Players to Lovers (4 Book Collection)

by Ketley Allison

  A hand falls on my shoulder, and I hear Neon Green say, “Uh, miss, I really need you to leave this room…”

  I fall against him, and he catches my slack with surprising ease.

  “I’ve ruined him,” I say.

  I bury my face in my hands and whisper through tear-coated lips, not caring who hears, “I love him.”

  27

  Ben

  Aiden meets me at a nondescript billiards bar on the West Side Highway of Manhattan, wearing a navy ball cap in contrast to my black one.

  I take off my shades as I slide into the booth opposite him, because sometimes, that’s all you need in this city to be incognito—a ball cap and sunglasses. In the celebrity realm, anyway. I’m not too familiar with maintaining a camouflage under witness protection these days.

  “Coffee?” Aiden asks as he pretends deep interest in his newspaper. The paper contains fingerprints and grease marks like it’s been read by a few patrons before him.

  I nod, and he signals the server for two more of what he’s having. What I really want is a beer, but considering what we’re talking about, I’d better stick with nonalcoholic stimulants.

  Aiden leans back against the blue, torn vinyl in the low-lit room as the server lays down a mug for me and pours from a carafe into mine and Aiden’s empty one.

  “So,” Aiden says once she departs. “Tell me what you couldn’t over the phone.”

  I tell him everything. From the law firm representing these two psychos that killed my parents, to the attorneys representing them, to Astor. That gorgeous, flawed woman I thought had a soft spot for me, despite wounding her so badly years ago, who only turned around and bit the hand that stroked her.

  Aiden nods along, saying nothing, staring at the woodgrain of our table or his grease-bitten paper, contemplating the universe as I detail this morning’s confrontation at Locke’s gym.

  “Huh,” he says once I finish, his shoulders falling back against the vinyl again.

  “That’s it?” I say. “I tell you I may have to give up everything, all I’ve worked for, and get a new name in a new city, and all you can do is grunt?”

  Aiden laughs.

  “Dude,” I say. “What the fuck?”

  Aiden puts a hand to his chest, as if trying to contain his mirth. For the first time in more than eight years of knowing him, I want to kick him right in the sack.

  “We’re not in a movie here, Ben. You don’t have to assume a new identity and start again somewhere else.”

  I splay out my hands. “But this firm, these guys at Costello and whatever, know who I am.”

  “And they’ll have the Department of Justice snarling down their throats so fast they’ll lose their tongues, never mind their attorney licenses, if they so much as breathe a word of your identity to their wives, partners, children … you get the idea.”

  “I don’t feel safe anymore, Aiden,” I say. “I gotta be honest.”

  “Look, WITSEC was created specifically for trials. To protect key witnesses in high-profile cases, or prosecutions where the defendants are extremely dangerous. The fact they want you to testify at trial, that’s exactly where we come in. We can protect your identity all the way.”

  “But I don’t want to testify.”

  “And you don’t have to. In which case, we’ll slap a court order in their faces so fast they’ll get whiplash. Everything they found out about you must be redacted or deleted.”

  “But my new identity—me, Ben—I’m high profile. I’m a pro-footballer. This kind of information…”

  Aiden grows serious. “I’ll admit, you’re not the typical guy we protect. Usually, it’s fellow criminals that get a new ID and hide, not a baby boy who’s grown into a successful, famous adult. Is there a risk you could still be discovered? Yes, I’m not going to lie. But here are the facts as I see ‘em.” Aiden rests his elbows on the table. “You don’t want to testify. You don’t know anything relevant that could help identify these men. You’re doing nothing to hinder this prosecution, and on the flip side, you’re doing nothing to help them, either. So, if I were one of the bad guys?” Aiden shrugs. “What the fuck do I want with you at this point?”

  I sit back and take a deep, cleansing breath—the kind of inhale this one trainer I had who was super into meditation made me do. I’m starting to regret firing him. “So, you’re telling me, all this stress, all this bone-chilling terror I’ve been feeling about my family and friends, about giving up my life to protect theirs, is most likely for nothing?”

  “It’s never for null,” Aiden says, gentler. “We didn’t put you into WITSEC because we felt like it. It was because back then, there was a very real risk posed to you. You were meant to perish with your parents in that house, and you didn’t. You were also old enough to maybe have some kind of recollection in the future on who was supposed to kill you. When you were sixteen and I told you the truth—that was serious. Chavez was poking around, noticing holes in that case, and was making noises about wanting to protect his people. We almost moved you. There is always a risk, Ben. If you stay Ben Donahue, if you don’t and become someone else, there is always a goddamned risk to your life. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  I nod, close my eyes, and rub them.

  “You’ve been Benjamin Abraham Donahue for twenty years. I would rather you stay in this world, the one you love and belong in, then have to start over somewhere else, only to potentially reach the same outcome,” Aiden continues. “But, of course, it’s up to you.”

  I lock my jaw and stare out the filmed-over window. Aiden doesn’t push for me to speak. After a while, I say, “I want to stay Ben.”

  Aiden sips the last of his coffee and sets it down. “Then you do that.”

  I slump against my seat. Just because it’s the best decision, doesn’t mean me and mine are safe.

  Aiden stands and throws a few bills on the table.

  “Think on it for a while,” he says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been keeping my ear on this case, and it seems like these guys might take a plea. Then, it’ll be over.”

  “It’s never over,” I mumble, but I don’t think he hears, because he walks away.

  Aiden is not my friend. He’s been a strong advocate of mine, a fierce protector over the years, but in the end, he’s a U.S. Marshal who has to keep the little boy he saved at an emotionless arm’s length. I understand all that, but more than anything, I wish there was someone else I could talk to, be so completely open and honest with, and get their warmth as well as opinion.

  Astor’s transparent form takes shape across the table, her naturally wide, blue eyes landing on mine as I talk it out in my head, unleash all my worries, my fears, and ask her if I’m making the right moves.

  Astor’d give it to me straight. Just like she did last night when she listened. If I had her here now, I’d stand up, lift her with me, and kiss her ghost breathless.

  The betrayal from this morning, however, makes her imaginary lips taste like spider venom.

  I curl my upper lip and signal for a beer.

  Part of me doesn’t believe Astor would email her discovery to her peers, but most of me does. Astor’s hard to read, but when it comes to the source of the wounds behind her scar tissue, she’ll avenge them at any cost.

  As far as she’s concerned, I openly betrayed her years ago and never paid penance for it. Then she lost her mother, a tragedy so out of her control she raged at the world in general. Her father ignores her, despite her financial independence. Her brother’s found happiness, despite living like a pauper.

  In Astor’s universe, nothing seems fair. Anybody else would look at her and think she’s a bitter, lonely woman out for scorn and revenge, preferably both at the same time.

  “Until this morning, I saw through all that,” I say to no one. I tap the fingers of my throwing hand on the wood varnish, an anxious twitch I’m trying to get rid of.

  The server sets down my draft beer, and as the golden liquid swishes against the frost
ed glass, foam settling along the edges, the pint blurs into two, my tapping finger becomes four, and the wood varnish morphs into the pale, cheap bamboo table of my childhood—

  * * *

  Apple juice.

  “Finish your sippy cup, love,” Mom says as she rounds my chair. “Your last snack before bedtime.”

  “But I don’t wanna.”

  “Well, ya hafta.” She lays a wet kiss on my cheek, squeezing my shoulders until it tickles and she gets a giggle out of me.

  “Then I get a story,” I say through my laughter.

  “Of course. One story.”

  “Two.”

  “No bargaining tonight, son,” my dad cuts in. He shuts off the TV in the den and comes over. “Daddy’s got an important meeting tonight. No kids allowed.”

  “But I’m a great kid,” I say.

  “That you are.” He tousles my hair as he passes, goes to the fridge, and bends to find a beer. His muffled voice continues, “But it’s boring big boy talk. Actually…”

  Dad straightens and shuts the fridge, brown bottle in hand.

  “Rose, that might be just the thing to get him to sleep. Have him stay up and listen to all the crap these guys have to say. Ry’ll be asleep in seconds.”

  “Don’t say crap,” Mom admonishes him.

  “CRAP!” I scream.

  I get a gentle thwack across the side of the head for that one.

  “He’s having enough nightmares already,” Mom says above my head, as if I can’t hear. “Having strange men come around and sit in this living room, talking about things he can’t understand … Lord knows what kind of night terrors that’ll bring him.”

  Dad shrugs. “It was a thought. But read the same story to him five times over instead, then.”

  Mom chuckles, pushes Dad playfully when he walks by, then pecks his cheek.

  “Come on, honey,” she says to me. “Time for bed.”

  “But noooooo.”

  “But yes.”

  “I wanna meet Daddy’s friends.”

  “Another time.”

  Mom lifts me, and I curl my limbs around her soft body, always warm, always fragrant from soap. I cling to her neck as she hums a tune down the short hallway and drops me off in bed.

  My favorite story, Green Eggs and Ham, is ready on my nightstand, next to my emergency nighttime sippy cup of more apple juice, in case I wake up and need comfort, instead of running to Mom.

  Mom reads to me, and I chatter along with the parts I know, pointing and laughing. In the middle of round three of the book (because I always win), my eyelids go heavy.

  Last thing I remember is Mom’s lips pressing against my cheek, and she rubs the spot with her fingers when the scent of her drifts away. “Night night, Ry-Ry…”

  Peace. Until…

  STOMP.

  BANG.

  Breaking glass.

  My eyes snap open in the dim light, my Slimer from Ghostbusters nightlight lending small clarity. I blink, rising on my elbows, the sounds of my parents’ voices hitting my ears.

  “Please! We didn’t—” CRACK.

  “Oh! Oh, God, Tim, no! What did you do to him? What—?”

  “Shut up,” an unfamiliar, male voice says. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  “Let’s do her,” someone else says.

  “In a minute. We need to talk to this guy first, and something tells me knocking his woman around, maybe fucking her in front of him, will get him to talk.”

  “Please! Leave her alone. Let her go, I’ll tell you everything—”

  I creep out of bed, toward the door and the shaft of light underneath. Carefully—because something inside me is saying to be careful—I turn the knob and peer around the frame.

  My mom’s back is to me, her floral dress stained with red splatters. She’s on the ground, held by the hair by a tall, thin man, dressed in a black coat and dark jeans. If he has red splatters, too, I don’t see them.

  Mom’s crying, her shoulders shaking. Dad doesn’t sound like Dad. His voice is much higher, and crackles, and I think it’s the sound of sobbing.

  Sippy cup. I need my emergency apple juice, because I don’t feel very safe anymore.

  I turn back to my room, and as I do, the floorboard creaks under my foot.

  The man holding my mom snaps his head around.

  “Well, lookie here,” he says, his pale gray eyes taking in the sight of me and my race car pajamas. “Hey, Lopez. We have an unexpected guest.”

  I whimper.

  Wishing for my sippy cup.

  Wishing for my mom.

  * * *

  Gasping, I slam my palms against the edge of the table.

  “Sir?” The server rushes over, takes one look at me, and takes a step back. “Goodness, do you need an ambulance? Are you choking?”

  I don’t have the voice to tell her no. I do everything I can to calm my breathing and blink away the sweat dripping into my vision. Clutching the table, I center back to the present, to the bar I’m in, to the memory of Aiden across from me, and internally chant that I’m not that child anymore.

  Ben never saw the carnage.

  Ben wouldn’t remember.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, God,” I think I sob out, before bowing my head and exhaling hard into my chest.

  Ryan remembers.

  28

  Astor

  As it happens, I get to keep my job, but not a whole lot of it.

  Yang gives me a what-for in his office, concentrating mostly on my hoarding of crucial information relating to the Staten Island Slaughters. But, Yang isn’t a dumb man.

  He’s not a fair one, either.

  “Your closeness to this young man, I can see how it sullied things for you,” Yang says from his side of his expansive oak desk, surrounded by various diplomas and requisite family-and-children photos. “It made you emotional, you weren’t thinking correctly. Do I have that right?”

  Yes, because if it were the reverse, if it were Ben learning about me, he would’ve easily handed over the evidence and called it a day. These damned lady-part emotions, just can’t get rid of ‘em.

  “I was also on my period,” I say, deadpan.

  His right eye twitches. “Ah. Well, luckily Mike talked you out of it and you were ultimately able to come to the right decision.”

  I swallow any derision and say, “What happens now? What will you do, knowing who Ryan is?”

  “It’s not exactly par for the course, is it?” Yang taps a Mont Blanc against his ledger. “This is a delicate, extremely confidential matter, not that it wasn’t before. This firm can’t handle any blowback from the risk of outing an NFL player this way. But, we also can’t anger one of our favorite clients.”

  “Chavez.”

  “Somehow, we have to play both hands. The less people who know about Ryan Delaney, the better. I’d like to keep that knowledge between you, me, Miss Maddox, and your fiancé.”

  I readily agree with him. “Does this mean we won’t go public with any of it?”

  “Not a bit.” Yang squints in my direction. “I’m one of Manhattan’s top ten defense lawyers for a reason, Miss Hayes. I do not have loose lips.”

  What about Chavez—I almost say but stop myself. I haven’t studied Yang enough to determine if he’d ever let Ben’s identity slip to the mafia boss and placing a hope and a prayer on Yang’s ego doesn’t seem like enough.

  “We have to appease Chavez somehow,” I say instead.

  “Agreed. That’s where you come in.”

  And this is how you keep your job, is left unsaid.

  I stay quiet.

  “You must convince Mr. Donahue to agree to a deposition. Written, no recording, no identifying characteristics. If we get that, I’ll make sure it’s enough to keep Chavez happy.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  Ben’s not talking to me anymore, I want to say. He hates me more than I ever hated him—and that’s a lot.

  “Then you’d better damn well try, Miss Ha
yes.”

  “He doesn’t…” I think the rest of what I want to say through before I continue. How much I can divulge while respecting Ben’s privacy? “Ben doesn’t remember anything.”

  “Then we get that on record and can wash our hands of this.”

  “He doesn’t want to be on record—”

  “You’ve already said as much. Change his mind.”

  I shake my head, but Yang’s desk phone rings. He gestures at me in dismissal, and I stand, both hating and loving that this meeting is over.

  “I expect results shortly,” Yang says to me before answering the call.

  I depart Yang’s office, unsure if I should sit at my cubicle looking stunned for a while longer or go home and drown my sorrows in wine.

  The latter. Definitely the latter.

  I swipe my jacket from my chair on the way to the elevators, drawing Taryn’s attention. I wave at her that I’m fine, no biggie, while my insides slosh like I’m on an ancient ship to the edge of the world.

  I don’t take a car home, preferring the clog of the subway. It’s easy to become no one in such a large, close knit crowd. To be nothing to anyone around you.

  When I unlock the door to the darkness of my apartment, it’s the first time I wish for a cat, or a dog, or a something, to greet me.

  I flick on the lights and kick my heels off in my foyer, heading to the kitchen and straight for the fridge, but I’m sidelined by a bottle of champagne on the counter.

  The good kind. The pink, sparkling gorgeous brand that’s all over Pinterest.

  And the note that’s stuck to it sends acidic bubbles up into my throat.

  * * *

  Congrats on such a find, babe. I could never compete with your brains.

  Celebrate on me!

  M.

  * * *

  The greatest urge to hurl the bottle against the wall hits my arm, but I resist, both for the clean-up and the fact that Mike is well aware of his penchant to make me throw things. I don’t want to do what he wants or expects, ever again.