by Aria Scott
I just took another drink from his bottle.
By the time the bottle was empty, the sun had set. Stars twinkled overhead as I parted ways with my new best friend and started down Ocean Drive. The cool breeze cleared my head somewhat, but not enough to keep me going all the way to my penthouse. Eventually I found another park bench and sat down on it. I was starting to feel really nauseous at that point, and I just wanted the world to go away.
I closed my eyes.
Slept.
“Chase!”
Someone was shouting my name. I felt a hand shake my shoulder.
“Fuck off,” I grumbled.
“Come on,” the voice demanded. “Get up. You smell like a urinal.”
I lifted one eyelid. Found myself staring into my brother Luke’s angry gaze. For a minute, I thought I was dreaming. But then Luke smiled a ferocious, ass-kicking grin.
My other eyelid shot up. “Luke. What the fuck are you doing here?” As I said this, I realized all of the words had run together, until it sounded like whatdafuckyoudoinghere.
Luke’s brows lowered. “Mom sent me. I had to cancel a new client meeting for this and I’m not happy about it.”
“How the fuck did you find me?”
“You’re sitting on a bench in front of your apartment building, dumbass. Get up.” He grabbed my football jersey and hauled me to my feet. I stumbled around, then found my sea legs.
“What do you want? Take your hands off me,” I demanded.
Luke cocked his arm and punched me in the jaw.
Pain exploded in my head. I saw stars. I staggered away and grabbed the back of the bench. “Wha...”
“I owed you that,” Luke said, his voice deep with fury. “Remember what I said to you, all of those months ago? Don’t hurt her? Well fucking A, you tore her heart out.”
I clutched my head and moaned. The thought of Aubrey hurt worse than his punch.
He grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me around. “Come on, jackass, let’s get you upstairs.”
“What the hell has been going on with you?” Luke shook his head as he watched me stumble to my sofa. I sat down heavily, making the cushion puff out with protest, and then dropped my head into my hands.
I groaned. My head was pounding and my jaw felt dislocated.
Luke made a tsking sound that reminded me of our mom. I groaned again.
“Is that it, then?” he asked. “Are you just going to give up on everything?”
I rubbed my chin. “Did you have to punch me so goddamned hard?”
“I’m trying to knock some sense into you.”
I glanced up at him from beneath lowered brows. His usual smile, I saw, was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling at the idea.
“What are you so happy about?” he barked.
“Just that I’ve finally managed to wipe that trademark grin off your face.”
He gave me a hard stare, his dark eyes full of disapproval. “Don’t be too pleased with yourself. This rampage you’ve been on has left a trail of dead bodies behind you.”
“Dead bodies?”
“Mom, Dakota, me, Gage—the whole family, for Chrissakes.”
“Look, dude, I don’t need to be reminded of what a fuck-up I am—“
“Not that,” he cut in. “We all make mistakes. Mom doesn’t care about the football. She’s out of her mind with worry. She’s worried you’re trying to drink yourself to death. And she’s sick over the fact that you and Aubrey broke up.”
Just thinking about the whole thing made me want to puke. I squinted at the windows, which let in way too much sunlight, then grabbed the remote and closed the blinds.
“That feel better?” he asked, with mock sympathy in his voice. “Are you gonna start acting like a man now?”
I sat up a little straighter. “You have balls, coming here and saying that to me.”
“Look. Some bad shit went down, and now you’re hurting. I get that. You think you lost everything. I get that, too. But that doesn’t mean you should just roll the fuck over and die. Sober up, and start fighting for what you want.”
I laughed aloud.
“What the hell are you laughing at now?”
“You said to fight for what I want. How am I supposed to fight for it, when it’s already gone?” My head throbbing painfully, I lurched to my feet and weaved toward the kitchen. “I signed with another agent, but he’s already dropped me. Said I’m untouchable.”
“So what?”
“You just don’t get it.” I reached for a bottle of whiskey on the kitchen countertop.
Luke’s hand came down hard on my arm, and stopped me from pouring. “What about Aubrey?”
“She’s done. I saw it in her eyes that night she came to the jail. And I don’t blame her.” I pulled my arm from beneath Luke’s, but didn’t try to pour.
“Have you talked to her since then?”
“No.”
“You should. She’s been walking around like the world just ended.”
Inside, I suddenly became very still. “She’s been through a rough time. A total clusterfuck. Of course she’s depressed.”
“Are you sure that’s why?”
“Are you saying that isn’t the reason why?” I felt my heart begin to beat a little faster, like a damned schoolgirl’s.
Luke’s lips tightened a little, giving him one of the most serious expressions I’d even seen. “Can I ask you something, bro?”
I shrugged.
His gaze caught mine and held it. “Do you love her?”
I swallowed, then found myself nodding slowly. “More than football.”
“Holy shit, dude!” He stood up and waved his hands at me, in a WTF gesture. “What are you doing here, then? Get your ass back to Grove pronto.”
“Do you think...” I couldn’t even voice my hope about maybe having a second chance with her.
Luke shook his head. “When’s the last time you checked your email? Your phone? For all you know, she might have been leaving message after message. Cripes, I must have left at least ten messages myself, until your phone started telling me your mailbox was full.”
I stood there, staring at him. All at once, I felt stunned. Had she been trying to get in touch with me? The idea was like a cattle prod to my ass. Feverishly I stumbled out of the kitchen and hurried into my bedroom. My phone was sitting on a side table next to the bed, but it had lost its charge days go. I raced back into the kitchen, past a satisfied-looking Luke, and plugged my phone into the charger.
“It’s going to need at least five minutes,” I said, then returned to the bedroom. Already thinking about the specifics about catching a flight to Grove, I showered and then changed. In less than five minutes, I felt like a new man; and as I strode back into the kitchen, Luke handed my phone to me.
“It’s at about ten percent,” he said.
I snatched it from his grasp, unlocked the main screen and went straight for the missed calls list. I saw that everyone in my family had tried to call me at least once, with my mom, Dakota and Luke clocking in at five to ten times each.
I didn’t see even one from Aubrey.
I let the phone fall slowly to my side. “There’s nothing from her.”
Luke’s eyes opened wide? “Are you sure? Look again.”
I paged more slowly through my missed calls, and this time I noticed one from John Clarke. But still nothing from Aubrey. I shook my head. “Nothing from Aubrey. But I did get a call from the team owner.”
He dragged a hand down in his face, then shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Did she send you an email?”
I glanced through my emails—hundreds of them—and found nothing. The brief spurt of hope that had warmed me up inside started to go cold. “Nope. Shit.” Frowning, I went back to Clarke’s call and listened to the voicemail he’d left:
Chase...call me when you get this, I want to speak with you...
Confusion joining the sense of despair that was slowly regaini
ng its hold on me, I dialed Clarke’s number and got his secretary. She told me that ‘Mr. Clarke’ was at the golf course, but that I should go straightaway to see him.
Wondering what the hell was up, I decided to put the problems of my love life on hold for a moment, so I could see just what Clarke wanted.
About forty-five minutes later, I was walking across the golf course to the fifteenth hole. The day was bright and the sun felt good on my face, and I realized that I’d been living like a vampire for the last several days—only coming out at night, to drink. By the time I reached John Clarke, I’d started feeling ashamed of how low I’d allowed myself to fall over the last few weeks.
He looked up with a smile when he saw me approaching. The change in his attitude was so drastic that I wondered for a moment if I was dreaming. What had he called me, on my wedding night? Disgusting? A fraud? I couldn’t remember exactly...which was probably a good thing. But now he seemed like a favorite Uncle.
“Chase! Glad you finally decided to look me up. I was getting worried.” His smile widening, he nodded to his three silver-haired golf partners, then walked in my direction. “Why didn’t you bring your clubs? We could have played a few rounds.”
For a moment, I thought I was going to start stuttering. Just a few weeks ago, I was the dirt he’d scraped off his boot. But now...now he acting like the other Clarke I’d known, when I’d played on his team. “I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. Somehow, I missed your phone call—” I paused and tried not to appear like I really had missed his call, rather than gotten myself drunk every night for the past month. “So as soon as I heard it, I just rushed over here.”
“Well, I appreciate that, son.” He put a friendly hand on my back and guided me to stand in the shade, beneath a group of palm trees. Once we were out of the glare of the sun, he crossed his arms over his chest and eyed me with a combination of fondness and reproach.
“I can’t say that I much like what you did, with that pretty little wife of yours,” he started. “It sure shocked me. I might even say it turned my stomach. But that was before she explained it all to me.”
“She?”
Clarke raised an eyebrow. “Aubrey.”
“Aubrey?” I couldn’t believe it. Aubrey and John Clarke, having a little sit-down? No way.
“Yes, Aubrey. You did marry her, didn’t you?”
“Ah, yes. Yes I did.”
“And you’re still married to her, no?” Clarke spoke slowly, patiently, and with more than a little sarcasm.
“Well, ah—”
Clarke lifted his hand to cut me off. “I don’t need any more explanations. I just want to know if you love her. Be truthful to me, son.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times. I wanted to simply nod yes, but the moment called for more than that. I took a moment to think about what I wanted to say, and then faced him unflinchingly.
“You want to know if I love her. The short answer is: yes. Still, there’s more to it than that.” I took a breath and tried to compose my thoughts. “You know me, John, at least where football is concerned. You know how much I love the sport. My entire life has been about it. But there was a woman, years ago, who made me want something more than just football in my life. Her name was Simone, and I fell in love with her. With her by my side, I thought I could do anything.”
He nodded, his gaze sympathetic.
“She fucked me over, though. She’d always been after my money, and I had been too stupid, too gullible to see it. After she cleaned me out and took off, I realized that everything about her and me had been fake. It sent me into a tailspin. I made some wrong choices after that.”
“You made a lot of wrong choices after that,” he observed.
I nodded in agreement. “I know. I wish I could take them back.”
“We all have those kinds of moments in our lives.”
“Yes we do.” I drew in another deep breath. It wasn’t easy, coming clean like this in front of Clarke. “As you know, I was on track to keep making those wrong choices. My wanting to scam you with a fake marriage was one of them.”
“A big one.”
I snorted a laugh that had absolutely no humor in it. “I’m sorry about the whole thing, John, but in a way, I’m glad for it, because it’s changed me. When this started, I didn’t mind the idea of a fake marriage so much, because everything in my life seemed to be a sham. Why not? I thought. One more phony thing isn’t going to make a difference. But then I met Aubrey, and I felt myself opening up. I felt the knife wound that Simone had left in me start to heal. Aubrey unlocked something inside of me, some part that knew how to love, and to hope--a part I thought had been buried forever.”
The emotion in my voice was almost embarrassing, but I kept going.
“The truth is, what I had before with Simone, and with other women, had been a sham. With Aubrey, it had always been real. And now that I’ve experienced that, what kind of idiot would I be to go back to fake? But I’ve fucked things up pretty badly.”
He sighed, then chuckled a little. “You have a habit of fucking things up, Chase. At least you’re learning from them. Honestly, that’s all I ask.”
“Tell me about Aubrey,” I urged. “What did she say to you?”
“She told me how much you loved football. And how that agent of yours screwed you.”
“Caifano. What a prick.”
He nodded. “She also told me that while your engagement might have been fake, your marriage was real. At least on her side. She said that by the time you slipped that ring on her finger, she’d fallen in love with you. It seems you two think alike.”
Abruptly I felt lightheaded. “She said that?”
“You mean you don’t know how much she loves you? You don’t feel it, deep in your gut?”
I looked away, my jaw working.
He slapped me on the shoulder. “The road to love is never smooth.”
I stood there for a moment longer, immobile, nearly stunned. Then, like a lightning bolt, the realization that I needed to make our marriage truly real hit me. “I gotta go.”
“Tell her I said hi,” he said with a smile. “In the meanwhile, I’d like to extend you an offer to play for the team next season. I know it’s late in the pre-season, but we need you, Chase.”
I stared at him with dawning hope. “What about Tillman?”
“He has a drug problem. He’s gonna be benched.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I would not kid you about something like this.”
My heart gave a giant thump, and then seemed to grow lighter in my chest. “I’m in.”
He lifted a cautionary finger. “I won’t be paying you as much this time around.”
“That’s fine. I’m in,” I said quickly.
He grinned. “Don’t you want to read the contract first?”
“No time for that. I have to get back to Grove.” I looked anxiously toward the clubhouse, and the parking lot that lay just beyond it. An image had formed in my mind, of beautiful green eyes filled with tears.
“Be here in two weeks for practice,” he said. “And make sure you bring that pretty wife of yours back with you.”
“Damned right I will,” I replied firmly, then spun on my heel and set off for the parking lot. As I jogged toward my car, I considered renting a Lear--I didn’t want to wait around for a commercial flight and all the delays that went with it. But then I checked through my options and I saw that a flight left that night for Tulsa, if I was willing to risk it as a standby.
I was willing to risk it!
I made it to my Porsche, hopped in, and then saw it: the letter Aubrey had mailed me weeks back. I’d stuffed it into the dashboard days ago. With my hands shaking a little, I grabbed it and ripped it open. I knew now that it wasn’t a Dear John letter.
I read it with my heart beating heavily in my chest. My attention zeroed in on the one thing she seemed most determined to keep from me:
I’ve done the stupidest
thing I could possibly do: I’ve fallen in love with Chase Wilder.
I let the letter drop to my thighs for a moment, thinking.
She loved me.
I refocused on the letter and read it again. Each word she’d written hammered into my thick skull the fact that I’d been a fool. All at once, I deeply regretted every second I’d wasted since our wedding night, every moment I’d been without her. What was I thinking? What had I done? And how could I prove to her that all along, I’d felt the same way, but we’d both been too scared and too stupid to admit it to each other?
I pulled out my phone. Picked out her name from my contacts list and let it ring. Just as quickly, though, I hung up. This wasn’t something that could be done long distance. I needed to see her face-to-face, to tell her how I felt. And I was going to bring my own letter with me, the one I’d written that day in Dr. Goswami’s office.
With that decision made, I started my Porsche and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving half the tires’ rubber on the asphalt. I had a million things to do, and a very short time in which to do them. My first step, though would be to call Dakota and get things set up. Feeling truly light-hearted for the first time in what seemed like forever, I got my sister on the phone and explained to her what I needed her to accomplish.
Chapter 24
Aubrey
“You look fantastic!” Dakota’s eyes widened with approval as I slid into the passenger seat of her car.
I murmured my thanks and smoothed the creases out of my dress, while she maneuvered the car down my twisting driveway.
Since I’d been back in Grove, I’d had no need for fancy clothes; my feet hadn’t been stuffed into such high heels for weeks. I glanced at the outrageously expensive black stilettos. The last time I’d worn these particular heels, I couldn’t help but remember Chase’s irrepressibly lustful smile; he’d commented on just how sexy he thought they were. But I could also remember, just as many times, he had commented on how sexy I was in plain old sweat pants, too.