Hate the Game

by Renshaw, Winter

  I’ve never seen Mark and Mom so silent before.

  “We want a little space,” I say. “So maybe you can use this time apart from me to figure out your own shit. Mark, maybe you can push some of that excellence you’re so obsessed with onto yourself. Maybe try being a better husband, how about that? Maybe take an interest in your daughters’ lives and stop buying them shit to tell them you love them, maybe spend some actual time with them for once? And Mom, maybe take this time to start thinking about what it is you’re really getting from this marriage. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you make a decision for yourself about anything.”

  Mom’s gaze dips down to the napkin in her lap.

  “Talon, that’s enough.” Mark’s balled fist smacks against the table, summoning a few dirty looks from the patrons around us.

  “Anyway,” I say, feeling light as air now that I’ve unloaded years’ worth of their bullshit. “Ira, sorry you had to see all this. But before I go, if you so much as share another word about any of my contracts or career dealings, you’re fired.”

  I leave the restaurant a new man in every sense of the word, the future suddenly looking brighter than I ever could have imagined.

  Chapter 47

  Irie

  I’m waiting at his apartment when he gets back from the gym Friday night, balanced on the edge of his kitchen island with the dopiest grin on my face.

  He drops his gym bag at his feet, letting the door slam shut behind him, and he makes his way over, settling between my thighs, his hands on my waist.

  He smells like soap and his hair is damp from the locker room shower and his hand is warm as it caresses my cheek. His thumb grazes along my bottom lip and a moment later, he kisses me soft and deep, burying his fingertips in the hair at the nape of my neck.

  “I talked to Kira today,” I say when we come up for air. “I turned down the job. We’re doing this …”

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Terrified. Mostly,” I say. “But when I look at you, all of that goes away.”

  “Good. It should.”

  “How about you? How are you feeling?”

  “Like a million fucking dollars.” He kisses me again, pulling me against him before sliding me off the counter. A second later, he’s carrying me back to his room, dropping me on the center of his bed. “Contract is signed. Assholes got a piece of my mind. And now I get to spend the night with my favorite girl. Doesn’t get better than this.”

  “We need to find a place to live,” I tell him.

  “And we will,” he says. “We’ll find a home. Our first home. And you’ll have free rein to do whatever you want to make it ours.”

  His left hand moves to the waistband of my shorts, un-popping the button before gliding the zipper down.

  “I love you,” I tell him as his mouth peppers a trail of kisses down my lower stomach.

  I didn’t think it was possible to feel every single emotion all at the same time, but this moment is proof that it’s possible. I’m terrified about the future, exhilarated with hope, giddy with love, and hot with desire all at once.

  Talon slides my shorts down my thighs, followed by my panties, and then he shoves his gym shorts down. A moment later, I’m pinned beneath him, his cock hot and throbbing against my sex.

  “I love you more,” he says as he buries his face into my neck, nibbling at my ears as his left hand veers between my legs. He teases my seam before circling my clit with his thumb. A second later, he slides two fingers inside me as my hips buck against him.

  Suddenly I’m feeling anything but terrified.

  He reaches over me, grabbing a condom from his nightstand, and I kiss his rounded shoulders, his skin still warm from his workout and the hot shower that followed.

  I breathe him in—the man I adore more than anyone in this world. His musky, soapy scent. And I’m intoxicated.

  Intoxicated with love, with hope.

  They say good things are worth the wait—and while I didn’t always consider Talon a good thing … I’m so glad I waited before giving him a chance.

  He was more than worth it.

  Chapter 48

  Talon

  I hand Irie a coffee when she gets to anthro Monday morning. It’s the first day back after spring break and the lecture hall is packed with exhausted faces who don’t want to be here—but not us.

  Every day that passes is a day closer to graduation.

  And the day after graduation, we’re packing up our U-Haul and hitting the road.

  “Aw, thank you.” Irie takes her drink before unpacking her notebook and pen from her bag. “Did you get that link I sent you last night? The townhouse in Richmond?”

  “I did.”

  “And? What’d you think?” she asks, taking a sip.

  “I think you need to dream bigger, baby.” I give her a wink before stealing a kiss.

  “I don’t think we should get carried away just yet. Oh! I wanted to show you something,” she says before reaching into her bag and pulling out a hardback textbook. A moment later she flips to a page marked with a neon orange Post-It and hands it over. “Found this last night by pure chance.”

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “It’s a plan your father designed,” she says. “I found it in one of my exteriors textbooks.”

  According to the blurb beside the picture, it’s called Talon’s Edge.

  “I’ve never seen this one before,” I say. “And I thought I’d seen them all.”

  “It was one of his last projects,” she says. “Isn’t it beautiful? Look at those clean lines and that symmetry. It’s perfection.”

  I flip to the next page and find an image of the interior layout.

  “I’m going to build this,” I say, tracing my fingertips along the preserved image. “For us. In Richmond.”

  “Talon, this is eight thousand square feet …”

  “I don’t care. This is it. This is our home,” I say, nodding. “What do you think? You up for tackling a project like this?”

  Her eyes widen. “It’d literally be a dream come true. But are you sure you want to do this?”

  The overhead lights turn dark and the screen down front flicks to life. I turn to Irie, studying her face in the dark, the glimmer in her eyes, the sweet smile that claims her soft lips. All this time I thought nailing her would be the ultimate win, but now I know I was wrong.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”

  I’m going to marry this woman someday.

  Epilogue

  Irie

  10 years later …

  I stand on the balcony of our home on a balmy June afternoon, a drooling, teething baby Bette on my hip as I watch Talon toss a football to our seven-year-old son, Theo, in the backyard. The sun sets over Talon’s Edge, painting the sky in warm shades of hibiscus and tangerine. It’s nights like these, the simple and ordinary ones, that make me stop and think about how far we’ve come—and how all of this almost didn’t happen.

  Thank God for Talon’s persistence.

  You can give the man any goal in the world, and I swear, he’ll make it happen.

  It’s a gift.

  Sometimes I think he might be better at manifesting than football—though he’s still pretty damn good at football. One of the best in the league statistically, morally, or otherwise. Richmond just signed him to a new contract, this one worth an amount that makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it for too long. I guess when you lead your team to three Super Bowl victories in a row, they’ll do whatever it takes to hang onto you. And don’t even get me started on the sponsorships.

  I don’t know how he does it.

  He’s busier than ever and at the top of his game quite literally, but he still makes time for his family, and he’s never once asked me to shutter my design business. And he wouldn’t. He knows it’s my passion. I’ve scaled back since we had our daughter, opting to be a bit choosier with my clients and the projects I’m willing to take on. Some
days I’m spread paper-thin, other days I’m jubilant with exhaustion.

  Talon has never once complained, never once asked me to scale back. He understands what it’s like to be given a gift, to have a passion, and to be able to use it on your own terms.

  “You want to swing, baby girl?” I say to Bette, bouncing her a little as I walk to the wooden playset several yards back, nestled in a thicket of blooming red peony bushes.

  Bette smiles and instantly I think of her namesake, feeling a bittersweet sting in my center. I wish Bette would’ve been able to meet and hold my daughter. I can only imagine the kind of advice she would’ve been shelling out given her extensive experience raising girls (even if those girls were predominately strippers and one lame college student).

  Talon gives me a wave before catching Theo’s toss, and I blow them each a kiss.

  A moment later, I secure baby Bette in her swing and give her a gentle push.

  “Mom, watch!” Theo yells, grinning as he sprints across the grass and catches his dad’s throw.

  I cheer for him and his sister squeals.

  Theo was a bit of a surprise originally. We weren’t trying to get pregnant. In fact, I was on the pill, but some things tend to find their way when they’re meant to be.

  A couple of years after moving here, Talon and I eloped, tying the knot on a private beach along the Pacific, not far from Bette’s house, surrounded by a few close friends. We didn’t invite my aunt and uncle. Bette served as my maid of honor—and much to everyone’s surprise, I took her up on her offer to throw me an epic bachelorette party.

  Which she did.

  Strippers and all.

  Things with Talon’s mom are better these days, especially since she left Mark. Their divorce was long and nasty and expensive, and she’s still working through some of her own issues, but she agrees it was all worth it because now her relationship with her son is better than it’s ever been.

  She visits at least once a month, staying in the mother-in-law suite we had installed above the garage. She also travels with us during the off-season, when we’re making our national rounds doing work on behalf of our Hero Ballers foundation. So far we’ve recruited a number of big names in the league and we’re putting so much good into the world, making such a difference in ways we never expected.

  We always dreamed big.

  Turns out we needed to dream bigger.

  So we did.

  Earlier this year, Talon hired some private people finder group to locate my mom. It turns out she’d left her first commune sometime while I was in high school and took up with another, this one based out of Oregon and almost completely off the grid. A couple months after Bette was born, we took a trip out west to see her. I was apprehensive about going at first, not to mention a bit resentful at the fact that she made zero effort to be an ounce of the mother she should have been, but Talon said I needed to do this for me—for closure.

  And maybe even for forgiveness.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  The meeting was tear-filled and emotional, but watching her eyes light when she held her grandkids for the first time, watching how instantly enamored Theo was with his grandma made it all worth it.

  One of these days she’ll come out here, I’m sure. Someday when she’s ready. Until then, I’ve made peace with accepting the fact that she wasn’t able to be the mother I needed her to be—and that I’m not doomed to repeat her mistakes.

  “All right,” I say after another fifteen minutes of play time. “Time to head in and get baths and jammies.”

  Theo moans, throwing one more pass to his dad, and I scoop the baby into my arms. We head inside, our perfect little family, and make our way upstairs to run baths.

  Moving to Richmond with Talon was, unquestionably, the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. It wasn’t easy, throwing caution to the wind, walking away from a generous job offer, but I can’t imagine my life with my husband and the two beautiful children we’ve made.

  Sometimes you have to close your eyes and leap—and sometimes, if you’re lucky, your best friend will be right there, holding your hand as you jump into the vast unknown together.

  “Hey,” Talon says, stopping me when we’re outside the nursery.

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you,” he says.

  “That’s all?” I ask, chuckling. For some reason, I thought he was going to tell me something else.

  He leans down, kissing the top of Bette’s head before kissing me. “That’s all.”

  SAMPLE - The Marriage Pact

  Synopsis

  I was sixteen when I vowed I would never marry him.

  We shook on it. Pinky swore. Even put it in writing and all but signed our names in blood.

  It was the one and only thing we ever agreed on.

  To the world, he’s Prince Julian, Duke of Montcroix, second in line to the Chamont throne. Panty-melting accent. Royal charm. Hypnotic presence. Blindingly gorgeous. Laundry list of women all over the world who would give their firstborn for the chance to marry him. Most eligible bachelor in the free world …

  But to me, he’s nothing more than the son of my father’s best friend—the pesky blue-eyed boy who made it his mission to annoy the ever-living hell out of me summer after summer as our families vacationed together, our parents oblivious to our mutual disdain as they joked about our “betrothal.”

  He was also my first kiss.

  And my first taste of heartbreak so cataclysmic it almost broke me.

  I meant it with every fiber of my soul when I swore I’d never marry him.

  But on the eve of my 24th birthday, His Royal Highness had the audacity to show up at my door after years of silence and make a demand that will forever change the trajectory of our lives: “We have to break our pact.”

  Chapter 1

  Emelie

  “Em? There’s a guy here to see you …” My best friend Gillian stands in the doorway of my bathroom as I hover over the sink, scrubbing tonight’s makeup from my face.

  My feet ache from hours spent dancing in the most beautiful crystal-encrusted heels known to man, and my head has finally stopped spinning from the too-many-to-count top shelf cocktails. My body is in the process of thanking me for changing out of a skintight bandage dress and into jersey pajama pants and a cotton tank sans bra. I’m two point five seconds from crawling under the cool covers in my dark room and succumbing to a long, hard sleep.

  After the year I’ve had, I needed tonight, but I have a feeling I’m going to be paying for it all day tomorrow.

  “He probably has the wrong address.” I press a dry washcloth against my skin before moving for my moisturizer.

  “Look, I admire your dedication to your skincare routine after a night on the town, but I’m serious. There’s a guy at your door and he asked for you.” Gillian bites her lip before continuing. “And, um, he’s insanely, ridiculously hot.”

  I roll my eyes. Earlier tonight, a few of my friends were trying to hook me up with a dark-eyed stranger sitting at the end of the bar. It was every bit as awkward and embarrassing as it sounds, and he was clearly not having his best night. He just wanted to be alone in a room full of strangers. I get it. I’ve been there.

  “Did Stacia tell him where I live?” I ask. “The guy from the bar?”

  Gillian laughs through her nose. “No, no, no. The guy at your door is definitely not the guy from the bar.”

  I shoot her a look. I don’t know what she’s trying to pull, but I feel like I’m being set up.

  “Did Hadley make a fake Tinder account in my name again?” I ask, one hand cocked on my hip.

  Just because it’s the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday and I’ve been going through a rough patch and a dry spell doesn’t mean I’m in the mood to hook up with some random guy hand-selected by the most well-meaning yet least discerning friend in my group.

  Gillian’s hands lift to the air and she shrugs. “I don’t know who this guy is, but he looks official.”
<
br />   “Official?”

  “He’s wearing a nice suit and he’s got a security-looking guy with him.”

  “I’m so confused.”

  “You and me both.” Gillian yanks me by the crook of my elbow and leads me down the hall and toward the front door. “So why don’t you just see who he is and what he wants?”

  “You realize how sketchy this sounds,” I say.

  “I do. That's why I’ll have my phone out in case we need to call 9-1-1 ...”

  “Reassuring.” I sweep my hair off my neck and pile it onto the top of my head, securing it with a hair tie from my wrist, and then I take a deep breath before opening the door.

  And then I hold that breath, deep in my lungs, until they burn.

  “Hello, Emelie.” A familiar sparkling blue gaze and signature half-smirk greets me. I’m tempted to slam the door in his face until I remind myself that he’d probably enjoy that too much.

  “Julian,” I say, hand gripping the edge of the door so hard my palm throbs. “What are you doing here?”

  A man dressed in all black stands a couple of steps behind him, hands folded at his waist as he scans the area then returns his attention to his charge.

  “I realize it’s late,” he says, an air of uncharacteristic remorse in his panty-melting voice. There are a million things I despise about this obnoxiously gorgeous specimen of a man, but his accent has never been one of them. Too casual to be the Queen’s English. Too posh to be middle-American.

  “Extremely,” I say.

  “But I’m afraid my matter is rather urgent.”

  I maintain my poise and poker face, keeping my vision trained on him despite the fact that the myriad of cocktails I enjoyed tonight are still working their way through my system.