The Ground Beneath

by Stephanie Vercier

  Jessica Moore is known for her years anchoring network news desks before she moved on to doing investigative journalism all around the world. Even a guy like me who hasn’t paid as much attention to the news as I should have knows exactly who she is.

  For the one-hour network special and several additional network appearances, one before the interview airs and one after, Alli and I will get a million dollars, half to her and half to me. It’s no small amount of money and could be life changing for her, but when I told her I’d be giving my share to Children’s Hospital, she didn’t hesitate in arranging to do the same.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. That’s just the kind of person Alli is.

  “You’re going to do great,” I assure her just as Jessica enters the studio and walks toward us.

  “Hope so,” Alli says, sucking in a breath.

  “So pleased to meet you both,” Jessica says, both Alli and I standing, me to shake her hand and Alli to give her a small hug. “I think the public is going to be very interested in what you both have to say, for what both of you have had to endure.”

  I’ve been through plenty of interviews during my years in the NFL, but those were almost always only about football and nothing else, making this the most personal to date. I take Alli’s hand again, weaving my fingers through hers before we settle our entwined digits on her thigh.

  Jessica begins with half a dozen or so softball questions, stuff about my injury and what it’s been like sitting on the sidelines this season, then about how Alli and I met and what Alli’s goals and aspirations are.

  Then, just as I expected they would, things get a little more uncomfortable.

  “You have a bit of a reputation, don’t you Hunter? A bachelor superstar athlete who’s shown no signs of wanting to settle down.” Jessica leans forward, one of her eyebrows arched high, awaiting my answer.

  “That’s in the past,” I tell her with confidence. I look over to Alli and say, “I’ve found the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with.”

  “That’s quite the commitment for a man with your record.”

  “Well, she’s quite the woman,” I volley back.

  With her eyes still trained on me, Jessica says, “I think some people would perhaps wonder if Allison is too young for you. Ten years is a notable difference, especially when one of you isn’t even of legal drinking age.”

  I hate this question because I didn’t fall in love with Alli because of her age—I’ve fallen in love with her in spite of it. “I’d say I’ve matured a lot slower than she has,” I reply, doing my best to give Jessica an answer. “In a lot of ways, Alli is years ahead of me.”

  Jessica gives an approving nod at my reply, then turns her attention toward Alli. “Do you share his opinion?”

  “About his maturity level?”

  Jessica emits a small laugh, and I realize however dumb the question, she’s just using it to lead to something more. “Yes. You must know Hunter well enough by now to be able to properly assess that.”

  “All I know is that he and I work together as a couple… and that maybe he wouldn’t have been ready to settle down when he was my age. So, I guess if you want to look at it that way, our age gap works out just fine.”

  Alli doesn’t know it, but part of what she said is wrong. If I’d met her when I was nineteen—and she’d been nineteen too—I’d have done everything in my power to spend my life with just her. Then again, ten years ago, I might have found a way to fuck it up. Part of me is afraid I still might.

  “And you did settle down even before you met Hunter, didn’t you?” Jessica asks. “That was your intention at least, with a young man named Wyatt Mitchell.”

  Alli takes in a deep breath, then expels it as she answers, “Yes. Wyatt and I dated through most of high school. He was two years ahead of me, so we agreed that we wouldn’t get married until I graduated.”

  “That’s still so young these days,” Jessica says. “You were eighteen then?”

  She nods.

  “And then tragedy struck.”

  Alli nods again.

  “Your new husband and your brother were both killed in a car accident the night of your wedding. What led up to that Allison?”

  I give her hand a squeeze for support. I’m tempted to tell her she doesn’t have to answer anything she doesn’t want to, but in a strong, clear voice, she begins her story. She doesn’t punctuate the lurid details, and she doesn’t throw Wyatt or Abe under the bus, even though she can’t dispute the truths Jessica makes sure to bring up.

  “So, Wyatt was cheating on you?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “That must have been a shock?”

  “It was.”

  “And your brother was in on it, the deception.”

  “I wouldn’t use the word deception.”

  “No? What word then?” Jessica prods.

  Alli takes a moment before she says, “I think misdirection is more fitting. I don’t think Abe ever wanted to have to deceive me. Maybe, in his own way, he thought he was protecting me from the truth.”

  I hate that she’s being put through this because she’s with me. I told her as much and said she had every right to back out. But again she said no, she made a commitment, and this was about creating clean slates and maybe, if we were lucky, spurring interest in taking another look at my mother and aunt’s deaths.

  “I don’t want people to think Wyatt was a bad person,” Alli says after Jessica goes into another round of painting the man in her short-lived marriage in a very negative light. “He made a mistake, and in his own way, I think he was trying to protect my virtue while struggling to deal with his own needs. Of course I was angry with him, furious really, and I had every right to be. But if he hadn’t died that night, I know I’d have found a way… well, not to still be married to him, but to forgive him. And I just don’t want him to be reduced to the one horrible mistake he made in his life.”

  “Do you look at your brother in the same way, or is he held to a higher standard, a little less easy to forgive?” Jessica inquires.

  “My brother was dealing with his own demons,” Alli says, “and I just wish, more than almost anything, that we had a chance to work through all of it. But I forgive him—of course I do. And, like Wyatt, there was so much more good to him than that one thing he did wrong with me.”

  Jessica seems to be satisfied with her answers, and I couldn’t be more proud of the way Alli endured and replied to the questions. The attention is turned back to me and how, nearly two decades earlier, a similar tragedy befell my family in an “eerily similar way” to Alli’s.

  I’m as honest as I can be about that time in my life, though I do spare a number of details, including the mess my dad turned into and how I became easy prey for Wyatt and Micah’s father, the one man in our county that we were all supposed to trust and put our faith in.

  Theresa enjoyed holding things over me, as evidenced by what she’d done at her party, making it seem like her big midnight reveal was going to have something to do with our affair or, less likely, that I’d been abused by a piece of shit pedophile. But her big announcement ended up being about her new web series, a take on The Real Housewives franchise.

  I was sure she enjoyed making me sweat, and I hated that I’d let her in as much as I had.

  “Growing up without a mother had to have been so difficult for you, Hunter,” Jessica says. “I can imagine how tightly these tragedies that both you and Allison have been through have united you.”

  “United us… and made us wonder too,” I say.

  Jessica tilts her head to the side. “What is it the two of you wonder about?”

  I look at Alli, raise my brows and tilt my chin forward, a silent nudge for her to share with Jessica the concerns Daniella first brought to her. I still hadn’t been sure how ready I was to discuss the specifics of my mom’s death, and so Alli agreed to do the talking.

  I get a nod back from her, and then she returns her atte
ntion to Jessica. “There’s actually a lot to wonder about.”

  She goes on to lay out a case as to why the accident that took my mother and aunt should be looked at again, why it should be investigated with fresh eyes. I’d say she gives an argument that even a lawyer would be proud of, and by the end of the interview, Jessica Moore is making us a promise that if there’s anything nefarious to uncover, she’ll be the one to do it.

  This pledge makes me hopeful, but fearful too. Too much digging into the past on her part might uncover less about my mom and more about me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ALLISON

  The interview with Jessica Moore airs tonight, just a little over a week since we sat down with her.

  Two nights before Hunter and I were scheduled to fly to New York to appear on a network morning show as part of our contract, I’d called my parents to prepare them. It was a long call, one in which my mother ended up in tears.

  “She just can’t get over your brother’s death,” Dad told me. “It’s possible we may have to hospitalize her.”

  “I’ll come home,” I offered, though I knew that would be difficult considering the commitment I’d made to the network.

  “I appreciate the offer,” Dad said, “but her grief is so intense that not even God has been able to guide her out of it.”

  “She lost her only son,” I said. “It isn’t fair.”

  “No, it’s not. Unfortunately for us, not everything in God’s kingdom is fair.”

  “I’ll pay for the hospital,” I said. “I’ve got money coming from this interview.” It was money already promised to Children’s Hospital, but I was sure I could take a sliver of it out to help my mother.

  Dad laughed in that soft, melancholy way he sometimes did. “We actually have excellent health insurance through the church, Allison. I’ve already checked into things, and her stay will be covered. Even if it wasn’t, this would be my responsibility to bear.”

  I didn’t argue with him about that. I just said, “So, take her, Dad. Take her in tonight. She needs help.”

  He sighed, long enough that I thought my father, a man who had always led his flock and had helped so many of them, would disagree and say she needed a bit more time at home, perhaps just one more night where a miracle might occur.

  But when he spoke, he said, “You’re right, honey. No more waiting. I’ll get her in tonight.”

  I again offered to come home so that he didn’t have to go it alone, but he insisted that I keep living my life the way I’d been living it. “After things settle down, come home, and bring Hunter with you,” he added.

  “I will,” I said, telling him how much I loved him and Mom, relieved that she’d be in good hands when the interview aired.

  “What are you thinking about?” Hunter asks, coming up behind me, gripping my waist and laying his chin on my shoulder.

  I’m standing in front of the full-length mirror of our hotel room in New York. I don’t want to worry Hunter and tell him I’d just been thinking about my mother’s potential nervous breakdown, so I say, “Just wondering if this is the right thing to wear out to dinner.”

  He hugs me a little tighter from behind. “You’re stunning, Alli, and the dress is perfect.”

  “You sure? It’s not too short?” It’s about as short as a dress can reasonably get without looking indecent, and it’s perhaps a little daring for the high-end restaurant we’ll be meeting some people from the network at tonight.

  He moves his hands down and over my hips, the warmth of his skin on my bare thighs. “It’s not too short, Alli,” he says, kissing my neck. “It’s just the right length to give me a hell of a boner that I’m going to have to try to tamp down.”

  “Who says you have to tamp it down?” I go from worry to ease, my growing sexual experience with Hunter allowing me to be liberal with my words, to tease him in ways Wyatt would have never approved of or allowed.

  “Oh, don’t do that to me.” He closes his eyes and nearly buries his face in my hair, his erection pushing into my rear.

  “We have time, don’t we?” I move one of my arms behind me and reach my hand to the very solid package between his legs.

  “You’re killing me now,” he groans, opening his eyes back up and kissing my neck again. “We have to be on time for dinner.”

  “Five minutes late won’t hurt anyone.”

  I don’t have to say anything else because, in the next moment, Hunter is dragging the back of my dress up and pulling my panties down. In the mirror, I watch the edges of his arms moving behind me, hear the clang of him unbuckling his belt and the zip of him opening up his trousers.

  I’m flooded with warmth and desire, bringing my fingers underneath my dress and to my center, keeping my eyes open as he nudges forward, his cock rubbing against my slit, teasing me and making me wetter with every stroke.

  “Just fuck me,” I pretty much beg, feeling no shame at my choice of words.

  And he doesn’t disappoint.

  “How’s this,” he whispers into my ear as he pushes his length into me, making me catch my breath as pulses of pure pleasure ring through my body.

  “You feel so good,” I whisper back, keeping my eyes open to watch our reflection, to see his big hands holding tight to my hips, his own hips thrusting as he slides his thickness in and out of me, the friction sending snaps of pleasure through me like a million little firecrackers going off, one after the other. The visual of him is almost as intoxicating, like I’m the only woman in the world for him.

  I drop my hand from my center, his girth giving me more than enough stimulation, but I need something to hold, to grip, and I reach around, dragging my fingers through the hair at the back of his head.

  He’s moaning now too, urging me to turn my face to him, and then we’re kissing, a buzzing warmth building like steam about to blow a valve. I come first, leaning back into Hunter’s strong chest as I do, one of his hands moving from my hips to my stomach and holding me tight to him as he moans with anticipation of his own. With a penetrating groan, he releases himself into me, dropping his lips from mine until his body stops convulsing. I feel as though my knees could buckle, but Hunter keeps a tight hold on me, no fear of me ending up as a heap on the floor.

  “That was more than five minutes,” he says, a bit of a catch in this voice.

  “Then we better get cleaned up and get a move on,” I say, even if I wouldn’t mind just ordering up room service and spending the rest of the night in this room, just Hunter and me.

  “Yes ma’am,” he says, pulling out and giving me a long, lingering kiss. “I’ll be counting the minutes until I can get you back alone in this room.”

  “I’ll count with you.”

  When the alarm goes off, all I want to do is hit the snooze button and burrow back beneath Hunter’s arms and into his warm chest.

  He groans and mumbles something like, “It can’t be morning yet.”

  “Unfortunately… it is.” It’s arrived way too soon.

  It would be generous to imagine I’d gotten more than three hours of sleep, my mind snapping into full awareness whenever my exhausted body tried to pull it into slumber. There was a lot to think about, my pending appearance on live morning television, my mother being in a psychiatric hospital getting the help she really needs, and one more very big thing I hadn’t been expecting.

  With my back to Hunter, he pulls me close, kissing my neck and holding me tight. He growls like a bear, his morning erection pressed up against me. “I don’t want to let you go.”

  I clasp a hand over his, the new bit of metal around my ring finger still cool against my skin. “We don’t ever have to be apart… not really,” I say, still a little disbelieving at the way Hunter turned to me in bed last night after our dinner out, held a ring up to me and said, “I know this isn’t the most romantic way to ask you to marry me, but I can’t wait any longer. Allison Marie Briggs… will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  For the briefest of
moments I hesitated.

  Was it too soon?

  Would getting married again somehow break the spell we were under and curse us the way it seemed to have done to me and Wyatt?

  But as quickly as the concerns entered my mind, they left it. Hunter was not Wyatt, and I loved him so deeply that I couldn’t imagine saying anything but yes.

  And that’s what I did.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll be your wife!”

  “That’s right,” he says, the timbre of his voice still deep. “You’re going to be my wife, and that makes me the happiest man alive.”

  “It makes me pretty happy too,” I say, rubbing my rear against his hardness and then pulling out of his grasp and jumping from the bed before I’m tempted to miss our morning interview and stay wrapped in his arms the entire day.

  He groans, sits up and says, “You can’t rub that cute little ass of yours against me and leave me alone. I’m in pain here, Alli.”

  “Who says I wasn’t going to help you take care of that?” I say, glancing at the tent he’s made of the sheet.

  “And how are you going to help me if you’re standing way over there?”

  “We have to take a shower, don’t we?” I raise a brow and toss a smile at him before I saunter into the bathroom, sure to leave the door wide open.

  It’s a big shower, and less than a minute after entering it, I find myself between Hunter and the wall, his strong arms holding the weight of my body as he takes me with his girth. I hold tight, my arms draped over his massive shoulders, my new diamond ring glittering in the overhead shower light. As impossible as it seems, this morning escapade with Hunter is the best sex I’ve ever had with him, that thought coming and going in a mind made half delirious with him inside of me. It’s because I’m going to be his wife that jolts me into this newly elevated pleasure, the love and forever commitment that accentuates the warm, needy tingles and pulses of ecstasy that ripple through my body until they burst into an orgasm I won’t ever forget.

  I shudder and shake against Hunter, unafraid to show him just how much he affects me. He seems pleased, kissing me as warm water splashes over us. I’m still shaking when he lets go, pushing hard and deep into me, his fingers digging into my rear as mine dig into his shoulders.