Linebacker's Second Chance (Bad Boy Ballers)

by Imani King

  I get out of the car, my mouth falling open in a surprised O shape. I take my breath in sharply and change out my sunglasses for the regular cat-eye glasses I keep in my Kate Spade bag.

  “Well, damn,” I mutter.

  Macklin’s home is a sprawling white farmhouse-style estate, with wraparound porches and lazily spinning fans on each section of the porch. There are screen porches on either side with swings and chairs, and each view looks out to the gardens or the orchards in the distance. The windows in the front must have a good view of the Charlotte skyline, as open as they are, and each of the shutters are painted a deep green. There are three stories to the thing and the siding is painted a brilliant, gleaming white.

  I don’t know what I’d imagined, but it wasn’t this. I guess I must have thought he’d have one of those flashy stucco-looking places like the athletes in Southern California. In fact, I’ve seen so many of those ugly ranches that I’d started to think they might be mandated by the NFL—and the NBA too, come to think of it.

  Instead, this is the house I’d dreamed of—the house we’d dreamed of. The one that I’d talked about in every fantasy Mack and I had shared. We talked about raising our two or three kids in a house like this, chasing them around the porches and setting up ramps for their bikes in the garden outside. Tears come to my eyes when I regard it, and I wipe them away before Wingate can see.

  The house might be far bigger and grander, but it’s exactly the vision we’d shared so long ago. I wonder if he actively remembered it when he was looking for a place to buy, or if our talks about the house had somehow just stuck in his mind and subconsciously dictated what kind of place he would buy.

  Was he thinking about me? The long talks we had sitting on the brick wall outside of my dorm? The place he first kissed me and told me he wanted me to be his girl forever?

  I may never know. I don’t want to know. My goal is not to talk to him the entire time I’m here. I’ll collect the money. I’ll do what I have to do to prevent him from damaging his career. And then I’ll be gone, back to my own tiny house in Sausalito, back to a reality that doesn’t involve a man who ripped my heart to shreds.

  Wingate breaks me out of my reverie. “I’d get our muscle out here to help you with your bags, but I don’t think that’s going to be what you want to do—is it?” Wingate winks at me and hoists one bag over his shoulder while I grab my laptop and purse and the briefcase that holds every one of the files I’ll be reviewing tonight.

  “I guess not,” I breathe, looking up at the coffered windows. It’s a shame I won’t be going inside to see what the view looks like. Instead, I follow my old friend to the guest house, trying to push away the feeling that this is the one place in the world I shouldn’t be.

  No, honey. $600,000 says otherwise. You get your act together and be a grown up. You’re over this man. All the relationships you’ve had since them have said so.

  I don’t go over how many relationships there have been, nor how mindless each one of them had seemed.

  “Guest house has all the amenities. Including a lap pool and hot tub out back. I had everything cleaned and the refrigerator stocked with food. You can also order any catering you want from the book of menus and restaurants I put on the table. We have a guy who delivers any time of day to anyone that calls from this property.”

  I nod and draw Wingate into a hug as he leaves me behind in the two bedroom house that sits at the back of the property. In the expansive kitchen—all granite and hardwood and marble and stainless steel—there’s fresh fruit and baked bread, and several bottles of red wine that are probably more expensive than all the alcohol we drank together in college. I uncork one and pour a glass as I kick off my heels, drinking sips of the rich, dark fluid as I put on my athletic clothes and change my lacy push-up bra for one that doesn’t sit so hard against my skin. The wine feels good as it expands through my body, and soon, I have the strength—and perhaps the mental stability—to open my briefcase and sit down at the round dining room table that faces the back of Macklin’s house. I try not to look too carefully at the white painted porches, try not to glance up and wonder if I’ll see his face in one of the windows. Instead, I start sorting through the paper files I’ve printed on each one of the educated, intelligent, well-dressed women that live in a fifty-mile radius of Charlotte.

  Soon, the glass is empty and another is poured. I tuck into a plate of Manchego cheese and flaky, handmade crackers and sip more of the wine while I check through the list of people, taking out those I rank above a five, and discarding the women who don’t meet the threshold.

  All potentials must get a combined score of at least seven, but we’ll look through those again..

  After drinking my fill of the wine, I have a stack of four women—one of whom could be Mack’s saving grace. The woman who makes it appear that he has it all together. The woman who looks good in photo opportunities, who wears a tasteful ring of my choosing, and hell, she might even take Mack to church if she’s the right type of girl. I’ve got a couple of those in the stack.

  That’s right, Big Mack. Your ex-fiancée is getting you a fiancée. And maybe a wedding to boot. Tom Cruise hires wives all the time, and plenty of people think he’s straight. Why can’t we hire one for you so that people don’t think you’re an asshole?

  When I’m done sorting, I finish off the cheese and watch the sun set over Macklin’s house. Part of my plan for Mack feels like pure genius—and part of it makes me insanely nervous, deep down inside. But that part of me is long dead. Isn’t it?

  The sun hangs low over Macklin Pride’s house, and I examine each of the windows, looking for traces of him. When it nears eight in the evening, I’m about to go do my yoga exercises and get ready for bed when I see a shadowed figure step out onto the porch. Tall, like Wingate, and for a second, I wonder if it’s my old friend. My pulse quickens—because when the shadow steps into the dying sunlight, I see dark hair cropped close, broad, muscular shoulders, and arms and legs so muscular they resemble tree trunks instead of a regular person’s limbs. But somehow, the utter hugeness of the man always looked good, like he was a male model that had to beef up for a photo shoot or an actor who needed to gain sixty pounds to play a soldier in some war movie. He doesn’t move after that. Hands in his pockets, he just looks toward the guest house, eyes focused on the front window where I’m sitting. I’m not sure if he can see me, or if the glare from the sunset is obscuring me from his view. But he stands there just the same, his muscles outlined in the deep blue t-shirt he’s wearing. I can’t see his eyes clearly, but I know they’re that same shade of stormy blue. In the dying light, I can just make out the line of his Roman nose, the bridge broken one too many times. On someone else, the multiple breaks and the extra scar tissue that built up over time would look rough or sloppy, but it only ever made Mack look more distinguished, somehow perfectly matching his long jawline and high cheekbones.

  After a while, I realize I've been staring for a long time.

  And so has Mack.

  Instead of indulging any longer, I rip my gaze away from him. But his eyes seem to follow me as I stand. Just before I walk away to my bedroom, he raises one hand in my direction and waves it slightly.

  My pulse quickens when I see that hand. I can’t help but think of his long fingers taking my hand in the vast expanse of his palm and sliding that ring onto my finger.

  Renata Young, you’re smarter and savvier than any woman I know. And you could wheedle the badge off a police officer even if you were robbing a bank right in front of him. I need that kind of woman in my life. I need you there when I fail, and I know I will. I need you there when I win—because without you I won’t. And I want to be there by your side when you do the same. I want to grow old with you and sit next to you in a big-ass rocking chair while our grandchildren run around the porch and give us hell.

  His voice had cracked at that last part.

  I thought I’d never part from that ring, that it would always be with me
, through good times and bad. Through thick and thin, sickness and health.

  After that, his hands were on my body, and all the things we did that night faded into an incandescent blur.

  We never had sex, never went all the way. That was for after the wedding. Because we were young and stupid and idealistic, and we thought that’s what people did. There was everything else though—all the other ways we could explore and celebrate each other—over and over, until dawn greeted us and we finally slept.

  I’d thought that was the first night of many, but instead, it was the last.

  “What happened, Mack? Why wasn’t I enough for you?” The words echo in the empty house, and I’m glad Mack can’t hear me. I wouldn’t want to listen to his response anyway, not at this point in my life.

  Six months after he left for South Carolina and I departed for Cali, I lost my virginity to a boyfriend I barely remember, just after I started graduate school in California. My old plans and vows don’t matter anymore because Mack decided to throw it all away.

  Part of me wants to keep standing there, my gaze locked on Macklin Pride’s body, my eyes trying to find his in the coming dark.

  But I remind myself of the pain I felt when his brother showed up to tell me Mack was done with our relationship.

  I break away, walking down the hall the the bedroom and leaving Mack with one hand raised in greeting.

  After I do my stretches and slide into bed, I ignore the pulsing warmth in my body, the instinct that even now to draws me to Mack like a moth to a flame.

  I’m better than my instincts now, and I’m here to do a job.

  Mack comes to me in my dreams, but there’s no way to control the dreams that bring you back to a former lover. In the morning, when I wake, I shed that desire and start in on the challenge of bringing the NFL’s prodigal son back to the light.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My back and my head hurt like I’ve been drinking hard when I wake up the next morning. In a way, I have. I indulged myself in staring out at Renata, thinking about all the years we missed out on, all the time that I discarded for the sake of… well, a lot of things she has no idea about. There’s no coming back from what I did, even if I did it for a good reason.

  I go through the motions of my typical morning, waking early and working out, followed by a nasty coffee-protein shake combo that Wingate came up with a year or so ago. I can’t help liking it, even though it’s probably the grossest combination of stuff since Kind Bars were invented.

  “At least the protein shake doesn’t break your teeth, Mack,” I say to myself, out loud. My muscles are still pumping from lifting, and my legs are sore from the intensity of yesterday evening’s workout. I was so angry at Wingate and so frustrated that this woman I worked so hard to forget would be coming back into my life that I pushed myself too hard and got my legs into a mess. I sip on the coffee-flavored peanut-butter protein shake and fiddle with the side of the glass as I look out of my kitchen window. The lights in the guest house are still off, and with good reason. Renata’s probably dealing with some jet lag. I wonder if I ought to make her some coffee and leave it on the porch in one of those Yeti cups that keeps your coffee boiling hot all day.

  But Wingate said ‘no contact,’ since she still obviously thinks you’re the worst scum on the face of the entire planet Earth. And you just about are, aren’t you?

  The protein shake leaves a greasy mustache on my upper lip, and I wipe it with one of the fluffy kitchen towels that the cleaning team leaves around. I don’t even know where they came from. Wingate’s got a team of decorators and designers, and they took the image I gave them and created this house from nothing.

  It’s not my house, not really. Not mine alone. It's the house from my imagined life with Renata, and I didn’t think she’d ever see it in person.

  To tell the truth, I’ve thought about moving out more times than I can count over the last few years.

  The kitchen is too big, with a chef’s stovetop set on a big wooden island, copper pots and pans I don’t use hanging from ceiling racks, and what seems like acres of smooth, open counter space. Counter space that was intended for making cookies and pancakes and omelets on Sunday mornings—not for lining up shots and pouring beer pong beer.

  I sigh and drink the rest of my shake, slamming down the cup in the sink. It’ll be gone by the time I come back to make lunch, cleaned and set aside by one of the silent staff that Wingate hired when we moved out of town. Wingate used to stay in this big house I have, but now his is almost through being built down the road. Can’t say I blame him for moving out early. He’s not much of one for girls wrestling in baby pools, and he thinks I’m on some kind of immature downswing.

  A burst of rage breaks through the zen I cultivated during my workout.

  The damn man told me I couldn’t have my party today, but it’s my privilege and my right to have people to this house when I see fit. It’s not like Renata’s going to make her way over here to personally tell me off since she’s the one who wanted no contact, and she even stipulated it in the contract she signed.

  I should be glad she’s here to reform my image, to save my career. If there’s ever been one thing I loved almost as much as I loved Renata, it’s football, and the Carolina team in particular. But Wingate’s head is screwed on incorrectly, and he’s meddled and meddled until he brought back the woman I left behind, the one thing I didn’t need as I headed into a new season.

  I growl as I look across the field to the house where that woman is staying. The lights still aren’t on, and there’s no way she’ll know about what I’m doing this morning. By the time she wakes up, I’ll have half the team and fifty of our closest fans lounging in the pool on the side of the house. I’ll make the party bigger than I was going to.

  She said no contact.

  She said she didn’t want to work with me directly, and I guess it’s because I’m just so damn distasteful.

  I’ll show her what it means to be distasteful. She’ll get a big old eyeful. And she’ll either leave… or she’ll break her vow to stay away.

  As I get on the phone with the guy who fills up my kegs with the finest beer—and my pool with the finest women—I wonder to myself if I want her to leave or if I want her to come raging up here with a scowl all over her beautiful face and give me the speech of a lifetime.

  Doesn’t matter either way, Macklin. That woman is done with you, and she has every reason in the world to ignore you for the rest of your life.

  She’s here though, ain’t she? I might as well give her a show.

  ***

  By ten in the morning, some of the other early-rising players start to arrive and my keg man Craig brings in a big-ass shipment of Stella Artois and has it placed by the pool.

  I’ve worked out, had a damn protein shake, and there’s a woman whose heart I broke in the guest house, plotting away at my future without my consent. By golly good damn, it’s time to start drinking. I get my icy cold mug from the below-zero freezer out by the pool kitchen and fill it up with the deep amber-colored liquid, pouring a bit of foam off the top. I bring it to my lips so I can start forgetting all the feelings that came over me when I caught a glimpse of Renata last night.

  I take a big sip of beer and savor the taste. It’s already over eighty degrees in the shade by the pool, and there are a few girls in very skimpy bikinis walking around the pool. A subtle wave of relaxation pours over me as I down the first half of my icy cold mug, and I pause only to take my shirt off and have one of the women who arrived early put sunscreen all over my back and shoulders. Her fingers are soft and warm, and I try not to think about how Renata’s hands once felt on my skin.

  How can I even think about a relationship from six whole years ago when I’m on the edge of the biggest linebacker career the NFL has ever seen…? And I’ve got about fifty girls pouring into the side gate, each of them less dressed than the last.

  “Hey Craig,” I yell to the short, shirtless man as he sets up the l
ast keg and pours a cold beer for himself into a red Solo cup.

  He looks up and takes a long swig. “Yeah?”

  “Put out the sign I had made—the one that says ‘Bikini tops optional.”

  “All right man, can do. As long as I can stay and eat and drink.”

  “Hell yeah you can stay, Craig. You brought the beer, didn’t you?”

  I watch as Craig hauls out the sign, and I pour myself another beer. Another few of my teammates start showing up, and I wonder what that bastard of an owner and the damn tattle-tale of a coach would think of the shenanigans I’ve got going on here today. As the second beer goes down and the ladies start lining up for mugs of Stella, tops start coming off, and I start getting into the zone of not giving a shit about anything. I get the custom-made top and straw on the top of my mug and wade into the pool, positioning myself on a giant chair-like float in the center of the pool. Fortunately, the cupholders on this thing are so big, they each hold a mug of beer. Around noon, the food starts to get set up, and the quarterback is walking off with some topless woman to one of the rooms off the side of the porch.

  “Who cares?” I say out loud to no one in particular. The cleaning team will be by again before midnight, and they’ll clean up every mess and even replace torn up sheets or curtains as they see fit. Everything is taken care of, and nothing matters.