Single (Stockton Beavers #1)

by Collette West

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Luke

  This ends tonight.

  I stand in front of the reception desk in the hospital emergency room in my baseball uniform, waiting for the nurse behind the window to pick up her head and acknowledge me.

  But I'll wait all night, if that's what it takes, because I never want to see that look of fear on Roberta's face ever again. That's why I'm here. That's why I asked Danny to cover for me. He's probably driving Roberta and Mom home right now. But I'm not worried. Danny knows the plan. I gave him the line to feed Roberta after the game, that I had to talk to the media and I didn't know how long I'd be. I don't know if she bought it, but at least it bought me some time.

  I knock on the glass and the nurse's eyes nearly bug out of her head when she sees me. Slowly, she pushes back the window, ignoring the ringing phones going off all around her. "Can I help you?"

  I don a penitent face. "Yeah, hi. My name's Luke Singleton. I'm a player on the Beavers."

  "Oh, you don't have to tell me," she interrupts. "I know who you are…and what you just did." Thinking my hopes are already dashed, I take heart when she gives me a coy little grin. "Don't tell anybody I said this, but good for you!"

  But I don't let my contrite expression falter. "It's just that I feel terrible about what happened. And it'd mean ever so much to me if I could just go back there and tell him I'm sorry."

  She frowns. "Well, technically, I'm not allowed to let anyone in who's not an immediate family member."

  I give her a plaintive look. "Please…for me? Just this once?"

  She looks around to make sure nobody's watching. "All right, but make it quick."

  I do my best to remain somber, when really I'm jumping up and down inside. The nurse is around Mom's age, and before she got sick, Mom always said she could never resist my sad, puppy-dog eyes. I guess this nurse couldn't either.

  She braces herself against the door, holding it open for me. "He's behind the fifth curtain on the left. The ambulance brought him about an hour ago. The attending doc shot him up with some painkillers until the surgeon's able to examine his X-rays, so he might be a little out of it."

  Great. I really need him to be in his right mind when I say what I have to say to him.

  "Will he know it's me?" I ask.

  She shrugs. "I'm not sure. When we asked him if he wanted us to call his wife, he shoved the orderly next to him so hard, he fell on the floor."

  Even after being seriously injured, his violence knows no bounds. I made the right decision to come here tonight. He needs to be put in his place, once and for all.

  I smile at her. "Okay, thank you, ma'am, for all your help."

  She gives me a quick nod. "Just remember. Keep it short. In and out."

  I stroll by her. "I will. What I have to say won't take long."

  The latch of the door clicks behind me as she returns to her desk, and my ears are immediately assaulted by loud moans of pain coming from the center of the room. I count the curtains as I move down the row while staff members hustle by me, and I'm not surprised that the noise is originating behind curtain number five.

  Grabbing hold of it, I draw it aside, only to find Nichols groaning and sweating on the other side.

  His eyes nearly roll back in his head when he sees that it's me. "You… What are you doing here? You little wimp…you little coward…you little piece of…"

  He clearly knows who I am, no worries there.

  "I've come to deliver a message," I respond coolly.

  "Get out," he growls, his broken hand resting limply on his stomach as he tries to sit up. "I said, get out!"

  Closing the curtain, I step toward him. "Not until you listen to me."

  "Nurse!" he cries out. "Nurse!"

  I glare at him. "Yell all you want. No one's coming to help you after you decked that orderly."

  Breathing heavily, he leans back against the pillow, eyeing me with suspicion. "What do you want?"

  I grip the bed rails and lean over him. "I want you to stay away from Bobbie Jo. You're not to call her, text her, go anywhere near her. You got that?"

  "And what are you gonna do about it?" he mocks me. "Break my other hand?"

  I narrow my eyes at him. "Sorry, I'm not like you. I don't go around hurting innocent people for kicks."

  He snickers. "I've hit a lot of guys over the course of my career, but you're the only one who refuses to know when he's been beaten."

  I get right in his face. "That's where you're wrong. You don't have a career anymore. You're the one who's been beaten."

  A glimmer of uncertainty crosses his face before he can hide it. The worst fear of every ballplayer is suffering a career-ending injury. I should know. For a while, that was my life, thanks to him. But I made it back, and he's not going to be so lucky, for one very important reason—he doesn't have Roberta to help him through it, and I did.

  "It's over. She's with me now. She doesn't want you anymore." I shake my head as I stare down at his misshapen hand. "Can you blame her?"

  He glowers at me. "You don't know Bobbie Jo like I do. You may think you do, but you don't."

  And that's when I go off on him. "What? Like kicking her in the stomach when she was pregnant with your child?"

  His eyes lock on mine. "She told you that?"

  I nod, but I'd much rather knock that ugly smirk off his face.

  "Yeah, well. She's lying."

  I ease off the bed rails and take a step back because it's the only way I'll be able to restrain myself. "Keep telling yourself that. But we both know what happened, don't we? She may have been too afraid to press charges then, but she has me now. And I swear to God, if you ever hurt again, you're gonna rot in jail for a long, long time."

  He scowls at me sullenly, and I make sure to drive my point home so there's no confusion.

  "You have a record now. You've served time. No judge is gonna take your side over mine. So if you ever try breaking in to my home again in the middle of the night, know this—I'll be ready for you, Nichols, and I'm gonna enjoy taking you down for good this time. Do we understand each other?"

  He stares daggers at me, stubbornly remaining silent.

  I move closer to him. "I repeat, do we understand each other?"

  "Yeah, we understand each other," he snarls back, intent on getting the last word. "Besides, no real man is gonna want her now, not after she lowered herself to be with the likes of you."

  This time, I'm the one smirking at him. "Really? That's the best you can do?"

  His eyes are like slits as he simmers with rage on the bed. "Get the hell out."

  "With pleasure," I mutter, turning on my heel and tossing the curtain aside.

  It took every ounce of courage I possessed to go in there. Before, I let him get away with what he did to me. But now, I was able to do what had to be done, ready to stand up for what's right. But Roberta can never find out about this. It'll be the only secret I'll ever keep from her, but it's one I have to keep. She wouldn't have wanted me coming here to confront her ex-husband. But I'm the man in her life now, and it's up to me to draw the line in the sand.

  I stride through the door, and when the nurse at reception spots me, she calls out, "How'd it go? Everything okay between the two of you now?"

  I nod at her. "Couldn't be better."

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Roberta

  "Bobbie Jo, it's two a.m. What are you doing down here?" Luke asks when he finds me in the kitchen.

  It was late when he got home, and I pretended to be asleep, not wanting to talk about David when my mind was all jumbled up and confused. So I snuck down here to write in my journal, which is what I've been trying to do for the last two and a half hours. My body's on high alert like I just downed three espressos. Usually, I'm able to collect my thoughts on paper, but tonight, even that's not working for me. I'm still wired, tense, anxious. I've scribbled everything out because nothing I've written makes sense.

  I take in his messy hair and
the wrinkled state of his tee and wonder why the heck I'm down here when I could be upstairs with his strong arms wrapped around me. I don't have an answer to that, and I need to keep writing until I do.

  He ambles toward me, barefoot. "Come to bed."

  "I can't, not yet."

  "Bobbie Jo…" He reaches behind me to massage my shoulders, and I quickly shut the cover of my journal. "He's not coming back, not tonight, not ever."

  But that's not what I'm afraid of. I stare straight ahead at the picture of Luke's father on the wall. When Luke showed me his statue on the square, he joked about having to grow up as the son of Mr. Beaver and what it would be like when he had kids of his own someday. After he said that, I was torn. Should I tell him or shouldn't I tell him? I was so conflicted I didn't even let him kiss me that night, despite how much I wanted him to.

  He breaks in to my thoughts, stepping around to the other side of the table, getting me to look at him. "I didn't even know you were down here until my phone went off. My crazy manager felt the need to text me that I've been chosen as one of the Kings' September call-ups."

  His good news gives my spirits a much-needed lift. "Oh, Luke. That's wonderful!"

  I'm halfway out of my chair to give him a hug when he says, "Thanks, but I'm not taking the spot."

  "What?" I ask, slumping back into my seat.

  "It's an honor and all, but there's no way I'm leaving you and Mom."

  "Luke…" I groan. "It's only for a few weeks, a month at most. We'll be fine."

  "But what if it's not?" he asks. "What if I make the playoff roster and the Kings go all the way to the World Series? Then we're talking more like eight weeks instead of four. And that's not even taking next season into account. There's no way I can uproot Mom and move to New York. It's just not possible."

  I clasp his hand. "That's why you have to tell Landry. He can help you. I know he can."

  "No." He slips his hand out of mine. "Roberta, you know how I feel about this."

  "But this is too big of an opportunity for you to pass up. You can't turn it down, Luke. I won't let you."

  "But it's not just about Mom." He pins me with his gaze. "I don't wanna be away from you."

  My heart beats strong and true in response because I feel exactly the same way. I don't want to be separated from him either. This life we've carved out for ourselves here in Stockton has become my whole world. But he's making a monumental decision without having all the facts.

  I fidget, playing with the cap on top of my pen. "This thing with David…you think it's over, but it's not."

  He shifts his head to the side. "What? Of course, it is. The ball shattered his hand. Even with surgery, he won't be able to hurt you ever again, I swear."

  I hold my head in my hands. "But Luke, you don't know…" I moan. "David always wins. In fact, he's already won."

  Luke laughs, breaking into a big grin. "You're letting your mind run away with you. I know you've been running scared for a long time now, but you don't have to be afraid anymore. Trust me. Things will look a whole lot brighter after a good night's sleep."

  He offers me his hand, but I don't take it. "Tell me, Luke. What do you really want? Do you even know?"

  He kneels down beside me, taking the pen out of my hand. "Yes," he whispers, his eyes changing from an intense amber golden brown to that tender shade of green I love. "I want you."

  I have to just drop it on him. It's the only way I'll find out the truth.

  "Even if I'm not able to have children?"

  He falls into a stunned silence, and I have my answer. Pushing back my chair, I head to the window, putting some distance between us. As I peer out into the backyard, the outline of the miniature baseball diamond is visible in the moonlight. It's the one Luke's dad made for him, the one he no doubt wants to share with his own children someday, the children I won't be able to give him.

  When he finally does speak, his question strikes hard and it strikes deep. "It's because of him, isn't it? Because of what he did to you?"

  I have no reason to be scared anymore. David no longer poses an immediate threat to us. He can't hurt me. He can't hurt Luke—only I'm capable of doing that now. But it doesn't mean Luke's wrong. Taking a cleansing breath, I release the sigh that's pent up inside me. "Yes, David had something to do with it."

  When Luke slams his fist down on the table, I jump. "I should've broken his other hand when I had the chance!"

  But when he sinks down into my empty chair, the energy fueling his tough-guy bravado quickly fades. Luke's not a violent man. He's not like David. Out on the field tonight, I saw how guilty he felt for what he did to him. Even though it was a freak accident, he doesn't take joy in anyone's suffering. That's not who he is. And that's why I love him. And that's why, no matter how painful it is for me to say, he deserves to know the truth.

  But the flicker of hope that's burning inside of him is slow to die. "But what if there's a doctor, a specialist somewhere, who can help you?"

  And it hurts to have to extinguish it.

  "Luke, there's something you should know. After I left David, I had a series of…what I guess you would call…rebound relationships. I was just in a bad place where I bounced from guy to guy because I was so mixed up inside. I was working for Arnold Heimlich at the time, and I started sleeping around with…some of the Kings."

  He ducks his head, rubbing his hand across his jaw when it starts to hit home that some of the rumors about me are actually true.

  "But I didn't fall in love with any of them. To me, they were more like flings than anything else. So no one was more surprised than I was when…" I trail off in order to gather myself. "When I ended up getting pregnant again."

  The hand he was running over his goatee falls to the table.

  "But you have to understand," I plead. "It was the wake-up call I needed. Even if I didn't care about myself, I had no choice but to pull my life together for the sake of the baby. It was my chance to start over. I pinned all my hopes on it."

  "Who was the father?"

  "Jake Woodbury."

  Hearing that, his face remains blank. And now, this is where things get hard. I could just leave it there. I don't have to go on. And if it were anyone else, I probably would shut down and close myself off, hide from him what I don't want him to know—but I can't with Luke. He let me all the way in, and he deserves the same from me.

  I lower my head. "But very early on, I suffered a miscarriage." I take a moment, digging deep to find the strength to go on. "The mental anguish I went through after that was the darkest period of my life. I know it sounds crazy, but in my head, I kept hearing David telling me: it's your fault, Bobbie Jo, it's always your fault. And I believed that voice inside my head because I had no one to tell me otherwise. Luke, you have no idea how much I wanted that baby after what happened with David… And when I lost it, it hurt…it hurt so much. I was experiencing a great deal of physical pain too, but the heartache hurt more. Aware of my medical history, my doctor was worried and he put me through a series of tests.

  What he found out wasn't good. There was a lot of residual scarring in and around my uterus from the emergency C-section I had after what David did to me. I didn't even know because when I woke up in the hospital, all I was told was that's the way they chose to handle the stillbirth." I pause, my voice starting to tremble. "So when I got pregnant again…and eventually miscarried…" I stop, reliving it all over again in my mind. "The tests revealed that the placenta wasn't able to fully dislodge the way it was supposed to. A part of it was still attached to the uterine wall, to the scar tissue, with a very real danger of hemorrhaging." I take a deep breath. "I had no choice. I had to have a hysterectomy…so that's what I did. I didn't even think twice about it. I guess at that point I was ready to do just about anything to make the pain go away, regardless of what it would cost me."

  Luke's brow furrows like he's not exactly sure what I'm trying to tell him, and it kills me to have to explain it to him.

 
A sob rises up in my throat. "Luke, don't you see? I can't give you the children you want. I can't give you a family. What I had done can't be undone." The tears start flowing in earnest now, and I can't hold them back. "It's just, at the time, I convinced myself that I was okay with it because I never thought I'd meet someone like you. I gave up on life, on ever falling in love again, on ever being happy again." I take a shaky breath. "And now, I'm half a woman…with nothing left to offer you."

  "Don't say that," he cries, getting up and reaching for me. "You're everything I could ever want and more. Don't you know that?"

  I shy away from him, not allowing him to pull me into the warmth of his embrace. "And do you really think I could be happy, knowing that you threw away your future on account of me? Luke, I refuse to hold you back. I want you to have everything you've ever dreamed of because you deserve it. That's why I want you to tell your manager yes. You owe it to yourself, your mom…your dad…to go and play in New York." I sigh deeply. "If you don't, I don't think I'd ever be able to forgive myself." Hugging my arms to my chest, I slowly back my way out of the kitchen.

  "Roberta…" he whispers.

  But with silent tears streaming down my face, I keep going. Once I get inside my room, I lock the door before throwing myself down onto the bed, tugging the sheets around me that are still warm from his body.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Luke

  When you get to be around twelve or thirteen, don't even think about shaping your own eyebrows. Come to me and I will take you to have them done by a professional. The hair you pluck today, you'll be wishing you had back when you're older.