The Game of Love: (BWWM Romance)

by K. Alex Walker

  “And who’s that?”

  “Emma Riley.”

  William’s eyes flicked over to him and Luke prayed that he wouldn’t call his bluff.

  “She still goes by Riley?” He slapped his hand against his thigh. “I’ll be damned. I would have never expected that.”

  Luke relaxed some and grabbed a wing. What the man lacked in beverage-making skills, he made up for with his talent on the grill.

  “I’m sure she’s still as beautiful as ever, even in her sixties,” William went on. “Got the eyes of a lynx. And the same big ol’ feet.”

  Luke quickly wiped his fingers and reached for his laptop. “So, how did you two meet?”

  Austin threw a touchdown pass to Cason and William bellowed with excitement before answering. “Met her right here in Alabama, which is where I was born and raised. She worked in a restaurant at the time with her parents. I was twenty-eight, so she had to be around sixteen or so. She was born in Italy and her family came here to open their restaurant, which made no sense to me since Italians always went to New York, but if they hadn’t come here, I would have never met her.”

  Luke typed the notes on his computer. “So, what made you decide to move to Yearwood?” he asked.

  “That was Emma.” William grabbed another wing. “She hated Alabama. Em’s more of the free-spirited, liberal type. A product of the sixties. Alabama was too backwoods for her. ‘Antiquated’ was the word she’d used. Where she really wanted to go was New York, but I couldn’t take that fast-life type of stuff, so we decided on North Carolina and ended up settling in Yearwood, strangely enough. That place is so small, you probably can’t even find it on a map.”

  Luke decided not to skirt around his real reason for visiting any longer. “So, Mr. Riley, why is it that Austin makes it seem like you’re dead? Why the fallout?”

  A defender crushed into Austin on the screen, and he fell onto his back and remained still for a few seconds. William hopped up out of his seat and spewed profanities at the television. After the play was reviewed, the officials determined that the defender had led the tackle with his helmet and called the penalty against Pittsburgh. The call didn’t seem to appease William.

  “You see how they’re beating up my boy out there?” he argued. “Dirty players in Pennsylvania, I tell you. They’re trying to take him out because they know that Dallas will never win without him.”

  William flopped back down into the chair and downed some more lemonade.

  “God, that’s awful,” he finally admitted, looking over at Luke. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Luke, confused because the man had already had several sips of the beverage, wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

  “You asked me a question,” William continued. “Oh, that’s right; what happened between me and Austin.”

  He grabbed another wing and Luke waited until he finished munching so that he could continue. When the man didn’t, he cleared his throat.

  “So, what happened?” he prodded.

  “My past caught up to me,” William replied, and then abruptly got to his feet and disappeared down the dark hallway. Several minutes later he still hadn’t returned, and Luke tossed a glance towards the front door to make sure that Gus hadn’t found his way inside.

  He dared another sip of the lemonade and popped a wing into his mouth. Austin’s face appeared on the screen again but this time, he was smiling and chatting with Cason since Dallas was finally up by a touchdown.

  William’s heavy footsteps came trudging down the hall and he reappeared with an antique, brown-leather photo album in his hands. Taking his seat again, he kept the photo album in his lap and trained his attention back on the game.

  “What’d I miss?” he asked an even more confused Luke.

  “Nothing. Dallas is still up by a touchdown.”

  William nodded. “Good game, but my boy’s gonna win.”

  Luke’s eyes fell to the album. “What’s that?”

  William didn’t turn to look at him as he spoke. “It’s an old photo album. Don’t worry, I brought it out here for a reason. I’m just waiting for halftime before I show it to you.”

  Luke glanced at the game clock and realized that halftime was still seven minutes away, so he closed his laptop and leaned into the seat cushions. He didn’t really too much care for football, or any sport for that matter, which was why he hadn’t attended the game. His type of journalism was more along the lines of the gossip magazine, so unless a football player had arrived at the stadium with his mistress while his pregnant wife tried to barter a ticket at the gate, he wouldn’t be finding any stories there.

  He glanced around the small house again. Austin was worth millions. Between the explosive contract that he’d signed two years prior that had over fifty-five million dollars in guaranteed money, and his endorsement deals and investments, he was set for life. Therefore, it made no sense that his father would be living the way that he was, unless something major had caused the family separation.

  The clock slowly ticked down to zero, and Dallas jogged back into the locker room only up by four points with the field goal that Pittsburgh kicked right before the time expired. Luke anxiously tapped his foot as he waited for William to explain why he’d brought out the album, while William lifted the remote to mute the television.

  “I don’t too much care for halftime,” he declared. Then he looked down at the album. “I’m guessing you’re itching to find out what’s inside here, aren’t you?”

  “You could say that,” Luke answered.

  “Before we go traveling down memory lane, I do want to say something first,” William began, tracing the grooves in the leather. “No matter what you see in these pictures, one of the hardest things that I had to come to terms with was the fact that my son is smarter than I am. Even at the age of seven, he was already a better man than I was, but I was too stubborn to see it. I was set in my ways and let my roots control me.”

  Luke reopened his laptop. “So, what does that mean? Your roots controlling you?”

  “I had a hard time accepting change.”

  “Which means?”

  William blew out an exasperated sigh. “My ex-wife has a best friend named Caroline Hayes. Those two women became fast friends within minutes of us settling in Yearwood. They even had babies the same year. Em had Austin and Caroline had a daughter named Sommer. Sommer Hayes. Now Sommer, she was a hotheaded little thing and even though I didn’t want to admit it back then, she was as cute as a button. The first time my son laid his eyes on Sommer, he was hooked.”

  He paused, waiting for Luke to catch up.

  “Hooked how?” Luke asked.

  “Smitten,” William cried out. “In love. He’s been throwing ga-ga eyes at that girl ever since he could say ‘ga-ga,’ and I didn’t like that.”

  Confused, Luke frowned. “Why not? Was there something wrong with Sommer?”

  William opened the album and scraped his hand across the plastic covering the pictures to remove a layer of dust, and Luke steadied the laptop as he walked over to the chair.

  The first picture Luke saw was one of Austin as a chubby baby with bright eyes and dark hair. William smiled at the photo and ran his finger over baby Austin’s cheek.

  “Ask me that question years ago, and I’d tell you that Sommer was just plain born wrong,” William answered. “But no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop Austin from staring at her. At the bakery. After school. During downtown events. All the damn time. Then his friends Kyle and Darrell started coming around and that, well that just made me more upset.”

  William flipped a few more pages, showcasing pictures of Austin and Arielle at different stages of life, as well as younger versions of him and Emma. He pointed at a little girl in pink overalls sitting on a beach next to Austin.

  “He’s two years old here,” William explained. “See this little girl sitting next to him? That’s Sommer.”

  As Luke looked at the dark complexion of the charming litt
le girl, he began to understand.

  The next page held a series of photos, one of which was face down. William’s hand hovered over the overturned photo, and his fingers trembled.

  “Before I turn this over, I want to know why you’re writing about my boy,” he demanded.

  Luke, caught off-guard, nearly dropped the laptop.

  “Because Austin’s a big deal right now,” he partially lied. “I’m writing a piece on his family and thought that interviewing Arielle and Emma were it. Then Emma told me that you were still alive and out here in Alabama. I figured that maybe, with all these years in the shadows, you’d want to get your voice heard. Make amends with your son so that he could stop having people think that you’d died.”

  William swallowed to clear a lump of emotion in his throat. “I do want that,” he admitted. “And while I don’t think that I can be a regular father to him, I would still like the opportunity to apologize for the hell I caused.”

  Luke placed a hand on William’s shoulder, but then quickly removed it when William shot him a look.

  William’s fingers went to the edge of the photo and when he flipped it over, Luke’s heart came to a screeching halt. He couldn’t and didn’t want to believe what he was seeing, but that one photo suddenly made everything else make sense.

  “I’m not proud of it,” William remorsefully expressed, “but that’s who I was for a good part of my life. That’s who I tried to turn Austin into.”

  Loud cheers signaled that the players were returning to the field. William unmuted the TV, stood, and set the album on the chair.

  “This lemonade is terrible. Want a beer?” he asked.

  Tearing his gaze away from the photo, Luke met his eyes. “Beer? Yeah. Sure.”

  As William disappeared into the kitchen, Luke pulled out his phone and snapped a few quick images of the photo. He quickly put the phone away as William returned, and graciously accepted the beer before returning to his seat. William closed the album and applauded as he stared at the TV.

  “Come on, son. You can do this,” he cheered.

  Luke sat back and watched the second half, throwing in intermittent questions which William half-heartedly answered. Although the photo had given him his entire story, he knew that leaving too soon would only arouse William’s suspicions about the true intent of his story about Austin. As he thought about Gus on the porch, the last thing he’d needed was a dog taking a bite out of his new CK slacks.

  Though games usually didn’t hold his interest past the first quarter, Luke found that he was fully engrossed in this one. However, he couldn’t tell if his excitement was because of the exclusive story that he was going to print, or if it had actually just been an extremely good game.

  In the last few seconds, William nearly bellowed the roof off of the house as Austin tossed a game-winning touchdown to Cason. Luke even found himself jumping up and down with him, as well as slapping their hands together in jubilant high-fives.

  William had only a few minutes to calm down before he was roaring again when Austin was named MVP. Then both men froze in surprise as Austin walked up for his speech with a baby in his arms. William glanced over at Luke.

  “Is that his baby?” he asked.

  Austin’s announcement for the crowd to meet his daughter answered William’s question before Luke had a chance to fumble for a response.

  William crumpled into his chair. “You said your name was Luke, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Luke, I know you’re just a reporter, but I’d like it if you did whatever you could to get me back in my boy’s life. I can’t make up for what I did to him, but maybe he’ll let me be in my grandbaby’s life. Maybe they both will. He and Arielle.”

  Luke couldn’t tear his eyes away from the little girl. Austin had never mentioned seeing anyone ever since Jessica Costa, which was unusual since that relationship had been highly visual and public. Had Austin hidden this new woman out of shame? Would anybody be able to deny it after his article was released?

  “Of course, sir,” Luke finally answered. “I’ll do everything in my power to give this story the platform it deserves.”

  *****

  Austin, still on a high from the win, entered the hotel room with a sleepy Olivia in his arms and his equally tired mother trailing behind him.

  “Sweetie, I’m going to lay down for a bit,” she informed him, reaching up to peck him on the cheek and blowing a few kisses against Olivia’s cheek. “I’ll see you two in the morning.”

  Then she left the suite and dragged her feet to her room the next floor down.

  Sommer hadn’t shown up on the field even after he’d given his speech, but five minutes before Austin had decided that he would send a SWAT team to search for her, she’d texted his mother to let her know that an emergency had come up, and that she’d gone back to the room.

  As he walked throughout the suite, he never liked the feeling he got whenever everything inside looked undisturbed. Although he knew that Sommer would never leave him and Olivia behind, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that she would eventually declare this life too much for her and run back to Yearwood, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of his chest that no one else would ever be able to fill. He’d even wondered if she’d somehow figured out that he was going to propose to her on national TV and had effectively avoided it. However, little did she know, it was still going to happen. She was still going to be his wife.

  “Sommer, are you in here?” he called.

  “I’m in the room,” she answered. When she appeared in the bedroom doorway, he could immediately tell that something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  “Baby, what is it?” he asked, crossing the room so he could examine her face closer. She smiled, which seemed more like a struggle than a gesture, and reached for Olivia.

  “Nothing’s wrong, babe. Here, I’ll feed Livvie and put her down so you can get ready for bed. You’ve had quite the day.”

  He shook his head. “I already fed and changed her, so how about you rest while I give her a bath and put her in the crib? Then, when I get back, you’ll tell me what’s bothering you.”

  She tried another smile, this one even more pitiful than the last. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Order up some room service.” He kissed the top of her head. “Get me something too. I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared with Olivia, and Sommer looked over the room service menu but was unable to focus on anything written on the sheet. Although her uncle hadn’t said much, she’d still understood plenty: her mother needed her. She had to go home. Unfortunately, she knew that if she told Austin that she had to go, he’d want to go with her even though he had weeks of TV appearances and events planned that she didn’t want to interfere with. Plus, she wasn’t sure what kind of state her mother was in and a part of her wanted to deal with witnessing that alone. The people in Yearwood knew of her mother’s cancer, but none of them had actually seen what it could do to her.

  She finally decided on a New York Strip for Austin, and Salmon with Beurre Blanc sauce for her. When he returned, the food was in the process of being dropped off by a timid looking girl in her early twenties. When she looked up and saw Austin emerge, her face flushed and her gaze dashed over to Sommer.

  “Congratulations, Austin,” she said only a couple of decibels louder than a whisper.

  “Thank you,” he peered at her name tag, “Christina. I really appreciate it.”

  She blushed even deeper. “Olivia is your daughter?”

  Sommer realized that the question was being directed towards her. “Oh yes, she is. She’s our daughter.”

  “Cool. She’s gorgeous.”

  The girl lingered for a few seconds before walking back to the door. Just before she exited, she turned around. “One more thing. I’m mixed too. I have friends from all different backgrounds. My best friend, she’s Indian, but she’s from Trinidad. I just wanted to tell you that while I’ve always respected you, Aust
in, what you did tonight made me like you even more. You didn’t let anyone tell you who to love, so ignore all the bad things people are saying.”

  Before Sommer had a chance to ask her what she was referring to, she was out the door and down the hall.

  “What bad things are people saying?” she asked, eyes landing on Austin.

  “You’re not changing the subject.”

  “I’m fine, Austin.”

  “I’m not asking you about how you look,” he teased. “I’m asking what’s got you looking so down. Did you really want Pittsburgh to win?”

  She tried another smile, but he could still see the sadness hidden behind the gesture.

  Frustrated, he pushed the food to the side, tugged her up out of the chair, and led her to the balcony. He flopped down into one of the padded wicker chairs and pulled her onto his lap.

  “We’re just going to leave the food in there like that?” she asked.

  “No, we’re going to go back and eat it,” he assured. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m so hungry I can barely see straight, but I want to get to the bottom of this first. Now, talk to me.”

  Sommer sighed, and he knew he had her.

  “Something’s up with Mom,” she revealed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Uncle Reese called and said that she collapsed. Her cancer metastasized and they’re currently going over more aggressive treatment options.”

  “So, she’s in the hospital?”

  Sommer blinked back tears. “Uncle Reese took her to the emergency room earlier today. They were watching the game at the café when it happened.”

  Austin pulled her closer. “Wow, baby. I’m sorry to hear about all of this. Do you want to fly out tonight or in the morning?”

  Sommer closed her eyes and willed herself to enjoy the comfort that his embrace was currently bringing her. If she didn’t, the minute she stepped foot in Yearwood, she knew she’d immediately regret not doing so.

  “I already talked to Walt. He switched our tickets. Mine and Livvie’s. We’re going to North Carolina in the morning instead of Texas.”