I pressed my palm against the glass. “Enjoy the shower. Dinner will be ready in a few.”
I walked out of the bathroom, fighting every instinct I had. The one to take her the way I wanted. The one to break down and tell her the truth. The one that was in the back of my throat: telling her I didn’t want to disappoint her.
16
Lennon
I’d never scrubbed my skin so hard. What in the hell was he thinking? And why hadn’t I noticed the past week or longer that his hand was healing faster than any natural process? He wore his sling and acted like it bothered him. He tried to throw me off. That might have pissed me off the most.
I cut the hot water and reached for a towel. In a short amount of time, I had basically moved into Wes’s apartment. He had taken one look at my rented extended stay and decided I needed a place with a view, and preferably one with a view of him.
I arrived with an entirely new wardrobe and my own closet. Dating a highly paid quarterback had its advantages. He was a millionaire on top of having a rock hard body and eyes that stirred every impulse under my skin.
And the sex. God, the sex. There was nothing like it. There never had been, and I knew that the day Wes walked out of my life, I’d never have anything like it again. That was the problem. I knew this was temporary. There would be a day when we’d both wake up and realize there was no way we were compatible.
He’d never had a girlfriend before. Why did I think he’d suddenly change now? It was insane to think he wanted commitment and all the things that came with it. I laughed. This was probably the first time he’d had an actual argument with a woman and didn’t kick her out. Ben and I fought. That’s what regular couples did.
We fought about what movie to watch or whose parents were more annoying. We fought about what shifts we should work, and who should buy groceries. But had we ever fought about an ethical and moral issue? Had Ben and I ever fought about something that mattered like this?
I toweled off my hair, slipped on Wes’s jersey and a pair of yoga pants, and trotted off to face him.
I sat on the barstool. He plated a pasta dish and placed it in front of me. “Dinner.”
“Smells good.” I picked up my wine glass. “We have to finish this discussion. You know that, right?”
“I know that I’ve said everything I want to say. And I don’t expect you to keep questioning me.”
I fought back the anger and tried to remind myself he was new at this. “Whatever it is we’re doing here, Wes. This thing between us… it’s not going to include lies. I’m not compromising on that.”
He gripped his fork. “You knew what you were getting into with me. I drink. I gamble. I sleep around. Uh, used to sleep around. I cross lines that have to be crossed so we can win. I do the things that other people don’t want to do.”
“What is it with you and winning? Damn it, Wes. Winning isn’t everything.”
He slammed the fork on the counter. “Yes it is. You don’t get it. You don’t understand my life, or what it’s taken for me to get here. You live in a happy black and white land where you get to save people and put them back together. It’s my job to tear them down. To trample and stomp. To tackle and defeat. That’s my life. I’ve fought for everything I have. Every victory. Every dollar. Every single damn thing. Everything.”
“Hey, hey. I’m not judging you.” I saw the flames in his eyes. The vein on the side of his neck was throbbing. “Tell me. Just tell me. Explain it. All of it.”
He hunched back in his seat, letting an expansive breath escape his chest. “It’s not a great story. Let’s just let it go. I don’t want to fight with you.”
I pulled his right hand into my lap. Something desperate had made him do what he did. And I knew enough about my connection to him that I wanted to understand it. I wanted to know what would drive a man who had everything to risk it all. Put his health at stake. I still had no idea what he had taken, and that scared me.
I traced the side of his jaw. “No. I’m not letting it go. I care about you. And if we’re doing this, then I’m here for all of it. Not just the sex and the beautiful clothes.” I smiled. “Although, those are nice perks.”
“The truth comes out.”
“It always does.” My thumb rubbed his bottom lip. “You can trust me. Talk to me. I want to know why you have to win.”
“Huh. I think that’s the first time someone has asked me that. Doesn’t everyone want to win? Isn’t an instinct?”
I shook my head. “Not at the risk of everything. There’s something driving you. I see it. I feel it. It’s even with me. You wanted to win me over.”
“And I did.” He winked.
“Yeah, you did. And here we are. So, I’m asking you, where does it come from?”
He closed his eyes. “This is fucking hard.”
My heart pounded. I wanted to pull him to my chest and cradle him and tell him he could trust me with everything. Even if he had done something I thought was completely unethical. But that wasn’t really the problem. Whatever he had done to regenerate his hand wasn’t the core issue. It came from something far deeper. There was something Wes wasn’t telling me.
“Where does all this come from?” I pressed him for an answer. Some kind of explanation.
I had seen two sides of him. There was the competitor. The cocky bastard who wanted people to fall at his feet. The man who dominated me in the bedroom. The womanizer. The reckless millionaire who threw money around.
And then there was this man in front of me. The one who had cooked dinner for me after I had a hard day at the hospital. The one who made sure I had everything I needed. The one who sent flowers and kissed me like every kiss was making him whole again. That man was the reason I was here. That man was the reason I slept under his sheets and wore his jersey.
I waited, trying to be patient. Trying to understand why it was so hard for him to open up. He wasn’t used to this.
“You’re not from Texas, Doc.”
I shook my head. “No, this has all been a culture shock.”
“What you have to understand is that football is life here. My dad shoved a helmet on my head and a set of pads on me when the ball was still bigger than my head. He had me run drills on Saturday mornings at 6am when most kids were still sleeping. I threw the ball until it was time for dinner. He hired a private coach when I was eight. I was scouted by the time I was twelve.” Wes’s eyes hardened. “It didn’t matter to him if I liked football or not, I was going to be a champion.”
“But did you like it? Did you want to play?” I tried to imagine a younger version of the strong man sitting in front of me, spending his every waking minute on a football field instead of playing Chutes and Ladders or watching cartoons.
“I didn’t know what I wanted. He didn’t ask. I never had a choice. By the time I was in high school, I was already getting scholarship offers for top schools. It was a no brainer. Football was in my blood by then. It was my life and I kept riding the train.”
“But you love it now?” I questioned.
“It’s who I am. I can’t separate it. I don’t even think about it. I live and breathe football. I always have.”
I touched his hand, the one I had so carefully put back together. I didn’t know what lengths he had gone through to heal it in record time, but I was starting to understand pieces of his story.
“But your dad isn’t making you do those things now, is he? You’re your own person, Wes.”
His eyes hardened. “He made me into a winner. A champion. And that’s who I am. I’m who I am because he pushed me. He made me.”
I swallowed. It sounded like brainwashing. It sounded like a child being robbed of precious years of imagination and happiness. It sounded like a tyrant parent living out his own dream vicariously through his talented son. The entire story pissed me off.
“I know it’s not the same as playing for a national team or having the world watch my every move.” Although lately, it seemed like the press wa
s following me around. “But when I’m in surgery, I know that feeling. I want to win. I want to succeed.”
“No, that’s not the same.”
“Just hear me out.” I ran my fingers along his arm, swirling over the ink that ran the length of his bicep. “When I’m in there, I know I can’t win every time. People count on me. The patient. Their family. The surgical team under my direction. But we can’t win every time. And I have to live with that. That has to be okay. Because if it’s not, I can’t be a good surgeon. If every time something went wrong and I believed we were failures, how would I ever walk back into the next OR? How could I ever give someone else hope?” His eyes were on me, and I prayed he understood what I was saying. “Being a good surgeon means accepting loss. And I think it’s the same thing for you, too. Everything can’t be a win. There is a line drawn that isn’t worth crossing. Not for winning. Not if it means being unethical. Not if it means it will let more people down. Not if it costs you your health, or possibly your life.”
He gently brushed the hair off my shoulder. I sighed, believing I had struck a nerve with him.
“I don’t think we’re wired the same way.” His words smacked me in the face.
“You didn’t agree with any of that?”
“You were right about one thing. Being a surgeon isn’t the same as being a quarterback. You don’t know the weight on my shoulders.” He stood and took our plates to the sink. “You don’t know what I’ll do to win.”
I looked at the empty counter, feeling the disappointment sink in. Our first fight had transformed into an emotional story, and now I couldn’t believe I’d never felt more disconnected from him than I did at this minute.
Maybe I didn’t have the warrior’s spirit to win like he did, but I wasn’t going to give up. Not yet.
17
Wes
I washed the dishes and tried to ignore Lennon’s eyes needling my neck. She didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. We were from different worlds. Surgery and football had nothing in common.
“I’ve got to go over some plays.” I turned off the kitchen light and sank into my recliner. “Coach has changed up some things.” I started flipping through the binder the messenger had sent over.
She sat on the couch, holding her wine glass, and started switching through the channels. She landed on a show about a president and his mistress.
“Could you turn that down, please? I’m studying.”
“Sorry.” She practically muted the TV.
I didn’t like this. The fight. The tension. The fact that I had done something to piss her off, when it was none of her business. I did what was necessary to win. And the Wranglers weren’t going to win with Cosech on the field. He’d made that clear last game. We had run the ball almost every play and barely won by a field goal. My return was the only way to punch our ticket to the Super Bowl.
“I think I’ll study in the bedroom.” I kicked the recliner in place and headed to my suite. This was awkward as fuck.
“Why don’t I just leave for tonight? You can study. I’ll give you some space.”
I turned in front of the double doors leading to my room. “Hell no.”
“I don’t want to pressure you, Wes. Me sitting here while you’re pissed feels like pressure. I don’t want to make this worse. We can talk tomorrow.”
I dropped the binder on the table. “That doesn’t work for me.”
“Why not?” she questioned. “We have to agree to disagree on this, and maybe we both need our space right now.”
“Because I want you in my bed tonight.”
“Sex isn’t the answer.” She rolled her eyes. But I saw the spark. I saw the lust. I saw my opportunity to finally show her what Wes Blakefield could do with two fully operational hands.
“For us, I think it is.”
I scooped her in my arms, her legs dangling in the air, and carried her to my bed.
I couldn’t help the kiss that devoured her lips. I didn’t know if I was punishing her for arguing with me or trying to taste every last drop of wine off her mouth. I pushed my tongue inside, sucking hard while she wiggled in my arms.
I dropped her on the bed and gazed down at her. “My bed. My rules.”
She nodded.
I crawled toward her, sweeping the hair off her neck to kiss the line of skin that ran to her shoulder.
“Who do you belong to, Doc?”
“You,” she moaned, her head rocking back in ecstasy. That was all I needed to hear. I could make up for everything else as long as she was still mine.
Game day was my favorite day of the week. I left the apartment extra early to get to the stadium before the first rush of fans walked through the turnstiles. I left Lennon sleeping naked, with the sheets threaded around her body.
On the counter was her pass and ticket for the game. The driver was going to pick her up an hour ahead of time and deposit her at the private stadium entrance.
It had been three days since we had the discussion about my hand in the kitchen and neither one of us had brought it up again. At some point, she was going to lay into me about what I had taken. But for now, she seemed to respect that my focus was on defeating the Volts. It was my first game back.
I walked into the locker room, inhaling the stale smell of sweat and deodorant. Damn, I loved this place.
It was quiet. I was the first one in. I hung my bag under my name and looked around the room. The towel attendant wheeled out an empty cart. In an hour, this place would be packed with guys gearing up for warm-ups. Right now, it was all mine.
I sat on the bench.
Stubbs was the first to walk in. “Hey, good to see you in here.” He smiled. He liked being early too.
“Good to be here.”
“It’s lucky we had that bye week.” He motioned toward my right hand.
“Oh yeah. Made all the difference.”
“And I heard you’re fucking the doctor.”
I laughed. “Yeah, and that.”
Stubbs pulled on his socks. We all had a pre-game ritual we followed. His started with the feet.
“Is she going to be here today?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. She’s in my box.”
“With your parents?” He scrunched up his face. “Your dad?”
“Fuck.”
Stubbs stopped what he was doing. “What?”
“I forgot to tell her about my fucking parents.”
He started laughing so hard he snorted. “That’s messed up. She’s going to kill you.”
I shook my head. “Lennon’s not like that.”
Or was she? Holy fuck. I’d told her that story about my dad and then stuck her in a box with him with no warning. I searched for my phone. I still had a chance to call her and give her a heads up. She could back out at the last minute and I’d get it. I wouldn’t want to be up there with him either.
Shit. My phone wasn’t in my bag. I pictured it in the bathroom, plugged into the charger. Double shit.
“Man, if you could see your fucking face right now.” Stubbs pointed at me. “This is why I never have one woman. I don’t want to deal with this shit.”
“You have two girlfriends. How is that any better?”
“Well, if one gives me hell, I just go see the other one.” He grinned.
The guys started to trickle in. Everyone patted me on the back and gave me grief about my hand. There were a few comments about Lennon too, but I bit my tongue. I didn’t need to start punching out my own team before the game.
I’d never felt the need to protect someone before. But I didn’t like the way they talked about her. How hot she was. How fucking awesome she probably was in bed. I focused on lacing up my ties and tried to ignore them.
“Blakefield, you ready for this?” Bruno stuck his chest out and walked through the crowd of linemen.
“Hell, yeah.” I gave him a high five.
“Then let’s huddle and get out there.”
18
Lennon
I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look like a surgeon. I didn’t look like the girl who had graduated at the top of her med school class. I looked like some girl so in love, she’d do anything to see her boyfriend play football.
I heard the knock on the door. Too late to undo this now, I reminded myself. I was in it. Totally in it.
The driver dropped me off under the stadium and showed me where the elevator was that I was supposed to use for Wes’s private box. I wore the credentials tag he gave me around my neck and showed my ticket to the security guard at the elevator.
“Go Wranglers,” he grunted as the elevator doors closed.
My first AFA game, and I was going to sit in the most elite player’s box in the stadium. I’d seen the boxes on TV. But up close, I knew this would be a completely different experience.
Two weeks ago, I was on my couch, watching Wes walk the sidelines, and now I was here as his girlfriend. His number one fan.
I pushed open the door to the suite, and came face to face with a man with broad shoulders and an eerie resemblance to Wes.
“This is a private suite, ma’am. There’s an usher in the hall that can help you find where you’re supposed to be.”
“Oh no, this is where I’m supposed to be. Wes Blakefield’s box?”
The man looked at a woman, who was picking through a tray of fruit. “Gloria, did Wes mention this to you?”
She looked me over. “No. Honey, who are you?”
Oh God. This was embarrassing. Horrifying. I knew it even without them having to make the proper introductions. These were Wes’s parents. How could he not tell me his parents were going to be in the box?
Beauty and the Billionaire Bad*ss Page 23