Rags 2 Pitches: A Secret Baby Sports Romance

  Guys wanted to be with her.

  Girls wanted a body just like hers.

  Her breasts bounced as she walked in the room, and every part of her, including her butt, was just tight. I couldn’t help but want to pinch it every time. She always wore fitted clothes that showed off her body; that hot, tight body of hers. When prom hit, shit, I was so damn jealous that her date wasn’t me.

  But I couldn’t fucking show it.

  Everyone would have thought that I was some kind of freak lusting after my stepsister.

  She went to the trouble of transferring from the community college to Stanford after my dad agreed to support her. We never really spoke, even at home. Our parents got married fast. Real fast. They fucking eloped and told us about it after. It was crazy - her mom was desperate to do it before Kayla graduated. I didn’t see the rush, but Dad was smitten. Anyway, before I knew it, Kayla moved in and then it was time to go to college. I was happy, thinking that the wet dreams of her would go away once I went.

  When Kayla left, I tried looking for her after her mom filed a police report. Mary, her own mother, was kind of hesitant about going to the police. She even went and said something like, “Kayla was always running away as a kid. She’s just up to her old tricks again.”

  In the end, due to heavy persuasion on my part, she filed a missing person’s report, but nothing came of it in the first few days. Mary sighed. “See, Stephen, I told you. Kayla did this as a kid. You’ve got work to do back home. Let’s just go back. If anything comes up, the police will call us and then we’ll let you know, Chase.”

  That wasn’t good enough for me. I was used to getting my own way, so I pressured Dad and they hired a private detective, Mr. Johnson, and, within a few days, he’d found out more than the police did; he had evidence.

  We went to his office to hear the news; I was so excited about finally having a lead on the whole mystery. I thought that he was going to tell us where she had gone and why. His office was nothing like what I’d expected. It was downtown, and it looked more like a finance office than a private detective’s office.

  Or maybe I had been watching too many reruns of Columbo. I’d expected the guy to have a raincoat in California. I had no idea why, but my vision was completely ruined when I saw him. He reminded me of Luther from the TV show; clean-cut in a business suit, and a smooth operator. Anyway, as we sat down in his office, Mr. Johnson told us the bad news.

  “Well, I found her. It wasn’t hard.”

  He flicked through pieces of paper, avoiding our eyes, so I blurted out, “And? What did she say? Did you talk to her? Is she coming home?”

  He didn’t need to look through pieces of paper to give us an answer. It was a simple question.

  “Slow down, son. I’m sure Mr. Johnson wants to give us an account of Kayla. The main thing is, she is safe.”

  He nodded. I looked around his room and took a few deep breaths because I was losing patience. He had a few awards on his wall from when he was serving with the police. I wondered for a split second why he’d left, but he had finished reading whatever he had to address us once again.

  I rocked while facing him, feeling as if my head was just spinning out of control.

  “So.” He adjusted his glasses. “She’s living in Chicago. Downtown. Do you want the address?” This time he was talking directly to Mary.

  She shrugged. “It depends. Does she want me to have it?”

  What kind of question was that?

  Your daughter goes missing and you’re asking permission to have her address?

  I didn’t wait for Mr. Johnson to reply. Instead, I shouted, “I’ll have it. Seeing as I’m the only one interested in her whereabouts!”

  I stretched out my hand, ready for him to give us the report on his investigation.

  Instead, Dad spoke up. “If she wanted us to have it then she would have contacted us, right?”

  Mr. Johnson nodded. “See, that is the problem with most runaways. They just don’t want to be found. Mrs. Logan has hired me before with the same problem with Kayla.”

  I frowned at his announcement. Dad didn’t even think anything was wrong with it. I could have sworn that Kayla said they lived in Kentucky before they came to Dallas. Besides, it was kind of weird, because they both had strong Ohioan accents.

  “Anyway, she’s living with a guy. His name is…” Mr. Johnson started to look for it again. “Sorry, I got my papers mixed up because of all the missing persons’ reports that were produced the last time she went missing.”

  He was annoying me. I hadn’t known that Kayla had a history of going missing and, as he trailed on to his findings about Kayla working in a coffee shop and being with some guy, I wondered if it was true or all lies.

  Maybe the voice inside my head was telling me that she had moved on, but none of it made any sense. Mr. Johnson said that she was living with some guy in Chicago.

  Why Chicago of all places?

  I didn’t understand. She never mentioned knowing anyone there, and then she just up and left one night without a trace to go hook up with some guy that she just met or had maybe known from before? Her phone was smashed and found by the ATM where she took out money before she left. The police were treating it as a kidnapping, until campus photos showed her smashing up her own damn phone.

  This was so out of character. Her mom was quick to close the case.

  “Thank you, Mr. Johnson. It looks like Kayla’s up to her old tricks again.” They both got up to walk out of the door. I just sat there, stunned by the revelation.

  She’d never mentioned going to Chicago.

  Then again, she never said anything about running away before, or even the fact that she had a history of it. It was almost as if the girl that I was pining for, had fallen in love with, was completely unknown to me. I knew nothing about her, and I started to wonder if she had just used me.

  Mary tried to comfort me, or maybe she just wanted me out of Mr. Johnson’s office. I stood up, not happy with the answers. Maybe because I wanted to hear the words from Kayla herself. I needed her to tell me that she didn’t want anything to do with me.

  Mary sighed as she offered her hand and walked back to me. “Chase, I know this must hurt. But Kayla obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

  I shook my head. “None of this makes sense. You need to take the address.”

  Mary and Dad refused, and waited outside the investigator’s office. It wasn’t exactly where or when I wanted to tell them, but I ended up confessing how Kayla and I felt about each other.

  They were taken aback, and Dad whispered, “You guys hardly even speak to each other! When did all this happen?”

  I told him, “The first week that you dropped us at campus. I couldn’t keep my true feelings to myself any more.”

  Dad and I were kind of close, so I could tell that he was a bit disappointed that I had never said anything before.

  “But you had a girlfriend; what was her name? Stacey or Kelly or whatever her name was?” Mary asked, and I knew who she was referring to. I would not say they were necessarily my girlfriends. Just girls I fucked once in a while. But I wasn’t exactly going to disclose my whole love life to her here, or at all.

  Dad cleared his throat. He knew that I’d had a thing with both Stacey and Kelly, so he quickly changed the subject.

  “Let’s talk about this back at the hotel. We can get a clear idea of what is going on.”

  He avoided looking at me until we got in the car.

  “The thing is, you’re step-siblings. I just don’t understand what you were thinking?”

  I didn’t answer. He was right. We were, but sometimes you can’t help the way you feel about someone. It wasn’t like we were brought up together or anything. We didn’t even meet until she and her mom moved to Dallas.

  I started to wonder how much Dad really knew about Mary and Kayla. I knew that a few times she had stayed over with me, Kayla had had nightmares. Fucking bad ones. She told me that they were of the
past and that she needed to get rid of them her way.

  Now, I wondered if they were about her times on the street. Seeing as she had a habit of running away. Maybe the previous times she had been living on the streets?

  Or with this guy in Chicago?

  Maybe he had a hold over her.

  Everything was clear before and now it all felt cloudy.

  I hated Kayla for leaving.

  I hated her for not telling me the reason why.

  We arrived at their room in the hotel, and Mary didn’t hesitate booking the next flight back to Dallas.

  Dad took me to one corner and asked, “So, how long has this thing been going on with you and Kayla?”

  I didn’t understand his question because I had answered the same thing before. The answer hadn’t changed since we left the office.

  “I told you. Since September.”

  He nodded. “Good, so just over two months. Right. So, if she doesn’t want to be found then just leave it.” He looked to the left to see if Mary was coming out of the bedroom.

  “After all, she’s your step sister. She’s not exactly the best person to be starting a thing with.”

  He had no idea what he was saying. What I had with Kayla wasn’t exactly a thing. It was more than that.

  She was the first girl that I had connected with and saw myself spending real time with. Not just fucking, but hanging out as a friend, then loving like a partner.

  I shook my head as Dad’s words hit home. This thing was only one-sided. Kayla had a new man. Some guy in Chicago. Kayla never mentioned going to the city before, let alone visiting it. Then again, people travel, so maybe she met the guy in Dallas or Ohio, where she’d said that they had lived before.

  She was always so shady about talking about her past.

  Mary told him the good news about the flight. Dad’s face told me to drop the subject, so that was exactly what I did. I dropped it and decided that I would go out there and play the field like I used to before I hooked up with Kayla.

  That was when I found out that I was just kidding myself.

  Kayla didn’t want me.

  But my dick certainly needed her!

  I couldn’t get it up with another girl, no matter how hard I tried.

  Chapter Nine

  Kayla

  After Hannah left, the room turned cold. I looked around in the dim lighting and hoped that this would not be the end. That my life would not end in the ring or with Hannah seeing to it that I was punished for not winning the fight.

  What the fuck was I thinking?

  I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for Willy. He’d stood by my side when the going got tough. Hannah and I had an agreement, a verbal one, that she would help me in my time of need. In return I would fight; she’d seen my skills and I’d managed to convince her that I would win the big one.

  The finals.

  If I did, she could keep up her lavish lifestyle and her gambling habits. I remembered one time, she got confused: “Come with me to the casino, Carolyn.”

  She asked after I just got finished training at the gym. I didn’t think much of it at the time, until I went into the showers and saw that it was approaching midnight. Sometimes, I got so ahead of myself that I would stay in the gym too late, with only one thing on my mind.

  Winning the next fight.

  “Sure,” I said, and then she handed me a dress. It was as if Willy was my knight in shining armor, he appeared from no where and said, “Carolyn is just meant to fight and train. Nothing more.”

  I stood, confused. Hannah pouted like a spoiled child, grabbed the dress and left.

  “Willy, what did she want?”

  He sighed as he said, “She wanted to try and sell you to one of her poker buddies in exchange for more money to play. She has been losing a lot lately.”

  As if I was a whore.

  A profession that I had considered as a means of survival, and one that I had turned my back on. Yet, Hannah was happy to sell me to the highest bidder without a second thought.

  I knew that I could turn to Willy. He would always help me out, putting Hannah in her place. I wondered at times what the basis of their relationship was, but sometimes in this business it was better not to ask questions. Besides, with Hannah and her strange ways, the incident had taught me that Willy was someone I could trust. But as curiosity could get the best of me at times, it would cross my mind from time to time that he might be her dad.

  Maybe, but then it made no sense because at times she spoke to him as if he was a lowlife, the worst person in the world. But she expected him to be around all the time. If she didn’t see him in the gym or around the apartment, she would curse him.

  It was almost as if she couldn’t breathe without him. She would panic beyond belief if he was gone.

  “Where the fuck is he?”

  I always knew who she was referring to, but I would make a simple phone call and he would either call her or come to her side.

  Didn’t he know that she couldn’t survive without him?

  Maybe he was oblivious to it?

  I just hoped that one day Willy would tell me. My mind was drifting, trying to think of something that didn’t concern me, just to distract myself. To make the fear go away.

  ***

  Maybe my stubbornness and desperation had gotten the better of me and made me think that I could do it. Flashbacks of Natalie in her previous fights that I had seen, and even the ones Willy told me about, told me that I was being ambitious. But there was so much more at stake if I stayed. I could have waited until next year.

  I’d been afraid that Hannah might grow bored of me by then and try to get rid of me the way she had her previous fighters; by throwing me out on the street or, even worse, killing me.

  No, I had no choice. Hannah had hinted more than enough times that I was costing her more than she’d thought I would, and that my recovery times were turning into a hole in her profits that she could no longer sustain.

  What she really meant was that her gambling habits were spiraling out of control. I had followed her to the casino a few times and lately she had the habit of losing rather than winning. That was what got me nervous.

  She was taking her frustration out on me in every way she could.

  I had made this choice because there wasn’t any other to make.

  As I took a deep breath and turned off the light, I remembered the reason I came here tonight. The reason that I had said that I could do this.

  I didn’t want to leave the room until I’d done the one thing that I felt the desire to do so badly: pray.

  I used to find comfort going to church when I first ran away from Stanford. Going there weekly used to help me deal with what was going on with my dad. The police offer, who served the public and was sworn to protect them. But behind closed doors it had been a completely different story. He didn’t protect us - no, he took out his frustrations on us.

  He’d lost his partner after a bust went wrong, and that was when he’d started to drink. It wasn’t obvious at first. He would order a couple of shots at dinner when we went to a restaurant. We didn’t know that he had been hiding a bottle in every part of the house.

  When we found out, it was too late.

  His frustration had turned into anger.

  That anger was taken out on Mom and I.

  As I kneeled on the cold, wooden floor, I started to pray.

  Dear Lord,

  In my heart I pray, but I know that you have not heard from me in a while. It’s because I’m ashamed. You know of what we did. I was only a kid, Lord, and I hope that you can forgive me.

  I learned in church, when I used to go to Sunday school, that you’re a compassionate God. A loving one.

  You must have forgiven me, because I’m still alive tonight. Well, for now, anyway.

  I just need the strength Lord. The strength to do all that I planned with my life. But, the problem is I just seem to keep making mistakes.

  I had to stop.
I was crying uncontrollably. My hands were shaking and I felt bad, and really sad for asking for something that I didn’t deserve. I was telling him upstairs that it didn’t matter what I did. Just give me the strength to beat the shit out of another human being.

  I started to get confused about my path. It felt so simple when I was young and naive and thought that the world was one big rainbow - until my dad smacked me for forgetting to turn the tap off, even though I hadn’t even visited the bathroom that afternoon when I’d come home from school.

  The smack had turned into a punch when I didn’t eat all my food at dinner.

  Mom had decided to take me out after school. We’d already been to McDonald’s that night. But when he came home and saw that he was eating alone, he was pissed. He made Mom dish some food out for us. I struggled to finish my plate. I was only ten and didn’t have a great appetite. Most of my friends were eating full meals. I still got full just eating a Happy Meal.

  Thinking about the past, about what I had done, and what the heck was going to happen tonight, I was all messed up. I took another deep breath. Everyone deserved a second chance. Everyone.

  Including me.

  I’d had a rough start in life and it’d got easy for a while when Mom remarried. Even though she wasn't officially divorced. Yet, I was back in that corner. The live-or-die situation once again.

  I was only twenty-one, but my body had experienced tons of bruises, cuts, and pain. Most people live until fifty and never experience what I had gone through.

  Part of me felt as if there wasn’t really a God.

  Would he really let me suffer the way that I had?

  Would he not show compassion and give me that second chance?

  Everyone deserved a second chance. Including me.

  Sorry, Lord, I lost my way. Please forgive me and give me the strength to beat her. To do the right thing for once in my life. I know what I have to do.

  I need to win, Lord. You know I do.

  Because everyone deserves a second chance.

  Everyone.

  You are a compassionate God, a forgiving God.