Romance: SCREWED (An Arranged Marriage to the NFL Bad Boy) (A New Adult Contemporary Athlete Sports Football Romance)

by Bridget Lang

  “Yes. It…soothes me.” Damn, admitting to the need to be soothed at all was a bad idea, he realized too late, but his emotions were raw and exposed after Maria’s visit.

  “Cleaning it does?” This time her tone was inquiring, but not pressing.

  “Using it, cleaning it. It’s…guns are what I’m good with, how I’ve made my living.”

  “I see.” Somehow he felt like maybe she really did. “Teach me to use one then?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve spent weeks now trying to bring you some measure of peace. If guns are what you need to feel that way, so be it. We’ll just consider it a new type of therapy.”

  The words brought a smile to his face. The spark of humor surprised him, and encouraged him. It was the first light emotion he’d felt in a while, he realized. Even his lust for Ava was a heavy, weighty thing, an inexorable force rather than the light, easy encounters he’d had in the past.

  “Guns for the crazies, huh? Something tells me the world won’t exactly embrace your methods, Doc.”

  He took her to the range, though. They both rode on the back of his bike. He went slower than was necessary and took a longer route, relishing the feel of her arms around his waist. The innocent contact, the trust it took to get on a motorcycle with someone, was a balm to his wounded spirit.

  Ava didn’t pressure him to talk about anything that he didn’t want to. They simply enjoyed each other’s company. Dean found that when he wasn’t using the attraction between them as both shield and weapon, that Ava was a woman that he admired, with a quick wit and a strong spirit. She was also most definitely someone who deserved much better than anything he had to give.

  With an unusual burst of sentiment, he decided that he would take her easy affection today, cherish it as the gift it was. Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow he would give her a gift of his own. He would walk away. He would walk away and save her from being entangled with a monster. He would save her from giving a piece of herself to a man who would didn’t deserve her love.

  When they came together that night, it was not a rushed and frantic encounter like the ones they’d had before. Dean laid her on his bed, tried to show her with every touch, every kiss, what he would never admit to her in words.

  When he entered her warm, wet heat and plunged into her again and again it filled him with a sense of completion like nothing ever before. It was more than sex, he realized with surprise, though he wouldn’t allow himself to examine exactly what that meant.

  Chapter Ten

  Ava stretched, delighting in muscles that were slightly sore for all the right reasons. Last night had been nothing short of amazing. Dean had finally let his shields down, and what she found beneath them was everything she could ask for from a man. He had cherished her with his eyes, his words, his body. He had made love to her—no way could last night be described in any other way, though she’d never been one to romanticize sex, and the results had been satisfaction so complete that a small part of her wondered if she would ever be satisfied with anything less again.

  Even if that was true, it might just have been worth it.

  Ava hadn’t forgotten her intention of getting inside Dean’s defenses to help him—well, maybe she’d forgotten for just a few hours there, but who could blame her? The man did things to her that could make any woman forget her own name.

  But, he’d opened up to her yesterday. Not enough to begin to confide in her about the last fateful mission he’d been on, but enough for her to hope that he would in the future. And if she had to warm his bed for a while longer before he did? Well, that was definitely fine with her.

  She ran one hand down Dean’s back. He shivered in response to her touch but didn’t wake. With a smile she decided to make herself some coffee. She would wait for a bit, let him wake up so she could kiss him goodbye before she left, maybe even try to make plans for seeing him again…

  She padded softly through the apartment, and found everything she needed to make a pot of coffee. When she went to dump out the old grounds though, there was a box upended into the trash can. She took it off and started to take the bag from the can so that she could replace it, but stopped when she saw several photos in the otherwise empty bag. She reached down and began to sift through the items. The photos were of Dean and James, and there were home burned DVD’s as well. Some of the pictures showed the two as boys. Their arms were around each other in most of them, and they had the too-bright smiles and haunted eyes of children who had already been to hell and back, who were leaning on each other to survive.

  She rose when she heard Dean come into the room, one of the DVD’s still in her hand.

  “Well, good morn—” The words dried up on his tongue, and she saw stoic weariness replace the sleepy warmth that had been in his eyes.

  “What is this, Dean?” She couldn’t understand what had led him to throw these things away. She saw him begin to put on the mask of sarcasm and humor that he used to hide his pain from her. But that wasn’t happening again. Not this time.

  “Don’t, Dean. Just…don’t. If you think you’re going to convince me that something isn’t seriously wrong after this,” she swept one arm to motion toward the garbage can behind her, “then you must think I’m a damn idiot. I’ve skated around pushing you because I can recognize a man who won’t be forced when I see one, but I’m going to have some answers before I leave here today one way or another.”

  She saw the flash of pure grief in his eyes before he banked his emotions, then saw the anger born of defensiveness well up inside him. She watched as he finally broke, sighed the old, weary sigh of a man much older than he was, a man who shouldered a lifetime of disillusionment and regret.

  “Okay…Okay, Ava. But don’t be surprised when you don’t like what you hear.”

  He crossed the distance and turned her face toward his own with a gentle finger beneath her chin. His kiss was filled with yearning, with regret.

  “I had to do that, just once more.” She puzzled at his words as he took her hand and gently led her back into the living room where they seated themselves on the couch. Then Dean let go of her hand and moved a bit further from her before his gaze focused on an empty corner. His voice, when he spoke, was lifeless and flat.

  “James and I were…he was the closest thing I had to family. We were from a pretty small town, and neither of us was that well behaved.” He smiled, presumably at some memory of the two of them, and the reflexive expression seemed totally at odds with the anguish in his eyes.

  “No one wanted to keep either of us for long, so we were in a lot of the same temporary homes together, the halfway houses for boys that were a little too much to handle in a more…traditional atmosphere. At first it was because we were broken, hurt and lashing out. Eventually though half our antics were just attempts to be placed in the same home again. I felt…less alone when he was there with me. We joined the service together too, both made it through selection and training to become SEALs. Then he met Maria and got married.”

  Ava said nothing, afraid that if she spoke he would retreat from her once again. Somehow she knew that if he did, nothing she could do would be enough to reach him.

  “I was so damn happy for him, so damn proud. I thought one of us had actually managed to make it through our childhood and still have a full, happy life…and it was good, for a while. It was. Then things started to change. It seemed like after every one of our missions he left a piece of himself behind when he came home, until…”

  Dean met her eyes then, and his anguish seemed to be its own entity, a heavy presence robbing the room of light and air. “Eventually there wasn’t anything left of James, the James I knew, at all. He started going missing when we were overseas, even though you’re never supposed to go anywhere alone in a combat zone. He’d come back and seem…kind of strung out. I thought maybe he was using. Not surprising considering how we grew up. I still think he might have been…”

  Dean let his eyes go to the floor then, and Ava could
tell that he struggled to force himself to speak the next words.

  “When we were ambushed…James started smiling, like he was having the best time…then he…he started killing our team, Ava. He was like a man possessed. I…I had to take him out. I froze though. I’ve never frozen before, no matter what I’ve faced. But seeing him killing his own teammates, it was like my mind just couldn’t believe my eyes, you know? If I’d shot him sooner, I could have saved every last one of them. Hell, if I’d just mentioned to someone when I noticed something wasn’t right…”

  Ava could hardly breathe through the lump in her throat, and she couldn’t stop the tears that were trailing down her cheeks any more than Dean could go back and change that which had already come to pass.

  He continued speaking after a moment. “I didn’t help him when he needed it most…but the least I can do is let him die a hero, keep his wife and children from realizing the he died a traitor, a cold blooded killer.”

  She laid a shaking hand on his arm.

  “I’m so sorry, Dean. I never realized… I won’t tell a soul. I want you to know that. I swear it.” She moved her hands for emphasis, and his gaze fastened on the DVD that she’d forgotten she still held in her hand. She flinched as he tore it from her fingers.

  Gone was the teasing lover from last night, the broken man of just a few moments ago. All she could see in his eyes now was a grief-fed rage that she feared might consume him. He threw the DVD across the room, and the sound of it hitting the wall was as loud as a gunshot in the quiet of the morning.

  “Get the fuck out, Doc.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The following days became weeks in which Dean spent in an alcohol and grief laden haze. He no longer waited for evening to use liquor to dull his pain. He’d taken almost all of his saved leave after his confession to Ava.

  His commander had rushed the packet through for him, gotten the time off approved in hours rather than days or even weeks. Dean wasn’t sure why he’d done it, but he was thankful. Dean didn’t know how he would face anyone again.

  Somehow speaking of James’s death made it more real. Before he’d been able to push it down, distance himself until he almost felt like it was a bad dream. Words had power, though. Deans words brought the darker emotions to life. He’d given the memory of James’s death power, and now it threatened to choke him with every waking breath.

  Day after day he fell deeper into the bottle. He wasn’t even sure anymore if he was doing it to escape reality or if he was trying to punish himself for what he’d done, wreck the body that had caused so much grief and pain. A little of both? It really didn’t matter in the end, as long as he didn’t have to sober up and face himself in the mirror.

  Things continued on that way for a month and a half. His imposing frame lost muscle mass and when he did bother to look in the mirror he didn’t recognize the tortured sot who stared back at him. That was good, he thought to himself. He hated the strong, confident, arrogant man who’d murdered his best and only friend. Anyone he became had to be better than that guy.

  Eventually, though, there came a day that he woke without any liquor in the house. At some point over the last few days he’d misplaced the keys to both his truck and his bike in a drunken stupor, so it looked like he would be going to fetch a bit more liquor on foot. He could have called a cab, of course…but after so many days in solitude, the thought of making conversation with another person seemed an almost insurmountable task.

  He would rather walk the two miles to the liquor store than try to speak around the grief in his throat and his heart. Even if he was inclined to, he felt that the words would be large and awkward in his mouth. No, he would walk to the liquor store this time. Then, after he’d had a few drinks to calm the tremor in his hands and the pounding in his head, he’d find the fucking keys so that this didn’t happen again.

  The sunlight and heat left him shaking and queasy. His head was swimming and sawdust filled his mouth. Every breath felt too heavy for his lungs, and the sunlight offended eyes that hadn’t seen nearly enough daylight in recent weeks. Even so, something about the walk cleansed him, sobered him at least enough to take an honest look in the mirror when he got home. What he saw left him sick and ashamed. He showered off the sweat and the liquor scent that seemed to be oozing out his pores.

  Then he sat on his couch, not sure what to do next. He looked around at the room. It was cluttered with takeout containers and empty booze bottles. Some of the bottles had been left on their sides to leak their last few drops on the carpet, adding the scent of old alcohol to the smell of stale grease. He shook his head in disgust.

  That was as good a place to start as any, he supposed. He grabbed a garbage bag and was almost done picking up the worst of the clutter when he saw the DVD that had been laying on the floor since the morning he’d kicked Ava out.

  He found his laptop and placed it on the coffee table. With shaking hands, he inserted the disc. It was a series of video clips from his childhood, all of them short, homemade by James and himself. Even through the pain he couldn’t help but smile at their childish antics. More clips followed of them in the service together, at James’s wedding, and at barbecues with James’s family. He watched it all with dry-eyed longing. What had happened? What had he missed? How had his friend slipped so completely off track without him noticing?

  The screen went black for a moment, and then Maria’s face filled the screen.

  “Hi Dean. I’m recording this because I’m not sure I will have the strength to say what needs to be said to your face without getting mad. I’m sure that however James really ended, it was…bad. I can’t even imagine, and I don’t want to know. I wanted to show you how I remember him though…and how you should too. That’s what he’d want. I get it if you can’t look at me for a while, or ever, without hurting. Just don’t throw out the good memories with the bad, okay? James wouldn’t want that.”

  He saw the tears start to fall slowly down her face as she reached forward to stop the recording. He was shocked to realize that there were tears in his own eyes as well. Only a few, too little to actually fall, but still…he thought he’d cried out every last one in his youth. Only a couple solitary tears…but they represented cleansing, and starting over, and he knew what he had to do.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ava could hardly believe her ears when her receptionist buzzed to say that Dean was there to see her.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  She stood uncertainly as he entered the door. He was thinner, and paler. But there was a new softness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. She waited, not sure how to proceed.

  He made his way to her, ignoring the professional boundary of her desk as he always had. Her heart hitched at being so near to him after not seeing him for a month.

  “So, I stayed drunk for a little over a month,” Dean began with a rueful smile. “Then, once I finally stayed awake and sober for a few hours at the same time, I thought about James. Then I thought about the things you said.”

  He took a deep breath, as Ava waited for him to continue.

  “I do need help. I don’t want to tell anyone else what really went down with James. It won’t bring anyone back and it will only hurt everyone involved, the way I see it. The families of everyone who died think that those men died at the hands of terrorists. I don’t want to rob them of that any more than I want to see James’s memory trampled through the dirt… but I need some help to deal with this, so I’d like to make an appointment to come back and see you.”

  “You don’t have to come here… I could help you any time you need it, Dean. Day or night.”

  “Still, we’ll do it here. You might as well get paid for all the trouble You’ve gone through for me. Before I start with those appointments though, there’s something else I could use your help with…”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The following weekend Dean and Ava walked hand in hand. Maria walked beside them through the park, while he
r two older children scampered ahead of them toward the playground. They’d just gone out for ice cream, and now they were going to give the children a chance to play themselves out before Maria brought the kids home, and before Dean brought the beautiful woman beside him back to his place.

  He reveled in the feel of Ava’s hand in his own. Hard to believe that a week ago he’d been drowning himself in liquor, half hoping he’d follow James to an early grave. Now he felt… at peace. He and Maria had spent the entire time in the ice cream parlor telling Ava stories about some of his and James’s escapades, and he found that he could laugh and remember the past fondly now. Not without a twinge of pain of course, but this pain was bittersweet. After the soul-rending anguish he’d felt before, he could certainly handle bittersweet, especially with a strong woman by his side to help him through.

  He couldn’t resist leaning in for a quick kiss, and loved how her lips curved into a smile at the simple gesture.

  “Uncle Dean and Ava sitting in a tree—”

  “Jenny, that’s enough,” Maria told her oldest daughter in a scolding tone.

  Ava just laughed, and Dean couldn’t help but join her.

  “I guess we do seem a little whipped,” he admitted with a smile.

  “A little?” Maria scoffed, “Ava, this man has never brought a single girl home for me to meet, and you have him eating out of the palm of your hand. He’s most certainly whipped.”

  Dean stopped and turned Ava so that she faced him, so that he could look into her beautiful eyes.

  “Well, Maria,” he spoke to her, but his eyes never left Ava’s, “For the first time in my life, I’m thinking that being whipped is just fine with me.”

  And it was.

  THE END

  A BRIDE FOR DADDY