The Playboy's Redemption

by Vanessa Miller

  Oh yeah, Shawn wanted to do something with Jules, all right. But he had been tricked by Paris and Lily, he wasn’t trying to go for his third strike so he told her, “I need to get let my knee heal… got to get back on the field and earn my paycheck.”

  “You’ve been on the injured list a lot this past year. What’s up with that?”

  Shawn hated when people asked about his injured status. It made him feel like a loser, because after signing a twenty million dollar contract, he had lost focus. The fight wasn’t in him anymore and he was losing his love for the game. At twenty-nine, Shawn was hoping to hang in there just two more years so he could fulfill his contract and then retire. He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. “You wanna watch a movie?”

  “Whatever, I’m just glad that you want to spend some time with me,” Jules said and leaned back against the couch again.

  He really didn’t want to spend time with Jules or any other woman who wasn’t Lily. But he had burned that bridge. He’d also hired a nanny to help him with Imani, so the past few days he’d had a lot of time on his hands. One day he would learn that trying to fill up his free time with indiscriminate women was not the answer. And maybe today was the day that he didn’t just bring his books to school, but actually opened them and learned something new.

  When the movie was over, Jules turned to Shawn and said, “Thanks for inviting me over. I always knew that you and I could be good together. I just had to sit back and wait on you to get over Lily.”

  “The thing is, you weren’t just sitting back waiting. You had a man, remember?” Shawn said.

  A look of sorrow crossed Jules’ lovely face as she said, “But that didn’t work out, now did it? And now we’re back together, so ‘all’s well that ends well’, is what I say.”

  He couldn’t let Jules believe that they were together, as in a couple. He put his head in his hand as he realized his mistake. Jules had always been clingy and quick to jump from one bed to the next. He looked at her, trying to figure the best way to end this, and then he simply decided on the truth. “The thing is, Jules, I haven’t really gotten over Lily yet. I still want her, but she doesn’t want me. So I called you over here tonight to try to get her off my mind. But it’s not working.”

  Jules eyes filled with a kind of pain he’d never noticed there before. She stood up and said, “Don’t call me again… not until you get her out of your system.”

  Shawn nodded and then watched as Jules walked away from him. Once she was gone he looked at his cell phone, wanting desperately to pick it up and call Lily to apologize. But everything in him, called him ten different kinds of fools for even thinking about doing something like that. Lily had wronged him. She needed to beg his forgiven, but instead she was angry because he had the nerve to call ‘em like he saw ‘em.

  But in some ways, Shawn also realized that the gold digging label didn’t fit on Lily. Because if she really just wanted his money, why hadn’t she married him and taken a nice chunk of his money in alimony? And why hadn’t she tried to get an increase in the child support payments that she’d been receiving for the past two years? Most of the athletes he knew who had children outside of wedlock, constantly complained about their child’s mother taking them back to court for cost of living increases. But Lily had never asked for anything like that. She lived in a modest home and saved a portion of her child support payments for Shawnee’s and little Isaiah’s college fund.

  Maybe he should apologize. He picked up his phone preparing to call when, Martha, his nanny walked into the room carrying Imani.

  “I think this little one wants to spend some time with her daddy,” Martha said.

  Shawn put down his phone and allowed Martha to place Imani in his arms. “She wouldn’t stop crying, huh?”

  “She’ll get used to me. It normally takes a while.”

  It hadn’t taken Imani any time at all to connect with Lily. As a matter of fact, he hardly remembered Imani crying much when Lily had her. Maybe his daughter knew a good thing when she saw it, too. Maybe it was just her dad who was a bit slow. Shawn looked down at Imani and started making cooing sounds. The baby smiled and Shawn found himself smiling as well. “What is Daddy going to do with you, pretty girl?”

  “I’ll go make her a bottle,” Martha said as she left the room.

  “I’m going to take you to a party and show you off to my entire family, that’s what I’m going to do,” Shawn told Imani as he thought about his father’s eighty-fifth birthday party. He would be leaving for Atlanta in two days. Joel Morrison was going to have a lot of questions for him; Shawn just hoped he was ready to provide answers to everything his dad would want an answer on.

  ***

  The gang was all there, and for the first time in the past two years, Shawn felt like a welcomed member of the Morrison family. The rift between him and Isaiah had been one of the hardest things Shawn had ever endured. He didn’t even want to be around his family once the truth was out, because he’d felt so ashamed of what he had done. But his father hadn’t taken sides. Shawn still remembered how his father approached him on the steps of the beach house in the Bahamas that Joel owned. Shawn had been sitting on the porch by himself when his father came to him.

  After all the drama about him sleeping with Tanya had blown up in his face, Shawn sat alone until Joel found him. He’d put his hand on Shawn’s shoulder and said, “I don’t have any rocks to throw at you.”

  “Dad, I knew it was wrong when I was doing it. But I just kept telling myself that it was no big deal because Isaiah had only been dating Tanya about a month when I had arrived home that summer.”

  Joel sat down next to Shawn and patted him on the leg. “I was young once, Son. I know how things can get out of hand.” Then he amended himself. “I’ve never slept with my brother’s girl or even a close friend’s girl for that matter, but I did my share of wrong doing before I gave my life to the Lord.”

  From the beach house porch, Shawn pointed towards the door, indicating the people inside the house and said, “They’re all treating me like a leper or something.”

  Joel laughed and patted Shawn on the shoulder as he stood up. “There are no lepers in my family, Son. God has cleansed you from the inside out; you just haven’t taken off your dirty clothes yet.” With that, Joel walked into the house humming as if all of his children’s dirty secrets hadn’t just been laid out at the dinner table.

  As Shawn thought back to that moment, he realized that his father truly didn’t have a care in the world, because Joel Morrison looked at his children through the eyes of God and he saw what was to be, not what was or is. “Let’s get this party started,” Shawn yelled as he entered the ballroom.

  Elaine ran to Shawn and hugged him. “Why do you always have to be late?”

  “Yeah,” Dee Dee agreed. “I’m supposed to be the only diva in this family. So you have to at least arrive before me.”

  Shawn laughed. “I will keep that in mind from now on. But I’m traveling with my kids this weekend. They tend to slow me down.”

  Elaine looked at the baby carrier in Shawn’s hand. “I was sorry to hear about your daughter’s mother, Shawn.”

  “I was out of the country or I would have rushed to your side,” Dee Dee explained.

  “Don’t worry about it. Isaiah came and helped me out; I’m good.”

  “Can I hold the baby?” Elaine asked.

  Shawn handed her the baby carrier. “Thanks, I need to go find Shawnee and little Isaiah; they took off the moment we got out of the car.”

  “I saw them in the movie room with Dad and Isaiah.”

  “What are they doing in there?” Shawn asked Dee Dee.

  “Dad is on a video conference with Eric and Linda. Since Linda is still on bed rest they can’t travel, but they wanted to wish Dad a happy birthday.”

  Shawn made his way to the theater. As he walked into the room, his sons were jumping up and down along with their cousin, Erin, as they screamed their hellos t
o Eric, Linda and Kivonna.

  “We wish you guys were here,” Erin said in her sweet little princess voice.

  “Me too, but we’re stuck in this boring old house,” Kivonna complained.

  “On that note, I guess we’ll let you get back to your party, Dad. And remember, we’ll all come to see you as soon as the baby gets here,” Eric said. His arm was around his wife and daughter and he looked like the happiest man on earth.

  Shawn wished his family was complete and that he could look that happy, even in the face of adversity. Eric had just lost an election and his wife’s pregnancy was uncertain from one moment to the next.

  But even Linda appeared to be at peace as she waved and said, “We will all see you soon, Daddy.”

  “Love you Linda girl, you take care of that new grandbaby of mine,” Joel said.

  “Will do,” Eric answered for Linda and then the screen went blank.

  “Call ‘em back, Pop-Pop,” Little Isaiah said as he grabbed his grandfather’s arm and tried to get him to operate the video conferencing equipment.

  “Not now, little man, we need to go back to the ballroom.” Joel stood up and turned and as he looked into the face of his youngest son, his eyes lit up. “I knew you had to be roaming around here somewhere when these two munchkins came into the theater room.”

  “We’re not munchkins, Granddad. We’re little boys,” Shawnee said.

  “That you are,” Joel agreed as he patted his grandson’s shoulder. “Come on everybody; let’s get back to the party.”

  They all began walking out of the room. Joel stopped in front of Shawn and gave him a hug. “I’m glad you came to see your old man.”

  “You know I wouldn’t miss your big day, Dad,” Shawn said as his eyes turned to Isaiah. They appeared uncomfortable with each other for a moment, but then Shawn remembered what Lily had said about God redeeming him to his brother. Shawn walked over to Isaiah and gave his big brother a bear hug. “Thanks for your help last week.”

  Isaiah playfully shoved Shawn. “Boy, you know I’d go to the ends of the earth to come see about you.”

  “I know it now,” Shawn said and was grateful for the meaning behind his words. Because Shawn knew that he truly did not deserve his brother’s forgiveness, but he was standing there hungrily receiving it anyway.

  As Joel walked out of the room, Isaiah lowered his voice as he said, “I just talked to Melvin a little while ago. He says that the information you and Lily gave the police has helped them narrow down a suspect.”

  “I’ll give him a call after the party,” Shawn said.

  The party went on for hours. Shawn could tell that his father was getting tired, so he asked, “Do you want to go lie down for a while?”

  “I think I should,” Joel agreed. “Walk me to my room, Son.”

  Shawn did as he was told. Once in Joel’s bedroom, he helped his father into bed and pulled the cover up for him. “Do you need anything else?” Shawn asked. Concern filled his eyes, because at that moment, Joel looked every bit of his eighty-five years.

  “I just want to talk to you for a minute. Is that all right?”

  Shawn wanted to say ‘no’, because he knew this wasn’t going to be a how’s-life-been-treating-you kind of talk. It was a come-to-Jesus talk and Shawn didn’t know if he had the energy to resist anymore. He sat down on the edge of his father’s bed. “What’s up?”

  “Why haven’t you been to see my accountant about setting up your foundation?”

  “Wow, no beating around the bush; you just get straight down to business, huh, Dad?”

  “At my age, I don’t have time to beat around the bush.” He grabbed Shawn’s hand and held onto it as he said, “You know that I lost three of my children and my first wife all in the same day, years before you were ever born.”

  Shawn nodded. He knew the story, although his father rarely talked about it. When they were kids, Joel would read all kinds of stories from the books in the Bible, however, the one story he stayed away from was in the book of Job. When Isaiah was a teenager and had spent his own time reading the Bible, he’d gathered all of them together and told them about what he’d read in the book of Job. “This book in the Bible sounds like what Dad went through. He’s our modern day Job,” Isaiah had declared.

  Shawn hadn’t thought much of it through the years, but now that he had children of his own, he knew for sure that if what had happened to his dad, had happened to him… Shawn probably would have cursed God and then blown his brains out. But not Joel Morrison. His father fascinated him.

  “My children were lost to me in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t help them, because I was on location shooting a film when they burned in the fire. But I’m here for you, Son.”

  “You’ve always been here for me, Dad. I just don’t understand why I need to give away money that should rightfully come to me as my inheritance.”

  “My first three children never received any monetary inheritance from me. You know what they received from me?”

  Shawn shook his head not knowing the answer, since his father didn’t dwell on this subject much.

  “Every day of my children’s short lives, I gave them Jesus. I helped them understand how important it is to love and serve God, and for that reason, I believe that I will see my children again in heaven.”

  “You taught us about God while we were growing up also, Dad. And I remember a verse in the Bible that said something about a man who didn’t provide for his family was worse than an infidel. I still haven’t figured out what an infidel is, but I’m sure you don’t want to be worse than it.”

  “Let me finish, Shawn. Okay, yes, money is nice to have. I don’t deny that I have enjoyed being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. But God blessed me with more money than I or my children could spend in a lifetime… and neither I nor you can take it with us when this life is over. So now let me ask you two simple questions that come straight out of the Bible: ‘what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul? And what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’”

  Shawn didn’t have an answer for his father.

  Joel continued on. “The blessing is in the giving, Son… I mean, you’ve made a good living for yourself. Don’t you have enough?”

  “See that’s what I mean.” Shawn stood up and began pacing the room. “Everybody thinks I have so much money and tons more on the way. But I don’t think any of you are paying attention to how many times I’ve been on the injured list this year and last. My back hurts like I don’t know what. I’ll need surgery on my knee in another year or so… my career is trending down. So, my money making years are almost over.”

  “That’s not true, Shawn. Even if you aren’t playing football, you’ve made such a name for yourself that you’ll be making money off of endorsements for years to come. The sky is the limit for you and all of the Morrison children. Don’t you see that?”

  Shawn sat back down as he asked, “Do you really think I can have a career outside of football?”

  “Of course I do. Son, I have prayed for all of my children. But over the years, I’ve prayed for you the most—because for some reason, you don’t seem to realize just how special you are.”

  Shawn closed his eyes and inhaled all of his father’s words. He needed to hear this, especially now. He hadn’t wanted to give that money away because it felt like giving his future away, but maybe his father was right, and Shawn would be able to handle his future all by himself. It was time for him to stop being selfish and join his family in giving the bonanza they had going on. “All right, Dad. I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you, Son. And remember, you can’t beat God giving. You do this, and all you’ll have to do is stand back and wait for God’s blessing to overtake you.”

  Shawn stood up. “Okay Dad, you get some rest. We can talk about this more later.”

  Shawn closed his father’s bedroom door and headed back to the party.

  CHAPTER TEN

  After puttin
g the kids to bed, Shawn kicked off his shoes, stretched across his bed and checked his missed calls. He had two missed calls from Lily, and one from Melvin Cotrell. He knew he should call Melvin first. Lily was only calling to find out how the boys were doing. He could give her that information after he talked to Melvin, but his fingers hit the call button on Lily’s number instead of Melvin’s anyway. He leaned back against the pillows and waited for her to answer.

  “Hey Shawn, how’s it going?” Lily asked.

  “It’s going. The boys are sleep though.”

  “At eleven at night, I would hope that you had already put them to bed.”

  “I just managed to get them to sleep. Those little monsters refused to go unless I gave them another slice of chocolate cake.”

  Lily laughed. “Those kids eat too many sweets. I wonder if I can pray away cavities.”

  “They’ll be fine. I’m the one you need to be praying for,” Shawn said.

  “Why you? What’s wrong?” The concern Lily had for Shawn’s wellbeing could be heard in her voice as she questioned him.

  “I think I just lost my mind.”

  “You just lost what?”

  “I’m serious, Lily. I might actually be crazy. I just had a talk with my father and he finally convinced me to give away a hundred million dollars.”

  “Oh my God!” Lily screamed through the phone. “I am so proud of you, Shawn. You haven’t lost your mind at all. You’re doing a wonderful thing.”

  Lily’s response surprised him and he said so. “I’m surprised that you’re happy about this.”

  “I don’t know why my happiness should surprise you.”

  “It should be obvious to you that if I had been able to convince my father to let me keep my inheritance rather than give it away, you would be collecting more child support each month.”

  Lily laughed again, but this time Shawn got the distinct impression that she was laughing at him.

  “I don’t need your money, Shawn. What you give me to take care of the boys is more than enough. Anything that we lack, trust and believe that God will make a way for us. But what you don’t seem to understand is that I know what it’s like to be poor and to not know where your next meal or a new pair of shoes will be coming from. So, I admire your father for teaching his children how to bless others who are in need.”