything had a place, and if it wasn’t in that place…well, I put it there. Clothes were hung by occasion, color and sleeve-length. Shoes were shelved in pairs. Socks were mated, then organized by purpose and color. How the hell could she find anything in here?
She pushed one last time, and the clothes disappeared behind the mirrored door, but something else fell free and hung out of the doorway at an odd angle.
It was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of me in full uniform.
“Oh my God!” Her face blushed an even brighter pink, and she scrambled to tuck the thing away.
“Is that a bra hanging from my helmet?” I managed to keep a straight face.
“Nope.” She stilled, then ripped the lacy confection down and shut the closet door. I bet it looked phenomenal cupping those exquisite breasts hidden behind her oversized UNC T-shirt. Hell, I even bet her nipples peeked through that lace just enough to make out their dusky color. Her breasts were mouth-wateringly incredible.
Those, I fucking remembered.
She turned toward me, then realized the bra was still in her hand. Sighing a rumble through her lips, she gave up the pretense and flung the thing into the overflowing hamper next to me.
I laughed and raked my hand over my hair. This whole situation was ludicrous, and we both knew it.
She rolled her eyes. “The cutout was a gift from my roommates. It’s how they told me they’d bought you in the charity auction. All of my sorority sisters chipped in, too.”
“I remember you telling me they all went in on it,” I admitted with a grin. “But you left out the six-foot-four cardboard me in your closet.”
Her mouth opened and shut a few times as her forehead puckered, but finally, she gave in and smiled as she laughed.
My heart fucking stuttered. That right there was what had drawn me to her in the first place. Before the drinks turned into many drinks, which turned into a night I barely remembered, she’d smiled, and I’d been stunned speechless…just like I was right now.
That smile of hers was genuine. Authentic. And in my world—where every woman was surgically enhanced, fake-as-hell, and always had an ulterior motive, genuine was rare. Genuine was precious.
Snap out of it.
“You said you had something for me?” I turned toward the desk and picked up a few of the books, which were all on psychology. I quickly stacked them in alphabetical order as I heard her come up behind me.
“Oh, right,” she said, opening the skinny drawer on the left side of the desk and taking out a paper. Her eyebrows knit slightly as she noticed the newly-stacked books. “Do you have OCD?” she asked softly.
I bristled. “Liking things to be their correct place doesn’t mean I have OCD.” Not officially, at least. It had taken five years of therapy after Nick died to lessen the worst of my compulsions, but stressful situations still brought them out.
This definitely qualified as a stressful situation.
She didn’t question my tight tone or look at me with skepticism or pity, which would have most-likely pushed me right over the edge. Instead, she simply handed me the paper with a soft smile. “This is your copy of my lab report.”
“My copy?” I asked as I looked it over. The doc’s office looked legit. There was her name, Liberty M. Jones.
“I figured you’d want your own.”
I read down the report to her HCG levels. She was pregnant.
Pregnant…and by the dates of her last cycle, and the estimated conception time frame on the report, the baby was mine.
Mine, mine, mine. MINE.
If the report is real, that tiny little voice in the back of my head chimed in.
Because the last time, it hadn’t been.
It had all been one giant lie.
“Say something,” Liberty urged gently.
“Looks like you’re pregnant.” My fingers tightened on the paper, making it crinkle. I read it again and again, then folded it down the center once, then twice, before tucking it into the back pocket that didn’t hold my hat.
I stared at her, searching for something else to say.
She nodded, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth. “I meant what I said. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Stop saying that,” I whispered, slamming my eyes shut as gravity shifted beneath my feet. Lawyers. Paternity test. Child support. Visitation. Rights. Custody. My mother’s face. God, my mind wouldn’t stop.
“Nixon.”
I opened my eyes and focused on hers.
“Look,” she started. “I don’t know what your damage is, but it’s obvious you have some. And I get it. At first, I was seriously pissed at your reaction, but I thought about it, and I get it. You’re an NFL star who makes more money than most people could ever spend in a lifetime. I bet I’m not the first girl to come at you with a pregnancy claim, am I?” She tilted her head, exposing the long line of her neck.
“No.” Even now, I wanted to trail my tongue from her collarbone to her jaw.
“Do you have any other children?”
“Hell no.” I drew back. There had been at least a dozen claims over the years and all but two had come from women I’d never even slept with.
One of them was standing right in front of me.
“I see.” She looked away.
I had a feeling that she didn’t, but I wasn�
�t in any position to correct her. Hell, I was barely standing, because if that lab report was true…Don’t even let yourself think it.
“Well, there’s your proof.” She tucked her hands into her back pockets and rocked back on her heels. “But if you want more, I have an ultrasound appointment next week with my doctor. You’re welcome to come.”
“I am?” She couldn’t have shocked me more if she’d tossed a bucket of ice water on me. I’d never been invited to a doctor’s appointment.
“Well…yeah.” She looked at me like I’d grown two heads. “Half of what’s growing inside me is yours, so it only seems fair that you get to come, right?”
Yours. Suddenly the tiny apartment felt infinitesimally smaller.
“Right.”
“And I added your name as next of kin and signed a release, so you have access to my records. You can call and confirm those results yourself if you want. They’ll give you the information.”
She wasn’t hiding anything. In fact, she was exposing herself just so I’d see that she was telling the truth. My emotions jumped around so quickly that they never had time to land.
“And I talked to a lawyer. I’ll have the papers ready for you to sign next week if you want to relinquish—”
“No.” I shook my head, my entire body revolting at the idea of signing away the chance that the baby was mine…and if those dates were right—if this wasn’t the most carefully constructed lie I’d ever come across—it was mine. “When is your appointment?”
“The third at three-fifteen.” She swallowed. “I don’t know if you have practice or anything.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Promise?” she asked, challenging me with a raise of her eyebrows.
“If I say it, I’ll do it. I never make promises I don’t keep.”
And I sure as hell wasn’t starting with that one.
* * *
This wasn’t a doctor’s office. It was one of those horror-houses at a carnival. Clearly they wanted to terrify women. Why else would they show a diagram of a baby’s head that looked to be the size of a bowling ball, pressing up against a tunnel that was maybe the size of a damned nickel?
Nixon: A Raleigh Raptors Novel Page 3