by Max Monroe
So I’d been that girl, working my way through college and medical school with two jobs, fighting to find the light at the end of the tunnel that would afford me the ability to juggle one life instead of three.
When Nick Raines had shown up with his quick smiles, easy attitude, and life-lightening humor, I’d grabbed on as tight as I could and ridden the ride as long as he’d let me.
Of course, as all roller coasters do, the one with Nick had come to an abrupt end, and when the high wore off—and the pregnancy test read positive—I’d added responsibility to my life rather than absolved it.
Because being a single mother was a job, probably the hardest one I’d ever had, and by far the least predictable. I didn’t go in at nine or leave at five, and the expectations of the job were never—not once—the same.
But if there was one thing that was a constant with my daughter, it was her inquisitive nature and the questions it produced.
Constant, curious, intelligent questions about anything and everything.
That was all well and good on a normal day, but when you were in college and trying to cram for an exam that would equal fifty percent of your grade, the questions were a little hard to manage.
As the person trying to work and pass her test simultaneously currently, I knew. I really knew.
Lexi moved over to the small leather chair in front of my desk and plopped her little butt down, her legs swinging back and forth underneath it. She scrunched her nose up as she focused, and her fingertips tip-tapped across the keys.
Silence—thank God. I loved the sound of her voice, had waited tirelessly to hear the words every mother dreams of when Lexi was struggling the most with her speech delay, but concentration and chatter, no matter how adorable, didn’t go hand in hand.
Focused again, I carefully described every detail on the report for Harrison’s torn ligament and moved on to the broken vertebrae DeMarcus Bassy had suffered in practice.
I still marveled at the injuries a sport could produce, the overall very real physical roughness of football, and the absolute grit most players displayed when you told them they couldn’t play. There was never relief in their eyes or fear in their hearts—they lived and breathed football, and being told they couldn’t be out there felt like a death of a part of them.
Five minutes later, the words, “Pen and paper, Mommy?” pulled my attention from my laptop and back to my daughter, but five minutes were better than none. Plus, her sweet face was a happy distraction from all of the gruesome details of the end of a man’s dreams—at least for the season. Bassy’s ass would be riding the bench for a good long time.
“Sure, honey.” I grabbed a small notepad and pen from my desk drawer and set them on the edge of my desk.
Her Mary Jane-covered feet ran across the hardwood floor, and she stopped in front my desk, hand already gripping the pen and scribbling something down on the notepad.
As much as I wanted to savor my time with her, drink in her knowledge and learn all the things she surely had it in her to teach me, I didn’t have the luxury. Instead, my eyes went straight back to my laptop, closed out the reports as I typed the final details, and hurriedly tried to finish a few more emails before the six-year-old standing across from me would cause any more distractions.
Mom life, right?
Sometimes, it was real fucking tough to get anything done.
And on top of the obvious time constraints, we were constantly fighting the guilt of feeling bad that we weren’t giving our children all of our time, yet still trying to find the balance of not losing ourselves in just being Mom all day, every day.
It was a struggle every single day.
“Knock knock.”
I glanced up to find Wes standing in the doorway of my office with a soft smile on his face. Everything inside of me woke up at once.
It’d been just over a week since the Halloween party at Brooks Media, and everything about that stretch of time said Wes and I were something.
Not defined in the slightest, but well above nothing, we’d managed to sneak away during work hours for sex four times in the last eight days. And as much as I expected my desire to die, after we were done, the flame always burned that much brighter.
His smiles came more easily and with much higher frequency, and after the first time I’d had to bring Lex to work, he’d even seemed to warm up to her. I’d noticed his discomfort at first, at not knowing how to interact with her without the manipulation he used on so many adults, but it hadn’t taken him long to find a way to talk to her that seemed to put them both at ease.
“Are you stopping by the practice tonight before you head out?” he asked, both hands on the top frame of the door with his body leaning forward.
Good God.
“Probably not.” I motioned toward Lexi and shook my head. “I’ve got a lot of work to finish up and, well, let’s just say some things are very distracting.” And two of my medical aides were on the field. I’d get a phone call if anyone seriously needed me.
Wes chuckled softly and walked toward my desk to stand behind my daughter, peeking over her shoulder. She was still too enthralled in whatever had her mind busy for the moment and hadn’t even noticed his arrival.
His eyebrows rose dramatically at whatever he saw on her notepad. If I had a different kid, I might have feared a dirty drawing or limerick with the way his forehead seemed to disappear, but I didn’t, so instead, I prepared myself to be floored. He must have jerked his head from the paper to me and back again a full three times before finally settling his surprised eyes on mine.
I tilted my head to the side with an indulgent smile and asked the question that was almost always relevant. “What am I missing?”
“Do you see what she’s doing?”
I bit my lip in an effort not to laugh, as the answer, thanks to a good six feet of space and a lack of superhuman eyesight, was blindingly obvious. Still, I pictured her usual work and ventured a guess. “Writing numbers?”
“I’d say it’s a little more complex than that,” he responded, an actual bounce in his demeanor as he smiled bigger than I’d ever seen before. He may have been smiling more frequently, but right then, I realized I hadn’t seen anything yet.
Lexi, as though she could feel the happiness radiating off of him, finally left her little bubble and glanced up at his face. “Wes! Now we’re three.”
“Hi, Lexi.” And the smile deepened even further.
Good Lord, I’m in real trouble here.
“We’re three?” he asked me curiously.
“There are three of us,” I explained.
“Ah,” he breathed, looking back down to Lex just as she moved her eyes to his throat and smiled. She was getting used to him, genuinely happy to see him, but still too overwhelmed by the complexities of his unfamiliar face to look him in the eye.
You’re not alone, sister.
He pointed toward her notepad. “What are you doing there?”
“A linear equation. Each term is either a constant or the product of a constant and a single variable. Example: linear equation with only one variable. Ax plus B equals zero. A and B are the constants, and A does not equal zero.”
Wes’s smile, having barely faded at all, went back to full wattage.
“Mommy, linear equations.”
“Wow, baby.”
Seriously. Wow.
“I wish I could do them with you—”
Not a fucking chance I could do them with her. Watch her maybe.
“But I need to finish up a few things. Maybe we can do some when we get home.”
Disappointment clouded her face instantly, and an arrow of guilt, sharp and unrelenting, stabbed me over and over again in the gut.
“Do you want to come down to the field with me?” Wes asked Lex, squatting down to get on her level, and I could feel my whole face freeze in shock. The skin felt tight, and my eyes rivaled fucking saucers.
“You don’t have to do that—”
He wave
d me off and pushed to standing.
“No, this is perfect. She can come hang out with me on the field, and if I forget any of my players’ stats, her brilliant little mind will come in handy.”
I stared at him for a long moment, taken aback by the much-needed offer. I was starting to wonder if all of my assumptions about him were true. I felt like maybe there was a whole other side to Wes Lancaster, but trusting it as real seemed like a venture into idiocy.
Lex jumped up from her seat and put her hand in Wes’s, his offer to take her with him as good as an order to her. Her mind worked in absolutes, and it really had never even occurred to her that I might say no.
Wes’s surprised eyes still met mine in question, though.
“Sure. Why not.” I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “Be on your best behavior for Wes, and I’ll come down to the field and get you in a little bit.”
“How many minutes, Mommy?”
My daughter. The time stickler. The mere idea of her need for structure made me smile.
I glanced at the clock and calculated the time as quickly as I could in my head.
“Forty-nine minutes, baby.”
Lex looked to the clock to do some math of her own. “It’s 5:11 p.m. You’ll come get me at six o’clock.”
I smiled. “That’s right, sweetheart.”
And with that, Wes looked to Lexi’s little hand in his as she led him out of the office, glancing back to me just once before they completely disappeared from sight.
In his eyes? Wonder.
Holy moly, if you’re not careful, you’re going to want a lot more from Wes Lancaster than just hot sex…
At exactly 5:55 p.m., I stood on the field, watching Wes kneel in front of my daughter, holding a football in the kicking position as Lexi stared down at him in absolute fascination.
Even crouched down below her, he looked like a giant compared to my little girl.
A surprisingly gentle giant.
And as I saw the adoration on her face as she continued to listen intently to whatever he was saying, I couldn’t deny that my heart skipped more than a few beats.
I was five minutes early on purpose, knowing that Lex watched the clock like a hawk, and the strike of six would mean she was ready to pack it in—and I wanted to sneak a few peeks at the action before that.
The team was finishing up for the night, on the opposite end of the field, huddled together and deep in game plan conversation, leaving Lexi and Wes in a huddle of their very own.
I moved closer, carefully, so I could hear their conversation without either of them realizing I was there.
With the skill of a man used to children, he gently held her ankle as he showed her the correct way to kick the football. From the look on his face, I didn’t think either of us expected it to come so naturally.
“You’re going to come at the ball in a three-quarters type of position, Lex. And then keep your ankle locked and drive your foot all the way through the ball. Locked knee. Locked ankle.”
He demonstrated the motion with her leg, rather than showing her with his own, and my chest squeezed. The fact that he’d so quickly figured out how to best help her learn proved how closely he paid attention, and having failed to master my poker face, I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to pay that close attention to me.
“Why?”
He grinned up at her. “Because your body will generate a little skip, and that’s where the power is going to come from. And just remember, the ball always needs to be lined up with the laces pointed toward the field goal,” he explained as he ran his fingers down the white laces of the football.
“Why?”
“Because it will make the ball go farther.”
“Why?”
He paused for a brief moment, and then his grin grew wider. “When you kick the ball from the back seams, that’s the spot that creates maximum compression.”
She nodded in understanding. “Compression makes the football travel farther and higher.”
“That’s right.”
“Where do I stand? I’m predominantly right-footed. But sometimes, ambidextrous.”
Geez. If Wes smiles any harder, his lips are going to tear right off his face.
“Since you’re right-footed, for most people they need to stand about three large paces back and two paces to the left of the ball. But it will take a little practice before you find what’s comfortable for you.”
“I’m going to practice every single day for exactly sixty minutes.”
Wes chuckled softly. “Well, then I think it’s safe to say, in about fifteen years, I’ll be offering you a spot on the Mavericks.”
Lexi’s smile was brighter than the sun. My eyes stung. All kinds of emotions were bubbling somewhere deep inside me, and I wasn’t ready. Not to face it, not to question it, and not to fucking find out it wasn’t real. I pictured a fist and mentally tamped it down so hard I almost choked.
“Now, when you make contact with the ball, aim for the ‘sweet spot,’ which is about four inches above the bottom tip of the football. Where you make contact with the ball is very important because it allows you to manipulate the distance and height that the football will travel.”
“Ten point two centimeters from the bottom tip of the football.”
“Exactly.” Wes smirked. “Do you want to give it a try?”
Lexi nodded enthusiastically and did exactly what he’d instructed, taking three steps back and then two steps to the left of the ball. Her little legs moved quickly toward the ball as she tried her first attempt at kicking a field goal.
I watched on with amusement and pride as the football flew through the air higher and faster than I honestly thought my pint-sized daughter would’ve been capable of.
She immediately started jumping up and down in excitement.
Wes stood up and grinned down at her in a way a proud father would, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he even knew that was the look he was giving my daughter. “Holy sh—hel—heck!” he cheered. “You nailed it!” He picked her up, spun her around, and then set her back down on her little feet.
Her eyebrows pulled together at the impossibilities. “I don’t have a hammer.”
Wes laughed and shook his head at himself, putting a hand to her shoulder and giving it a very brief squeeze. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Figuring it was time to make my presence known, I cupped two hands around my mouth and shouted, “Way to go, Lexi!”
She turned around and, at the sight of me, immediately started sprinting in my direction. It didn’t take her long to make it to me.
“I was so accurate!” she yelled as she threw herself into my arms.
I hugged her tightly to my chest, breathed in her shampoo and soap and everything that was my daughter, and laughed. “You were! You did amazing!”
“I want to play football again!”
Wes’s soft laugh filled my ears as he came to a slow stop in front of us. “I think you should get her on a team, Win. She has a natural talent for it.”
“How many minutes until I play football again?”
“Honey—”
“How many hours?” she adjusted.
“Lex—”
She breathed a deep sigh, her face sinking desperately. “Days?”
I looked down at her and then back at Wes. “Can she do that? I mean…I don’t know of any football teams with little girls on them, and the season already started.” I gestured around the field as if to say, “Obviously.”
“You let me handle it. I’ve got some contacts. I’ll find her a good team with nice boys, and I’ll even help her practice.”
Lexi’s little hands covered both of my cheeks and forced my eyes to hers. “I can play in one day?”
I shrugged. “I might have to wrap bubble wrap around you like a mummy, but sure, why not.”
“Ayeeee!” she screeched. “Football in one day, one day, one day,” she sang.
Wes smiled down at my daughter. “Don’t w
orry, Win. I’ll make sure she has all of the right equipment. I’ll even take her to practice if you’re too busy.”
It took a lot of willpower to keep my face in an easy smile versus the what-in-the-hell-is-happening look that I really wanted to give.
Because, seriously? What was happening?
Wes teaching my daughter football. Wes saying he would take care of everything—team, equipment, even driving her to and from practice…
Who was this man?
And the real question…was he planning on sticking around?
The halls were quiet, the hustle and bustle of players and coaches fading into the night just like the last splinters of sunlight.
I’d been getting lost in Winnie and her daughter when Coach Bennett came over and pulled me away for a last-minute briefing—something I’d specifically requested he do in the past—and I had immediately gotten annoyed. I’d been trying to make sense of why ever since.
Why would a guy who’d all but tattooed the fact that he wasn’t into women with kids or kids in general on himself suddenly feel bereft after being taken away from…a kid?
It was a serious mental conundrum, and I hadn’t come up with much, but there were two things I’d managed to walk away sure of.
One: I owned a goddamn football team, but the time I’d spent on the field with Lexi Winslow a couple of hours ago had been the most fun I’d had with the sport in years. Maybe it was because I was stressed, or maybe it was because Lexi had real, untainted, unmarred by years of disillusion passion for it, but either way, the result was the same.
The career you have because you love it can so easily turn into something you have to work to love. I wouldn’t have ever thought that would be me, but it was. I’d let it become a job—and I hated myself for it.
And two: Lexi Winslow might have been six years old, but in practice, she was more of an adult than Thatch. So, really, it was basic science that she’d annoy me less than him.
Right?
I’m still not sure, but it seems plausible.