“Why the scare quotes around ‘Joe’?” Nick asks. He takes the sheet, looks over the instructions, and then tosses the paper onto the table behind him.
“Because the manager’s name was Joe too.”
“I’ll make it out to Joe Jr. and if he sells it, then, I guess, more power to him. I don’t sign autographs for adults anymore. Too many of them show up on eBay. But I don’t mind if it’s for the kids. The signature means something to them,” he explains.
That makes sense. Nick and I transfer the fish from the styrofoam coolers to the aquarium and then settle on opposite ends of the living room to wait for the fish to become acclimated to their new environment.
“Why’d you install the tank?” I ask. The entire condo is decorated in Charlie’s taste. Other than the game console, there’s not a speck of Nick in this place. It surprises me that he up and got a tank installed.
“You can’t guess?” He looks surprised.
I shake my head. “No. I’ve never once heard you say you were into fish. Or aquatics. Or even pool therapy.”
“Remember that one we saw in the lobby of the hotel near the park? Cassidy couldn’t take her eyes off it. She thought it was the coolest thing.”
“You…you bought this gigantic, expensive thing because Cassidy liked one two years ago?” I ask incredulously.
Nick shrugs. “Is there any better reason?”
Good Lord. Why? Why is he trying to be so danged attractive?
“Stop it,” I order. “Just stop it right now. What’s next? A dog? A pony? A car?”
Nick rises from his chair and walks over to mine, stopping only when his bare feet are inches from the toes of my sensible two-inch pumps.
He leans forward and places one hand on the back of my chair and the other on the edge of the seat. “If I tell you you’re overreacting, are you going to attack me?”
Chapter Eleven
Nick
Lainey stops breathing. Her eyes are wide and her chest is about a centimeter from mine. This is the closest I’ve been to her since the laundromat. To this day, whenever I get a whiff of detergent, I think of her and my dick gets hard.
She wets her lips. “Where’s Cassidy?”
“Sleeping.” I could kiss her so easily. Her lush lips are barely a breath away, but she’s like a bird—easily startled, hard to grasp. She said at the bar that it’s been years since she had a man. It’s been a while since I’ve been with a woman.
Most people probably find that hard to believe. My teammates think I’m banging in secret, but the sad truth is that sex with women who were only in it for the fame and glory or money is boring and now that I have a Super Bowl under my belt, I want more out of life than just football. I want to have it all, and my definition of all includes Lainey and her daughter. I was lost the first time I saw her at Stacks. Part of it is because she's so fucking gorgeous. If there’s a hall of fame for bodies somewhere, Lainey’s should be there, cast in bronze, forever immortalized. Wide hips, nipped-in waist, generous rack, thick thighs. She deserves to be worshipped—by my hands, my mouth, my body.
But it’s more than that. It's her spirit and how she never let her circumstances take her under. No matter how many times she stumbled on the gravel, she picked herself up and moved on.
“Lainey, I—”
“I-I have to go to the bathroom.” She darts off and disappears down the hall before I can recover.
“Damn.” Like I said, she’s going to be hard to catch, especially since I don’t want to damage any of part of her in the process.
Lainey reappears in the living room with Cassidy’s bag of toys and playthings and brushes by me without even one comment. She heads into the guest room where Cassidy is sleeping and hauls the kid into her arms. Cass murmurs sleepily and then tucks her little face into the crook of her mom’s neck.
“I have to go.”
I stare at Cass’s head with a mixture of love and frustration. “I’m going to let you run for now, but get it out of your system because you won’t always get to hide behind your daughter.”
“Where are Lainey and Cass?” Charlotte asks when she gets home to our lonely condo.
"I scared her off,” I admit, not bothering to get up from the sofa where I’ve been planted for the last twenty minutes watching ESPN updates from around the league.
“Oh, Nick,” Charlotte laments. She drops her purse and fifty-pound planner on the table, kicks off her shoes, and joins me in front of the television. Leaning forward, she plucks my beer from the coffee table and takes a swig without even asking. I guess she needs it to deal with me. “I went through all this trouble to get you two together and you ran her off already? What happened?”
I snag the booze back and drink all but the last couple of swallows before handing it back to her. “Just me doing nickthings.”
“Did you just quote your social media hashtag at me?” Charlie says in the middle of tipping the bottle toward her face. I gently give the bottom a push so she has something to do with her mouth other than ask me questions.
“No. They use my last name on social media—#NickJacksonThings—but nice of you to keep up.” I push myself off the cushion and wander into the kitchen to grab another beer. “What do you want to order tonight?” I wave the take-out menus.
“Italian, and bring me another beer. Or better yet, a bottle of red wine.”
“The whole bottle?” I tease and pull a bottle of cab from the wine rack.
“I figure I’ll need it so I don’t end up massacring you with the bottle.”
“Usually I get girls drunk so I’m more attractive.” I open the bottle, pour a large glass, and deliver the wine to Charlie before she attacks me. “But now I’m doing it so I can escape the night without being bashed in the head.”
She rolls her eyes before pointing to the dish she wants. I call in the order, but as soon as I’m off, Charlie pins me with an exasperated look. “Why don’t you just ask Lainey out on a proper date?”
“Because she’s scared and I don’t want her to run away again.”
“I don’t think you were the cause last time.”
There’s a note in Charlie’s voice that pings off a radar in my own head. “What do you know?”
“Nothing, really.”
I grab the bottle of wine and hold it over her head. “Tell me or I’m withholding your wine forever.”
Charlie frowns. “I don’t know exactly. I think Cass’s dad lived here in Dallas and was a real prick. She told me that it wasn’t safe here, but now it is.”
I lower the bottle onto the table and rub a hand under my chin. That’s more info on Lainey’s past than we knew before. “Should I hire the PI again?”
“I don’t think so. I would hate someone digging into my past. That’s such a huge invasion of privacy. It’s not like we have a reason, either, like we did before.”
“True.”
Charlie pats my hand. “You’re just going to have to be patient and wait for her to tell you.”
“Patience has never been my strong point.”
For the next few weeks, I do as Charlie recommends. While the guys pour into Stacks after practice and drool all over Lainey’s sensible shoes, I grip the frosty mug of my beer so hard I have grooves in my palms. While the baseball player who is getting a divorce from his third wife has Lainey running errands all over town, I bite my tongue so often until I swear it’s an inch shorter. While the two of them go out for a girls’ night dinner, I sit at home in the condo with my teammate Darnelle Wilson, watching game film.
Neither of us are actually watching it. I’m brooding about my lack of progress with Lainey and Darnelle hasn’t stopped texting his pregnant wife who is due in a couple of months.
“How’s Neda?” I ask, tired of being inside my own head.
“Good. She wants me to pick up candy canes. Can you even get those before December?”
“I have no clue. Maybe online? Why does she want candy canes?”
“It
’s her new thing. She’s got these cravings for peppermints but doesn’t like any of the ones in the tins. She wants the candy canes. I think it reminds her of being a kid? I don’t know exactly.” His mouth twists into a frown. “The candy canes are the least of my problems.”
“How so?” Wilson is one of the jokesters on the team. He’s always telling some corny joke to lighten the mood. Seeing anything other than a smile on his face is rare.
“It’s just the pregnancy, man. It takes a lot out of a woman. Her body’s changing. She’s got someone growing inside of her and she’s got to be careful with what she eats and how she exercises. Neda’s active, but I don’t like it when she’s picking up groceries or shit because you never know. Something bad could happen. It’s pretty much a fucking miracle that these kids are born without more problems. It’s like anything could go wrong.”
“You should go home,” I tell him. Darnelle’s going to worry his fingers completely through his phone screen if he sits here any longer.
“Yeah, I probably should.” He gets up without argument and grabs his wallet. “Thanks for the beer.”
“No problem.” I see him out and then return to the couch. Neda doesn’t have anything to worry about. She’s got her husband and an army of staff to lend a hand. Lainey, on the other hand, was what—seventeen when she had Cassidy, and given that she doesn’t have any friends or family around, she was alone during that time period.
I guess that’s why she’s so independent now and why it’s hard for her to let anyone in. There are some that will say the game of football is complicated, but we have playbooks that detail out the different schemes each team runs. Study enough game film and no defense will be a surprise. I wish I could say the same about Lainey. There’s no written explanation I can follow or study.
I want to wrap her up in a blanket and make her sleep for a week. I want to tuck Cassidy under my arm and teach her what a nickel defense is. I want to fill this place with laughter and noise and crayons and small smiles and big belly laughs and sweet baby kisses and hot adult ones.
I want to peel off Lainey’s clothes until she’s wearing nothing other than her golden birthday suit and a saucy smile. I want to see her on her knees with her cherry lips around my dick, and I want to see her underneath me, writhing with pleasure as I pound into her.
My bloodstream fires up as I begin to imagine her laid out on my king-size bed with her hair flared out on the pillowcase like a fan. My ears fill with the sultry moans as she sighs my name after each stroke of my cock along her tight, wet channel.
I’m about to reach into my sweats when a particular ring tone blares from my phone. Cursing, I abandon my dick to check the texts from my brother, affectionally labeled Dipshit in my contacts.
Dipshit: You around?
Me: I’m here.
Being a Navy SEAL is possibly the only profession that is more interesting to football players than playing football. Guys in the locker room are endlessly curious about what my brother does.
Pundits and players like to call football a war on the field, but none of us players really know how we would react in situations like the ones my brother has been in. A lot of those situations have been bad, and he’s changed because of it. I remind myself of that every time I look at Charlotte’s hurt face.
When Charlie got sick when we were both fifteen, she decided she was going to get all her living done—just in case. She never said that sentiment out loud, but I knew she believed it. And Nate was number one on her bucket list. Good thing for her that he’d harbored feelings for her too.
At first, it was weird for me, but near-death experiences have a way of fixing your perspective. If Nate was what Charlie wanted, then good for them. While my brother and best friend were consoling each other in ways that were probably too adult for them, I was finding comfort in one willing girl after another.
When Charlotte was fighting cancer and winning my brother, I figured their thing was the embodiment of that dreamy ideal poets write about and my English Lit teacher forced us to read. But in the end, we all learned that tragedy is more real, more believable. The rest of it is just fantasy. Nate left, and each year that he doesn’t get back, Charlie’s light grows dimmer and dimmer. I love them both, though, and hope they one day get their act together.
The phone rings and I grab it, eager to hear my brother’s voice. It’s been weeks of no contact. I assumed he was on a mission. “You just get in?”
“About four hours ago,” he admits. “I just woke up from a nap.”
“I'd be sleeping for a week if I just got in after a six-week vacation like yours,” I joke as a surge of relief courses through me. I didn’t realize I’d been so tense, but that’s how the entire family is for weeks at a time when he drops all communication because he’s on a mission.
He grunts. “I slept on the ’copter ride in.”
Nate says one of the skills he learned is to sleep on command, but I doubt you get any real rest in a noisy helicopter. I’ve been in one of those transport birds and it doesn’t even have a real seat. This ass needs a seat.
“That’s another solid five minutes?”
There’s a strangled sound on the other end of the line that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. “Yeah, a whole five minutes. I’ll sleep again later tonight. I wanted to check in and see how training camp’s going. You excited this year?”
“Was excited last year. Now I’m a mix of fear and adrenaline.”
“That shit keeps you alive. I saw on your schedule that you play San Diego in October. The family coming in for that?”
Meaning, is Charlotte coming? “Probably the parents. Charlie’s business is keeping her busy.”
“Yeah?”
He wants me to fill in the blanks. Stupid bastard. If he’d just pull his head out of his ass… Unlike Nate, I’m not noble and self-sacrificing. I’m not going to give up everything, and I do mean everything, to pursue a greater good.
“Yeah.” I change the subject because I’m tired of serving as Nate’s intermediary. He’s a grown-ass man and can talk to her if he wants. “I’m assuming you’re not injured.”
“No, not a scratch on me. And you?”
“Completely and disgustingly healthy.”
“I’m reading that you have a good chance this year to make the playoffs.”
“I’ll be happy if we end up eight and eight.”
“No, you won’t.”
I pause a beat and then agree because if I can’t get this team into the playoffs again, I don’t deserve to be behind center. “You’re right. I want to win it all.” Again.
I want to have it all. The Super Bowl, the smiling wife, and the dark-haired little snots that will grow up loving football like me. And I’m going to have it all, too.
“I’m thinking of coming for a visit.”
I bolt upright and knock the empty beer bottle off the table. Thanks to my great reflexes, I catch it before it crashes to the floor. “What did you say?”
Nate clears his throat. “I thought I’d visit you and Charlotte.”
“You talk to Charlotte?”
“Ah, no.”
“You little coward.” I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “How can you run into war zones but be afraid of a tiny woman?” He doesn’t answer because there is no response. “It was a rhetorical question. You’ll have to get a hotel room. Charlie and I have a two-bedroom condo.”
“You two still live together?” There’s an edge of suspicion in his voice.
“Yeah, and what about it? You told me to look after her.”
“I suppose I did. Do me a favor. Don’t tell Charlotte I’m coming. She’ll make up an excuse to be somewhere else if she knows.”
“Fine, but you owe me.”
“Put it on your books with all my other debts,” my brother says in a disgustingly cheerful voice. “I’ll see you soon.”
I toss the phone onto the coffee table with a frustrated sigh. Whatever plan I have to snare Lain
ey will need to be put into motion immediately because once Nate gets to town, it’s gonna be a big-ass mess.
Chapter Twelve
Lainey
"Mommy, I need the bread! I need the bread!" Cassidy says breathlessly, having sprinted all the way to the pond the moment we entered the park. I hand her the heels from loaves we ate. "Come on, Uncle Nick." She tugs on his hand. He goes willingly, adjusting his ball cap.
I'm not sure the disguise is going to work. The weather is nice, and the park is filling up. Soon there won't be an empty space on the grass. I plop down on the edge of the pond. The trees are starting to bud. I pluck some long grasses and weave them together while I watch Nick and Cassidy.
I’m not sure how I ended up spending my Saturday here with the two of them. I thought that it was going to be a girls’ weekend, but like the day so long ago, Nick found a way to tag along. Charlie conveniently had another request from the Spurs basketball player that she absolutely had to complete that afternoon. I get why Charlie made herself scarce. She thinks if I spend enough time with Nick, I’ll fall in love. She’s probably right.
Nick, on the other hand, confuses me. Surely there are better things for this young, hot man to be doing other than naming ducks with my five-year-old daughter.
"That one's Mr. Happy." Nick's muscled arm stretches out to point toward a plain brown duck paddling furiously toward the huge chunk of bread floating in the water. The motion emphasizes the definition in his biceps. His T-shirt stretches snugly across a broad chest that arrows into a narrow waist. I know he works out and that his body is supposed to be tight and fit, but it’s still addicting to look at.
I force my eyes to Cassidy who is doing a poor job of tearing the bread into bits. She gives up and tosses the entire piece of bread in. Three ducks furiously paddle to the food and peck at each other until a small brown one scares the other two off.
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