by Shandi Boyes
“Then how can you explain the media having them? No one has been in my room, except you.”
The guilt on his face triples before he stammers out, “And your father.”
I’m so blindsided by his revelation, I swerve into oncoming traffic. Fortunately, the driver in the truck traveling in the opposite direction has enough sense to veer onto the shoulder to avoid us from colliding.
After we whizz past him, rattling his windows, I grind out through clenched teeth. “How the fuck was my father in my room? I haven’t seen him in over a year.”
Jonah silently begs for me to slow down. When his request falls on deaf ears, he pushes out, “He arrived at your suite unannounced the weekend your family were here. He said he wanted to discuss a new contract opportunity for you with me. I explained you handled that side of your business, and I handle the linguistics of your contracts.” He sucks in a breath for the first time during his admission before continuing, “After a bit of to and fro, he said he’d leave, but he needed to use the bathroom first. I swear to God, Lorenzo, if I had any clue he was snooping, I would have never let him in.”
Although everything he is saying makes sense—my father forever meddles in my career—one thing doesn’t. “Why would you let him into my bathroom, Jonah? That doesn’t make any sense.”
His hands splay the dashboard when I dangerously weave around three stationary vehicles waiting for the light to turn green.
Once I clear the T-intersection without incident, he mutters, “Because your sister’s things were in the guest bathroom. I didn’t want him to know she was stateside with Gio and Gia.” He takes his eyes off the road, so I can see the remorse in them. “I swear to God, he wasn’t even in your room for five minutes. I was standing by the door the entire time. He didn’t make a fucking peep.”
I can see the remorse in his eyes, smell it pumping out of him, but it doesn’t lessen my anger in the slightest. “He was here last month. A whole thirty fucking days ago, yet I’m only hearing about it now.”
“I wanted to tell you. I just…”
I wait and wait and wait for him to answer me. It’s a long-ass twenty seconds.
When I slam on my brakes, my anger beyond salvaging, burning rubber lingers in the air. “Get out.”
Jonah turns his eyes to me, confident I’m joking. “Enzo—”
“Get out!”
With one of his hands held out in front of himself, he uses the other to throw open my car door before peeling out of my passenger seat. Several motorists honk, frustrated and shocked I’m letting my passenger out in the middle of a busy freeway. I’m frustrated too, but I’m too blinded by anger to stop and evaluate Jonah’s confession with more diligence. He’s been my agent for years. He knows how much my father’s mind games fuck with my head, yet he did nothing to stop that torment being shunted to Skylar.
I can’t forgive him for that right now.
I don’t even know if I will months from now.
After leaning over to close Jonah’s door, I lock my furious eyes with his remorseful ones. “If I lose her over this, you’ll lose more than ten percent of my earnings.”
I steal his chance to reply by planting the gas pedal to the floor.
Five hair-raising minutes later, I’m hot-footing down the hallway of Skylar’s dormitory.
“Amore mio?” Ignoring the shake hampering every inch of me, I bang on her door. “Are you there?” I press my ear against the warped wood. When I hear a commotion, I knock again. “Things aren’t as they seem. I’m as shocked by their reports as you are. If you open the door, I’ll explain why this happened and how I plan to fix it.”
I trip over my feet when the door unexpectedly swings open. It isn’t Skylar as I’m hoping. It’s Willow, and she looks torn between wanting to kill me and hug me to death. Both responses would result in my death. “Skylar isn’t here.”
“Then where is she?”
Too worked up to wait for her answer, I enter her domain without permission. It’s rude of me to do, and Elvis is more than happy to tell me so. “We don’t want to be in the middle of this, Lorenzo, but a word of warning, if you mistreat my girl, we’ll have more than words.”
I barely register his threat. For one, I’m not scared—I was raised by a bully, so I’m more than capable of taking care of myself—and two, Skylar’s half of her dormitory is empty. Not a little. A lot.
“Where is she? Where did she go?” The panic in my tone is so high, my voice is unrecognizable.
“I don’t know.” Willow sounds as if the fear clutching my throat is clutching hers as well. “She wouldn’t tell me where she was going because she didn’t trust me not to tell you.”
My heart thuds in my throat as I shout, “So you just let her leave! You let her go.”
“Hey!” Elvis growls in warning at the same time Willow replies, “I didn’t let her do anything. She chose to leave. She chose to go.” She angrily swipes at a tear careening down her pale cheek before banging her wet fist on my chest. “I’m just as angry as you, you wanker! We had plans before you went and ruined everything.”
I’m lost to what plans she means until I take in the packed boxes on Willow’s half of the room. There are only half a dozen, but they’re all marked with the same thing. Skylar and Willow’s crash pad. With college close to ending, Skylar and Willow were toying with the idea of bunking together off-campus until they decided on their next move. I didn’t pay much attention to the details of their arrangement as I intended to offer my own solution to Skylar’s predicament.
I wanted her to come to Milan with me.
Now it might be too late to ask her.
When Willow spots the horrified expression fettering my face, she runs her hand down my arm. “She’ll come back, Lorenzo. Just not until she’s ready.”
Chapter Forty
Lorenzo
As I curl out of my car, I silence Jonah’s seventeenth call for the past hour. I’m too tired to deal with his groveling right now. I’ve spent hours looking for Skylar at her favorite haunts. She’s nowhere to be found. Not even her parents have heard from her.
Although I have no intention of sleeping, a change of clothes may aide in my search. The less recognizable I am, the fewer declines I’ll have to issue for autographs. Wandering around town in my team uniform and boots isn’t helping the situation.
My lengthy strides to the elevator bank of my hotel halves when a familiar face reveals itself from the shadows. Regrettably, it isn’t the bello one I’ve been relentlessly searching for the past six hours. It belongs to the person responsible for Skylar’s disappearance. A man I hate more than I will ever love.
“Leave before I have you removed.”
My father looks smug while acting as if he has my best interests at heart. “I did what needed to be done. You were spending way too much time with that girl…” my popping knuckles echo around the garage from the way he spat out ‘that girl,’ “… and nowhere near enough time focusing on the game.”
“How is my head not in the game? My stats are the highest they’ve ever been.”
He steps closer to me, his stance as intimidating as ever. If he thinks his title of ‘father’ will stop me from retaliating to the violence he brought into my life from the tender age of four, he’s mistaken.
“You can’t brag success when you’re competing against teams below your caliber. This isn’t how I raised you, Lorenzo. Before you came here, you were tough and headstrong.”
“And hated by my teammates because I thought your way was the right way. I was the most talented player our country had ever seen, yet no one would touch me because I was also the most loathed. Skylar brought joy back into my life—both on and off the field—”
My head snaps to the side when the back of my father’s hand connects with my left cheek. “That’s the loser inside of your talking. Winners do not talk that way.”
While dragging my head back to its rightful spot, pretending I can’t feel blood pooling on my
top lip, I remind myself time and time again that I’m bigger than him, that I don’t need to intimidate and bully people to express myself, that I will never scoop to his level, but the instant our eyes collide, it’s all forgotten.
“You push and push and push me because no matter how much you wish you could have been as good as me, you weren’t. You never lived up to your father’s expectations, but instead of evaluating why, you took your failures out on me.”
This time, when he attempts to strike me, I seize his wrist before his hand gets within an inch of my face. I use my unforgiving hold on his arm to push him away from me before I end up in jail. Only six months ago, I would have responded to his violence with just as much violence, but right here, right now, finding Skylar is more important than anything.
“You’ve fed off me for long enough. Your supply is now dry. You’re cut off for good.”
After a final stare down that warns him I will ruin him if he doesn’t take my pledge seriously, I make my way to the elevator.
Halfway there, my father’s pleas grow as desperate as the man I see in his eyes every time I look at him. “Everything I ever did was because I had your best interests at heart. I wanted you to succeed, to see the greatness you were capable of.” When English doesn’t work, he resorts to Italian. “Sono tuo padre, il tuo sangue, non puoi rinnegarmi! Tua madre non lo permetterà.”
I’m not surprised he brings my mother into this. A coward can’t fight his own battles.
Once I’m in the idling elevator, I spin around to face my father for the final time. “My mother was done with you years ago. Why do you think she visited me last month?” My smirk triples as arrogance sluices my veins. “It wasn’t just to meet Skylar. It was to introduce me to her new innamorato.”
The elevator doors close quickly, but they’re not fast enough to drown out my father’s belligerent rant on how things will never be over between my mother and him, and how I owe him for the years of service he put into making me who I am. His words sting, but for the first time ever, I don’t believe them. Yes, I wouldn’t be here without him, but without me, my mother would have never seen him for who he truly is. That, in itself, is worth the millions of dollars he’s drained from me the past decade.
It’s over now, though. My threat wasn’t idle. He is gone from my life, and if I have it my way, from Mamma, Alessia, Gio, and Gia’s as well.
While moving to the back of the elevator car, I yank my cell phone out of my pocket so I can warn Alessia about the possible bomb I just detonated. Piero, the Italian-speaking elevator assistant who’s been a fan of mine my entire career, watches me through thick lashes but remains quiet. I can understand his objective. I can’t see my face, but I’m confident it’s giving off the leave-me-the-fuck-alone vibes Skylar swears I don at the start of every press conference. She calls it my resting bitch face. Whatever that means.
Just as I enter my suite, Alessia finally answers her ringing cell. Her delay is understandable. It’s early in Milan. “Enzo, why the fuck aren’t you taking my calls?”
I step back, shocked my sister sounds like a trucker who chuffs down a hundred smokes a day. She asked Skylar for her surgeon’s details, but I thought it was for breast augmentation, not gender reassignment.
Even with confusion the highest of my emotions, suspicion is also noted.
I’ve heard that voice before. I’d swear my life on it.
“Jonah?” When he makes a duh noise, my anger reforms like a tsunami. “I’m not answering your calls because you fucked up.”
I scarcely register him calling me an asshole when he informs me he found Skylar.
“Where?”
Through the raging thump in my ears, I hear him say, “I traced her cell to Danny’s apartment…”
I don’t hear a word he says next. My brutal sprint to the door drowns out his reply, much less the quickest glimpse of a face I’ll never forget during my charge.
“Amore mio.”
My phone slips from my grasp when Skylar replies, “Hey, Shortie J,” proving the image of her leaning against the doorjamb of my room in nothing but my jersey isn’t a mirage in my weary head.
When my eyes scan every inch of her, making sure her run-in with the press didn’t injure her in any way, I notice she’s clutching the contract I had Jonah draft all those months ago between our drive from 69ers’ home stadium to the nightclub they celebrated their championship victory at. It isn’t the one we signed, but a prerequisite of what I was hoping our relationship would become.
Once I’m satisfied she isn’t physically injured, I return my eyes to her face. “Are you hurt, amore mio? Did they hurt you?”
My pulse thuds in my throat when she answers, “No.” She tries to hide the sheen glossing in her eyes with a smile before muttering, “Not physically, anyway. My ego took a bit of a hit, but you know how good Danny is for fixing wounded egos.”
While jerking up my chin, I take a mental note to buy all the Men of Sports Calendars Danny produced. I have no use for them, but supporting his business endeavor is the least I can do for helping Skylar.
Skylar’s chest rises and falls when I take a step closer to her. “I didn’t tell them—”
“I know, Lorenzo. Jonah explained everything.” She matches my step with one of her own, her stride remarkably stable for how fast the little vein in her neck is pulsating. “I’m more interested in this.” She holds out the documents she is clutching to death. “Is it true? Did you really know from then?”
When I shake my head, panic scours her features, anxious she read my offer wrong.
She has no reason to fret.
“I knew from the second I saw you, my love,” I say, quoting her nickname in English for the very first time. “Why do you think I was so desperate to make you mine?” Although I’m asking a question, I don’t wait for her to answer me. Instead, I confess something I should have told her months ago. “I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you.”
Her lifetime ticket to 69ers’ stadium and the promise I’d pay for her to fly home from every single game falls to the floor with a soundless whoosh when she pushes off her feet to race my way. She breathes in my relieved sigh when our mouths collide in an almost violent way.
We kiss, lick, nip, and breathe as one for the next several minutes, like the ten hours we just spent apart will be the longest period we’ll ever be away from one another. It’s a beautiful moment, but nowhere near as beautiful as the words Skylar speaks next. “I love you too.”
Epilogue
Lorenzo
Three years later…
“Is it true you’re looking at switching codes?”
Laughing, I lean into the microphone to answer Jeffery’s question. Elvis warned me he’s the goofball at every press conference. I wouldn’t have believed him unless I had witnessed it for myself.
“Despite my father-in-law’s best efforts, I have no interest in switching codes.” I lick my lips, my mood playful since the last three years have been the best years of my life. “Although, for the right amount of money, I could give the idea some more consideration.” The press interviewing me about the upcoming intercontinental multi-country competition breaks into rapacious laughter when I add, “I could sure use some brownie points with my wife.”
Skylar pokes her tongue out at me before jotting down what I said, so she can use it in an article she’ll type up later. I can picture it now—her shoes kicked off, her hair pulled off her bello face with the same messy bun she had while showing me there’s more to a rodeo than men riding dung-stained bulls, and her laptop balancing on her six-month pregnant stomach.
She’ll chew on the end of her pen like she always does when busily typing an article that will be seen by millions of sports fanatics around the world. She has a knack for writing in-depth reports that capture the admiration a fan has for their idol because she understands how manic the obsession can be. She analyses games through the eyes of a spectator, which means she expresses the game in a w
ay even a non-fan can understand.
Players and coaches see statistics, revenue, and competition points. Fans see determination, grit, and idolization. Since Skylar came into my life, I see all sides of the coin. It’s made me a better player and an even better man.
I thought it would take years to undo the damage my father had done to me. I was wrong. I’m still arrogant, somewhat cocky, and very much Italian, but by surrounding myself with people who’d rather me be of sound mind than wealthy, I am happy.
My focus switches back to the thirty sets of eyes staring at me when a reporter at the back asks, “Was your decision to play in the intercontinental league on the hope your son will have dual citizenship?”
I shake my head, stunned by the range of questions I face at each press conference. Only three short years ago, it was always about the game, but since the media has fallen head over heels in love with Skylar as I did the day my eyes landed on her, their questions have grown more personal with each one they ask.
Cockiness is rife in my tone when I ask, “For one, who said our unborn child is a boy?”
Someone in the back shouts, “He’s just hopeful.”
I’m reasonably sure it was Jonah. He kept his position as my agent since Skylar’s unexpected arrival at my suite was compliments to him ensuring she understood the conditions I included in my offer for her to be my tour guide. Although he skated on thin ice when I discovered he’d been secretly dating my sister months before I busted them butt-naked in my kitchen, hence the reason he answered her cell phone.
I wasn’t lying when I said I’d leave no whim unanswered while searching for requited love full of passionate and satisfying exchanges. Skylar was the love I was desperately seeking, so I did everything in my power to secure it. Even with us only meeting in passing, I knew she’d never upend her life to create one with me in Milan. And in all honesty, I didn’t want her to.