Bad Ballers: A Contemporary Sports Romance Box Set

by Bishop, S. J.

  Along with the flowers, one of Dash’s teammates had showed up with a change of clothes for him, and after making sure that we were both all right, Dash went off to change.

  As he passed the door, I saw him pause, but I was too busy gazing into the red, smushy face of my beautiful daughter to see what had made him stop.

  “Can I see her?”

  I looked up and saw Becca slip into the room and walk softly to my bedside. My sister’s eyes were trained on her niece, and I wasn’t imagining the slight moisture there.

  I nodded, and as I handed my daughter over to my sister, I realized I was crying too. Becca held Emily for just a moment before giving her back.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” I told her. How long had she been waiting?

  “I wanted to see you,” said Becca. “You’re my sister. I wanted to make sure everyone was healthy. She’s…pretty,” Becca lied.

  I snorted. “She will be.”

  Becca nodded. “I’ll see you,” said my sister. “I just…I brought flowers. I wanted you to know I was here.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling tears slip down my face.

  At the door, Dash was coming back, having changed, finally, out of his uniform. I don’t know what Becca said to him. Her hand rested for a moment on his shoulder, and she gave him a brief, hard hug. Dash returned it, kissing her temple lightly. They parted, and Dash came back to the bed, his arms out to hold his daughter.

  “Look at this,” he said, drawing Emily into his chest. He looked at me, beaming.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Did we make a future president of the United States?”

  “Please,” said Dash, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m holding the future Quarterback of the New England Patriots.”

  End Zone

  BOOK 5

  1

  Erin

  The doors of the train opened up onto the Charles MGH platform, and I was all but hurtled through them, moving blindly past other commuters as they pushed into the crowded T.

  My mind was overwhelmed by emotion and yet, at the same time, I felt a curious blankness. I didn’t know what to think, so I didn’t. I just walked.

  Two years was more than enough time to get over an ex, but I’d just run into mine on the Red Line. I’d been taking the train home from a spin class in Back Bay, and Damon had stepped on, dressed in his officer’s uniform. Seeing him and seeing the wedding ring on his left hand – it was a reminder of all I could have had and all I had given up.

  But he cheated on you! What were you supposed to do? Pretend it hadn’t happened?

  I’d regretted my decision to break up with Damon two months after I’d done it – when my friend Lucy sent me a book called Sex at Dawn: about how we weren’t a monogamous species and expecting monogamy was ridiculous. We’re all idiots in love. Lucy had written messages fondly on the pages of the book. Idiot was right. I’d been so naïve about love. I’d thought it was a fairy-tale. Something perfect and full of handsome, brave princes and happily-ever-afters. And yet, at the first sign of conflict, I’d given it all up.

  Infidelity is allowed to be a deal breaker, my friend Casey had argued. You might have loved Damon, but if Damon had loved you, he wouldn’t have lied to you. It’s not that he cheated on you, Erin. It’s that he lied.

  But someone had forgiven Damon. Someone had taken him as he was.

  I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the daze that had led me to wander blindly down Charles Street. Looking around, I realized I was standing right in front of the stoop of Boston’s Best Psychic. The sign in the window let me know that she was still open.

  To run into Damon one minute and then appear in front of a psychic the next. I could practically feel fate breathing down my neck. I checked my watch: I had an hour before I was supposed to be at James and Casey’s house for dinner. I could spare a half hour to have my fortune told.

  I knocked on the smart, blue door and waited a moment before a middle-aged woman answered. She was in her mid forties and looked as if she’d come from money. She wore a tidy blue A-line skirt, a slightly rumpled yellow blouse, and a set of pearls. Her hair was smooth and pulled back from a face full of neat, elegant features.

  “Hello,” she said, waiting for me to state my business.

  “Are you Boston’s Best Psychic?” I asked dumbly.

  “I am. Are you here to make an appointment?”

  “I’m here for a walk-in reading… if you have time,” I said, feeling suddenly stupid. Of course Boston’s Best Psychic would need an appointment.

  The woman smiled at me kindly. She must have sensed my desperation. Or else I was wearing it like a sweater. “I close in twenty minutes,” she said. “But I could give you a short reading.”

  I let her usher me through the door and into a small parlor, where we took a seat at an old, scarred table, and she pulled a worn deck of tarot cards out.

  “Now, split the deck into three piles,” said the psychic after she’d shuffled her cards. I did as she asked, and she picked up a card from the first deck, then a card from the second, and then a card from the third.

  Staring at them a moment, she frowned and pulled a few more cards from each deck, laying them out.

  “This is your past,” she said, pointing to one of the piles. “This is your present,” she pointed to another. “And your future. Your past and your present are very close to each other,” she said, sitting back and looking at me. “There’s a figure from your past who is returning. Or perhaps he’s already returned.”

  Damon. I tried not to let anything show on my face.

  “But there’s something in the cards that just isn’t making sense,” she said slowly. “Your past is in your present, but in your present, you seem to have lost your past.”

  I shrugged. It made sense to me. I’d shed my past like a snake skin and had left my childhood behind a long time ago. After my mother had died a few years back, I’d refused to return to McKinney, Texas, my hometown. The only person I still really talked to from high school was Lucy. And while I still had a few friends from college, I’d gone to school at UC San Diego, and they were all still on the West Coast.

  The psychic tapped an elegantly manicured nail on one of the middle cards. “You work in communication,” she murmured to herself. “You’re good at your job and your colleagues like you, but you are unsatisfied in life. What is it you’re looking for?” She sat up and closed her eyes. When she cocked her head to the side, she said, “Love?”

  Who didn’t want love? Love was why I was here. I wanted to be in love again.

  “Yes,” said the psychic, answering her own question and staring at the cards. “You’ve loved two men.”

  “But they didn’t love me back.” I couldn’t keep from speaking, and the psychic frowned at me and shook her head slightly. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Do you know about the love languages?”

  Love languages?

  “We all have different ways in which we love. For some people, they show love in the way that they give you their time and attention. Some people show love in small acts of services. Some show love as gift-giving. I think these men loved you, but most likely you could not read their language.”

  Well, wasn’t that something to think about. I shook my head, unwilling to think about it more. It was too late now, wasn’t it? Or was it? My high school boyfriend was long gone from my life, but Damon had just walked back in. Hadn’t he?

  “Love is in your cards, but it’s hidden. See here,” she pointed to the Lovers card that was, indeed, sitting in my past pile.

  “And here,” she pointed to the future where a man juggled a few cups of water. “But it’s cloudy. Unclear. Let me see if I can see more.” She sat back and closed her eyes.

  Then she opened them abruptly, looking slightly alarmed. “Do you own a blue car?”

  Where the heck had that come from? “No,” I said.

  “Are you trying to buy a car?”

  “No.”r />
  “Have you been in an accident recently?”

  I shook my head. She pressed her lips together. “It’s all very confusing. The cards say one thing, but I see another… I see a blue car, an accident… an uncertain future… and this murky, gray love. I’m sorry,” she shrugged. “I’m not usually so vague. I can usually make sense of what I’m seeing.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. She was clearly flustered by our meeting. “It’s closing time, anyway. I should let you go.” I’d gotten what I’d needed. She saw my past in my future. Damon. Damon was about to enter my life again. But in what form? He was married. I’d tell Casey about the whole thing when I got to her house.

  We stood, and the psychic shook her head as I tried to pull my wallet out. “No. Of course you don’t have to pay for that ridiculous reading. But I have to tell you, be careful. Please.”

  “Careful about what?”

  But the psychic shook her head helplessly.

  Checking my watch, I rushed down her steps and hurried back toward the T. I didn’t want to be late for my dinner with Casey and her husband James. While I’d showered and changed at the cycling studio (before my untimely run-in with my ex), my car was parked outside of my central square apartment.

  I hopped back onto the T and traveled two more stops.

  By the time I reached my car, I knew I was going to be late.

  I opened my phone to call James and Casey and reached out to turn on the radio.

  Welcome to Only a Game! I’m your host, Bill Littlefield, and tonight it’s all about the New England Patriots.

  “Siri, call Casey Gordon.”

  Calling Casey Go…

  I saw only a flash of blue. Then the world exploded.

  2

  Ted

  “You’re gonna crush ‘em this season,” said the old man, reaching out and taking my hand in his. “You’re a great pickup, kid. You’re going to do great things.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to keep my grip light. The old man’s skin was almost translucent, and it was bruised around the point where the IV attached. Poor guy. No way was I going to look down on his chart and ask him why he was here. I couldn’t stand knowing. His voice was so faint and his grip so frail, I had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to make it home.

  Goddamn. I hate hospital visits.

  I can’t stand the smell in the pregnancy wing, can’t take the brave smiles in the cancer units, and I definitely can’t take the kids or the old folks. Those get me every time.

  “You hang in there,” I told the old guy. “And you better watch the game this Sunday,” I said for lack of anything else to say.

  “Good clip,” I heard the reporter behind me murmur as I stood to leave. I rolled my eyes, glad my back was to the film crew. Yes. Of course I’d brought a film crew. If a football player goes to visit the hospital and there are no press around to witness it, did it really happen?

  This whole visit was my agent’s idea. I’d signed onto the Patriots last spring, during the off season, and had taken a huge pay cut. While I didn’t give two shits about the money – everybody in the NFL knows that you don’t join the Patriots for the money – less salary for me meant less salary for my agent. So Barry was working his ass off to try to get me local exposure, which would – in his mind – translate to lucrative New England advertising contracts. “You’re going to have a hard time standing out on the field that contains Dash Barnes, Caz Woods, and Burke Tyler,” he’d warned. “So make yourself matter. I’m setting you up in the community, and I’m sending the press with you.”

  Which is how I’d ended up wandering from floor to floor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, shaking hands with the dead and dying.

  “Okay,” I said to the nurse, Chelsea, as she led me out of the room and into the hall. “Where to next?”

  “This is a bit unorthodox,” said the woman. “But since we’re on this floor, I thought it might be a good idea if you visited some of our coma patients. We have one who’s from Cleveland. He’s a big Browns fan,” the nurse made a face, “but his wife said it might help if he heard your voice.”

  “Sure,” I said, feigning chipperness. A hospital wasn’t the place for my legendary snark. “Lead on.”

  * * *

  I spent a few minutes with their coma-patient, looking forward to getting my ass out of there. But when we entered the hall to leave, the CBS reporter who’d been following me on my hospital visit stopped the nurse to get a few sound bites from her.

  “Excuse me, Nurse Hawley. Can I ask a question?” he said into his microphone. As the cameraman and sound recorder turned their attention to the reporter and the nurse, I felt my shoulders relax. For the first time all day, I could stop posing and look around. Do you know how hard it is not to stare at hot nurses?

  Speaking of hot nurses, there was one down the hall, exiting a patient’s room. She was cute: tall with strawberry blond hair (super bright against those drab blue scrubs) and pale skin. As if she felt me looking at her, she looked up and smiled, recognizing me.

  I never wasted an opportunity to talk to a pretty girl. I’m not an idiot. So I smiled back and walked down the hall to say “Hi.”

  “How’s your patient?” I asked, coming abreast of the open door and gesturing my thumb at whomever was inside.

  “Still out, poor thing,” said the nurse. Dana, her nametag read. Her eyes were dark blue and friendly. I checked her hand. Ah. Engagement ring. Awkward. But I’d committed. No going back now.

  “What happened?” I asked, turning to stare at the door lest I stare too hard at her tits.

  “Car accident five days ago. She didn’t break anything, but the collision caused swelling on her brain. She’s been out since the accident. But I don’t have to explain head trauma to you…”

  “Never had a concussion that put me in a coma,” I said, my eyes scanning the wall and resting on the patient’s name. Erin Duval.

  I blinked, startled.

  “Who is she?” I asked, forcing myself to stop staring at the name and focus on the nurse.

  Dana shook her head. “I don’t know. She didn’t have any emergency contacts listed. We retrieved her phone from the crash and called her last known number. Some friends have been in and out to visit her. The cop who was on scene at the time has been by once. But no family.”

  “May I?” I asked, resting my hand on the open door. I felt physically nauseous, but I needed to see.

  Dana glanced down the hall, sighting my party, still caught up in the nurse interview. “Sure,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I slid into the room.

  The room was small, with room for only one bed, tucked up against the window and crowded by several machines. Despite the still warm mid-September weather, the girl in the bed had covers pulled up to her collarbone. Her hair, that same pale brown as the Texas mountain laurel, had been pulled off of her face, revealing the full extent of her bruising. One eye was swollen and purple, the bruise spreading from her temple across her cheek. There were cuts on her cheek, clearly healing, and the bruising was made all the more brutal by the paleness of her skin. She looked young, wounded, and vulnerable. Her bottom lip had been split open and was swollen, but her mouth was open, air whooshing softly between her lips.

  Part of me relaxed. At least she was breathing on her own.

  Erin Duvall: a common enough name. This one looked nothing like the Erin Duval I had known all those years ago in Texas. That Erin had been vivid, burning with some inner fire that lit her up like the sun. The Erin I’d known had been vibrant, stubborn, smart, and intense.

  This wasn’t my Erin, the Erin I’d known back in McKinney, but my heart broke for her all the same. Fuck, who was I kidding? My heart broke for me, for the sixteen-year-old boy I’d used to be. I’d been nicer then, less jaded by the politics and lifestyle of the Game. The boy who’d busted his ass in high school to make the grades, stand out, and get recruited; the boy who’d felt completely unappreciated and entirely misunders
tood – that boy was gone. And truthfully, I didn’t want him back.

  I wasn’t him anymore. And this wasn’t Erin Duvall, who’d seen past the golden-boy to the insecure shit-head beneath – and loved him anyway.

  I slid into the chair beside her bed. Reaching out, I felt for her hand beneath the blanket and it and found it. I wondered if she could hear me. They say coma patients can hear you. That hearing is the last thing to go.

  “How did you end up here?” I asked her softly, squeezing her hand. “How on earth did you end up here?”

  Before I thought better of it, I leaned down, my lips brushing gently over the red and purple bruise on her temple.

  I heard the machines start to beep. Pulling back, startled, I stared down into a pair of wide, bleary, hazel eyes.

  3

  Erin

  The first thing I saw was a figure from a Renaissance portrait: soft brown eyes framed by pale brown lashes, below dark blond brows. Pale blond hair curled softly across a perfect forehead. Lips that any girl would have envied were open in surprise.

  The first thing I heard was the beeping, then a series of exclamations. Someone was shouting.

  I closed my eyes as pain seared through my head and, when I opened them again, the Renaissance Prince was gone.

  * * *

  “Can you tell me your name?” asked the doctor, a homely man in his mid-forties with graying brown hair and a neat brown beard.

  “Where am I?” I asked instead. I was testy and, to be honest, in a shit-ton of pain and pretty damn frightened. The past half hour had seen me poked and prodded by a team of nurses. One of them had squeezed something into my IV, which had done a lot to dull the pain.