Dropping The Ball: A New Year’s Billionaire Romance

by Weston Parker

  Not even his great ass could distract me from the torment breaking me up inside. So that’s what will change this time. Everything. Again.

  But what was different was that I wouldn’t fight to get back what I’d lost again. Because ultimately, I wouldn’t be the loser if I tried to get him back. Carter would, and he was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a loser. I wouldn’t turn him into one.

  At least I still had control over that one thing.

  Chapter 27

  CARTER

  So this is what heartbreak feels like, huh? I’d never known how badly a person could hurt without even having sustained so much as a scratch. It was no wonder it took people years to get over a broken heart. I also suddenly understood all the melancholic songs written about it and why therapists made a living off the poor saps who’d loved and lost.

  I was the card-carrying member of that club now. Sure, I hadn’t been to see a therapist yet but it had only been about fourteen hours since Rylee had ripped my heart out. Give me time.

  In my pursuit to become the best bodyguard I could be, I’d spent years of my life fighting against the masters in a variety of martial arts. I’d taken more hits than I could count, and none of them had hurt even a fraction as much as this did.

  What made it even worse was that I knew what she was doing and why she was doing it, but it was killing me. I hadn’t moved off the couch since I’d gotten back from the hospital. Except to go digging around in my kitchen cabinet for a bottle of scotch I’d stashed there at some point, a glass, and to take a piss every so often, I just sat here.

  I hadn’t been able to sleep, nor had I changed my clothes. The paper booties were even still on my feet. My television was off and so were my lights. All night, I’d sat there in the dark, replaying every moment Rylee and I had had together while trying to work out when she’d decided to end it if we hit a bump in the road.

  Bart was taking over her detail for the time being, leaving me with nothing to do except drink and feel sorry for myself. I wasn’t breaking my promise to her. I wouldn’t give up. I knew that was what she wanted right now and that she thought she was doing it for me, but I wasn’t getting onboard with her plan.

  I could handle myself, and I could handle whatever curveballs life threw at us. Her disease scared me too, but that didn’t mean I was running from her. I’d stand right next to her and brace for the storms we’d face together. The MS, the press, my job, and the dangers it put me in. None of it was too much for me, and none of it was enough to make me want to throw in the towel.

  Throughout the night, I’d given myself time to wallow. I’d needed time to process what had happened and to deal with my own fears about it. Seeing her grow pale before her legs gave in…

  Fuck. I’ve never been that scared in my life.

  Now that the first traces of morning had come, hazy sunlight shining in through the crack in my curtains, I knew it was time to start doing something about the promise I’d made. I was nowhere near over the fear. I’d probably live with it for the rest of my life, but hopefully, I could spend all that time living with it but also with her.

  I’d have shielded her from it if I could, but I couldn’t. I also doubted she’d have let me even if it was possible. Rylee was fucking strong. She might not think it, but I knew it enough for both of us.

  Wincing when my phone clattered on the coffee table with an incoming text, I grabbed it. I was desperate for news from the hospital, but it wasn’t that. Well, not exactly.

  Bart: Tani got Max. Will drop him off later. You okay?

  No, but I didn’t want him worrying about me. He had to take care of my girl. It fucking hurt that I had to rely on someone else to do it, but that was the way the chips had fallen. For now anyway.

  Me: Thanks. Keep her safe. Talk later.

  I tossed the phone down and stretched my aching muscles. Catching a whiff of myself when I lifted my arms above my head, I realized I needed to take a shower before I tried doing anything else.

  The scotch made my head swim when I got up, but I stumbled my way to the bathroom and yanked my clothes off. After taking an ice-cold shower that cleared some of the fog from my brain, I pulled on a pair of jogging pants and a T-shirt. It was freezing outside, but I needed to feel the cold to sober all the way up.

  Pure alcohol seeped from my pores while I ran, my head throbbed almost as badly as my heart, and my mouth tasted awful, but I kept going. Having heavy metal playing through my earphones wasn’t helping my head at all, but at least the pounding drums kept me distracted from my thoughts.

  Until Rylee’s face jumped out at me from the paper when I passed a newsstand. I thought I was imagining it at first, but no. There was no mistaking those piercing eyes or the long auburn locks framing her face. I recognized a smaller shot of my own face in the corner of the page, but I didn’t really care about that.

  Slamming to a stop, I jogged back to the stand and scowled when I recognized the name on the byline. Nathan Biles.

  Blindly grabbing my wallet and extracting some money, I shoved it at the woman manning the stand and grabbed a copy of the latest New York Times without looking at her. I scanned the article, becoming more furious with every word I read.

  RYLEE NAPLES IS DONE! The headline screamed in bold print from the page. My blood boiled when I realized it was an expose.

  For years we’ve all been wondering what happened to make Broadway’s brightest star, Rylee Naples, quit the stage. We’ve been fed lies about her taking a break, but this reporter never believed any of it.

  He went on and on about how many times he’d tried to get her to talk to him, how she’d “abruptly left” the interview she’d finally agreed to when the questions got “too hard,” and how he’d finally learned the truth.

  Naples never came back after falling one night during a show. There was widespread speculation that she’d injured herself, but her team insisted that she was unharmed and had simply taken a spill because she was tired.

  This isn’t true. Days after the fall, Naples was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a potentially disabling disease of the brain and central nervous system. While it is unknown what stage her disease has progressed to, one thing is clear. Naples is done with the stage for good. She’s too ill to perform, and she and her advisers have been covering it up all this time.

  Meanwhile, she’s got a new beau and sources say they’re planning on falling off the map together.

  There was more, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it. Fuming as I fumbled for my phone, I marched back in the direction of my apartment and hit dial on Billy’s number.

  He picked up after the first few rings, his voice tight when it came over the line. “Carter? How is she, man? Thank fuck you’re with her.”

  “I’m not,” I said, not sounding much better than he did. “She kicked me out, but Bart is with her. She’s safe. He’s my boss and he knows what she means to me. He won’t let anything happen to her.”

  “What? Why would she kick you out?” Even though he was hundreds of miles away, I heard the worry and confusion in his voice as clearly as if he were right next to me. “What happened? Jules called my parents to let them know she was in the hospital, but I don’t know much more than that.”

  “She kicked me out because she’s trying to protect me,” I said. “We’ve been seeing each other and I knew she was worried about what would happen if her MS flared up again, but I didn’t think she’d take it this far.”

  “Hold up, you’ve been seeing each other?” he asked disbelievingly. “Fuck, man, how long has this been going on? She told me you didn’t used to make out behind my back. What the fuck is this now?”

  “We never made out behind your back.” I squeezed the back of my neck while I prepared to tell him the rest of it. “Well, not when we were kids anyway. It only started after I got assigned to her detail.”

  He kept quiet for a few seconds. “Is it serious?”

  “Yeah.” I blew out a breath. “From my side
anyway. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her, but she won’t listen to me. Someone needs to help her see that this disease is only a slight limitation right now.”

  “You want me to come out there?” he asked, and I suddenly heard the sounds of traffic from his side. “I’ve been thinking I wanted to, but I thought I’d wait until I got an update before I made a decision.” He paused again. “Hey, Carter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not saying I’m okay with you guys hooking up and not even telling me, but if she kicked you out, that means she’s serious about you too.”

  “She’s pushing me away.” I sighed, the pieces of my broken heart contracting painfully. “It isn’t the way to go about anything, but I understand what she’s doing. She thinks her life as she knows it is ending and she’s trying to set fire to it so she can move on. Probably somewhere by herself.”

  “I’ll be on the next flight out,” he said. “When I know what time I’ll be getting in, I’ll text you. Can you pick me up from the airport? I need to know what happened and I want to look into your eyes when you tell me how you feel about my sister.”

  “Are you going to kick me in the balls?”

  “Depends. Are you going to hurt her?”

  “I already have, but I didn’t mean to.” I screwed my eyes shut. “I’m never fucking lying to anyone again, not even by omission. This keeps coming back to bite me, but I recognized her when she first hired my firm. I didn’t tell her who I was even when I realized she didn’t know. I kept it from her and from my boss. And from you.”

  “Why’d you do it?” he asked after a beat.

  “I wish I knew, man. I really wish I knew. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t think it would matter, and by the time I realized it did, it was too late. I already hadn’t told her, and then I was afraid that if I did, she’d get pissed off and leave me.”

  “You’ve told her?”

  “Yep.” I opened my eyes again and kept heading back to my place. “She got pissed off, but she didn’t leave me. She didn’t fire me either. Things were awkward. Then they were better. Then she started becoming distant again.”

  “It’s been a tough couple of years for her.” His tone was much gentler now. “The diagnosis pulled the rug right out from underneath us all, but obviously, it hit her the hardest. It’s taken her a long time to trust her legs enough to get back up.”

  “I figured it was that.” My teeth sank into the inside of my cheek. “Then last night, just after she told me she was scared it would happen again, it did.”

  “She threaten to pull the plug on her performance?” he asked, worry thickening his voice.

  I nodded. “She asked me to call Jules to tell him. I called him, but only to tell him what’d happened. He was on his way to the hospital before we even got off the phone.”

  “You picking me up from the airport?” he asked again.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there. Just let me know what time.” After promising me we’d talk more once he got in, we hung up the phone.

  When I made it back to my apartment, I took another shower before crashing for a few hours. My sleep was fitful and plagued with nightmares about Rylee, the way she’d collapsed, and the look in her eyes when she told me to get the fuck out.

  My body, head, and heart all ached even worse when I woke up. There was a text from Billy waiting for me, saying he’d be in shortly after seven. I checked the time. Only three p.m.

  I flipped over on my bed, hooked my hands behind my head after grabbing my earphones, and tried to drown out the noise in my head with some more metal. It didn’t work.

  Rylee occupied all the real estate in my mind. I fluctuated between smiling into the empty room, punching my mattress, feeling like I was about to cry for the first time in fucking years, and even fighting a hard-on at times.

  God, I’m so fucked up right now.

  Still feeling super down when I sat up an hour later, I figured hair of the dog wasn’t the worst idea. I had a beer in my kitchen while staring out the window before going to get dressed to get ready to pick Billy up later.

  All in all, it was one of the most miserable days in my existence and I wasn’t feeling positive that the next day or even the one after that would be any better.

  What if she never lets me back in?

  I groaned out loud. I couldn’t even think about it. Facing the rest of my time on earth without her was the only thing I’d ever come across that I wouldn’t find a way through.

  Chapter 28

  RYLEE

  When I walked into my house on Sunday morning with Bart in tow, Carter’s absence hit me like I’d entered a Home Alone-style prank-filled house full of booby traps. Instead of gloopy syrup, feathers, and marbles, I was hit by the complete and total lack of his things.

  There was no leather jacket on my coatrack, no Max, no hoodie over the back of my couch, and no empty glasses or mugs anywhere. Carter wasn’t exactly messy, but when he made himself at home, he didn’t worry about things like taking his dishes back immediately or throwing his discarded clothes into the hamper right away.

  It hadn’t bothered me because it’d come with him. His unwavering, larger-than-life presence that I’d felt the second I’d stepped foot inside. That presence was also one of the things I missed so acutely now.

  A rustling in my kitchen made me snap my gaze in that direction. I dropped the duffle bag Jules had brought to the hospital for me and I’d insisted on carrying in myself, and ran toward the sound.

  Carter. Please be Carter.

  I couldn’t feel his presence, but maybe that was just because I hadn’t been expecting it. When I came around the corner and saw a familiar shock of dark hair and broad shoulders working the coffeemaker, I blinked back my surprise and charged forward.

  “Billy? Oh my God! What are you doing here?”

  My brother turned just in time to see me coming at him. His face split into a wide grin and he opened his arms for me to launch myself at him. “Ooomph. That’s a nice hello, sis. I wasn’t expecting quite this much enthusiasm.”

  I buried my face in the crook of his neck, hugging him tight while trying to get my emotions under control. “You came. I can’t believe you’re here. Wait. Why are you here? When did you get in?”

  He pulled back, setting me down gently before taking a step back to look me up and down. “You’re looking good. How are you feeling?”

  I stuck a leg out and wiggled it around before doing the same with the other. “I’m fine. I haven’t had another attack since that one on Friday and all my tests came back looking really good.”

  Some light crept back into the blue of his eyes and his chest expanded like he hadn’t been able to take a full breath since he’d found out. Motioning for me to take a seat on one of the stools, he fixed a cup of tea for me and coffee for himself. “Do they know what brought it on?”

  I rubbed my palms on my jeans, about to answer when Bart popped his head in the door. “I’m going to give you two a few minutes to talk in private. I’ll be in the control room if you need me.”

  Billy frowned at me over his shoulder, but there was some amusement in the slant of his lips. “The control room?”

  I shook my head, chuckling as I lifted both shoulders. “Formerly known as my formal sitting room. The space was unused, so they set up some monitors and things in there as well as in Cart—”

  My throat closed around his name. Pain lanced through my heart as the memories of the last time I’d seen him rushed through my head. Forcing air into my lungs, I took a few steadying breaths before trying again.

  “There’s monitors in the guest room as well as the sitting room.”

  My brother turned and pushed the cup of tea across the counter before wrapping his fingers around his mug. His expression was back to being serious, the lightness that had just been creeping in gone without leaving a trace behind.

  “Can’t even say his name, huh?” he asked, sounding sympathetic rather than surprised. He di
pped his head to look into my eyes, leaning down to slide his forearms onto the counter with the mug still gripped in his hands. “He’s the reason I’m here, Ry. He called me.”

  “He did?” My heart started pounding wildly. I tried to keep it calm, but it refused to play along. “What did he tell you?”

  “That you needed me.” His features pinched as though he was in pain before he raked his hands through his hair. “You should’ve called me. I’m grateful that Carter did, but why didn’t you?”

  I watched the steam floating off the surface of my tea like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, unable to meet his eyes. My voice was quiet when I finally found it again. “I freaked out. I think I was kind of already freaking out even before it happened. The doctors say it might’ve even happened because I was so stressed and emotionally wound up.”

  “Carter didn’t only tell me that you needed me.” The admission in Billy’s tone made me look up at him. I didn’t know what I’d expected to see in his eyes, but it wasn’t the soft expression I found in them. “He also told me that you two have been seeing each other and that you chased him out of the hospital.”

  “He brought you here for me,” I repeated his earlier words. A humorless laugh came out of me and tears pricked my eyes. Hanging my head, I swiped the gathering moisture away but I couldn’t scrub away the emotion in my voice quite as easily. “I’m so fucking in love with that man, but he deserves so much better than me.”

  I didn’t hear him move, but suddenly Billy’s arms were around my shoulders and he was hugging me. “That has to be the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. What the hell made you think that?”

  A shuddering breath left me. “I can’t saddle him with someone like me in the long run. I should never even have started this thing with him.”