Even the Score

by Beth Ehemann

  As soon as she said that, I stopped jumping right then and there. No way was I going to beat her.

  “What? Wait. What are you doing? Are you giving up?”

  Not only did I give up, I fell backward into a spread-eagle position on the trampoline as my chest heaved up and down for air.

  “You’re giving up? I win! I win!” She cheered as she continued jumping, pumping her arms up and down.

  I lay on the trampoline, watching her celebration out of the corner of my eye, thinking about how I’d technically just lost, but I’d spent the last hour watching her jump on a trampoline, so in reality . . . I was the winner.

  CHAPTER 30

  Danicka

  After we finished extreme trampolining, we decided to head to the farmers’ market, which was right down the street. Becca held my hand the whole time, but really, I was the one holding hers. Andy and I even snuck in a quick snuggle or two, and it felt amazing. I’d been pretty much alone my whole life, but after spending some time with Andy’s family, I definitely felt a different pull inside of me. The pull for something more.

  We grabbed tons of fresh veggies to cook for dinner, along with some kettle corn and triple-berry jam. As we passed a white tent on the way out, we all turned simultaneously as the smell of cinnamon drifted into our noses.

  “Dad, look!” Logan pointed and ran over. Andy, Becca, and I followed.

  A sweet older man was sitting on a stool off to the side, a small smile on his face as he watched Logan stare down at his table full of nuts, fudge, and donuts.

  “See anything you like, young man?” he asked. “Would you like to try something?”

  Logan nodded excitedly. “Can I please try one of these?” He pointed toward the plate full of little donut pieces with toothpicks stuck in them.

  “Of course.” He stood and walked over toward us. “Maybe your mom, dad, and sister want one, too?”

  “Oh, she’s not my mom,” Logan corrected him as he picked up a piece of donut and popped it in his mouth. “Wow. Dad. We have to get these for breakfast tomorrow.”

  “They’re made with real apple cider,” the old man said proudly.

  “Really?” I was impressed. “And you make all of this by yourself, or do you have a little store?”

  “Nope.” He shook his head, his eyes turning a little sad. “Just me. I cook everything on the weekends and go to different farmers’ markets during the week. I used to do it all with my wife, but she passed last year.”

  My heart sank. “I’m so sorry,” I said sincerely, wanting to leap over the table and hug him.

  “I’m sorry, too. She was my best friend.” He was quiet for a minute as he stared down at his table, but I knew his mind was elsewhere. “You know, it’s deceiving how fast time goes. When we got married, I felt like we had our whole lives ahead of us and all the time in the world to do what we wanted, but now that she’s gone, I realized it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.”

  An uncomfortable pinch in my throat made me swallow as I digested his words.

  “Anyway.” He cleared his throat and smiled up at us with chubby, rosy cheeks. “Did you guys want to try anything?”

  “I’m going to steal one of these donut bites. They look delicious.” I dropped the sugary donut on my tongue and closed my eyes. It was amazing. You couldn’t taste the apple cider much, but I imagined that’s what made it so tasty. That and the cinnamon and sugar.

  “Wow. That is insanely good,” I said to Andy before turning back to the man. “We’ll take a dozen donuts and whatever else these guys want. Becca, Logan . . . why don’t use guys pick out a few things?”

  “I don’t want to spoil them too much,” Andy said, shaking his head.

  “You don’t, but I do.” I stuck my tongue out at him playfully as I pulled my wallet from my purse. A few minutes later, we paid the sweet man and walked away with a dozen donuts, half a pound of cinnamon cashews, and four squares of mint fudge.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m exhausted. Let’s head home,” Andy said as we walked to the car. On the way home, I kept thinking about what the man said, his words playing over and over like a record in my ears. I peeked back at Becca, who fell asleep with her mouth open, leaning against the headrest of her booster seat. After I watched her for a couple of seconds, my eyes slid to Logan, who was staring out the window.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” I said to him.

  He turned toward me, crinkling his face in confusion. “Huh?”

  “Penny for your thoughts,” I repeated. “It means I’ll give you a penny if you tell me what you’re thinking about.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andy lift his chin, looking at Logan in his rearview mirror.

  “I don’t know.” Logan shrugged. “I’m not really thinking about anything. I’m just . . . happy.” He turned back to the window and rested his chin on his fist, a content smile on his lips.

  We cooked supersized salads for dinner with all of our yummy farmers’ market finds. After we finished eating, I told Andy I’d clean the kitchen while he ran the kids through the shower and put them in bed. The dishwasher was running, the counters were clear, and I’d swept the corners of the floor, but Andy was still upstairs with the kids. I decided that I wanted to get more comfortable, so I crept down the hall to my room and put on cozy sweats and an oversize T-shirt. When I came back into the kitchen, Becca was sitting at the island, waiting for me.

  “What’s up, kiddo?”

  “I wanted to say good night to you.” She held her arms out straight for a hug.

  I walked over and picked her up off the stool, squeezing tight. “I had fun with you today.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she murmured in a soft, sleepy tone against my shoulder.

  “Did you have fun?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Are you falling asleep?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Falling?” Andy whispered loudly, laughing as he came into the room. “She’s gone.”

  “That was fast.” I rocked her back and forth, taking a deep breath of her hair. She smelled like oranges and vanilla, and I made a mental note to sneak upstairs tomorrow and see what kind of shampoo she used.

  “Once she’s done, she’s done. She’ll fall asleep anywhere, so you have to get her into bed the instant she starts complaining about being tired.” He laughed again, walking over and switching her into his arms so he could carry her back upstairs and put her in bed. I watched Andy walk away, his strong arms and broad shoulders carrying his sweet baby girl. He leaned down and kissed the side of her head just as he rounded the bottom of the staircase. No guy had ever given me butterflies the way he did.

  I was curled up on the couch with the remote in my hand when he came back down a couple of minutes later.

  “All right, I’m a grown man,” he announced as he walked over to the couch and sat down next to me. “Mature enough to pay up on a bet when I lose. What are we watching?”

  My head fell back against the couch, and I rolled my eyes, turning my face toward him. “Confession time. I hate chick flicks. They bore the hell out of me. I’d much rather watch SportsCenter and see how my athletes did today.”

  “Seriously?” His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Score!”

  We were quiet for a little while, both staring at the TV as they did the top ten plays of the day. None of my athletes did anything spectacular, but one of Andy’s baseball players hit two home runs. He fist-pumped the air as we watched the replay. After the show was over and they went to commercial, I clicked the button on the remote to look at the guide.

  “I’m sorry about Becca,” Andy said suddenly.

  My eyes shifted over to him. “Becca? Where did that come from?”

  He shrugged and lifted his feet onto the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles. “She’s been all over you since you got here, and I feel bad. I’m sure you weren’t expecting that.”

  I shrugged. “Andy, I wasn’t expecting any of this. A wee
k ago, I was sitting on the couch in my own house watching SportsCenter with Roxy on my lap. Now I’m here. Everything has happened so damn fast, and I’m just thankful that you’ve been there for me. Besides, I needed a new sidekick. Becca’s great. I love hanging out with her.”

  He nodded as his eyes dropped to his lap. Something else was definitely on his mind. “Now that you’re here, I can definitely see how much she misses having a mom.”

  A little twinge pulled in my stomach at the mention of the m-word, but I didn’t want to talk about me right then.

  “Okay.” I pulled my knee up onto the couch and turned to face him. “You opened the door, so I’m going in. What’s up with her? And you? I’m not gonna lie, it’s a weird situation.”

  “It’s very weird. And overwhelming at times.”

  “What happened? Like . . . why did you divorce?”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “It’s a long story, but I’ll give you the condensed version. When Brody started dating his now wife, Kacie, Blaire was mean to her for absolutely no reason. And I mean . . . cruel. She almost broke them up, just for sport. Anyway, we had a talk, and she swore she’d stop meddling in people’s lives, but she didn’t. If anything she got worse, and after I found out everything that went down and the dust settled, I started to take a long, hard look at our marriage and how she’d been all those years. She was never a nice person, but I did my best to keep the kids and myself out of her way and just tolerated it. I decided that was no way to live, so I pulled the plug. That was it.”

  My eyes danced around his face while I took a second to ingest everything he’d just said. One thing I didn’t understand, though. I pulled my brows in together and tilted my head slightly. “Okay, but what made you even fall in love with her in the first place? She doesn’t sound like she was ever very lovable.”

  “We started dating in college. Back then, she had a zest for life and talked about all these things she was going to do after graduation. She wanted to start a clothing line and be a high-end fashion designer. I was enamored with her, or with who I thought she was going to be. I couldn’t wait to see what she was going to do with her future . . .” He trailed off.

  “And . . . ?” I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy.

  “And . . .” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Then right before graduation, she told me she was pregnant.”

  My eyes bulged and my mouth fell open. “Whoa! I had no idea.”

  “Most people don’t.” He shook his head, dropping his gaze down toward his lap. “Her filthy-rich parents freaked out and basically told us we had to get married. At the time I loved her enough, so we did.”

  “Wow,” I mumbled incredulously.

  “Coincidentally, the week after the wedding, she lost the baby.”

  “Holy shit.” I stared at him in disbelief. “You sound skeptical?”

  “I was. I am. She’s never actually admitted it, but the timing was suspicious to say the least.” He lifted his eyes to mine and licked his lips. “Brody was being scouted every single game by two to three new agents and getting offers at least once a week. It was obvious he was going to the pros. She was my girlfriend, so of course I shared that with her.”

  I nodded my head slowly as it all started to sink in. “And naturally once you became Brody’s agent and he started making crazy good money, you would, too.”

  “Yep. Her parents forced us to have the most over-the-top shotgun wedding ever, so she wasn’t pregnant very long, but she never showed me a test or anything. And the one time she was supposedly going to a doctor appointment, I asked her if I could come with, and she freaked. Accused me of not believing her and smothering her. I told her that wasn’t at all what I was doing, that I was just curious and wanted to go with, but she picked the fight anyway and stopped talking to me . . . until after the appointment.”

  My mind drifted to my first encounter with Blaire. I had only met her the one time in Andy’s kitchen, but with that meeting plus everything Ellie had told me, I wasn’t at all surprised that she was manipulative, I just had no idea she could be that manipulative. It sounded like she’d made making Andy’s life miserable her main hobby, and that made me sad for him. Sadder for Becca and Logan. “Wow. I’m so sorry you had to deal with all of that. Did you ever have good times?”

  Andy pulled his brows in tight and looked down at the couch. “In the beginning things weren’t all bad. Our first official date was at this little restaurant called Storybook Productions. It was a café that sold sandwiches, soups, salad, things like that, and every evening they had local authors come in and read parts of their books. Sometimes it was romance, sometimes crime dramas, sometimes science fiction. It was so easy to get lost in their stories. I always wound up buying the books after, except romance, that wasn’t my thing.” We both chuckled, and he continued, “In the beginning we went often, then slowed to once a month, and eventually we stopped altogether except for our anniversaries. Even once we were married, we always went there for dinner. On our third wedding anniversary, we went there like usual. The whole time, she was on her phone or staring off into space. At one point, she actually started filing her nails. She was so rude and I was embarrassed. After we left, she was pissed off and told me never to bring her there again. It was no longer good enough for her.”

  “Yikes.” She really was a monster.

  “Yeah, and I was bummed because while we could afford to have dinner wherever we wanted, that was our place. Money didn’t matter in there, at least not to me.”

  It was no secret that I liked to keep my emotions tucked away, safe from everyone else’s judgment, but I couldn’t imagine being as cold and uncaring as Blaire was. I thought once you got married and had kids, you were supposed to love them more than you did yourself? That you should put their needs and happiness above your own? Not only did Blaire not do those things, she actually took happiness away from the people she loved. She was some sick, well-dressed burglar of happiness.

  “Do you regret marrying her?”

  A smile grew slowly across his lips as he shook his head. “No, I don’t. First of all, I got the best parts of her in Logan and Becca, and for that, I’ll always be grateful. Second, I think every relationship teaches us something, and that one taught me that I’m made for marriage. I loved having inside jokes with someone. I loved creating traditions and memories and celebrating all the little things. I loved coming home at the end of the day to the same person. Blaire was the wrong person, but I look forward to that day when I start that all over with someone else. Someone better. Someone that loves me just as much as I love them.”

  That woman was a fucking moron who had a prince among men wrapped around her snobby, manicured little finger, and she flicked him off like a worthless bug.

  “What about you?” Andy asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

  His question caught me off guard. “What about me?”

  “Yeah. I’m assuming you’ve had relationships in the past. Anyone ever lie to you about being pregnant?” he asked with a laugh.

  “Ha-ha, funnyman. No, no one’s ever lied to me about being pregnant, and honestly . . . I haven’t had that many relationships. Not any good ones, at least.” I shrugged.

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t really know. My parents were teenagers when they had me, but my mom took off before I even turned one, so I was raised completely by my dad. We kinda grew up together, actually. He raised me to be super independent and never rely on anyone for anything. Every time I dated a guy, it was always the same thing. It would start out great, but eventually he’d get all macho and try to tuck me under his wing. Little did he know, that’s the worst thing to do with me. Instead of letting him, my reaction was to punch him in the gut and run away.”

  Andy’s mouth widened into a big smile, his eyes sparkling with laughter at my visual. “You know, I can actually picture you doing that.”

  “Eventually it just became easier to keep everyone away and concentra
te on my career. Less feelings and bullshit that way, ya know?”

  Andy’s nostrils flared as he inhaled loudly. “I do know. But . . . you’ve let me tuck you under my wing a few times. What does that mean?”

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve been all the way under your wing, but I’ve definitely let you pull me in closer than most.” Tension filled the space on the couch in between us. The same tension that I felt that night on the bench outside of the bar when I kissed him for the first time. “But the good news is I don’t have the urge to punch you in the gut, so that’s a bonus.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth, and I hadn’t even had a chance to laugh at my own joke when Andy leaned over, cupped my face, and crashed his lips against mine. Adrenaline shot through me, just like it had that night outside of the bar, but after all we’d gone through the last couple of weeks together, it was more intense. I reached up, placing my hands on his forearms as his mouth opened against mine.

  Every care I had in the world completely disintegrated as he moved closer, pressing his body against mine. At that moment I didn’t care about anything other than being with him. I needed this. I needed him.

  CHAPTER 31

  Andy

  Kissing Danicka was like throwing a penny into a wishing well, only instead of never seeing it again, you turn around and there’s a leprechaun standing there, handing you a fucking pot of gold. She kissed just as fiercely as she argued. Nothing with her was half-assed. Passion seeped out of her in everything she did, and being the lucky bastard on the receiving end of her intensity was amazing.

  I pulled my lips from hers and stood up, not taking my eyes off of her. Reaching down, I gently grabbed her wrists and tugged her to a stand as I tried to catch my breath. I wove my hand into her hair, gently pulling it from its ponytail. She stared up at me with parted lips as strands of her dark hair fell over the sides of her face. I felt carnal, animalistic. I wanted to pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and drag her back to my cave, but I also wanted to take things slow and enjoy every second with her.