Hail Mary: A Second Chances Sports Romance (Gridiron Love Book 1)

by Vanessa Fox

  Then he smiles slyly. "Ah, I get it though. You're still gonna get some on the side, huh?"

  Kade's cheeks turn a shade of red. "No way, man," he says, laughing.

  "Yeah, I know that look! I can see it in your eyes! Guys like you and me, it's in our blood. We just love kitty cats, if you know what I mean. A big variety of kitty cats."

  The audience simultaneously laughs and groans.

  He glares at them. "What?! You guys don't believe I'm a ladies man? Look, I may not be as handsome as this guy, or as talented, or smart, or... anything, for that matter. But I can still get it."

  He leans in close to Kade from his seat at the desk. "Look, if you ever need an alibi, you've got my number."

  Kade chuckles politely. "Thanks."

  Eric looks out at the audience. "See, ladies? You've still got a chance!"

  That's it. I've had enough.

  I get up and start to march back to my room.

  "Willow? Where are you going?" Katie calls out.

  "I'm done with this."

  I don't mean to slam the door behind me, but my arm yanks it with a little too much force, and the apartment shakes.

  I collapse on to my bed, my head swimming.

  My heart is racing. I have a stomach ache. My head hurts.

  Katie knocks on the door a moment later. "Willow, come back out. You know they're not being serious. It's just witty banter."

  "It's okay, Katie, I'm fine," I lie. "I just want to go to sleep. I've got work early in the morning."

  "All right then," Katie sighs. She doesn't try to hide the disappointment in her voice.

  Witty banter aside, I can't stomach it.

  I know these conversations are rehearsed beforehand. I know Kade must have okay-ed these topics of discussion. And I'm furious that he thinks it's okay to not only joke about our relationship, but to joke about cheating on me. Kade didn't appear to be in any hurry to deny Eric's insinuations. He didn't put his foot down. He didn't defend himself. He just went along with it, and laughed, like this is all one big joke to him.

  But most of all, I can't stand the blush of red in Kade's cheeks when Eric brought up cheating.

  Maybe it isn't just a joke to him. Maybe there's a hint of truth to it.

  And it kills me.

  Chapter 18

  Kade

  It's Saturday night, but I'm not doing my usual routine: staying in, drinking lots of water, eating a healthy dinner and going to bed early in preparation for a tough Sunday matchup. There is no game tomorrow, and it's another week until we play again. I know I'm in for a tough week of practice leading up to it, but for now, I'm celebrating with some of my teammates at Club Fresco. We're chilling in the VIP room, ordering the most expensive drinks and basically acting like ballers.

  The club is jumping, full of throngs of people, pink and purple strobe lights pulsing to the heavy beats of popular r&b and hip hop tracks.

  I'm a sucker for a good party and a raucous night on the town, but I can't say I'm really feeling it tonight. I wish I was having as much fun as Marcus, who's already a half a bottle deep into Hennessey and grinding against some really hot, barely-dressed fan girls. Or Damien, my wide receiver, who's hooting and hollering, popping champagne bottles and pouring the sudsy drinks all over himself and the cleavage of multiple women.

  I'm keeping a smile on my face as I sip Bacardi. But it's forced.

  Jamal, the heaviest linebacker on the team, wraps a thick arm around my shoulder and squeezes. "Hey man, what's up with you? This is supposed to be a good time, dawg! You're actin' like you at funeral or something."

  "I just have a lot on my mind," I sigh.

  "Woman troubles?"

  We share a look and he nods in understanding. "I get it. But hey— you can't let that get you down. You're the Alphas quarterback! You led us to 16-0. You're the man. No doubt you're gonna get Rookie of the Year. Just think about that— not some random pussy. There's enough of that to go around."

  I chuckle and nod, though I don't agree. I keep my accomplishments on my mind 24/7, no doubt about that. But it doesn't seem like enough. It doesn't seem meaningful. Not without Willow in my life. And all the "pussy" in the world couldn't make up for that.

  She's supposed to be here with me right now. I invited her out, but she turned me down, saying she has a headache. She was supposed to go to lunch with me two days ago, but had an excuse ready for that as well. She didn't even come to the children's hospital with me on Tuesday. She was "tired".

  Every time I try to ask her what's wrong, she deflects. She's practically been ghosting me since we won our last game, and I can't figure out why. Despite all the success in my career, I feel like a total loser when it comes to her. I feel like a chump. Does she just expect me to sit around and wait for her to figure it all out? Sit and wait, lingering, longing for her, praying that she'll finally throw me a bone, like a dog waiting impatiently all day long for their owner to come home from work?

  I'm embarrassed that a woman, any woman, can do this to me. But I guess Willow isn't just any woman.

  Jamal slowly and drunkenly stands to his feet and disappears into the crowd for a moment. When he comes back, he's got his arm wrapped around the tiny shoulders of a scantily clad Latina with long curly black hair and a skirt so short it leaves nothing to the imagination.

  "Yo, Kade, allow me to introduce Maria," his deep baritone voice drawls.

  Maria grins as she sits next to me, cozying up real close and sliding her arm into the crook of mine.

  I glance her up and down. She's a sexy little thing, with beautiful brown eyes and a huge rack bulging out of the top of her strapless, corset-like top. She looks like caramel candy and smells like hairspray and some sickly sweet perfume reminiscent of cotton candy and Starburst.

  She is Kade Hughes bait if I ever saw any. Normally, I'd be all over her. I wouldn't even hesitate. I'd do whatever it took to get those tight clothes on the floor: sweet talk her, use my charm and cheeky smile to get her drooling for me and ready to drop to her knees. Chances are, I wouldn't even have to make an effort. Simply being Kade Hughes would be enough to get her pink gleaming lips enthusiastically wrapped around my throbbing cock.

  But this isn't "normal" circumstances. Right now my cock feels like it belongs to a 65 year old grandpa on a Viagra commercial. I feel no stirring in my loins— no guilty thoughts or fantasies playing out in my mind. All I can think about is everything she lacks, because she's not Willow.

  I don't want some fun-for-a-night club floozy. I want to see Willow's naturally beautiful pale face, her deep blue eyes gazing into my own. I want to see her cheeks blush a deep bloom of red. I want to see her bite her bottom lip. I want to see her clad in white panties, wearing my over-sized t-shirt as she puts on a pot of coffee in the morning. I want to see her cock her head and give me an admonishing look when she catches me staring at her ass.

  "Honey? You wanna get out of here?" Maria's vaguely accented voice asks, leaning close to my ear.

  Her hand starts to inch up my thigh.

  I move her hand and look her square in the eyes. "It was nice to meet you, Maria. Unfortunately, I gotta get going."

  Her face falls in disappointment.

  I grin as I lean in close and point to the corner of the room where my safety is quietly lounging, bobbing his head to the music. "Why don't you keep Trey company?"

  She nods and moves over to him. I get up and start to walk out, but Jamal catches me by the arm. "Where you goin'?"

  "What can I say? I'm pussy-whipped," I say with a cocky grin.

  Jamal lets out an exasperated "pssscch" as I head out. "You're hopeless," I hear him remark.

  —

  Half an hour later, I'm at Willow's apartment, buzzing to be let in from the ground floor. My phone buzzes with a text: "I'm sleeping". I reply with "Just give me five minutes".

  It feels like an eternity. I'm starting to reel in disbelief that she would just ignore me like this, and send me away without so much
as a hello. Sure, it may be 1AM in the morning, but she's my goddamned girlfriend! Or at least I thought she was.

  I breathe a sigh of relief when she finally buzzes me in.

  I'm at her door in an instant. She opens it quietly before I have a chance to knock.

  "Shh, Katie's sleeping," she whispers. She doesn't even look me in the eye. I push past her into the apartment and cock my head towards her bedroom.

  "I'm not up for a booty call, Kade," she sighs.

  "That's not why I'm here. I just want to talk to you."

  She follows me reluctantly into the bedroom. I sit on her bed and she stands by the door, her arms crossed. She's wearing a light pink tank top and gray pajama pants. Her hair is scooped back into a matted, messy bun. Her eyes are swollen and tired, and a little smeared from makeup she didn't wash off completely. I don't care about any of that— she looks adorable, and a sight for sore eyes. But there's a cloud looming over her, and over us, that doesn't allow me to enjoy her presence as much as I'd like to.

  "So?" she asks.

  "I want to know what happened between us."

  "Nothing happened," she shrugs.

  "Then why do I feel like we're strangers all of a sudden? We've barely spoken all week. You don't seem interested in spending time with me."

  "I've been busy, Kade!" Her voice is fiercer than I expected. She's already defensive. "I know you have a busy, successful life, but so do I. I may not be a world-class athlete, I may not be on talk shows or hanging out with celebrities, but what I do still matters, and it's still important. I can't just drop everything to follow you around like a puppy."

  I'm taken aback. "I never asked you to," I say. "I just figured you'd be a little more enthusiastic about me— about us. But this week it seems you're looking for any excuse to avoid me."

  She just shakes her head.

  "I don't mind if you don't want to go to all these events. It's okay that you don't want to fly to LA on a whim. But at least show me that you still want this. At least give some kind of a sign. Because right now I just feel like I'm wasting my fucking time."

  She lets out a deep sigh. "Well, maybe you are."

  My heart stops.

  "Maybe I'm not cut out for this," she continues. "All of it. The limelight, the tabloids, the paparazzi. Seeing you on TV all hours of the day. It's just not... it's not for me. I'm not comfortable with it."

  I clench my jaw. My hands involuntarily curl into fists at my side. I want to tear my hair out. I want to jump up and scream. But what can I say? She's not cut out for my lifestyle. Fair enough.

  "I guess I just figured our bond was stronger than that," I say, my tone clipped, trying hard to stay calm despite the storm brewing inside me. "I thought the circumstances wouldn't matter."

  "I thought so too," she says. "I thought a lot of things."

  "What things?"

  The look in her eyes is pained. There is something she's holding back. Something she doesn't want to tell me.

  I stand up and grip her arm firmly. "What things?"

  "I thought you'd changed. I thought you matured. I thought you were different than you were in high school."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I know you're a cheater, Kade. A serial cheater. It's fine, it is what it is. Some men are like that. They can't help it. But I can."

  "What?! Why would you think that? Who told you that?"

  "It doesn't matter," she tries to shake out of my grip.

  "Yes, it absolutely matters!" I growl fiercely.

  "Shh, keep your voice down!" She yanks her arm away from me. "It doesn't matter, Kade. Of course you'll try to defend yourself. And hell, maybe you're right. But I can't take the chance. I can't gamble on a 'maybe', on a 'hopefully'. I have to protect myself."

  I'm completely blindsided. I have no idea what the hell she's talking about. I have no idea who's gotten into her ear.

  "Don't do this, Willow," I shake my head desperately. "Why the hell would you believe others over me? You know how many bullshit rumors and tabloids are out there? People thrive off that shit. It doesn't make it true!"

  "It was true when Samantha did it!" She shoots back. "They're not always wrong. Almost every rumor is based on a little bit of truth."

  "I can't believe what I'm hearing."

  "Do you know how much you fucked me up the first time we went through all of this?" she asks fiercely. "How many nights I spent crying myself to sleep? How hard I had to work to get over you? Do you know how hard it is, to this day, for me to trust men? To trust people in general?"

  All I can do is scoff, even though I know it makes her angrier. "And for what?" I shoot back. "Because you immediately judged a situation, out of context, and refused to listen to me when I tried to explain?"

  "Sure, 'out of context'," she air quotes. "I'm sorry, what's out of context about seeing you with your tongue down another girl's throat?"

  "I thought I explained everything to you already," I say, exasperated. "She was drunk. She kissed me. I was trying to shove her off of me."

  "It didn't look like you were in any hurry," Willow remarks. "You only panicked when you saw I was standing there."

  I shake my head. "That's not true. That's not true at all."

  "It doesn't matter," she says. "It's in the past. I'm over it. But I'm not going to willingly place myself in a situation where there's a good chance it may happen again."

  "It won't happen again! I love you, Willow. You, and you alone."

  Her eyes widen and in the dim light of her bedside lamp, I can see they're glimmering with tears.

  "You've barely even given me a chance," I plead. "You've barely even dipped your toes in the water. Give me a chance to prove to you how much I love you, how devoted I am to you, so you won't have to take my word for it."

  She stands there, pondering, her face pained. She bites her bottom lip. "I don't know if I can," she says quietly.

  My jaw clenches. My face hardens. My heart hardens along with it. "You know, this was never about seeing me with some girl. That was just the excuse. The fact is, you've never been able to trust me. You've never fully opened yourself up to me, opened yourself up to my world. You've never let me in. Why? I don't know. Because I'm a jock. I'm an athlete. I value different things than you do, and that scares you. I embody a lot of things that you look down on. You think you're better than me. You always have."

  Willow scoffs and rolls her eyes.

  I realize I may be going overboard with this, but it feels damn good to let it out. "You're so condescending, so snobby. Tell me, who was it that received the acceptance letter from Harvard and sat on it for weeks? Who was it who lied, who deflected whenever the topic came up? Talk about being deceptive, Willow."

  I start to leave, but then turn around because I have more to say, more emotions that are begging to be poured out. "You know, I would've been fine with you going to Harvard, if you'd just told me to begin with. We could've made it work. I was willing to do anything for you. Anything. But you didn't tell me. You looked me in the eyes and smiled and made it seem like you were headed to Georgia U all along. How am I supposed to react to that? How is that supposed to make me feel?"

  The tears are starting to spill over, running down her reddened cheeks. "I don't know..." she whispers. "I was scared. I didn't know what to do."

  "So you get a free pass on being young, foolish and naive back then, but I don't? You get to make mistakes, but I don't?"

  She shakes her head. "Of course not."

  She starts to cry. There's an intense, instinctual urge for me to step closer to her, wrap her up in my arms and kiss her tears away. But my soft spot has hardened. I'm beginning to see a little more clearly now. My heart still wants her, but logically I know she's not the one. She can't be. Because if two people are truly meant to be together, it shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be a constant struggle, full of doubt and uncertainty. It shouldn't be a constant battle for me to prove myself to her. A battle I'll never win. I'll
always come up short. I see that now.

  I decide to tell her as much. "You're right, Willow. Being with me is taking a risk. It's like playing Russian Roulette. It might work out fine, but it could also end in disaster. But the thing is, you're not the only one playing. I am too. And if this is what I have to look forward to— all of this struggle, all of this anguish... then I might as well put the gun down and get the hell away before I blow my brains out."

  Her jaw drops, her bottom lip quivering.

  I turn and leave quickly. A part of me wants her to call out for me, to chase me, take my hand and pull me back into her room, and try to make it work. But I'm kind of relieved when she doesn't.

  It takes everything in me not to slam the door as I step out.

  I take deep breaths as I march down the hallway and then the stairwell. This is a good thing, Kade, I tell myself. Now I can focus on what really matters. My career. My near-perfect rookie year. Winning these next two playoff games, and then winning the Gridiron Bowl. As I walk further and further away, I feel like I'm leaving a cloud of despair and anguish and complication behind me.

  I can finally close the book on this nagging chapter of my life. I'm walking away from the storm. The clouds are parting, and soon a ray of sunshine will beam down on me from above, with all the world watching as I make history.

  Chapter 19

  Willow

  I've spent the last week in a daze. Ever since Kade left my apartment that night, I've felt like a shell of a person. I'm listless. Apathetic. I'm not even really sad— I cried my eyes out the first couple days, but since then I've just felt like a robot, going through the motions of life. All the color has been drained out of my surroundings, and all I feel is gray.

  Logically, I know this feeling will pass eventually. I know I'll be fine. Time heals all wounds.

  I'm not the naive, immature eighteen-year-old girl convinced the world is ending because she broke up with her boyfriend. No, the world goes on. The sun rises again.

  I'll keep living my life, working on my career, hanging out with Katie and hopefully making new friends. Eventually I'll meet another man who gives me butterflies and we'll hit it off. I'll get married and have kids, spend my time balancing work with changing diapers and attending PTA meetings, and years from now, Kade will be nothing more than a distant memory. Maybe I'll be able to move past the pain. Joke about it with Katie. I'll have an interesting tidbit to tell people: "I used to date a professional quarterback" and they'll respond with ooo's and aaa's. Though, if Kade happens to have a long and successful career, I'm never going to watch a football game again. I'll stay far away from ESPN. In fact, I'll probably go without television entirely just to be safe.