Hard to Score

by K. Bromberg

  He treated me like a daughter in love, not like a best friend who had been scorned.

  And now, finally, all that guilt for keeping this from my family has eased. It’s like a weight has lifted off my shoulders.

  You and Drew have had a connection since you were kids.

  He’s right. We did. I see it and realize it now. With that being said, will we get past this challenge?

  DREW

  FILM REVIEW HAS BEEN POSTPONED for some reason and thank fuck for that, because I was going to be late anyway.

  There’s no way I could sit there and concentrate after what just happened.

  Instead, I’m sitting in my truck across the street from my parents’ house trying to figure out what in the hell I’m doing here.

  I just came face to face with a man I’ve believed to be the monster who undid the Bowman family. The villain in our story. Kenyon Kincade.

  And yet, he was nothing like the man I’d led myself to believe and like everything I’d seemed to have forgotten. The kind man who loved his girls more than his next breath, and with a laugh that you couldn’t help but join in with.

  Seeing him . . . Christ, seeing him has brought about a tidal wave of memories and the emotions that came with them. More so than when I saw Brexton for the first time, because Kenyon was . . . Kenyon was the stable one. The adult of the four parents who everyone listened to and went to for advice.

  Is that why it was so easy to believe he could be the monster? The one at fault?

  My hands grip the steering wheel as I stare at the house.

  Details.

  I squeeze my eyes and try to recall what it was my dad had said that Kenyon did. The intricate details of it all. My mind draws a blank. Because isn’t that like everything about this whole situation? Fuzzy. Unexplained. A goddamn fucking mess.

  Is Kenyon innocent? Is the man with the kind eyes and the warm smile I just met in my girlfriend’s house blameless?

  “You did it didn’t you?” Fury and disbelief twist and turn and claw at me as I stare at my dad’s oldest friend. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open.

  He’s shocked.

  Fucking shocked that I’m here calling him on his bullshit.

  “Drew?” My dad’s oldest friend moves through the lobby of Kincade Sports Management. “Son? Can I help you? What are you talking—”

  “Don’t you dare call me son,” I shout, hands fisted and teeth clenched.

  “Let’s go to the conference room so we can talk in private.”

  “Why? So all of these people don’t hear how you ruined my family? How you did it and pretended to be my—”

  “Goddamn it, Drew,” he shouts and pushes me through the open conference room door before slamming it behind me. I jerk my arm from his grasp, and it takes everything I have not to let my fist fly. Not to do something—anything—to abate all of this fucking rage.

  “Why don’t you want me to talk out there, huh, Kincade? Why don’t you—”

  “So you don’t make an ass out of yourself, that’s why.”

  “Me?” I laugh the word out and glare at the man I’m supposed to be able to trust. For the life of me, I’m finding it fucking difficult to meet his eyes. “Me? You’re the one who did this to us. You’re the one—”

  “Drew, I understand you’re upset. I know your world just turned upside down, but I’m not going to stand here and take your abuse.”

  “But it was you. You’re the one who should be ashamed. You’re the one who ruined my dad. You ruined us all.”

  I shake the thought off because if he’s not at fault, that only leaves one explanation.

  That means my father is.

  The man who stood before us time and time again and told us it wasn’t true.

  There’s no way.

  He couldn’t have.

  He wouldn’t have done this to our family. To Maggs. To my mom. To me.

  I reject the idea. Not because I believe it, but solely because it’s the only explanation that I can handle right now.

  Talk about the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. From last night to today.

  Pick.

  Choose.

  Decide.

  C’mon, Drew.

  But I don’t want to do any of them.

  I can’t.

  Instead, I grab my cell, scroll through my contacts, and hit send.

  “What’s up, man?”

  “Can you rack the tees up, Steve? I need to get some work in.”

  “Today’s not a practice day. It’s a rest day. Film review later. Didn’t you get the email?”

  “I know. I did. I just need to . . .” I just need it.

  The one solace I’ve had my whole life. The sound of my feet on the turf. The whistle of my hand and ball as it whips past my ear. The feeling of being in control of something in my life.

  Football.

  While I’m suddenly afraid the game was the sin of my father.

  It’s been my savior.

  BREXTON

  THE STADIUM SEEMS SO MASSIVE when it’s empty.

  Empty save for me and the man currently running up and down its steps. The man who owns my heart.

  He climbs one after another from the field level to the lower loge to the top loge. One step after another without slowing, as if he’s hell-bent on solving the world’s problems in this one workout session.

  But I know he won’t be able to solve a thing by doing it. Maybe quiet his head. Abate some anger and confusion. I can only imagine what he’s trying to work through. Seeing my dad again after all this time. Figuring out how we can be together when his family might just disown him for dating a Kincade. Worrying about the Raptors and if he’ll get more playing time. Or perhaps figuring out how we can be together when his family would hate that he’s dating a Kincade?

  I’m not sure how long I watch him but in the time I do, I can tell the weight of the world is on his shoulders. I only wish I could help alleviate it somehow.

  But my dad was right—this is something Drew needs to figure out on his own.

  And that scares the hell out of me. I can only hope that when the dust settles from the impending explosion I predict is on the horizon, I’m still standing here.

  I know the minute Drew sees me. He trips over the next step going up but catches himself and keeps going as if he didn’t.

  So I take a seat and wait for him to finish the zig-zag of rows until he can’t avoid me anymore and I’m right in his path.

  “You’re not answering my texts,” I say when he slows to a stop in front of me. I’m standing with my ass against the gate that he needs to get onto the field to go into the tunnel to the locker rooms.

  His eyes meet mine, a torrent of emotion raging through them. “I was busy.”

  “Running till you collapse isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “Like you have a fucking clue what would, huh?” Instead of going through the gate at my back he just hops over the railings at my right and onto the field.

  “Excuse me?” I say scrambling after him, kind of surprised by the comment.

  “You heard me.”

  “Running and hiding isn’t going to fix a thing, Drew.”

  “Why don’t you go back to your fucking family and give me some space.”

  “Seriously?” I yell at his back. “You’re going to turn this on me? Blame me? All because you saw my dad? Did you think we’d just keep on dating and that would never happen?”

  “Will you keep quiet?” he barks and turns around, looking over my shoulders.

  “There’s no one else here. I sweet-talked old Barry,” I say of the groundskeeper, “to let me in before he locked the doors on his way out.”

  “What do you want, Brexton?” he asks in a resigned sigh, shoulders slumping, head rolling back for a second as he takes in a deep breath.

  “You tell me.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he shouts and takes a few steps toward me, shoulders squared, tendo
ns tense in his neck.

  “Pretty self-explanatory considering how things were left between us this morning. Add to the fact that you’re not answering my texts, I’d think there’s lots to say.”

  “I don’t want to do this right now.”

  “Why not, Drew? Let’s get it all out. Scream at me. Yell at me. Tell me what the fuck is on your mind because I’m so goddamn sick of guessing and worrying and wondering. It would be nice to finally hear it from your lips.” I bait him, because I’m primed and ready for a fight. I feel like this has been bottling up for some time. As great as we are, there’s this constant underlying tension between us—the past we can’t control, a third party to all the good between us.

  And if that’s how I feel, I can’t imagine how he feels being the one left to decide what to believe.

  “What’s on my mind? No one gives a fuck what’s on my mind. All they care about is that I believe them when I’m not sure what the fuck to believe anymore.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Don’t!” he shouts like a little boy not wanting to hear something. “Don’t you dare tell me what to believe when you stand there beside your perfect family and pass judgment on me.”

  “That’s what you think? That I’m passing judgment on you?” I brace my hands on top of my head and walk away from him before turning back. He looks at me, lost but determined. “I’m not passing shit on you, Drew, but I’m lost here. All I want is to know what you’re thinking. How you feel. I want to stop feeling like I’m in love with a man, yet waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely it’s going to come down to me or what I feel like are a set of lies and you sure as shit aren’t going to pick me.” My voice breaks and the first tear slides down my cheek when I don’t want it to.

  “Brex.” My name is a resigned syllable with so many emotions woven into the four connected letters. “What do you want to know? That it fucked me up seeing your dad today? I feel stupid because it did. When I left, I was more confused than ever before, because for over ten years it’s been insinuated that he’s to blame. And fucking hell, Brexton, in that moment when he looked me in the eyes, I knew he had nothing to do with it.” He paces from one end of the tunnel and then back, and I swear if he could punch something right now he would. “Do you know what it feels like to realize you’ve been lied to by the person you idolize? It’s not exactly the easiest thing to swallow or even face.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t,” he shouts when I step forward and try to touch his arm. He squeezes his eyes shut as a tear slips out. Its slow descent as he tries to rein in his emotion breaks my heart.

  “Don’t push me away,” I plead. “Don’t—”

  “Just shut up, would you? Just . . .”

  And then he crashes into me with a fervor I feel but don’t understand.

  His hands are on my face and his tongue demands to meet mine. He picks me up so I can wrap my legs around his waist, while he carries me into the trainers’ room. He sets me down—long enough for our hands to shove down our bottoms so we’re bared and ready to connect the minute he lifts me onto the trainers’ table.

  Anger turns to passion. The defensiveness to lust.

  There are no words when he enters me. No soft murmurs. No sweet nothings. There’s just our guttural groans as I give and he takes.

  There is nothing gentle about our joining. It’s aggressive and dominant. It’s completely selfish, and I don’t care. He’s hurting and if this is what he needs right now, then I’m here for it.

  Especially when I didn’t have words to fix it for him.

  So I give him my body to get lost in. I give him my moans to smother with his lips. I give him scratch marks down his back and a nip of teeth on his shoulder so he can feel the sharp contrast against the pleasure and know that this moment is real.

  That I am real.

  And with his head buried into the crook of my neck and his hands holding my ass in place, Drew Bowman comes hard, fast, and without warning.

  His hands tighten, his body tenses, and his strangled cry is muffled where his lips meet my neck. But even when the last ounce of pleasure drains from him and his breath is still ragged, he doesn’t move.

  He needs a moment.

  Hell, we both do.

  So I run my hands up and down the length of his back. I allow him to regain some of his pride I know admitting all of that to me took from him. I urge him with my actions to feel surrounded by my love for him.

  I can’t be angry at him. Sure he said shit that was hurtful, but if I were in his shoes . . . if my father had lied to me for this long over something so life-altering, I would be devastated. I would be hurt. I’d lash out at anyone and everything trying to tell me otherwise. I can’t imagine how hard this is hitting him.

  I want to be his safe space. The place he can turn to when he needs solace from it all. The arms that will hold him when uncertainty owns him. The heart that will love him above all else.

  “Sometimes, I just want to go back to before,” he murmurs. “To when you were Bratty Brex and I was Dreadful Drew and everything was normal.”

  I press a kiss to the side of his head. “But then it would have been a single kiss from a spin-the-bottle dare instead of what we’ve found between us.”

  He leans back and looks at me with a clarity that makes me feel like we can figure this out. And when he moves forward and kisses me, it’s so haunting and slow that it steals my breath.

  When it ends, I keep my eyes closed as he rests his forehead against mine, his thumbs brushing back and forth over the line of my jaw.

  “I’ll figure this out. I promise.”

  I nod to reinforce his words with a soft smile. “Mildred was right.”

  “What?” His head startles.

  “Hate fucks are the best.”

  He throws his head back and laughs. “I wouldn’t exactly call that a hate fuck. No one said anything about hate.”

  “Well, let’s make sure that’s the closest we get to the hate part, okay?”

  He presses a kiss to the tip of my nose. “It’s a deal.”

  BREXTON

  “DEKKER, I THINK YOU GOT flowers again from that sickeningly sweet man of yours,” Chase calls through the office with a dramatic roll of her eyes, as she carries in a gorgeous arrangement of anemones from the reception desk.

  “Really?” Dekker asks as she jumps up like a giddy teenager and takes them from Chase. But it’s after she sets them down and looks at the envelope buried in the arrangement that she laughs out loud.

  “I don’t want to hear about what Hunter wrote that he wants to do to you. Or”—Chase holds up her finger to stop Dekker—“what it is you did to him to earn those.”

  “If they were mine, I’d make sure to tell you so you could be madly jealous, but they’re not for me.” Chase and I look at each other as Dekker continues. “You’ll have to ask Brex what she did and to whom, because this card is addressed to her.”

  It feels like all eyes in the office of my sisters and our staff shift to look at me. “For me?” I ask.

  “For you.” Dekker dangles the card by her two fingers as I walk over to the bouquet on the table.

  I hold my hand out. “May I have the card, please?”

  “Only if you tell us who they’re from.” She quirks her brow as Chase steps up beside her to form a unified front.

  “I can’t exactly tell you if I don’t get to open the card, now can I?” I snatch it from her fingers and take a few steps away so I can open it without their prying eyes.

  And when I open it, I can’t help the giddy feeling and the grin that forms on my lips.

  You’re the only one I want to spin the bottle with.

  ILYB.

  —DD

  Dreadful Drew knows the perfect way to end an awesome week.

  ILYB. Four letters that say and mean so damn much.

  As if waking up snuggled in bed beside him every morning for all five days wasn’t enough. Now this.
<
br />   “We’re waiting,” Dekker says in a sing-song voice when I walk back, bury my face in the flowers, and draw in a huge breath.

  “Who are they from?” Chase adds, looking over my shoulder at the card. “ILYB?”

  “ILYB?” Dekker says looking at me and then Chase again. “Oh. Oh.” She looks back at me. “I love you, Brexton?”

  “Yep. They’re from my boyfriend,” I say as I pick up the vase and head toward my desk, noting that their mouths have just dropped open. “Drew Bowman.”

  And when I turn on my heel to their shocked gasps, I meet the eyes of my dad across the room and smile when he winks at me.

  I know I have only seconds before the barrage of questions start so I get a good head start into my office before they do.

  But no such luck. They look like Cinderella’s evil stepsisters as they fight each other to get through my door and talk to me first.

  “Drew? Drew? That Drew?” Dekker asks with an incredulous look on her face.

  “It’s the only Dreadful Drew there is,” Chase answers for me.

  “How did this happen? How is it possible? I mean—”

  “What Dekker means is holy shit, you’re dating Drew?” Chase continues.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Dekker says with a nod, “except for my comment would have had a lot more curse words in it.”

  “True. She does cuss a lot more than we do,” Chase says.

  “Are you two done?” I ask. “Because I’m curious why you barged your way in here when it’s clear I don’t even need to be part of this conversation.”

  “Lennox,” Chase says. “We need to tell Lennox. Does she know?” she asks, turning to look at me.

  “Of course she doesn’t know,” Dekker says. “If she knows and we don’t, then we’d have to kick her ass for not telling us.”

  They both laugh and then it slowly fades when they realize they are so caught up in the excitement of finding out who I’m dating that they aren’t letting me talk.

  “This is serious, isn’t it?” Dekker asks me.