One. Two. Three. Four.
I was wired.
Filled with nervous energy, wondering what was going to happen. I stood up from the pushups I’d been doing to pace back and forth, trying to work some of it out so that I wouldn’t punch anything – or anyone – else.
I was in enough hot water as it was.
I ran my hands over my face, then propped them against my hips.
What are people saying about me right now?
I didn’t feel a single shred of remorse for hitting Samuels, but now that he wasn’t within arm’s reach I was considering the repercussions. Wondering if I should have tried harder to keep my cool, instead of letting him get to me. We’d just come back from the fight of our lives to win that game, and it should have been all I was worried about. I could have kept it together. Should have kept it together.
But then he brought my baby sister into it, and it was good as over from there.
I suppose getting to rock the jaw of a dummy who was bold enough to disrespect my sister to my face was a fair exchange for landing in jail.
I hadn’t seen any of my people yet, and hadn’t gotten to make my phone call. These charges were bogus, and they knew it – this wasn’t even the type of thing where the police usually got involved.
Nobody in the holding cell was bothering me, or looking my way at all, really. I was sure I probably looked like I was ready to snatch somebody’s head off – and I was, if they wanted to take it there – but I was glad for the lack of drama.
I just wanted to make it out of here, period.
A familiar sound met my ears, and I looked up just as Nicki turned the corner, with chubby cop sticking closer than necessary to her side. There were keys in his hand.
Damn. So this is who they sent.
She had such a disappointed look in her eyes. Of everybody they could have sent to get me out of this, Nicki was the one I least wanted to face from a jail cell. I didn’t even want to think about what was probably going through her head about me right now.
I didn’t regret socking Bobby in his mouth, not even for a second. He deserved that shit for bringing Jess into something she had nothing to do with. Despite the fact that it wasn’t true, and would never be true – my sister like skinny creative dudes, who rapped poetry and shit – I wasn’t about to let him saying disgusting shit about her, in my face, ride. As a matter of fact, I would pay good money for the chance to hit him again.
The fact that the NOPD didn’t take kindly to whooping their star cornerback’s ass hadn’t factored into my decision. They were just bodies though, in the long line of people I’d pissed off. No phone calls, no visitors, supposedly their protocol, but I knew it was bullshit. Between here and Connecticut, I knew the Kings, my management team, and my lawyer were working to get me out. Four hours later, they walked me out of my cell. I wasn’t surprised to see Nicki. I was more like… disgraced.
She looked exhausted, and she wouldn’t say much either, offering one or two word responses to anything I said to her. In the car, disappointment practically radiated from her as she sat beside me in the back seat.
The most expression she gave was when we pulled up to the team hotel. Even though it was nearing two in the morning, it was surrounded with reporters and photographers who’d probably heard I’d been let out of jail, and wanted the first shot. Nicki told the driver to keep going, and ten minutes later, security was whisking us through the back door of a different hotel.
In the elevator, she handed me my cell phone, and the bag with my change of clothes that had been left at the stadium. “For now, you can talk to your family, teammates, management team, and lawyer. No one else. No friends, no reporters, until Chloe and Margo figure out how to play this,” she said, looking straight ahead as the elevator climbed up.
“Why didn’t one of them come?” I asked. “Or hell, Nate or somebody?”
She glanced back, eyebrow raised, her expression disdainful. “Margo is trying to save any endorsement deals she may have had in the works for you. Chloe is figuring out how to keep the media from branding you a violent, egotistical brute. And you’re not Nate’s responsibility. You’re mine. So here I am.”
She cut her eyes back to the front of the elevator as we arrived on one of the executive floors, and she pulled a keycard from her purse for access. A moment later, I was following her down a hall while our security hung back, leaving us alone.
Her whole demeanor screamed pissed off as she led me into a suite, then let the door close behind me. “Get some sleep,” she said, pointing toward a door down a short hall. “We’ll be ready with a press plan in the morning.”
“That’s it? Just “get some sleep”?”
She shrugged, then headed to the kitchen area, where she pulled a bottle of wine from the mini-fridge on the counter. “What more should there be?” she asked, uncorking the bottle. She didn’t bother pulling out a glass – she drank straight from the bottle.
“Maybe some details about what the hell is happening? What does Eli have to say? Is the NFL fining me, suspending me, what?”
Nicki laughed. “What the hell is happening? Well Jordan, you punched a man in the face on live TV, and according to the mini-press conference he gave after, with his face all black and blue, while NOPD was hauling your ass to jail, tried to kill him.”
“What?” That shit was so ridiculous I laughed. “Nobody was trying to kill that fool. Just shut him the fuck up. And he deserved it.”
She took another long swig from the bottle. “Did he, Jordan? And let me guess, you aren’t sorry you did it, are you? Never mind that you could be suspended, which affects the whole team. Or that you could potentially do jail time for assault, which again, affects the whole team. No, you’re just thinking about you.”
“Please, Nicki,” I said, waving her off as I took a few steps toward the room she’d indicated. “Like you aren’t doing the same damn thing. You’re just worried about looking bad.”
“Damn right I am!” she snapped. “One of us has to, and it sure as hell isn’t you. You couldn’t even go two whole weeks of working with Chloe before you went against it all.”
“That motherfucker brought up my sister! I wasn’t gonna let that shit go!”
“This isn’t the streets, Jordan! You should have walked away, and let the shit go. Threaten to fuck his sister. Hell, threaten to fuck his arthritic grandmother. Anything but physically attack him, on live television, in your uniform, on the goddamn field!”
“Everybody can’t be an emotional robot like you, Nick—”
“My name is Cole,” she interjected, taking her mouth away from that wine bottle just long enough to interrupt.
“What-the-fuck-ever, man. Everybody can’t flip off their emotions with a switch, Evelyn Nicole Richardson. Some of us are human – we act on how we feel in the moment, and make mistakes sometimes. But you wouldn’t know shit about that, would you?”
Her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?!”
“You’re excused. You and your little-miss-perfect bullshit act.”
“I do not act like I’m perfect!”
“It’s damn near a fucking personality trait for you,” I snapped, dropping my bag to the ground before I stalked up to her, getting in her face. “Too bad I know that shit isn’t true. I know the real you.”
She swallowed hard, narrowing her already glazed eyes as she raised her bottle again, draining what had to be the last of the wine. “What are you even talking about?”
“I’m talking about my sophomore year, BSU. Pretty ass junior, top of her class, comes to see me play. Comes to every game, waits for me after, until she gets my attention. Sweet, innocent, smart. Not one of the popular girls. Gave me her virginity the night I scored the winning touchdown in the regional championship game. You know who I’m talking about Nicki? You remember that girl?”
Her nostrils flared as she moved to leave the kitchen, but I moved quickly, grabbing the counter on either side of her, keeping her in place. “I
’m not about to go down memory lane with you, not tonight,” she hissed.
“Oh, yes you are. You owe me that.”
Anger flashed in her eyes as she glared up at me. “I owe you? How the hell do you figure that?”
“Because that girl was a fucking fraud,” I whispered, right in her face. I grinned as her eyes went wide. “Yeah, Nicki. Shocker, ain’t it? She thought I didn’t know she only went after the football team’s breakout star to prove a point to some fucking mean girls on campus. She wasn’t just some nerd with a cute face. She was a tough cookie, with a nasty competitive streak. Someone she didn’t like wanted me, so she got me instead, to rub it in ol’ girl’s face.”
“How do you know that?” Nicki asked, through a shaky breath.
“Cause Whitney Butler caught me after practice one night, begging me to leave… that girl for her. She said that girl was just playing games, and didn’t even really want me. She just didn’t want her to have me. And that was true, wasn’t it?” She averted her gaze, and didn’t answer, confirming what I’d always known. I lifted a hand to her chin, turning her back in my direction. “You know what though? I didn’t care. Ask me why.”
She tried to turn away again, but I turned her right back, ignoring the gloss of tears building in her eyes. “Why?”
I moved in closer, putting my mouth right by her ear. “Because I loved your manipulative, fraudulent ass.” She put her hands against my chest, trying to push me away, but I didn’t budge. “I loved you, because you were supportive, and funny, and you would throw a football around with me. You weren’t star struck. You weren’t impressed with me. You were smart, and driven, and nasty as hell once I brought it out of you. You were my fucking first love. You and me, we were a team, and I didn’t give a shit how it started, because I knew what it was. You remember that, Nicki?”
“Y-yes,” she choked out, scrubbing tears from her face with the back of her hands.
“We were together two years. And you remember how you ended it?”
“Jordan, I—”
“I remember. Do you?”
She pushed out a breath, then leaned back against the counter, looking up at me with tears streaming down her face. “Jordan… don’t make me…”
“You told me you’d lied when you said you loved me,” I answered, since she wouldn’t. “That you were… “too smart” to get your feelings involved with an athlete. That you didn’t think I’d been faithful anyway.”
She sucked in a breath like it was the last one she would get a chance to take, and her eyes dropped to the floor as she shook her head. Even six years later, it hit me right in the chest to repeat those words back to her, in a way I hadn’t expected. I let go of the counter to grab her chin, pointing her face up to mine.
“What you did was fucked up,” I continued. “And you didn’t have to do that shit. So you’re not gonna stand in here and chastise me about defending my little sister, about enjoying myself in a club, none of that, like you’ve never done shit. You want to talk about shit professionally, fine, but adjust your fucking tone, and remember that you decided it wasn’t going to be personal.”
“What choice did I have, Jordan?!” Nicki batted my hand away from her, her eyes red from crying, or drinking, or both. “I debated! For the last two weeks, I’ve gone back and forth with myself, over whether or not I should let it be personal between us. You want the truth?! I don’t give a shit about you punching Bobby Samuels. I care that you’re proving the reason why I broke up with you exactly right. I care that you’re proving your father exactly right!”
I scowled. “My father?! What the fuck does he have to do with this?!”
“Everything! He came to me, and he told me I was distracting you,” she spat, sniffing back tears. “That you were still young, in your college prime. That it was your nature to explore your way through women, not be stuck up under somebody who was about to graduate, and leave. You were already excited, talking about going pro, and that was about to happen for you, soon. According to him, you were going to need time to drink, and fuck, and party, because “that’s what football players do”. And it was true. I may have gone off to college, but I grew up with the Kings. I saw what many of them did, and it was exactly what he said. It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, and I was too busy processing her words to say anything.
“The fighting,” she continued. “The partying, the women. For two weeks, you were showing me something different. And then, you went back, and showed me the same. How can you want me to let it be personal when you can’t even be consistent? How dare you kiss me, drag these feelings back up, act like you want to rekindle something, and two weeks later you have another woman in Jimmy Choo pinching your cheeks?!”
“She is my friend,” I growled, rubbing my temples. “How many times do I have to say that shit for you to believe me?! You wanna know why she was pinching my cheeks?! Cause she was teasing me about you. Asking me to bring you in for a date night.”
Nicki rolled her eyes. “Of course she was.”
“She was. You wanna know when I first connected with her? I went to Arch & Point and got drunk as fuck, poured my heart out while she giving me a lap dance. Why? Because I’d found out about your “secret” engagement to that wack ass, corny ass reporter from Zone Report. Two years after we broke up, your ass is engaged, while I still wasn’t over you. She listened. She comforted me. She did not try to get in my pockets when she could have, cause she had a man her damn self back then. Even now, the only way she’ll accept shit from me is if she dances, so it’s “legit”.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m supposed to believe that?”
I shook my head. “You know what, Nicki? I don’t care what you believe. I don’t know why I’m wasting time trying to figure out, work this shit out with you, when it’s obvious you aren’t with it. I’m taking a shower and going to sleep. You let me know about those press plans in the morning.”
I didn’t look back as I left the kitchen, grabbing my bag as I went. The room she’d pointed out to me had its own bathroom, so I did exactly what I said I would. I didn’t even bother turning on my phone, I stripped down and put my aching limbs under the hot water, trying unsuccessfully not to replay that conversation with Nicki in my head.
It didn’t even make sense to be hung up on old shit – especially when she wasn’t.
And my father… I held myself back from punching a fucking hole through the shower wall. Of course he’d told the girl I loved I wasn’t gonna be shit, because he never thought I would. Everything I accomplished was something new for him to scorn, nothing was ever right, or good enough. It was probably a delusion to think I could finally perform at a high enough level to earn the respect of someone who was hell bent on closing his eyes to anything positive about me.
Hell… I was out here proving him right.
After my shower, I climbed into bed, and decided against turning the TV on. I didn’t want to see whatever bullshit was getting blasted in the news. I just wanted to sleep, but it wouldn’t come.
I laid there until the clock beside the bed claimed it was four in the morning, and I still hadn’t drifted off. I was wide-awake when the door to the room creaked open, then closed. When the bed creaked under the weight of someone else inviting themselves into it.
I hated the way the tension left my body, hated that I suddenly felt so light. Nicki moved herself closer to my side, and it pissed me off a little that my natural reaction was to lift my arm, wrap it around her to pull her even closer. It pissed me off that she still felt so comfortable, so familiar in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the dark, in a voice so choked with emotion it made me swallow hard. “For everything. I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know how to deal with it now, and I didn’t know how to deal with it back then.”
“With what?”
She sniffled. “With whatever this is I feel for you. You’re right, I
was a fraud. I pretended to be this sweet girl to “get” you. Whitney and her little friends picked me apart every chance they got, and I just refused to let her win. So I got what she wanted. And then I kept what she wanted, just to prove my point. It was childish, petty, and wrong. I admit that, and I’m ashamed that I did it. But you… weren’t what I assumed. You were so bright, and funny, and smart, and strong, and sexy, and I ended up… I wasn’t in control of it, and it scared the hell out of me. What your father said was just the excuse I needed to get out while I still could. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
I let out a deep sigh, then stopped fighting the urge to pull her even tighter against my side. “What if I don’t believe you?”
Even in the dark, I could tell from her movement that she’d looked up at me. She sucked in a breath. “I would have to accept that. And I understand why. I’m probably not your favorite person in the world right now. But I’m telling you the truth. I never stopped caring about you Jordan, I just pushed it to the side and tried to ignore it. I’m so hard on you, always on your ass because… God, I want so badly for you to make me regret leaving. Make your father eat those ugly words. I want to see the first man I fell in love with grow up.”
I closed my eyes, even though I couldn’t see shit anyway. “Nicki… I’m trying.”
“I know,” she responded, and a moment later, she was on top me, cupping my face in her hands. “I know you are, I know.” She found my face in the dark and whispered that right against my mouth, then pressed her lips to mine, sending a surge of… something through me.
She gasped as I flipped us over, settling on top of her before I did what I’d been aching to do again for the last two weeks.
I kissed her.
Eleven.
Exposed.
Guilty.
Embarrassed.
Confused.
All of those feelings swirled in my chest, overwhelming me, making me dizzy.
I’d never been so relieved to be in the dark, so Jordan couldn’t see my red, swollen eyes or disheveled hair – the evidence of what the last hours had been like for me.
Love on the Highlight Reel (Connecticut Kings Book 2) Page 12