by Jade West
“I’m sure he does love it here,” she said, without even a hint of backtracking. “But you know as well as I do that this place was your call when push came to shove.”
I shrugged. “We were both tired of the same old corporate crap every day of the week.”
“I guess,” she relented. “It just always surprised me that he was so quick to up and leave the rat race. He loves that competitive stuff, always has. I can’t imagine him walking away without a whole raft of reservations.”
“What can I say? We’re both full of surprises.”
She tipped her head and flashed a smile. “You are today.”
We’d had this conversation several times over already, going over the same ground with the same taken aback look on her face every time.
I found my foot was tapping against my stool leg, the same old nerves flaring up at the thought I’d pushed him along with me during one of his weaker moments in life. Since today was a day for open confessions I opted to push the chat to new uncharted regions — ones I’d avoided like the plague through the earlier reruns.
“It was his dad,” I voiced aloud. “I think he was still reeling from his death. I don’t know if he’d have ever made the leap if he’d still been alive, even if we’d had the finances.”
“His stepdad?” she clarified, and I hated how she always did that, like that differentiation meant shit. Brett’s dad had been his dad since he was five years old, no less committed to his upbringing than our dad was to ours, even if he did have his asshole ways running through the whole fatherly process.
“His dad,” I argued. “The blood thing means nothing. His dad was his dad.”
“His dad was a dick,” she said, and I cast a glance at the bottle of wine between us. She’d had two glasses already, clearly more than enough to dull her sensitivities. “Don’t tell me you think he’s a saint just because he’s gone. That’s not your style.”
“His dad left him enough money in his will to set us up in a whole new life. Dick or not, we’ve got a lot to thank him for.” I downed the rest of my drink and poured the dregs of the bottle into my glass in an effort to catch her up. “He won’t hear a word of it anyway, so keep your blurting mouth shut if he comes back in here.”
She held up her hands. “As if I’d say anything.”
She wouldn’t, I was being a paranoid bitch, like so much of the time these days. I took a breath and forced a smile since the last thing I needed right now was to push my only welcoming ear away to arm’s length.
“It wasn’t just me,” I argued with a kinder tone to my voice. “Brett wanted the move too, no matter how it looks from the outside. His dad was…” I tried to find the words without compounding her earlier insult. “Forceful. Demanding. I think Brett realised the pressure was finally off without him breathing down his neck. God rest his soul, but George was always keen to voice his opinion.”
“Judging,” she said. “That’s what you mean. Judging.”
I did mean that, but it didn’t feel right to say it that way. “He paved the way for a whole new life, like I said. The deposit for this place was intense.”
She nodded, eyes focusing on mine as though a lightbulb had just gone on in her head. “That’s it,” she announced. “The reason he was so keen to take the cash from the London guy.”
I pulled a blank, tipping my head to encourage her to continue.
“The investment,” she said as though my brain was mush today. “Just think about it. He spent his whole life living up to his dad’s judgy standards, you don’t think he’d want to let the old guy’s money go down the pan with your venture, do you? He’d probably sell his own body if it meant his dad’s precious investment was safe.”
“That’s not it,” I said, but no sooner had the words left my mouth than I knew she had a point. I was shaking my head as I carried on all the same. “He did it to save our future here, not safeguard his inheritance. We could be cast out on the street and we’d still be together, holding tight. It’s not about the money.”
“Not about the money, no,” she persisted. “About the shame of fucking up with his dad’s money. Of being a loser. Of not winning. He’d rather cut his own dick off than lose a game on the sports field, and you know it. Hell knows what he’d rather do with stakes so high.” Her smile was definitely on the drunk side. “Sell your pussy, it seems.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I argued. “We made the decision together, both of us.”
I was scrabbling for further coherent thoughts when she raised a finger in the air. I knew then that her speculations were getting serious.
“How many trophies did his dad push him to win back in high school?”
I shrugged. “A few, but Brett was always into the sports stuff. He was competitive, like you said.”
“How many summer jobs did he juggle to impress his dad with his savings?”
Another shrug and I had to really think about it to remember. “A few. He liked being responsible.”
“Liked living up to his dad’s standards more like it.”
I let out a sigh. “So what if he did? What difference does it make?”
Her smile was a beauty of shrewdness, reminding me afresh why we were both murder mystery addicts.
“It’s all tied up in one crazy web of ramifications. All of this. You, this place, the struggles you’re under to find your groove again after spending the night with a random guy.”
“It is?” I asked, trying to piece together the same puzzle as her. “You sound like Agatha Christie on acid.”
Her nod was one of the most self-assured expressions I’d ever seen. “It’s confidence,” she said. “He’s losing his winner takes all and that winner is Brett Foster mentality. The change doesn’t suit him, you should probably help him pick up his competition game.”
“Neither of us are feeling like winners over here,” I told her. “We were barely unpacked in this place when the rumour mill brought the bargain basement hotel crap to our door.”
“And he’s probably never known facing a scrum he couldn’t win. When has he ever lost at anything? Name me one time?”
She was quiet as I struggled to find an instance. There wasn’t one I could recall easily, not outside of these past twelve months.
“Okay, Sherlock,” I said with a smirk. “Tell me what I do to fix this crap. A volleyball league on the beach this summer? A breakfast chef fry off with all the hotel chefs on the Welsh coast?”
“You make him face this shit head on,” she said. “If he thinks this other man was better in bed, make him prove that’s bullshit.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Make him prove that’s bullshit? How exactly? Our own explorations in the bedroom aren’t exactly a pinup of success.”
Her grin was definitely the result of too much wine. “I dunno, maybe call the guy back up again. Round two, no holds barred.”
I laughed out loud and pushed her wine glass away from her. She grabbed it back with a roll of her eyes. “I’m not drunk,” she said. “Not really.”
But she was drunk, clearly a lot less familiar with a sweet glug of alcohol on a weekday evening.
“You’re crazy,” I giggled, even as my belly flipped.
“Oh, come on!” she giggled along with me. “You say the guy made you come five million times in a row, don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to get him back here if Brett could handle it.”
I hated how perceptive she was, barely willing to admit to myself I rubbed my clit every opportunity I could as I imagined a rerun.
“There’s no shame in it,” she added. “You’re bound to be hot for him now, even if you’re still in love with your husband. It’s natural.”
It didn’t feel natural.
“There’s no way I’d get Thomas Heath back here,” I told her. “Even if the idea wasn’t insane, there’s no way Brett would go for it. They hate each other. Fuck knows why the guy has a shitty thing going for Brett, but there’s no way they’d ever double up and come out friend
s at the end of it.”
“They wouldn’t need to,” she said. “Just as long as Brett came out on top.”
I laughed afresh, shaking my head at the absurdity. “You’re crazy,” I announced again, like she didn’t know it already.
“With all due respect,” she told me with a grin. “I’m not the one who fucked a random stranger for fifty grand when I’m happily married.”
“Touché,” I said, and clinked my glass to hers.
Chapter Forty
Brett
Seeing Grace enjoying time with her sister did something to me. I felt it deep, the tug back toward the true heart of our lifetime together. Family, friends, the real connections that mean something in this world.
I left them alone for some chat time, hoping it would help Grace to find herself again in this chaos. That maybe an ear from someone who knew her both at her best and her worst would be enough to drag her out of this bullshit insecurity I felt from her but couldn’t reach.
I really did plan to throw myself into pending paperwork, but behind the quiet of the reception desk I found myself brewing with bullshit insecurities of my own.
That’s when it really hit me — the truth of all this. How deep our issues were already running before Heath ever stepped through this door. This stuff in us was already festering there in the half light, running riot through our days long before he’d ever offered us a financial lifeline.
It’s always so easy to pin the blame on someone outside and hate them for your own shortcomings. That’s one of the things my dad taught me young. One of the things he believed in.
It’s always you, son. People can be shit bags and assholes, but our failures are always our own. Own them, change them, demand more from yourself than a pat on the back and a better luck next time.
I missed him. Missed both his praise and his criticism, even if I’d never have believed the latter while he was still around.
Had he really been gone so long that I’d forgotten the mindset he’d drummed into me since the the very first day he’d joined Mum and me at our dining table?
I found it hard to believe that a couple of years could be enough of a turning point, but it was true. I had forgotten the wisdom I’d lived by when I was a boy. I wouldn’t be in this mess if I hadn’t.
Heath had been such a beacon of hate for me, right from the first moment he’d slapped his filthy offer on our bar top. Not so very long ago I’d have laughed him off as a joker and not given a toss for his dirty cash.
Desperation had made me a weaker man than the one I expected to face me in the mirror each morning, but that didn’t mean desperation was the only road ahead.
I gave myself a moment, wishing I could pick up the phone and call my dad just to hear his voice and ask him to drum his solid words right into me.
My mum was the next best choice.
I’d been avoiding calling her for way too long, holding back the point I’d finally have to admit my host of fucking failures over here. She greeted me with a hello that sounded half in shock, and the weirdest lump was in my throat as I forced out the words.
“Mum, sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been busy.”
I couldn’t lie, not to her. When she asked about the hotel, I told her we were still on our knees. When she asked about Grace, I told her I was worried I was down on my knees there too.
And she did it, right when it was needed. She stepped into my old man’s shoes and said it right how it needed saying.
“This isn’t you, Brett. Isn’t who you are. Isn’t who you were raised to be.”
I nodded as that lump in my throat notched up a gear.
“What if it is?” I asked her. “What if I’m not up to fighting all this shit and coming out on top?”
“Then you dig down deep and give your all until you don’t have another breath left to fight it.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “This isn’t crap I can face down and take on head to head. It’s bigger than that, harder than that.”
“It’s always like that,” she said right back, and I heard him there. Heard the soul of him right through hers. “You’re making excuses for putting off the inevitable. You fight, you win, or you give your all trying.”
It felt good to choke down my sadness and set my jaw the way I’d always set it.
She couldn’t see me nod, but I knew she felt it. I needed to make my way over to see her, living up north in a nice plush pad with her sister. I hoped she was happy. That maybe she’d even met someone new after all those years with my dad at her side. Now wasn’t the time to ask, so I didn’t. Just as it had never been the time to ask her for a bail out like Grace had with her sister.
I’d be washed up on the streets before I ever plunged the depths enough to crawl to my mum for a hand out. My dad would turn in his grave at the thought.
“You let me know how you’re doing,” she said, and I grunted an affirmation.
“I’ll let you know when I’m winning.”
“Or when you’ve given your all, Brett. I’m your mum. My door’s always open.”
I knew she meant well, but her words fired me up deep. She’d never said that before, that she was ready and waiting to pick me up from failure. My gut spat at the thought she was expecting me to come up short this time. That the pressures of a shitty business down the road and some smarmy cunt from London were too much for me to take.
She didn’t know about the details. Didn’t even know Heath existed, but that didn’t matter. She’d heard enough of it in my voice to paint a picture.
And that picture was mine.
Our failures are always our own. Own them, change them, demand more from yourself than a pat on the back and a better luck next time.
If Mum was hearing my own insecurities that loud from a hundred-mile distance after months of silence, how loud was Grace hearing them every day at my side?
No wonder that prick had taken her to places I never had. He was bristling with his own fight, battling my festering insecurities with a confidence way beyond anyone’s I’d ever seen.
He’d owned her, just like he’d owned me, charging me down on a field I hadn’t even known we were playing on. I barely even knew there was a ball in his hands until it was already in the net behind me.
Fuck him, but fuck me more.
None of it was too fucking much to take. Not a shitty rival down the coast, and not a shitty rival from the city.
If only I knew how to contact the fucker I’d face him right down for a rematch. Summon him back onto my turf and this time I’d own it.
I knew I was flaring like a bull-headed bastard, well beyond all fucking rational reason as I contemplated coming up trumps against Thomas Heath and whatever pathetic beef he had to grind out with me. I knew it likely had as much to do with the hard on in my pants every morning as it did the jockish call to slam his face in the dirt and call touchdown with my head held high.
But I knew it now. Knew a rematch was on the cards and always had been.
He’d always wanted back here, even if the cunt was as ignorant as I’d been, which I doubted. From that very moment he rocked on up with his proposal, it was always about something more.
The business card on the counter was every bit of a testament to his true fucking intentions, and fighter Brett would never have tossed that fancy-fonted little card in the kitchen trash.
Fighter Brett would have called him right up and told him to bring his game to an even playing field. No dirty cash, no stupid red lines, no shitty fucking nine-hour window.
Maybe I’d look him up.
It didn’t take long to decide that I would do, just as soon as I was done with the pile of crappy customer registration forms I’d need for the morning.
It was when I tugged the desk drawer open with more force than necessary that that same pathetic fancy-fonted little business card slipped out from its jammed in place between the parking receipts.
I didn’t know whether to smile or frown as I turned it
over and over in my outstretched palm and goosebumps prickled my skin.
Maybe Dad really was up there, watching over me and demanding I dive back into the game, no matter how fucking sordid the game was.
But there was no doubt about it, not after the business card’s miraculous sneaky rescue from the trash, not even for a fucking heartbeat.
My pretty little wife was demanding I dive back into the game too.
Chapter Forty-One
Grace
Something happened that night. I don’t know if it was with me and my slightly too much wine, or with Brett, or both of us combined, but things were very different once I’d waved Sarah off to her room and cleared our wine glasses away.
My husband was waiting in the doorway to reception when I got the lights. I started as I realised he was there, clutching my hand to my chest as I cussed him out for scaring me shitless.
He didn’t laugh, nor apologise, nor make any move to ease my tension. And that’s when I saw it. Felt it. Those brooding flames in his dark gaze I hadn’t even known had been missing for so long.
My belly fluttered, my heartrate picking up pace well beyond the jolt of fear, but my body’s reaction was so much more than that, instinctive to every cell inside me as I shifted on a hip, my pussy doing a needy little clench as Brett folded his strong arms tight across his chest and tipped his head.
“Did you sisters have fun?” he asked, his voice low and loud in the quiet.
I nodded like a fool, smiling like one too, not quite understanding why there was a strange zing up my spine out of nowhere.
“We did, thanks. Sisterly gossip is always the best.”
He exhaled as he smirked. “I’m sure you girls had a lot to talk about.”
I didn’t know whether I should be self-conscious about sharing the details, so I gave a little shrug and changed the subject. “Paperwork done?”
He nodded, just once. “Everything’s been taken care of, Grace.”
The space between us ate me up and spat me out, all chewed and exposed, a mess in the openness as he held back and kept his distance.