Miss Rose waved that away. “I’m no fool. I would’ve asked your daddy.”
As I climbed up the ladder, I held my hand out so she could pass me the screwdriver. Tucking the extra screws into my mouth, I pressed the drillbit into the notches and hit the button, the whine of the screwdriver giving me flashbacks of college. I used to work under the hot sun as many hours as they’d take me, between shuffling to classes and practice.
It was what I had to do in order to play the sport that I loved.
I had to blink a few times when I realized that I could finally see all of it connecting. The line of dominoes finally curled around in a way where the purpose in all of this, the buildup stretching back years of my life, was becoming clear. Without Ivy, without my parents reacting the way they had, and—with a rough swallow, I forced myself to bring her face to mind—without Faith, I might not have arrived in this place.
As I finished hanging the corner of Miss Rose’s gutters, I let myself think about how much I missed her. I didn’t dismiss it, and I didn’t let those feelings redirect to something less productive.
Every day, I thought of her. It never hurt less. Still, a month later, I struggled with knowing when I was ready. I trusted Faith’s ability to forgive me. She never would have said it if she didn’t mean it. But where I still felt unsteady was in my ability to trust myself with her heart.
Descending from the ladder, I handed Miss Rose her screwdriver. Her gently wrinkled face studied mine. “You all right, Dominic?”
I patted her back. “Getting there, Miss Rose. I messed up with a girl, and I’m trying to fix things.”
She clucked her tongue. “Lord. Hope she’s a patient one then.”
I laughed. “She is.”
“She pretty?”
“The prettiest,” I told her. “But what’s on the outside doesn’t come close to what’s on the inside.”
She whistled. “I think you’ll get there just fine, young man, with words like that.”
“I think I need more than words for this one.”
From across the street, I heard the squeak of my parents’ front door, and my mom waved at us.
“I gotta go, Miss Rose. Let me know if you need anything else before I leave, okay?”
She patted my cheek. “You’re a good one, Dominic. I always thought so.”
I was still smiling as I walked into my parents’ living room. My dad looked over the edge of his paper. “Son,” he said.
“Pops.” I glanced at the paper. “Mariners win yesterday?”
He grunted. “Barely.”
I kissed my mom on the cheek. “You look pretty today.”
She blushed, swiping a hand down the front of her purple blouse. “Had a hair appointment.”
As I set up my computer on the small dining room table, I could feel both of my parents study me, but neither said anything. I took a deep breath as I sat and clicked open the folder I needed. There were two videos that I’d dug up from my old cell phone, emailing them to myself so I could save them on my computer. If everything panned out the way I wanted, I’d need them saved in a place they could never be lost.
“What’s that for?” my mom asked. She set her oven mitts down and leaned up against the kitchen counter.
“Dad, can you join us in here?”
My parents shared a look, and he slowly got out of his chair. Like he did every day, and like he had for years, he was wearing the same white T-shirt he always changed into after he was home from work. In fact, if the video on my computer panned to him, he was probably wearing it there too.
With wary expressions on their faces, my parents joined me at the table. It took me a moment to get the courage to click on the first video. My mom’s brows lowered, recognition dawning.
“Dominic, what is this?”
I laid my hand on hers. “Please, just trust me. I need you to watch this before I explain something to you.”
My dad’s chest expanded on a deep breath. “I don’t think I can watch this, son.”
Already, my mom was shaking her head because she didn’t want to either.
“Yes, you can,” I said quietly. “And there’s a reason, I promise.”
After giving them both another look, I hit the play button. The sounds of Ivy’s last little soccer game filled the screen. She’d already started losing her hair, so her head was shaved at her request. But she’d had enough energy to play, and her coach put her in for the last quarter of the last game at striker—her favorite position.
My mom wept openly at the way she ran across the field, dribbling the ball past two defenders with a huge grin on her face. But the tears overtook her because she covered her face when Ivy pulled her leg back and kicked a beautiful shot into the top corner of the goal, just past the goalie’s hand. With the sound of Dad and me yelling triumphantly in the background, Ivy’s teammates surrounded her, with hugs and shrieks and screams and applause filling the video with happy noise.
Because I was that obnoxious brother, I’d run onto the field and hoisted her up on my shoulders like she’d just won the fucking World Cup, instead of scoring a goal in the rec league soccer at the park two blocks away from our house.
I refused to look away when she raised her arms, waving to all the people cheering. She was wearing a tie-dye scarf over her head, and when I pulled her off my shoulders, she gripped my neck in a tight hug.
Even though my face was wet, and my throat felt choked and full, I still didn’t look away.
My mom pushed her chair back. “It’s too much, Dominic.”
“Mom, please.”
She paused. “Why are you making us watch this? She’s gone.”
Dad’s eyes were bright red, his jaw tight. But he didn’t say anything.
“I miss her too,” I said. “I miss her so fucking much. She’d be almost sixteen, you know? And I know it’s hard to look at kids who were her age, or would be the same age as her now, but it doesn’t feel right to just … ignore it anymore.”
Slowly, my mom sat back down at the table. “What are we supposed to do then? It won’t bring her back.”
“I know that. But I think we should be able to talk about her, how tall we think she’d be, or what a fucking rock star she’d be if she was still playing because she would be. Or how ugly that tie-dye scarf was,” I managed.
My mom’s smile trembled, but it was there.
“It was.” My dad’s voice was gruff. “It was so ugly.”
We all laughed.
“We’re always going to miss her, but I think we can do something great with that. In order to do that though, I’ll need your help.”
My parents, holding hands under the table, shared another look. My dad gave her a short nod. After a deep breath, she finally met my eyes. “Okay. Why don’t you tell us what you’re thinking.”
The next day
Across the wide desk, they faced me as a single entity, an unbreakable unit. Luke stood behind his wife’s massive executive chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes hard. With her hair pulled severely off her face, Allie had slightly more open body language, but her eyes warned me without a single word:
Fuck this up, and you are finished.
She didn’t resemble the woman I’d met with on my first trip to her office. Back then, she’d been a bit warmer and a bit more willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.
Back then, I hadn’t broken her daughter’s heart.
The tension in the office was thick and heavy, and instead of running my mouth to make it disappear, I folded my hands in my lap and took a deep breath.
“Thank you for being willing to meet with me.”
“I didn’t want to,” Luke said.
I nodded. “If I had a daughter like Faith, I’d feel the same way.”
My voice didn’t stumble over her name, and I was pretty proud of myself for that because no matter that it had been almost eight hundred hours since I’d seen her, I still missed her like someone had cut my arm off. It
was the reason I was sitting in front of the two people who had every reason in the world to hate me.
“What did you want to talk about today, Dominic?” Allie said. She was wearing a sharply tailored red suit, the exact color of the Wolves logo, and I couldn’t help but marvel that she’d been commanding the Wolves organization for twenty years and hardly looked old enough to have two grown daughters.
“How did you start Team Sutton?”
Slowly, Allie sat back in her chair, surprised by the question.
Luke’s eyebrows lowered, and his gaze narrowed skeptically.
She tilted her head to the side for a moment, studying me. But then she blinked. “I had an idea one day to help girls find opportunities to find their passion and nurture them. A lot of those opportunities happen to come in the form of extracurricular programs at schools. We’ve expanded our mission, obviously, as it’s no longer run out of our basement by me and a friend, but it all started with an idea, a big check to get us rolling, and”—she shrugged—“a meeting with the team lawyer to make sure I was setting up the structure of the foundation properly.”
I nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you could pass along the number of a lawyer that you would trust.”
Luke’s arms unfolded from his chest, set now on his hips. “This is why you wanted to meet with us? Not to convince us why you should be with Faith?”
For once in my entire life, I chose my words carefully. “With all due respect, Mr. Pierson, and while I apologize for what happened at the ball, you’re not the person I need to convince. I know I should be with Faith, and so does she. I’m just … I’m trying to prove worthy of the fact that she does believe it.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “And that’s why you’ve ignored her for a month?”
Even with their stone-faced demeanor, it was the first real jab that had me feeling a brief flickering of anger. Allie sat thoughtfully, not in any rush to calm her overly protective husband.
“I’m respecting what Faith asked of me,” I said after a minute. “I have a terrible temper. Impulse control problems. And I fuck things up when I’m scared. That’s not something she can fix.”
It was Allie’s turn to interrogate. “And starting a foundation is what you think she wants you to do?”
I met her gaze head-on. “No. I’m doing that for my sister. But before what happened with Faith, I always…” I paused to take a deep breath. “I always skipped anything with kids because they reminded me of Ivy. And I’d do anything to avoid that feeling. But I can help. More than that, I want to.”
Allie glanced up at Luke, then back at me. “Tell us about her, what you want to do.”
I stood from the chair to hand her a manila folder with everything I had so far.
Wordlessly, she flipped through the first couple of pages of bullet points, the mission as I’d outlined it. Allie paused when she got to Ivy’s picture, held to the page with a paper clip. Luke settled a big hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“I like the name,” Luke said quietly.
“Thank you,” I managed.
“Do you want this to be a private foundation or a charitable foundation?” Allie asked, eyes still glued to the paper.
“Charitable,” I answered. “If I break my leg off tomorrow and can never play football again, I want to know that others can donate to what I’m trying to do.”
She eyed me briefly. “Please don’t break your leg. Preseason starts tomorrow.”
Allie handed one of the papers to Luke, and he studied it with an even expression on his face. If I saw the man smile, I might think the apocalypse was upon us. Because of the lights in her office, I could tell which paper he was reading. It was the page where I described the mission and why it was so important to me. Where I described what my parents went through, working jobs that didn’t pay very much, and trying to afford treatments for their eight-year-old daughter with a rare leukemia. My sister’s dream of being a professional athlete, that even if she’d recovered, how impossible it would have been for my parents to afford that dream.
“You’ll need a strong team to help you,” Allie said. “Female athletes on your board, no shirking the tough conversations they’ll force you to have.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m working on that.”
She grabbed a small notepad off her desk and scrawled something on it with a very expensive-looking pen. When she carefully ripped the paper off and handed it to me, she didn’t let go immediately.
“Do this the right way, Walker. Or don’t do it. The worst thing an athlete can do is promise to help and then screw up the delivery to the point they disappear from those people’s lives. I’m giving you this name because she knows everything there is to know about successfully starting a foundation, finding volunteers, and building a strong board of directors.”
“Thank you,” I told her.
“You’ll need a lot of help with the season starting tomorrow. I’d call her as soon as you leave, if I were you.”
“I will.”
Luke set down the paper. “Your parents okay now?”
I swallowed. “How would you be if you lost one of your daughters?”
His answer came without hesitation. “Empty. Heartbroken.”
I nodded. “Pretty much. Grief doesn’t fade, no matter what bullshit people feed you after someone dies. It’s always fucking there, crowding the base of your throat and weighing down the bottom of your gut. You just … get used to it to the point it doesn’t ruin your every waking thought.” I took the folder back when Allie carefully closed it and handed it to me. “Even if I’ve been quiet with Faith, make no mistake about it, every moment, I’m thinking about what I can do to make things right. I am going to try to win her back. You don’t have a woman like her in your life and then let her walk away without a fight.”
“And this is you … fighting?” Allie asked quietly.
I gave her a wry grin. “I figured I’d try it without throwing any punches for once. See how it works for me.”
Luke bent over and pulled open the top drawer of Allie’s desk. She watched him with a slight smile on her face. They had this whole silent communication thing going, and it was weird. Maybe that was what twenty years of marriage did to people.
He tossed a checkbook out on the desk and held out his hand. She set the pen on his palm.
I fidgeted in my seat, not sure what I was supposed to say next.
“How much of your own money are you using to start this thing, Walker?” Luke asked as he began to write.
My eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Ah, I spoke to my financial planner yesterday, and she’s setting aside five hundred k as an initial fund for families to apply for. I’ve got one family going through the paperwork process right now. Someone who works with my dad. Their daughter wanted to play for a traveling soccer team, but they couldn’t afford the registration. I’m meeting with Keisha later today about others she might know.”
The pen scratching across the paper was the only sound in the office. He ripped it off the checkbook and straightened. But instead of handing it over the desk, he took measured steps around it until I was forced to stand just so he wasn’t towering over me.
In his gaze was a challenge, clear and direct.
I didn’t reach for the check, simply lifted my chin and tried my best not to fidget under the weight of his stare. It was no wonder that when he played, defenses absolutely fucking hated lining up against him.
Luke held the check out.
“Don’t lose it on your way to the bank,” he said.
When I glanced down, I almost couldn’t believe it. They’d matched my initial investment, dollar for dollar.
“Thank you,” I replied, voice a little gruff from emotion.
It wasn’t just a generous donation. It was an olive branch.
“My daughters are my world, Walker,” he said quietly. “Prove that I made the right choice in trusting you.”
Behind him, Allie smiled.
“I wi
ll,” I told them both. “I’m getting there.”
Faith
Day thirty-three was the worst. Probably because it was the first time I saw him in person.
For the thirty-three days prior, I’d caught glimpses on Wolves social media channels. A few clips from training camp on SportsCenter. I might or might not have watched one particular clip about seventeen times.
They showed a series where James lined up, did a play action—faking a handoff to the running back—then tossed the ball laterally to the wide receiver to his left. Because the defense pulled to the running back, and James blocked the linemen who hadn’t been fooled, the receiver was able to step back and heft a beautiful thirty-yard pass over the head of the safety. Dominic stretched to his full height and caught it one-handed before he took off, spinning around a defender to run it in for a touchdown.
It wasn’t even the play that was incredible. It was the smile on his face when his teammates rushed him in the end zone.
Oh, the things that happened in my heart when I saw him smile like that. It was a little strange, truth be told. The happiness at seeing him celebrate with the team was almost enough to make me all weepy and ridiculous.
And there was a dull, throbbing ache because I still missed him as if I’d been with him for years. And in a way, we had been.
I missed talking to Nick about my day. About his. Even though the details of when and where had stayed offstage, we shared so many of the small building blocks that made up our days, the things we liked and didn’t.
And I missed the overwhelming fire of my short span of time with Dominic.
Sometimes I thought about reaching out, but I didn’t know if it was fair. I was certainly busy enough to stay distracted with work. Which was how I found myself face-to-face with Dominic Walker for the first time in thirty-three days.
The second I pulled into the parking lot, my heart was off to the freaking races at the sight of his truck. I shot off a text to Keisha immediately.
Me: He’s here????
Keisha: Did I not tell you about that?
The Lie : a bad boy sports romance Page 23