The Ground Beneath

by Stephanie Vercier

  Josh’s name lights up the screen, and I consider letting him just leave a message, but then that’s not really what friends do. They answer.

  “Hey, Josh. What’s up?”

  “Oh, man,” he says like he’s catching his breath. “You sound way too relaxed right now.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Because of the news.” He pauses, and when I don’t react, he says, “I’ll stretch myself out on a limb and say you haven’t heard?”

  Worry stings me.

  “What news? What are you talking about?”

  “Jesus. You really don’t know.”

  “No. I guess I don’t. So fucking tell me, Josh. Is it about Alli? She okay?”

  “No, man, not Alli. Not really. It’s Theresa Carmichael. She’s talking a lot of shit about you. Not that I believe it, but—”

  “What do you mean, she’s talking shit about me?”

  He sighs over the phone. “Man, check out any of those shitty gossip sites, and you’ll see it. She says you guys had an affair for three fucking years, and that’s not the worst of it. Dude, I always knew that chick was dangerous. Not only that, but I’m guessing she’s a pathological liar. That stuff can’t be true. It can’t—”

  “I’ll call you back.” I end the call, my gut pretty much hitting the floor as my heart jumps up my throat. I head back to my computer and open up the biggest garbage tabloid site I can think of.

  And there it is, my worst nightmare on a gossip page.

  Sports Shocker! Football Wife Admits Affair with Hunter Lawrence – Files for Divorce from Husband

  With my stomach lurching, I force myself to read on.

  Theresa Carmichael, that gorgeous wife of Henry Carmichael (soon to be ex) dropped the juiciest of truth bombs on every single one of her social media platforms. Bypassing the dinosaurs on network TV, she spoke directly to her fans (mostly horny old men) detailing an alleged hot and heavy three-year affair with Hunter Lawrence, that mouth watering NFL quarterback who less than two weeks ago went on morning television (way too early in the day for me) to show off that sweet little fiancé of his, Allison Briggs.

  The glamorous Mrs. Carmichael also said she was filing for divorce from her husband, Henry Carmichael. Do I even need to remind you he’s Hunter Lawrence’s teammate? I’d sure like to be a fly on the wall when those two hunks hash it out in the team locker room. And boy oh boy, I hate to admit I want to be in the front row when that pretty little Allison Briggs finds out all of this. Will she forgive and forget or kick Hunter to the curb?

  But that isn’t all! In a move that is drawing a great deal of criticism from abuse victim advocates and every other girl in the world it seems, Theresa spilled the tea about Hunter allegedly (there’s that word again) being molested as a child after his mother was killed in a car accident. Sorry friends, but there wasn’t a more delicate way for me to put that—sometimes you just have to rip off that bandage! Even Theresa decided she’d probably stepped in it because she deleted all tweets, texts and posts about the abuse not more than five minutes after first posting them. But soon to be single Theresa must know nothing is ever erased on the internet, right? Screen shots people!

  Her shares about the sultry affair remain though, along with multiple hashtags about her new web series. I’ll admit, I hadn’t even heard of it before this, but knowing what a train wreck it’s going to be, you can count me in!

  Fuck.

  I’m used to bad press, gossip and rumors about me, stuff I used to turn a blind eye to.

  But this is true and hurtful, and reading each word is like forcing myself to swallow shards of glass. It’s shitty enough knowing that two true things I’m deeply ashamed of have just been shared with the world, thrown out like bloody meat to starving sharks. But what pains me most is that I’d held them back from Alli, that I didn’t tell her myself.

  Texts and messages start pouring into my phone, as if me reading that trash article has opened the floodgates. But I ignore them all. The only person in the world that I want to see right now is Alli and hope she’ll let me explain.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  HUNTER

  “Oh, Hunter,” Sheila says when I walk into the office. She, instead of Alli, is at the front desk.

  “Where is she?” I ask, beside myself with worry. I’d been calling her all the way over here, with no response.

  Sheila walks around the desk. “I’ve never seen her more angry or upset. That’s what’s left of her phone.” I follow her eyes to a gash in the wall and then to the ground where the remnants of her phone lay.

  I hate myself for being the reason for her rage. “Please don’t mess with me, Sheila. Tell me where she’s at.”

  “You really do love her, Hunter, don’t you?” Sheila looks at me hard, still harboring doubts that I’m really the right man for Alli.

  “What kind of question is that? Of course I do. I’m going to marry her!”

  “Promise me this thing with Theresa ended before you started anything with Allison then.”

  I drag a hand through my hair. “I promise. It ended as soon as I met Alli, before that even. I fucking love her, and I can’t stand this. Does she not want to see me?”

  Sheila’s posture remains rigid, and I’m thinking I won’t get a damn thing out of her. I’m about to ask again when she relaxes, lets out a long breath and says, “I sent her to the back conference room to cool down. She wanted to go to your condo and either tell you off or comfort you—I’m not sure which—but I convinced her to have some reflective time on her own.”

  “I’ve got to see her,” I say to Sheila, like she’s the one holding the key.

  “Then go, but if she tells you she wants to be alone, respect that, okay?”

  “Fine. I will.”

  I’m already on my way when Sheila calls after me. “And Hunter!”

  I stop, barely turn. “Yeah?”

  “Take care of yourself too, and if you ever want to talk about… well, the other thing Theresa said, please know you can trust me.”

  I don’t want to be felt sorry for, not when it comes to what that bastard did to me, but I’m thankful for the friendship Sheila is offering, so I nod in thanks before pushing on, desperate to see Alli.

  When I open the door to the conference room, she’s standing in front of the floor to ceiling window looking into the city, her arms folded over her chest. She turns around when I enter the room, her cheeks stained with tears. I walk toward her, wanting nothing more than to pull her up into my arms, but I hesitate.

  “Do you want to see me?” I ask, clenching my jaw to keep myself from breaking apart if she says no.

  She slips one of her lips beneath the other, like she’s trying to stave off the same kind of emotion. She blinks away a tear, nods and then unexpectedly steps toward me and falls into my arms.

  I pull her into my chest and hold on for dear life. “Hey… hey. It’s going to be okay. I love you, Alli. You know that, don’t you?” Tentative, I want to believe I’ve just gotten a second chance with her, that the true relief of a man who’s just staved off death is within reach.

  She doesn’t say anything in return, and that worries me. More than ever, I need her to tell me that she still loves me, but I don’t want to force it out of her, make her say it out of some kind of obligation.

  When we finally part, she’s wiping tears from her eyes. “We should sit and talk,” she says, already heading toward the couch along the wall.

  “Okay,” I say, fully aware this could still go the wrong way and regretting whatever past choices I’d made to lead up to this. We sit, Alli choosing to take one end of the couch and me sitting in the middle.

  “So, it’s true. All of it?”

  There’s no reason to lie, not now, and definitely not to Alli. “Yes. As far as I know from what little I’ve read. I didn’t read whatever she originally posted, but yes, I had an affair with her, and yes, I was… molested as a kid,” I say painfully. “You have to believe th
at I would have told you eventually.”

  “I know,” she says. “I know you would have.”

  “I never thought in a million fucking years it would come out like this, Alli.”

  “You didn’t think she’d say anything because of her husband,” she says, calmly wiping a loose tear from her cheek.

  I shake my head. “I ended things with her the first day I saw you. She was at my condo, waiting for me, and I couldn’t. I was done. Since the day I met you, I haven’t been with anyone else.”

  “That makes me feel better…”

  “But?”

  She wrinkles her nose and grimaces. “But Theresa Carmichael? I know she’s beautiful, gorgeous actually, but to be with a woman like that… with so much ugliness festering inside of her?”

  I want to bury my hands in my face with shame for the man I’d been. “I wasn’t exactly a stellar guy either, Alli. My moral compass was almost nonexistent.” I could make excuses, tell her that Theresa and Henry didn’t take their vows seriously, but that doesn’t matter when I still knew it was wrong.

  “At some point, you trusted her enough to tell her those things, though,” Alli says, hurt in her voice, and it kills me to imagine I put it there.

  Those things.

  “I thought I trusted her,” I say. “About a year in, she told me what a crummy childhood she had, how her teen years weren’t much better, how men hurt her. I felt like she was trying to let me into her life, to be honest, and I owed her the same thing. So, after I’d had a lot to drink one night, I told her the stuff I usually just tried to forget. She acted like she understood, but I think she saw me differently after that, like I was less of a man. I never mentioned it again.”

  “You know that’s not true, don’t you?” she says, a defensive shine to her eyes. “You’re no less of a man, Hunter.”

  “I’m realizing that now,” I say. “But it fucked me up. It made me feel like I had to compensate and still hide the truth. It was easier to keep it to myself instead of risking… I don’t know… judgment? More pain? After I told Theresa, it just confirmed what I thought would be the response from anyone who knew.”

  “I hate her for that,” Alli says, her teeth baring like a lioness about to defend her cubs. “And I hate whoever did this to you.” She looks ready to say more, but then her head drifts down, silence overtaking her.

  I touch her arm. “I wish I would have told you on my own. It’s just not something I wanted to have to say out loud. It’s not that I didn’t trust you.”

  “That’s kind of the hard part,” she says. “I totally get that, but it still hurts you told her and not me.”

  “Alli.”

  “She’s a horrible, awful woman, Hunter. It’s not even the affair that upsets me so much, but the way she told the world about what you’ve been through.”

  “I saw the remains of your phone.”

  “Yeah, well… it’s her I wanted to smash. I would have punched her if she was in the office, you know? I still want to punch her.”

  “It’s good to know I’ve got you on my side.”

  “I’m always on your side, Hunter, and that’s why… well, I know it’s not fair, but I guess I just thought the things you were holding back from me were crazy things from your past, orgies or drug benders, stupid things, stuff guys do when they’ve got money and women throwing themselves at them.”

  “I’ve never been in an orgy… or gone on a drug bender,” I say, doing a bad job at trying to lighten the mood.

  She smiles, but it’s halfhearted. “I told you everything from my past that really mattered, and I had this expectation you’d do the same.”

  “I don’t know if that’s fair, Alli,” I say, feeling some anger that’s probably just fear this might be her way of saying I’d fucked up so bad that she can’t bring herself to marry me. “If you’d been sleeping with a guy you knew I couldn’t stand or had some fucker molest you when you were nine years old, would you have been eager to tell me?”

  Her eyes widen, and she takes my hand. “I’m not saying you were wrong, Hunter. I’m just trying to explain what I’m feeling.”

  “We aren’t over though, right?” My anxiety returns, and damn if it doesn’t hurt like hell to be in love, to ask a question and know the wrong answer might destroy you.

  Alli is too good for me—I’ve always known that. She’d gone through one of the biggest tragedies of her life a little over a year ago, and instead of becoming the worst version of herself, she worked through her pain, grew stronger, and started a new life in a new city. She could do so much better than me.

  “I don’t want to be over, Hunter, but maybe I just need some room.”

  “Room?”

  “Just a little extra space to remember who I am. I’ve been living and breathing you in since the day I met you, and it’s like I’m not even sure what my life would be without you.”

  “Is that such a terrible thing? I don’t know what my life would be without you either—I don’t want to know. You’ve made me believe I can be the man I always wanted to be.”

  “You’re giving me too much credit, Hunter.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, well, it’s still a whirlwind. I think we just have to take a step back and get to know each other again.”

  I know she’s trying to do the right thing, to make sure the foundation we have is solid, but I still feel like, at best, I’m being punished. At worst, the foundation being built is the one to take her right out of my life.

  “Are you going to have to try to love me all over again too?” I probably sound pathetic now, but I don’t care. Love does that to you.

  She inches toward me. “I don’t have to relearn that, Hunter. I do love you. I love you so much that it scares me, and I wouldn’t dare let you out of this room without telling you that. I wish I’d told my brother that I loved him before he and Wyatt took off that night. If I’d known it was the last time…”

  I pull her toward me. “I’m so sorry. I fucking hate how much this hurts you.”

  “I’m strong enough, Hunter. And I’ll say it again. I love you. We’re going to get through this, even if we have to take a step back and stumble through it.”

  “So, we aren’t over?” My brain is fried, and I apparently need her to spell it out for me in a way I can understand and trust.

  “We definitely aren’t over, Hunter, not even close.”

  “No?”

  “No. There’s no way I’d walk away from you. It would be impossible.”

  Impossible.

  “That’s what I needed to hear,” I say.

  She lets out a breath. “There’s a lot we need to hear from each other. Can you tell me what happened all those years ago? I want to know Hunter, to know everything about you, the good and the bad.”

  She deserves this truth because, as much as I hate that it’s a part of my past, it is. For her to know everything there is about me, I can’t hold back.

  “Okay,” I say. “Just let me figure out where to begin.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  HUNTER

  The calls kept coming in for me to answer Theresa’s accusations. I didn’t want anything to do with it, and the first time Sheila brought up the possibility of my silence affecting some of my lucrative deals, I told her I could have cared less about that.

  “It’s your reputation, Hunter. It’s about setting the record straight from your point of view,” she said, not letting it go. “Trust me on this. It’s what you pay me for.”

  Alli said it was up to me but that she’d support me in whatever decision I made. And I felt like I owed it to her, to man up and face head on what had become this week’s trending entertainment topic. So I gave the green light, and Sheila negotiated another exclusive deal with Jessica Moore. She’d fly out to Seattle again to do the interview, her one demand being that Alli was a part of it. I didn’t expect Alli to say yes, to go in for another round of questions she’d probably rather not answer, bu
t she did.

  “I’m here for the long haul,” she said.

  And I’m so much more at ease with her sitting beside me on the studio couch, our hands clasped, Alli’s engagement ring still on her finger.

  “This has been quite a week for you both,” Jessica Moore says as she begins the interview, the cameras focused on us.

  “About as intense as they get,” I agree.

  “So, Theresa Carmichael’s accusations came as a surprise to you? No warning?”

  I shrug. “In her own way, I suppose she was warning me.”

  “How so?”

  “By signing her and her husband on to my agent. She figured out I was with Alli by then and knew that she worked for Sheila. I think it was her way of trying to get back at me, to mess things up.”

  “Getting back at you for ending your relationship with her?”

  “That’s what I believe.”

  “There’s speculation she didn’t like all of the attention the two of you got during our previous, very well-watched interview,” Jessica says with something like a self-congratulating smile, her eyes fixed on me. “Do you think that’s why she shared so much of your private information, even if it was hurtful to you?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “That makes her a pretty awful person then, doesn’t it?” Alli cuts in.

  Jessica turns to her. “Perhaps. The loss of a relationship can make people do terrible things. I imagine you developed some rather strong feelings yourself when you found out your fiancé had an affair with a married woman for three years.”

  I cringe at the question and hate that I’ve put Alli in a position to have to answer it.

  “I don’t really care about that,” Alli says. “That’s over and done with. If Theresa wasn’t ready for it to end, she should have fought for him, but instead she shared something she knew would hurt, at the expense of Hunter and abuse victims everywhere really. She should apologize—publicly—and stop using this as publicity for her web series.”