22
Ryan
“You seem distracted, Super Bowl, you okay?” asked Elise, running her neatly manicured nails down my back. I did my best not to flinch away – Elise’s presumption knew no bounds. Technically, I guess, that was my fault. I’d agreed to go out with her and her gang of high school friends. Technically, too, if it weren’t for Courtney, I might have even enjoyed Elise’s attention, followed her back to her place, and let her ride me till neither of us could stand.
“Fine,” I said, the words coming out sharp and sulky. Elise removed her hand, looking mildly annoyed.
“Ryan, check out this Cruiser.” My brother placed his hand on my shoulder, his touch reminding me that I was in public and could take my black moods home if I so chose. To be honest, my mood was the reason I’d left the house, and I was pretty ticked at Gabe for following me out. He said he needed a night away from home, but I think he came out to keep me from doing anything stupid. I hadn’t told him what was wrong, but Gabe knew rage when he saw it, and I was in a flat, black rage.
I let Gabe draw me away from The Point’s crowded patio bar and towards the railing, where all the yachts were lined up in their stalls. I stared at them, blindly.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” asked Gabe, his voice low.
Then I heard it. Her laugh. I hadn’t heard it since I’d been back home, but it was loud and delighted and clear as a bell. I whipped around, and there she was. Her back was to me, but I recognized the guy: Doug. Courtney was dressed up, and dining out at The Point with Doug. Rage swept back in. I didn’t think. I handed my glass to Gabe and strode out towards them.
I didn’t get far. Gabe wrapped two hands around my forearm and swung me back around.
“Stop. Ryan. Stop and listen,” Gabe’s voice was low and urgent. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm my racing pulse, tried to beat down the anger that threatened to erupt.
“She lied to me, Gabe!” I hissed, allowing my brother to draw me back towards the railing, away from the crowd. “She lied to me. She told me that little girl was nine. She’s ten, Gabe!”
“Oh shit,” Gabe swore, but he didn’t release my arm. “Ryan…” He stopped, he didn’t know what to say.
“That’s ten years I’ve missed out of that kid’s life. Ten years where I might have helped her, provided for her, gotten to know her. Ten years!”
“We shouldn’t do this here, Ryan,” said Gabe. “Let’s get back home and talk about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I want to destroy something. How could she?”
Gabe couldn’t answer. We stood there quietly while I tried to master my anger. I wanted to walk over and smash Dough’s face in. He was out on a date with the mother of my child. He’d been there for Courtney and Lea when I hadn’t been. Breathe.
Finally, when I felt my pulse begin to steady, Gabe spoke again. “What do you want, Ryan?”
“Excuse me?”
“What do you want?” asked Gabe. “Not right now. But in your life? You had ten years to come back here, to see Courtney, to check in with your old friends – you never did. And the minute you come back, you can’t seem to stay away. Now you’re going into business with your ex – who may have lied to you for ten years. What do you want? Do you want Courtney? Do you want Lea?”
“Of course I fucking want Lea!” I growled.
“Why is that ‘Of Course’? You’ve never even had a serious girlfriend post-high school, and you’re all of a sudden gung ho for a daughter?”
If Gabe didn’t watch it, he was going to get his face bashed in.
“You can’t go over there and yell at Courtney. Not if you want her too. You’ve got to talk to her when you’re calmer.”
I heard his words. They even made sense. But I wasn’t in any sort of mood to think rationally. “You know what,” I said. “Fuck her.”
I turned and strode back to the bar.
23
Courtney
What did one wear to spend an afternoon on a boat with an ex-boyfriend? I suppose that depended on what I wanted from Ryan – and I just wasn’t sure. Part of me desperately wanted to break out my flirty, low cut sundress. Part of me wanted to throw on a sweatshirt and sneakers and do my best to keep him at bay.
I sighed, staring at myself in my bedroom’s full length mirror: light makeup, hair down, jean shorts, red-t-shirt, red espadrilles. I’d never been more confused in my life.
My evening with Doug had clearly been a date. He’d been warm, friendly, and touchy: a hand on the shoulder, a light caress across the table. After dinner, we’d walked the beach and he’d held my hand. At my door, he’d held me close, kissed my cheek and told me that he’d be back in town next week, and could he take me out then?
I should have said no – but I’d a demon riding me. As we’d left the restaurant I’d seen Ryan, sitting at the bar with Elise Lashinsky all but draped over his shoulder, and while he hadn’t been touching her, he’d been watching her with a cat-and-cream expression on his face: like he was just waiting for the right moment to lap her up. The image upset me deeply. So when Doug asked if I wanted to go out next weekend, I’d said yes. Yes. Because I couldn’t depend on Ryan. I wouldn’t depend on Ryan.
But that didn’t mean I was going to cancel our date either.
Ryan arrived as promised, driving up the Mangroves dock in his brother’s boat: an old cruiser that Gabe had probably purchased used. Behind the wheel, Ryan looked delicious: khaki shorts that revealed tanned, muscular legs and a sleeveless, mint-green t-shirt that displayed his massive tattooed shoulders and rippling arms.
He wore mirrored aviator sunglasses so I couldn’t see his expression. But his smile was shallow.
Ryan gestured at me to climb aboard, but said nothing as he steered the boat out towards the intercostal waterway. Something was wrong. Had he taken Elise home last night and didn’t know how to fess up to it?
“Do you own a boat?” I asked, needing some sort of conversation. This silence felt ominous.
“Wouldn’t waste my money on it,” he said. “If I want to go out, I rent.”
“It’s a nice day to be out on the water.” I tried again.
“Sure is,” said Ryan. I sighed. I’d forgotten these moods. Ryan, in high school, had never known how to deal with emotion. We’d fought a few times, and they were terrible fights in which Ryan would brood obnoxiously, unload, and then take a week or more to apologize. Something was wrong, and he wasn’t going to be the first to talk about it.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. We’d picked up speed once we’d turned onto the waterway and were zooming South. The sound of the engine swallowed my question, and I had to wait until we turned off of the waterway and out towards some of the barrier islands. Then I tried again, “Is everything okay?”
Ryan turned, his look unreadable behind his sunglasses. The motor cut and I could hear the sound of the anchor dropping.
“Your daughter isn’t nine.”
Oh no…
“You lied to me. She’s ten.”
I closed my eyes and tried to calm the tidal wave of nausea that rolled through me. This was the moment I’d been trying to avoid. I’d been half hoping that, even if he did find out, he’d ignore it. Go back to Boston, live his life, and leave me alone. The old Ryan would have.
God. I’d been such an idiot. Addie, Brandon, Karen, my parents: they’d all told me, when Ryan expressed interest in investing in The Mangroves, to tell him the truth about Lea. But I hadn’t. And now it was too late.
“Say something.” Ryan’s voice snapped across the calmness of the water: brutal and demanding.
I glared at him. I don’t like being yelled at. “And say what? Yes. Okay. I lied. She’s ten, but that doesn’t make her your daughter.”
“Her birthday is in February, so unless you were sleeping with someone else in high school…”
“How dare you. I would never!” I said, outraged. “But that doesn’t mean she’s your da
ughter. She’s not. She’s mine. You have nothing to do with her.”
Ryan’s hand balled into a fist and crashed into the side of the boat. “Of course I had nothing to do with her! I didn’t know she existed! How dare you take that from me, Courtney! How dare you take away the opportunity for me to get to know my own daughter…”
“Oh please!” I snapped. “It’s fine of you to act all self-righteous now that you’re a bored, wealthy football star with little to do but throw your money here and there! But don’t tell me that eighteen year-old jackass who broke my heart into pieces would have given two shits about impregnating his high school girlfriend. Because that’s all I was to you, Ryan! I wasn’t the love of your life, I was your high school girlfriend. Good for the odd fond memory.” I was yelling now. “I was disposable, replaceable. All you had to do was tattoo over my name and you forgot about me. Forgot about Serenity. You never even reached out again – not to see how I was doing, not to get any of your things back. Not one word!”
I was crying. Hot angry tears were streaking down my face as he stood there, fists balled at his sides looking ready to break something.
“You were done with me. I wasn’t going to pull you back into my life because we made a mistake. You wanted to go off and be a big football star. Fine. And you know what? I let you. I could have dragged you back here, could have dragged you into all of this, but I didn’t. I raised Lea myself. I moved to Texas so that nobody in Serenity would ever know. And I went to community college, Ryan. While you were banging Michigan cheerleaders, I was working nights and taking care of my daughter during the day! I was lucky that my grandparents babysat Lea while I finished my degree. I was lucky that someone like Doug, at twenty years old, would consider dating a mother! I was lucky when my parents offered to sell me the restaurant, but it was hard fucking work to get where I am now. And you don’t get to come here after ten years and act all affronted that I never told you about my daughter!”
Ryan’s head was shaking back and forth. “You should have told me…”
“No! I shouldn’t have! I didn’t want you in our lives. You left me Ryan. After two years, after everything we went through together. You were such a mess in high school – angry at your mom, shitty in school – and I stood by you! And in return, on the night of graduation, you fucked me and then broke up with me. You didn’t deserve me, and you didn’t deserve Lea.”
My words seemed to reach him like dual slaps. He twitched and seemed shaken. The silence was thick with tension.
“That’s not fair, Courtney,” He said, his voice rough. “That’s not fair.”
“Screw fairness. It’s not fair to be a mother at nineteen, to have my youth stripped from me by the very man who said he’d love me forever.”
Ryan’s jaw jutted outward, and he turned away from me, gripping the side of the boat as if to pry it off. “I would have come back,” he said, finally, his voice gravel. “I wouldn’t have let you do it alone.”
I closed my eyes. “Would you have?” I shook my head. “And even if you had come back, you would have gotten a job to support us. You wouldn’t have gone pro. You would have hated me forever. I couldn’t do that to you, Ryan. Even after what you did to me. I couldn’t do that to you…”
His arms were around me then, and he was crushing me to his chest. I was sobbing – tears I’d never shed, not even after finding out I was pregnant. Tight in Ryan’s arms, my face pressed against his shirt, I sobbed uncontrollably.
The truth was that I never thought I’d be here again, I never thought I’d be in his arms again. I’d wanted, desperately, to tell him about Lea. In those early days all I’d wanted was to have him back with me. Now here he was, and he knew.
I don’t know if I turned my face up, or if he bent down, but we were kissing. Raw, desperate, hungry kisses. We devoured each other, as if to make up for those lost years, those years where I was too proud, and he was too selfish. He held my head between his hands, trapping my head, savaging my mouth as if in punishment.
One hand came down and closed over my breast, burning through my shirt and my bra as if searing my skin with a brand: mine.
I arched into him, whimpering, wanting him to touch me everywhere. My hands twisted through his hair, holding his lips to mine while his hand rucked up my shirt, burning the skin at my hip. I was lust and panic and rawness and need and – oh god! This was wrong!
24
Ryan
I ravaged Courtney’s mouth, tongue thrusting forward to fill her anyway I could. Too much emotion was swirling: rage, regret, sorrow, longing. I couldn’t control any of it, and I didn’t try. I ground my hips into her. I wanted to possess every fucking inch of her, to remind myself of what I’d let go, to remind her why she shouldn’t have let me…
Her withdrawal was a bucket of cold water. One minute she was fire, living flame in my arms. The next she was gone, her hands shoving against my chest, jerking us apart. She stumbled towards the lip of the boat, grabbing the side to keep herself upright. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, her eyes liquid and burning into mine with unsatisfied desire. Fuck if I was going to stop. I moved forward to reclaim her but she held up her hands. “No!”
I stopped.
“Ryan. All this,” she waved her hand around. The boat, the water, the sun, the promise of fierce sex. “We’ve been here before, you and I,” she said. She sounded desperate. “And it was beautiful then. It was also a total lie. I don’t know that you can be committed Ryan! And I can’t do this again with you. I can’t have Lea get her hopes up and her heart broken. I won’t do that to her.”
“I would never hurt her…” I objected
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to,” Courtney allowed. “I don’t think you meant to hurt me! You’re not malicious Ryan, but you are selfish. I’ve seen the way you use women. I’ve followed your Instagram account, your twitter…”
Well fuck.
“Courtney I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be Lea’s father. I want to be good to you. I want another chance. I’m not the same guy I was when I was eighteen. You need to give me a chance to prove myself.”
“I’m sorry,” said Courtney, and she looked sorry. But she also looked resolved. “But the answer is no. No.” She shook her head.
“Courtney…”
“Please, take me back to shore, Ryan. I want to go back.” Her voice broke on the last word, and my heart broke with it. I felt terrible, desperate, and angry. I deserved a chance to prove myself to her. I might have been a terrible asshole eleven years ago, but she could not keep me from my daughter.
I drew the anchor in and started the boat, heading back towards the waterway and the Mangroves. The quiet gnawed at my nerves.
“Courtney,” I tried again when we got off the waterway and the engine stopped roaring. “I can’t forget I know about Lea. I want to be able to see her.”
“No.”
“Courtney. You can’t just say no,” I said. “I understand that you upset, but understand that I am too, and the fact of the matter is that I have a daughter, and I want to see her.”
“No.”
“You can’t deny me that. I don’t want to bring lawyers into this, Courtney. But I will.” I stopped the engine. The Mangroves was in sight, but I wasn’t going to allow her to just leap off of the boat. We were going to finish this.
25
Courtney
We were on the boat for two damn hours before I realized that Ryan was serious: he was going to wring a promise from me to see Lea or I’d have to leap overboard and swim to shore. In the end I relented with bad grace - but only because I was pretty certain that Lea already suspected Ryan was her father.
One we’d settle that he’d pick Lea up the following day, he started the boat and took us back to The Mangroves dock. He tried to reach for me, but I leapt off the boat and stormed back to my car, speeding away before he could call after me. He didn’t bother calling my cell phone. He knew I wouldn’t pick up.
I shot her a glance. Actually, I didn’t.
“I think you should give Ryan a chance. Or at least ask Lea what she wants. Also…” Addie scooped a lump of cookie dough onto the baking sheet and paused.
I shot her a look but she ignored it. “I think you should give him a chance and date him again.”
“Are you fucking serious!”
“Watch your mouth,” cautioned Addie, lowering her voice. “The Chatterbox could be listening. And yes. I’m serious. You’ve followed Ryan’s entire career. You clearly never got over him,” she said. “And now he’s back and interested again, and you’re waving him off like you’re trying to protect your heart.”
She shook her head. “Honey. I love you. I’ll tell you the truth, always. Nobody who knows you thinks you got over Ryan Mcloughlin. And it’s plain as day that you’re not that interested in starting things again with Doug. So why not just go for it with Ryan. Your heart isn’t going to get any more broken than it already is.” She opened the oven, deposited a tray of cookies and set the timer.
I gaped at Addie, and she shrugged. “I’m telling you what you already know,” she said. “If you won’t listen to yourself, than listen to me. And don’t be a coward. Tell that little girl who her dad is and let her get to know him.”
That night, when I went looking for Lea, I found her in the living room, tucked into one of the corner chairs with my yearbook open in her lap.
“To my girl Courtney,” Lea read, her small finger sliding beneath each word as she read it. “Baby, I don’t want a day to go by without holding you in my arms. You are heat lightening and summer storms. More passionate than a rip tide. Your smile electrifies my life. Your touch erodes me like the waves that beat against the coast…” It was a poetic note, one that had been written in mock seriousness. Ryan had plagiarized a metaphor assignment from our shared junior year English class.
Bad Ballers: A Contemporary Sports Romance Box Set Page 25