Players to Lovers (4 Book Collection)

by Ketley Allison

  I can’t blame her. When I offered for Carter to stay, it wasn’t with the goal of sleeping with her. It came from the very real picture she painted in front of me, the reality of taking Lily out of her arms and leaving Carter to deal with the aftermath alone.

  No child deserves to grow up without a mother, and Carter is the closest Lily has to one. Even I, more asshole than brain, know that much.

  Therefore, it should come as no surprise when, during each evening that passes, Carter grows more and more distant from our conversations, goes to bed practically when Lily does and falls into a routine that, for the most part, doesn’t involve Locke Hayes.

  We haven’t really discussed her terms or how long she’ll stay—a cardinal mistake in any other circumstance—but in a roommate way, Carter doesn’t bother me. She’s clean, quiet, washes bottles and dishes without a word from yours truly, doesn’t drink—as far as I can tell—cooks, and definitely doesn’t party.

  A few evenings, I’ve had to leave, prior commitments and promises forcing me out of the apartment while I have a live-in babysitter to continue to do so. Before I’d asked Carter to stay a while, I’d been attempting to figure out how to watch Lily while I went out. Get Ben over? Hell no. Asher would scare Lily on sight, and Easton’s too distracted right now to learn how to keep a baby alive for a few hours.

  I promised my sister I’d keep doing this, though—and Ben. All of them. I couldn’t renege on my deal, so on Tuesday evening, then Thursday, I asked Carter to watch Lily.

  Carter, expectedly, figured I was out sleeping around. Frowned at my fresh shower and spritz of cologne. Judged my button-down and didn’t return my waves good-bye.

  Let her think it.

  Most of me is carved from stubbornness. I have my dad to thank for that. If Carter wants to believe I’m busy fucking my brains out while leaving my responsibilities behind, let her goddamned think it.

  Truth is, I shouldn’t be complaining. In a perfect world, I’d keep my mouth shut and let this continue to play out since it’s going so calmly and full of polite gestures. We could blind each other with our teeth.

  But this isn’t my perfect world. In that one, I’d be fucking Carter Jameson.

  No woman has ignored me so effortlessly. She’s put me in a box and labeled it PRIVATE—DO NOT TOUCH. I can’t read her expressions or figure out what’s going on behind those champagne-colored eyes. She’s not using me for my body, not trying to get closer to feel a touch of Hayes fame. She isn’t affected one way or another if I’m in the room or not…

  It’s fucking infuriating.

  And it’s never made me want a woman more.

  I want to think she’s playing a game, doing the whole “hard to get” ploy that most men dig. With Carter, though, I don’t think that’s it. It doesn’t seem like her to premeditate how to get me shirtless and panting at her feet, because that’s the problem—I’ve been shirtless in front of her, many times, and she doesn’t give a fuck.

  At this point, I’m more than annoyed. I’m beyond blue balls. I’m pissed at myself because, in the midst of getting to know my baby daughter, I shouldn’t be thinking about how to screw her substitute mother.

  Another day passes, and a small box of Carter’s stuff comes. I offer to help, but she pertly says “no, thanks,” then goes into her and Lily’s room. Then another day goes by, and I’m ready to grab her and crush my mouth on those pillow lips made for blow jobs, but then she goes and decides to shock the shit out of me instead.

  The three of us are in the living room, Carter and I doing our own thing despite being within feet of each other, as usual, when she pauses in stacking blocks with Lily on the floor to say, “I should get a job.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I should. I’m not going to squat here. I’ll pay my way.”

  I’m stupid enough to suggest, “Why don’t you just be her nanny?”

  The Death Star stares at me in the form of a face. “You’re not going to pay me to be Lily’s babysitter. Like I said, I’ll earn my keep.”

  I shrug over my mistake, pretending I don’t give a rat’s ass what she does, when, in reality, it kills me that she doesn’t think she’s doing enough, then I go back to my laptop. “Your choice.”

  “What do you do, anyway?”

  I glance up at my screen, and I’m amused to see her flustered.

  “What I mean is,” she says, “do we need to figure out some form of day care for Lily?”

  “No, we don’t. I work from home for the most part.”

  Silence fills our space as she waits for me to elaborate. I stop typing and say to her, “I’m freelance.”

  She angles her head. “Freelance what?”

  I make my tone uncaring with a touch of flirt and my killer smile. “Freelance bachelor.”

  She frowns, but I don’t fill in the creases. After my injury on the field, my contract with the football league still paid in full. It was a rookie contract, but in professional football, it was more of a salary than most college grads on the fast track to corporate success could put together. I’d been living off that for the past year—that, and beer. Then it was beer and pain killers, which was a scary few months the boys and I don’t talk about.

  It’d been fine. Comfortable, even. And since learning Lily was a part of me, I hadn’t touched either. Been going back to the gym, working on physical therapy for my leg. Thinking about what kind of career I should go for.

  Except, now that Carter’s on her knees in front of me, and not in the way I’m used to, I feel weird about my past and current situation. Like a thick syrup has painted my gut. Like there’s something I need to be ashamed of.

  I don’t like it.

  I know I have to clean up my act for Lily, and it’s exactly what I promised the social workers casing my joint like I was guaranteed to jam Lily’s finger into an electrical socket.

  I may feel sorry for myself, but I’m no moron. Lily means a lot, and there’s no way I’m going to turn out to be her loser father. She’s not going to look at me the way Astor looks at our dad. No fucking way.

  Carter doesn’t ask any further questions. She stands, and, just like that, exits the apartment.

  When she comes back, and I’ve put Lily to sleep for the night, she’s hooked something up for herself.

  Just like that.

  If someone told me that after injuring my knee and having my dreams snuffed out in the form of one bad tackle, all I had to do was roll off my couch and travel a few blocks to find other employment, I would’ve thrown a crutch at them. Yet here Carter is, less than seventy-two hours in a new state without even a second pair of pants to her name, and she’s employed.

  “Freelance,” she says breezily as she makes her way to the kitchen to prepare dinner, and just as she meant it to, I feel the bite. “I didn’t want anything full-time since my priority is to have time with Lily.”

  I set my computer beside me on the couch. “Understood.”

  Something must have made her want to tell me anyway, because she adds while searching through the silverware drawer, “It’s at the coffee shop down the road. They’re letting me display some of my art.”

  “Art?”

  I don’t think I’ve ever met a bona fide artiste. I picture Carter in a room full of windows, with those white boards…what do you call ‘em? Oh yeah, canvas, surrounding her. Bathed in sunlight. She’s in a smock—an apron thing spotted with stains and color at the center of the room—paintbrush in hand, guiding strokes against the white, the apron lifting slightly, and…

  I’m unable to imagine any clothes on her. Apron only.

  I rub at my chin to dislodge the image of her hot body—which she’s made difficult since her impromptu show for the boys and me—and give my jeans a good readjustment.

  Carter shrugs while searching my drawers for…some kind of utensil that I probably don’t have.

  “I painted. Paint. Before Lily was born, that’s what I was pursuing. Sophie—my roommate—can s
hip some pieces I can display over there.”

  Lured by both the delicious smells going on in the frying pan and Carter’s story, I get my ass off the couch and head over.

  “What happened after Lily was born?”

  Carter’s body language is dismissive, but I can spot an act when I see it. “Money was an issue. It was only Paige and me, and she…she didn’t want to put Lily up for adoption. So we sat down, and we figured it out. With her income, plus anything I could find with a moderate salary, we could make it work. Line up our vacation days so there’d be someone with the newborn in the beginning. Paige’s job didn’t give paid maternity leave.”

  “So, you dropped everything to help out Paige and the baby.”

  Another shrug as she dumps onions and garlic in the sizzling olive oil. “It was a no-brainer.”

  Unbelievable. This girl put everything in her future on hold for a baby that wasn’t even hers.

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” I ask.

  That has Carter hesitating. I add, “Why didn’t Paige tell me that the baby was mine?”

  Carter’s busy stirring her mixture, but I can see the wheels spinning in her head behind all that hair. At last, she says, “You’re assuming I knew who the father was.”

  “Paige didn’t tell you?”

  Carter shakes her head. “And I didn’t ask. The way she spoke about it…it was clear the dad wasn’t in her life. That he wasn’t…” She stops.

  “Say it.”

  Carter’s still facing the stove. “Locke, it’s not like—”

  “No, say it. That I wasn’t going to step up, that I wasn’t worth the notification because I’m not father material, that you and Paige had no fucking clue what I’d do because you didn’t even ask me.”

  She sighs and finally turns to me. “I told you, I had no idea who you were.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you did a lot of research to find out.”

  “What did you want me to do? Interrogate my best friend? Tie her to the bedpost until she gave up the name?”

  “Don’t be dramatic.”

  “Don’t be a fool. It was Paige’s business. And it was my choice to be there for her, regardless of how she wanted to raise Lily. She was twenty-one, Locke. She had no fucking clue what she was doing. All she knew was that she wanted that baby. She wanted Lily.”

  I feel all the muscles on my chest solidifying. “I deserved the same chance. That baby sleeping in the next room right now? She went almost a full year without her father. Would’ve gone longer if it hadn’t been for—”

  “What, Paige dying?” Carter smacks the wooden spoon against the pan ostensibly to dislodge food sticking to it. “You can say it. She’s dead, Locke. Cremated in a jar in my room…” Carter can’t speak. She’s choking on too much emotion. But she gathers herself, forges on. “I can’t tell you what Paige was thinking, or why. I don’t know if Lily would have gone her whole life without knowing you. All I do know is, she’s with you now because her mother can’t be. And now you have the responsibility of being both parents, and I’m sorry about that. I really am.”

  “Stop saying sorry to me,” I snap. “And she still has you.”

  The sparks die in Carter’s eyes. “Not for long.”

  She spins back to the stove before I can say anything further, but I don’t want this conversation to end. It’s the most passionate she’s been since telling me I had a secret baby, and I admit I missed this part of her, Carter’s original introduction—all fire, flame, and heat. The numb Carter, the woman who musters energy only for Lily’s benefit, is a cold sadness I don’t want to leave to harden and calcify.

  “You can stay here as long as you want,” I find myself saying.

  Carter stiffens but doesn’t pause in her stirring. “Don’t say that. Something you don’t mean. We both know this isn’t going to work in the long term.”

  “Fuck what should work.”

  Carter jumps at my curse and looks back at me.

  “Lily loves you. You love her. So we’ll keep going like this until we can’t anymore, okay?”

  After a few seconds, Carter lifts her lips, but it’s the fakest half smile I’ve ever witnessed. More in the realm of, let this dumb jock think everything’s gonna work out as a fairy tale. “Okay, Locke.”

  Damn it, I hate how this girl sees me. As a guy who has fun role-playing as dad for now, but eventually will be desperate to go back to random women and long, sleepy mornings. To no Lily. No Carter.

  I wish my words could prove her wrong. But Carter’s already judged me, and it doesn’t help that I handle Lily more as a porcelain doll than a real-life baby. It will only be through action, through fact, that Carter will ever believe I’m more than the papers she’s read, the history she’s heard, Paige’s one-night stand.

  I’m more than a college bet.

  13

  Carter

  The next morning, Locke demands we take Lily to the Prospect Park Zoo.

  He says it with such attitude, such testosterone-fueled decision, that I’m tempted to say no just to drive him berserk. But there’s a crack to his exterior, a sign of frustration, that I latch onto instead. I let him have his way since, I remind myself, he’s trying to do things for Lily, not me.

  It’s day four of officially living in New York City, and I have no idea what zoo he means because I thought there was only one in NYC, the big one in Central Park. And even then, I can’t picture it among all the horses and carriages and giant ice rinks, and that pond with the restaurant beside it and all the fancy stores—

  I scrunch my nose as I throw a sundress onto the futon. There’s too much stuff in this city.

  “C’mon, look what I bought for an outing!” Locke calls in the main room.

  Sighing, I step into my strappy floral dress and out of the nursery, kicking my sole box of clothes out of the way. Sophie one-armed my drawers at home, just swung in and dumped whatever she could into this box. It meant I had maybe five pieces of underwear, a lot of shirts, and two pairs of jeans. Then she went to my closet and gave me all my dresses. All of which I never wear.

  I can’t be annoyed with her, because as I’d unfolded and cringed at every flowery piece of fabric I pulled out of the box, I also notice she’d sent me Paige.

  Right in the middle, folded very protectively with all the shirts Sophie packed that I now realize were meant to cushion Paige, I pick up the vase.

  It’s white ceramic, glued shut by the funeral home, but I’d painted it. Detailed flowers rim the belly, Paige’s favorites. Peonies, roses, and of course, lilies. I’d used the smallest brushes I’d owned to craft the finest detail. Upon first glance, the vase appears like spring. Sprouted from beauty, meant to be showcased on a bright, sunny day or to bring light on those with clouds and fog. Without asking, no one would know what it contained.

  I kissed the top, then settled it carefully on a shelf Locke had installed for Lily, right next to the framed picture of the three of us—Paige, Lily, and me—interlocked on our apartment’s balcony, sunshine and clouds our backdrop. It was one of the last pictures before Paige donned a scarf around her head and called it her new headgear.

  Where Lily went, her mom went. And I was glad to bring Paige back to her daughter.

  “Welcome to your new home,” I whispered to Paige, then turned out of the room, wiping at the dampness on my cheeks.

  Locke is standing in the center of the den, Lily at his feet, and he’s holding a black contraption by the strap.

  I have to ask. “What is that?”

  “A stroller!” he says with enthusiasm. “It folds, see?”

  He starts extending and retracting it like an accordion.

  “Uh…”

  “New York,” he adds. “Everything needs to be compact.”

  “I see.”

  I throw my hair up in a messy bun and pick Lily up, settling her on my hip.

  “It’s the best there is, the lady at the kid store assured me. All the Park Slope moms have thi
s thing, it’s super safe, and there’s this shade thing that happens to keep Lily out of the sun…”

  Locke’s back to unfolding the thing and trying to click it into place. He has to bang it on the floor a few times to get it to lock, and that was after he had to untangle the wheels from their folded position.

  “Hang on. I gotta…” Locke grunts, flips the stroller over, and punches the frame. “It’s easy. She made it look so.” Punch. “Fucking.” Kick. “Easy.”

  The determination on his expression, the pure defiance in the face of baby gear, has me smiling wide.

  “There,” he says once the stroller finally looks like a stroller.

  “It’s perfect,” I say, more for his benefit.

  He straightens, and the relief in his body language is evident. “Awesome.”

  I hand Lily over so he can strap her in, excited to see what comes next. As expected, the harness securing Lily is no small feat, and after a few grumbles and censored curses for Lily’s benefit, Locke has her in.

  “Great job,” I say.

  He throws me a look. “Stop being so amused.”

  I open my mouth to retort, but it lodges in my throat when I meet Locke’s eye. Hair falls across his forehead, his cheeks flushed with exertion. His eyes are bright with it, an insane blue sparkle that should only belong to anime characters, and I’m thrown. Have to stick my hand out for balance before my—oh, God—are my knees actually buckling?

  No way. I muster my nerve and remind myself this is a look Locke gives to many girls, with reactions he’s used to seeing—even expects. I refuse to be reduced to a puddle simply because a good-looking guy, one whom I was enamored with and drooled over all throughout college, finally has me in his sights. Knows my name.

  He slept with your best friend. Made a baby with her.

  “Whoa,” Locke says to me, retreating with the stroller. “Did I do something?”

  I coat my voice with resolve. “Everything’s fine. Let’s go.”

  Locke hesitates but doesn’t push it. He points to the couch where he’s laid Lily’s diaper bag. “Can you check that I have everything? I’ve followed your list, but I want to make sure we don’t forget a crucial item.”