False Start (Mavericks #1)

by Julianna Marley

  “Well?” Chelsea asked as Alivia sat down in the chair next to her.

  “Well what?” she asked confused, sliding her chair closer to the table.

  “Seriously? You’re going to play that game?”

  Looking at Chelsea a moment, it dawned on her just exactly what she was getting at. Slipping her sunglasses back on top of her head, she didn’t respond. She didn’t want to get into the “Jax discussion.” Not now. Or really at all. She just wanted to relax, chat about everyone else’s problems forgetting her own. Was that too much to ask for?

  “I take it by your silence that things are less than ideal with your new houseguest?”

  “Jesus Chels, can I sit down first?” she asked. She hadn’t even had a chance to open her menu and already there was a rapid fire of questions about him being home. It was bad enough he was already challenging her authority in front of the girls, the last thing she needed was him consuming her conversations too. Besides, there wasn’t anything to say because she hadn’t really seen him before this morning. They avoided each other at the party, well more or less she had avoided him and he seemed to take the hint. Some of their friends had stayed afterwards and when he disappeared into the media room with the guys she went to bed, thankful for the reprieve of being under his indiscreet stares. Plus, she was still refusing to acknowledge that she was getting turned on watching him in the pool earlier.

  “Wait, why he is back again?” Charlotte asked, taking a piece of bread from the center of the table. Leaning back in her chair, Alivia threw her hands up. What the heck was this? Was she lured here with the promise of French toast and chit chat, but had walked into some kind of intervention and not realize it? No. No. No. This conversation was not happening. But with three pairs of eyes staring back at her, it was clear that the conversation was in fact going to happen whether she liked it or not.

  “Because the lease on his apartment is up,” she sighed picking up her menu again.

  “I just can’t believe he still hasn’t told you why he left.” Whitney shook her head sadly.

  “Nobody knows,” Chelsea said resting her arms on the table. “Only Trevor.”

  Feeling the ache in her head press harder into her skull, Alivia mindlessly gazed over the menu that she already had memorized. All she had wanted to do was relax and concentrate on something other than Jax. She knew her friends were only trying to help, but she didn’t want help. She never wanted help. Avoiding the entire situation was what she wanted and she was too afraid of the outcome, so denial seemed like the most logical reasoning at the moment. Why didn’t anyone understand that?

  “Y’all just need to talk it out,” Charlotte said, leaning out of the way as the waiter placed their coffees down. “Either that or just have some hot, dirty sex and forget about it all,” she added shrugging her shoulders as if it was a perfectly reasonable solution, causing the waiter to chuckle. Shaking her head, her face fell into in her hands. The last thing she needed was to be thinking about having sex with Jax. Let alone, the hot and dirty kind.

  “Charlotte!” Whitney scolded looking up from her tea reprimanding her cousin, as per usual. Although paternal cousins, the Scott women couldn’t have been any more different. Charlotte was tiny and spunky and a certified fireball. Whitney was cute, sweet, and bubbly. Charlotte told it how it was, and Whitney favored optimism.

  “The fact that y’all haven’t done that already, just blows my mind,” Chelsea said, shaking a sugar packet before tearing it open.

  “Haven’t done what?” Alivia asked, watching the veil drape over Chelsea’s face as she prepared to launch into full guidance counselor mode, making Alivia want to run.

  “Talked? Or had hot, dirty sex?” Alivia asked mocking her, causing Charlotte to laugh loud enough for the couple next to them to look over.

  Sighing, Chelsea ignored her, looking around the table for affirmation. “I know confrontation isn’t your thing, Liv, but this whole non-communication thing between you and Jax is not healthy for anyone, especially you.”

  She knew Chelsea couldn’t help herself, she was a professional and she counseled school students before taking a sabbatical after having Asher, but Alivia wasn’t a teenager and she certainly wasn’t in the mood to be guided or counseled.

  “Whitney, how are you feeling?” Alivia asked, looking at her assistant across the table, forcing a subject change to something, someone, anything else, but her. Maybe something like Whitney’s rough pregnancy?

  “Big…I just feel big.” Whitney smiled, her Louisianan accent seeming thicker than usual. Poor girl was only six months along and her feet were already swollen twice their normal size and she had been sick throughout her entire pregnancy thus far. Alivia had only been sick for the first three months and remembered it to be absolutely awful, she had no idea how Whitney was still walking around with a huge smile on her face. But that was Whitney, as cheerful and sweet as the good Lord made them. And sensitive. Unlike her cousin.

  “I think he came home to make things right,” Chelsea interjected, smearing some cream cheese on her bagel, clearly not abiding by the forced change of subject. Alivia had wanted to believe that was the reason too. That he finally wanted to explain why he abruptly left or that he was still madly in love with her and wanted to be a family again. But it wasn’t. She knew that. She also knew firsthand that when the men she loved strolled out of her life, they never really came back.

  Her father had left when she was seven years old. Was it for another woman? Was the everyday grind too much for him to handle? Was he not happy? It could have been any of those things, but she knew when she had watched him leave as the sun set on that summer night, that she would never have the answer to that question. She remembered asking her mama every day for two years straight if he was coming home and her mama had tenderly kissed the top of her head, softly answering, “Not today baby, but maybe tomorrow.” It became very clear that, he in fact, was never coming home. That day or any other day. She loved her mama with all her heart and quickly realized she was all her mama had left in life, but she never truly let go of the pain her daddy inflicted when he walked away from them. The agony at the sight of his bags in his hands, as she looked up into his steel grey eyes and asked if he loved her and if he would stay for her. Being an adult and having children of her own she knew now what a coward he had been.

  But eighteen months ago, as she made her way to her office still smiling from the holiday weekend, all of that changed. She had been grinning to herself thinking about Jax and Trevor’s faces lighting up when they all had arrived at their hotel door. The Mavericks had a game on Thanksgiving Day and she refused to resign herself to another holiday without Jax. So she did what any madly in love wife would do and packed up the girls before convincing a very pregnant Chelsea to join them, along with Ross, to spend the weekend in Chicago. With the beautiful city exhibiting the impending excitement of the upcoming holidays, all the girls and of course Ross, shopped by day and spent the evening with the guys, crammed into one hotel room as they ate burgers and fries and watched movies. Relishing in their very own football holiday weekend.

  Noticing a man outside her office door looking up at the address on the door and back down at a small piece of paper in his hand, he looked lost. He was a tall man, very thin, but tall with little hair. His pants were tattered, the old t-shirt he wore despite the chill in the air looked thin and beat up. Slowing her steps, he turned around and she immediately knew it was him. It was her father. After collecting the magazines and fabric swatches off the sidewalk that fell from her arms from complete shock and a strained exchange of pleasantries where he felt the need to re-introduce himself as Kent Moore, her father, as if they hadn’t shared the same height, hair color and identical noses. Inviting him into her office and out of the windy morning air, she had made a pot of hot coffee. It was more than he deserved, but her mama had raised her with manners. Heavy confusion mixed with creeping anxiety, laced with complete anger and downright disbelief ran down
her arms and through her hands as she struggled to pour his coffee into the plastic cup. Sitting across from him in her thick chair in the small seating area of her office, she couldn’t understand why after all the years that had passed, he had finally tracked her down. The conversation was brief and strained at best, he had informed her that he had moved to New York after he left her and her mama, and shortly afterwards met a woman. She had interrupted him right there because she didn’t want to know anymore, wasn’t interested in how he led his life and if he was happy because he had shattered their family. Taking the last sip of his coffee, he had asked for her phone number and because she didn’t feel completely comfortable giving him her personal number, she gave him her email address. Turning to leave, he felt the need to drop another bomb on her, as if his unexpected appearance wasn’t enough for one day. Hanging his head, he informed her the second thing that she waited all her life to hear, the first being that he loved her; the second being that she had a younger sister. A sister named Kate.

  The idea that she had a half-sister somewhere out in the world was like a punch to the stomach, nearly breaking her heart. Growing up, she wanted nothing more than a sibling, someone to share life experiences with and embrace the craziness of their family in a way no one else could. Someone to share the responsibilities and worry over their mama as she got older, but the thought that she lost all of that, more importantly, lost all of that with a sister, was almost enough to bring her to her knees.

  Months followed that fateful morning, e-mails from him had poured in, but between the demands of the business, the girls, and Jax’s football schedule, adding strained small talk with an estranged father was low on her priority list. She had often wondered why he came back into her life. Was it because he finally had the nerve to face her and wanted to forge a relationship with her? Was he lonely and realized that he wanted the love and attention of his little girl? Or had he found out that she was married to the Mavericks’ star quarterback and he needed money or wanted a reputation by association? The e-mails became incessant and she put off his requests to visit her and meet his granddaughters for as long as she could. When Jax had finally convinced her that meeting the girls and spending some time with him may be a step in the right direction, she broke down and booked him a flight to visit. When he appeared through the throng of passengers from the airplane, his appearance startled her. He looked much older and thinner than the last time she had seen him when he had shown up at her office. It had only been three months, but his face held more wrinkles and fine lines then she remembered and looked frail and tired.

  As the weekend progressed he seemed preoccupied and uneasy. She hadn’t known him well enough to know if that was normal behavior for him, but from the little she did remember from her childhood, she didn’t recognize those mannerisms. Life didn’t stop just because her father suddenly had a change of heart after twenty-one years. The demands of a business, raising babies, and spending as much time with Jax as she could before the playoffs began, kept them to small talk throughout his visit. He talked about when she was younger as if reminiscing and she couldn’t shake the feeling of him searching for some kind of penance for his mistakes. Despite her questioning several times, he still declined to tell her any information about her half-sister as if using it as collateral, which not only confused her, but made her furious.

  Four weeks later she had found out that he wasn’t responding to his chemotherapy treatments and the doctors had given him a short window of time left.

  He had cancer.

  He was sick and was dying and he knew it all along. Choosing to say nothing. He knew the diagnosis when he had shown up on her office doorstep and he knew he was going to die when he flew out to visit her. He had tried to tell her the more she thought about it later, but she hadn’t given him the chance to. She was guarded and detached from him like he had been almost her entire life. The night he left her house to catch his flight back home, she hadn’t known it would be the last time she ever saw him again. His parting words still haunting her, “I do love you,” no doubt referring to the last question her seven year-old self had asked him before he left. Those four words that had opened the gate to every raw emotion from love to hate to hope to possible forgiveness, answers to all the burning questions she had held onto for years. When the hospital had called her to inform her that he was, indeed, fading quickly, she had spoken with him and he promised to answer all her questions if he could just see her one last time.

  After throwing a few clothes in a bag and kissing Jax and the girls’ goodbye in the late night hours, she pulled up to Charleston International on her way to New York to say goodbye, maybe even give some form of forgiveness or absolution and in return, receive some peace. As she stood inside the terminal gate alone, the call came from his nurse to deliver the news that he was already gone. And gone with him were all the answers to all the questions she had and the chance to make peace with her father once and for all, but more importantly, leaving with him was everything and anything she needed to know about finding her sister.

  “I just think he had a midlife crisis,” Charlotte interrupted, sharing her theory of Jax’s baffling disappearance and reappearance breaking Alivia out of her tormented thoughts.

  “He’s thirty-one,” she said looking up at Charlotte. “He’s hardly mid-life.”

  “Yeah, but I mean really think about it, Liv.” Charlotte sipped her pineapple juice through her straw. “You’re smart, you’ve always had your shit together-“

  “Language,” Whitney corrected, pointing at Charlotte.

  “And you’re hot as hell.” Not stopping Charlotte the long list of compliments, she stabbed a piece of cantaloupe with her fork, chewing the sweet fruit. “He has always been wild for you.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t handle the pressures of those silly cheating rumors,” Whitney said delicately, resting her hands on her swollen belly.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to see you breakdown again?” Chelsea muttered barely above a whisper.

  And there it was.

  The entire table falling silent at Chelsea’s notion, Alivia felt the permanent knife that seemed to be lodged inside her stomach twist…again. Her infamous nervous breakdown from a year ago feeling every bit as raw as the day that it had happened. At a time in her life when chaos became the new normal, she had allowed herself to take flight on a downward spiral, and she had needed her husband more than any other person in the world. As a wife to a professional athlete, sacrifice wasn’t just a deed, it was a lifestyle. Most times, it felt as if their marriage was put on hold from the first day of training camp until the last game of the season was either won or lost, but she was used to it. She stood by his side for close to six full seasons and was familiar that each season brought its own handful of concerns. The controllable things like stats and passing yards, contract negotiations and intensive training, along with the uncontrollable aspects of age and lingering injuries. Before Jax had left, he was put in the middle of a brutal contract negotiation leaving her unsure if her little family was going to stay in their beautiful city and organization that they adored or if she would need to pack their bags and head to the city of brotherly love, who were actively gunning for a trade. BBetween Jax gone on the road, her father suddenly reappearing and disappearing in her life all over again, nasty untrue infidelity rumors swirling in the media, along with raising two children and the demands of the business, she had been overwhelmed. Watching her perfectly constructed control slip right through her fingers, she had come undone.

  “Maybe,” Alivia mumbled, gazing off onto the cobblestones at the mix of locals carrying farmer’s market bags and the tourists taking pictures with their Nikons.

  “I was running in so many different directions trying to take my mind off my father and playing so many roles that there were times during the day I would just stop and see my hands shaking,” she confessed twisting her fingers in her lap.

  The table falling silent again.

  “I
had to be a mom and a wife…a wife to a NFL player in the middle of a contract year no less, run a business that was luckily thriving and had two young daughters that needed me, along with organizing charities and planning parties for the league,” she said evenly, looking out into the sidewalk again at nothing and nobody in particular.

  “After the infidelity rumors broke, everything spun out of control,” she said quietly, finally looking at her friends all listening carefully because it was the most she had spoken about Jax leaving, ever.

  “Between the pressures from the team and his agent and all the negative publicity from the rumors, I’m not sure if he snapped or if he fell out of love with me after my breakdown, but when I came home and found that note on the kitchen counter, I knew my life was crumbling.”

  * * *

  “Alright pumpkins, run upstairs quickly and grab your slippers for ballet class, we don’t have much time,” Alivia stressed, dumping their school bags, lunch boxes and construction paper art onto the kitchen table. Her head was pounding and it took all the energy she had left inside to still function and get through the second half of the day. Even a double shot espresso hadn’t taken the edge off.

  “Woof! Woof!”

  “Alright, alright, I’ll feed you big man.” She picked up Beans’ dog bowl grabbing a note off the kitchen island. Probably just another detailed note from Magda.

  “Hurry up girls!” she yelled over her shoulder. If she knew her two beauties well enough, she knew that they had more than likely already stumbled upon a toy to play with instead of just getting their ballet slippers on. Filling up the bowl with food, she took the sheet of paper out from under her arm and froze. Letting the oversized bag of dog food fall to the ground, her eyes hazed over the words. The note was certainly not an itemized list of household necessities from Magda.