Team Player

by Adriana Locke

  “Cross was with Megan McCarter?” Nora asks. “Today?”

  “Yeah. I mean, if he’s not taken, how can you blame him? Men have needs,” Veronica says.

  “That’s the biggest load of horse shit I’ve ever heard.” Nora takes her menu and slams it into the condiments tray.

  My hand visibly shakes as I try to get my menu lined up with hers. The plastic rattles as it swings back and forth, bouncing off the metal. Nora has sympathy and takes it from me then puts it away.

  “I’m not with him,” I say. It’s aimed at Nora, my words directed across the table, but in reality, I’m saying it for me. “He is working with her at the gym.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean to stir the pot…” Veronica looks at me with more smugness than I ever care to see on a person again.

  “It’s fine,” I say, grabbing my purse. “Hey, Nora, can you take me to the library? I forgot I’m supposed to meet Ruby there in ten minutes.”

  “Sure.”

  Veronica watches us get to our feet, ignoring the death stare from Nora. “Want me to send someone over with delivery?”

  “No, thanks though.” With a final smile that I have to force, we walk out of the bakery. As soon as we’re in Nora’s car, I collapse into the soft leather seat. “I won’t make a big deal about this.”

  “Don’t, not until we know for sure what he was doing with her in his car.”

  My heart quivers in my chest. Biting down on my bottom lip, I buckle my seat belt. “Can you drive me to the gym?”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Cross

  “Good workout today, Cobble. See ya next week.” I grab a towel and wipe my face off as my fourth appointment of the day gathers his things. Usually by this time of day, my ass is dragging, but not today. Today I have so much damn energy I could train an entire football team.

  A few minutes will go by and I’ll forget I spent the night with Kallie. I’ll get caught up in teaching a jab or timing a round on the jump rope and she’ll momentarily be gone from my mind.

  Then I’ll remember.

  The image of her spread out on my bed, how soft her skin felt last night as I held her tight against me will come charging back, and I immediately have another spark in my step.

  It doesn’t seem real in many ways. This girl I thought I lost, the girl I knew I’d never stop thinking about is all of a sudden back and has fallen in step with me again.

  Thank God.

  The door chimes and I look up, expecting to see Cobble leaving. I do, but I also see Kallie walking in.

  “Hey, babe…” My voice drifts off as I take in the look on her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Um, nothing…not really.”

  “Then why do you look like you lost your puppy?”

  She crosses her arms and then drops them. She crosses them again. “How has your day been?”

  “Good. Getting better—I think,” I add, still unsure as to what’s causing her to fidget with the hem of her shirt. “How was yours?”

  “Fine.” She heads to the free weights and drags her finger over them. “Did you train Megan today?”

  “Yup. Last session. She took it reasonably well.”

  She raises a brow. “Took what?”

  “The fact that I’m not training her anymore,” I explain. “We talked about that.”

  Her arms go across her middle again, this time firmly. She takes a deep breath, almost like she’s counting to ten before blowing it out. It makes me take one too in an attempt to settle the little fire that starts to burn in my gut.

  “So, the things you said to me last night, Cross, about how this changed things between us…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Exactly how did you mean that?”

  “I meant it like if I see a man hitting on you, I’ll break his face. Exact enough?” I’m partially teasing, but she there is no levity in her reaction. Instead, she bites the inside of her cheek.

  “I was just in Carlson’s with Nora. Veronica said you and Megan were in your truck—”

  “Dammit!” I throw the towel at the basket near the wall. “Why is she starting trouble?”

  “So you were with her today? Getting lunch?”

  “No—well, yes, I took her to Carlson’s and grabbed a sandwich because it was the easiest fucking way to get her out of my gym.”

  Her jaw clenches as she huffs. “Really, Cross?”

  “Yes, fucking really,” I say back. My head spins in disbelief. “She had Molly drop her off here and she didn’t come to pick her up. Was that intentional? Probably. Did I want it to happen? Absolutely not.”

  “Explain to me again why she was in your truck getting lunch?”

  Forcing a swallow, I try to be calm. “I needed to head to the school for a boxing class I was putting on for the sophomore class. Megan was still here. What was I supposed to do, Kal? Leave her on the sidewalk?”

  “That’s where whores usually do their work. She’d probably feel right at home.”

  “I know you didn’t mean that, but dammit…” I laugh, leaning against the wall. “When did you get so mean?”

  “When I feel messed with.”

  “I was just trying to move on with my day.”

  She turns her back to me, looking at the parking lot. “I need to move on with my day too.”

  There’s a finality in her tone, an insinuation that she doesn’t just mean her day. Panic shoots through my veins and I’m to her before she can even take a step. “Hey, don’t get crazy.” My hands go to her hips. I feel her body wanting to cave back into mine, but she doesn’t let it. “I’ll cancel my last session today if you’ll go home with me.”

  “I…” She gulps. “I have things to do today.”

  “You do not.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then come over tonight.”

  “I’m helping Mom sort things she pulled out of the attic.”

  “Want me to help?” I ask, running my hands up and down her arms.

  “No.”

  “Kallie,” I groan, twisting her around. “Stop it.”

  “I think you’re right. That’s exactly what I’ll do,” she says, looking away from me. “At least for now.”

  “Oh, no. You’re not doing this.”

  She snorts, flipping her gaze to mine. It’s steeled, with an iciness to it I haven’t seen since that night way back when. “What in the world am I doing, Cross?”

  “You’re not giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

  “No,” she says with a simple shrug. “I’m not, because I’ve been through this with you before and I don’t know why I thought it might be different this time. It’s not.”

  “The hell it’s not!” I roar, taking a step back. “I fucking love you, Kallie. I’ve waited on you to come back for years and you tell me it’s not different? Maybe you’re not different, but I fucking am!”

  She blanches, stepping away from me too. The corners of her eyes wet as she takes another step back. “Maybe we both are.”

  My chest reverberates as I watch her take each step toward the door. With each inch of distance added between us, the air stagnates. A hollowness begins to form in my chest, and I know it will never fill this time.

  “I love you,” I tell her, my voice the softest this gym has ever heard.

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “I had this big thing worked up to tell you but then I thought it would be better to show you, to make you believe it so much you didn’t have to ask or wonder,” I admit. “Guess that failed.”

  “I need time to think,” she says, her voice seeping with unshed tears. “I forgot what it’s like to date in a small town. It’s so damn hard.”

  “It’s not hard if you love someone. You take the truth for the truth and the shit for what it is—shit.” My head nods as I pick up a clean towel. “I’ve never, ever cheated on you, Kal. Have I messed up? Sure. Should I have had Megan in my truck? Maybe not, but I’ve been alone fo
r a long time and I forgot about dating in a small town too.”

  “I hate this,” she says. “I hated the rumors then and I hate them now. Sitting there with Veronica acting like I don’t know some big secret is awful, Cross, and I’ve spent a lot of years in that position, whether you were really cheating on me or not. It hurts. It eats away at you.”

  “And being accused over and over eats away at me too.” I wipe my face with the towel, scrubbing a little harder than necessary. “I can’t make you love me any more than you could change who I was back then. I changed because I wanted to, but I can’t make you love me if you don’t want to.”

  Her tears fall. I want to go to her and hold her and kiss them away, but I don’t. I leave her to them. She’s the one who wants to believe a stupid-as-shit reason enough to warrant them falling.

  “See ya, Cross.”

  Before she can leave me again, I turn away from her and head into the back room.

  Chapter 9

  Cross

  “I told you.” Walker kicks back on the sofa in his living room with a look I’d like to knock off his face. While I’m ninety-five percent sure I could take him, the five percent isn’t a risk I want to take tonight. “If they wanna go, let ’em go.”

  “This is such bullshit,” I spit out, grabbing a beer off the coffee table. “I didn’t do anything with Megan fucking McCarter. Not at any point in my life have I ever even touched her.”

  “I have.” He grins. “But good choice not to—it’s not worth it.”

  Every inch of my skin itches. It’s uncomfortable, making me feel like I need to move, to run, to rip something to shreds.

  “I’m caught between a rock and a hard place,” I comment, more to the universe as a whole rather than to Walker specifically. “As pissed as I am right now, I know she’s the girl I was meant to have. If I don’t go after her, I’ll lose her, but if I do, doesn’t that make me look guilty? Or like a pussy? Or set the stage for a power vacuum in our relationship?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? That’s all you got?”

  He turns off the football game and sighs. “Look, man, I’m not the best guy to go to for relationship advice…obviously.”

  “You’re all I fucking have right now.”

  “Oh, so I was the last resort?”

  “No, Lance was the last resort, but he’s fucking some nurse he met on a dating app. You are whatever falls after that.”

  Walker laughs. “You’re not as dumb as I thought you were.”

  “Here’s the difference between my situation and yours,” I tell him, bending forward and resting my elbows on my knees. “You don’t care. I love her.”

  “Love is such an overrated thing, Cross. What’s it really mean, anyway? How long does it last? Too many variables to make decisions based on love.”

  “Maybe I don’t know what it is.”

  “Know what what is?” Peck asks as he rounds the corner. “By the way, the alternator is changed on the SUV in the shop.”

  “Do you knock?” Walker asks. “But good work on the SUV.”

  “No, and thanks. Now, what are we talking about? You look so serious.”

  I take a minute to fill Peck in, getting more irritated as I go. Before I’m finished, I see he’s side-eyeing Walker.

  “First of all, whatever that jackass has told you, ignore it—all of it,” Peck says.

  Walker shrugs. “He asked.”

  “Second of all, you need to head that way now and apologize.”

  “Me?” I bark. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “And do you really want the rest of your life messed up because you were so worried about your ego that you wouldn’t apologize?”

  I snort. “It’s not ego, it’s principle.”

  “You can call it whatever you want, it’s the same damn thing. Either you want to feel like you have some high and mighty set of principles, which we all know you don’t, or you can get the girl—your pick. I’d pick her, because she’s really hot.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I watch Peck laugh.

  “Nah, not really because she’s hot, because she’s nice. She’s sweet. She gave you a second chance,” he throws in. When I don’t react, he stands. “Do what you want, but don’t come a-cryin’ to me when she’s at the bar with someone else.”

  “I’ll kill them,” I snarl.

  “Then avoid prison and go apologize.”

  He tells Walker something about a transmission, but I can’t hear it over the roar of blood over my ears. Walker turns the television back on, but I can’t figure out who has the ball or what the score is because I’m mulling over Peck’s advice.

  The thought of going home and never having her in my kitchen, in my bed, on my sofa again twists me up so bad I don’t even want to go. My phone sits in my pocket, and its failure to ring or buzz with a call or text from her hurts my heart.

  I sit for a few more long minutes before I just can’t sit any longer. “I’m gonna go,” I tell Walker, standing. “May as well get a workout in since all I want to do is hit something.”

  Walker doesn’t even look up. “Tell Kallie I said hi.”

  Chapter 10

  Kallie

  The bags crunch as they hit the countertop, and Mom starts sorting through the groceries. She doesn’t even have to look at me to know something is wrong.

  “Are you going to tell me or do you want me to guess?” she asks.

  Curled up on a kitchen chair, my hair in a messy bun, I sniffle. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “If you didn’t want to talk about it, you would be in your bedroom or driving around a back road, not sitting in the kitchen.”

  Putting my feet on the floor, I straighten my shirt. I don’t know how to talk about this with my mother. She loves Cross maybe as much as she loves me, and I’m not sure her opinion will be unbiased. Yet, she’s my mom. I just need my mom.

  “Did you date Daddy in a small town?” I ask.

  Her hand stills in the air before she puts the jar of peanut butter in the cabinet. “We dated in Detroit, mostly. We were newlyweds when we moved down here. Why do you ask?”

  “Nora and I went into Carlson’s today and Veronica told me Cross had a woman in his car today, buying lunch.”

  “I see.” She turns around and leans against the counter. “And that’s where you were all night? At Cross’s?”

  “Yes.”

  She nods her head, her face twisted in thought. “Did you ask him if it was true?”

  “Yes, and he admitted it.”

  “He did?”

  “He said she wouldn’t leave the gym and he had somewhere to be,” I say, testing the words out loud for the first time since I calmed down.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Megan is that way…but he shouldn’t have had her in his truck.”

  She takes a deep breath before turning back to her groceries. “I’m a little bit in shock.”

  “Me too.” I sigh. “I hate this, Mom. I hate the way everyone gossips and almost sets you up to be a joke.”

  “No one made a joke out of you.” She spins on her heel. “She made a tramp out of herself, but that’s the end of that.”

  A flood of warmth trickles through my body as I watch my mother watch me. Just knowing she has my back and is in my corner helps—a lot.

  “I left here because he wouldn’t grow up and I was sick of the gossip,” I remind her. “Then my ex in Indiana cheated on me, and now I’m back and it’s the same damn thing.”

  She sticks a gallon of milk in the fridge before pausing. “Maybe what you are seeing is how the world really works, Kal. I know you see pictures of perfect little houses and marriages and friendships, but it’s not real. Life is a bitch.”

  “Don’t I know it.” I chuckle.

  “The key to happy relationships is trust. It’s the hardest thing to master, but if you can, it’s the secret key that opens a world you can never know otherwise.”

  “But doesn’t tr
usting someone leave you exposed? They can stick a knife in you and twist it.” I wince, thinking that’s exactly how I felt this afternoon.

  “Yeah, it does. It leaves you wide open, but you can’t get through that door without doing it. You just have to learn who you can trust and who you can’t.”

  “So, basically, conquer Rome in a day? Got it.” Wiping the fog off my glass of ice water, I think back to Cross’s face. “He was mad at me, Mom. Can you believe that?”

  “I’d be more worried if he wasn’t.”

  “Why?”

  A soft smile ghosts across her lips. “Maybe it insulted him that you would accuse him of something. Maybe he thought you knew him better than that.”

  “It still doesn’t make this any easier.”

  “The world isn’t black and white, Kal. It’s a wonderful mixture of the two that has a lot of blurry lines, and if you care what people do and say, you have a long life ahead of you, honey.” She sits across from me and folds her hands on the table. “Trust your gut, and remember what led you back to him in the first place.”

  She gets up, kisses me on the head, and walks down the hallway. Her words, however, stay behind.

  Kallie

  The dog across the street barks, breaking the late-night silence. My car starts up, the lights shining into the living room as I back down the driveway.

  My stomach is all twisted, an ulcer beginning to form somewhere in the pit of my bowels. No matter what I do—read, sing, or create—I can’t stop thinking about Cross.

  Walking five miles just got me a sore hamstring, doing the dishes left me with a sliced finger, and I’ve sung the hell out of my favorite playlist on my phone. Through it all, I’ve thought about him.

  It’s those nights in Indiana all over again. It’s the emptiness in my soul, the craving to love and be loved…by him, only him. It’s only ever been him.

  As I sort through my memories, I see his face from earlier when he was telling me nothing happened. Even though I didn’t want to at first, I believe him. Something in my gut tells me to, says to at least hear him out without being pissed off to start.