#Player

by Cambria Hebert

  My knees started to shake, and I reached up and gripped his wrists (lightly). “Can we go?”

  He chuckled. “We have all afternoon until dinner tonight.”

  It was a rarity to have most of the day to ourselves during the week. But because of the hearing, the dean excused us from classes today so we could be in court.

  “Well, maybe you could leave that sling off… just for a little while longer. I sort of missed being held by you.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  I leaned up on my toes and kissed him again. “Anything I want?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I want to drive home.”

  He went from very accommodating to alarmed in two seconds flat. “You wanna what?”

  I held out my hands for the keys. “Too much driving is bad for your arm.”

  “It’s fine.” He groaned.

  “It will make me feel better.”

  “But the poor Cat will suffer,” he muttered.

  “What did you just say to me?” I gasped and pressed a hand to my chest. “I thought you said I was a good driver!”

  I almost laughed out loud at the look on his face. I’d have to remember to act like that more often when I wanted to throw him off his game.

  “Fine.” He relented and walked around to open the driver’s side door. After I piled my books on the seat and climbed in, he leaned down in the door. “Try not to rip out the engine, huh?”

  I rolled my eyes, and as I did, something caught my attention off to the side. “Hey,” I asked. “What is that?” I pointed to what looked like a piece of paper under the windshield wiper.

  Romeo straightened and snagged the sheet off the glass and looked down at it. “It’s a newspaper article.” He glanced up. “One of the ones written about me.”

  Since he did the interview with the Maryland Tribune several other papers called for an interview. He’d always had a sort of celebrity status since I’d known him, but usually it was limited to campus and the people who knew him.

  But since the championship, the NFL offers and the drama with Zach Romeo had become even more popular.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen this one yet,” I said and pulled it out of his hands to look down.

  The article was half a page and featured him smiling widely with his blue eyes and blond hair on full display. The heading of the article read:

  “WILL HE BE THE COMEBACK QUARTERBACK?”

  Beneath the article, there was a smaller picture of him on the field, wearing sweats and in motion of throwing the ball with his left hand.

  He’d been training the left side of his body for a while now, and I knew he was getting better and learning more control.

  “What do they mean the comeback quarterback?” I asked.

  He scoffed. “Because the NFL dropped me, but I’m still on the field training every day, determined to keep up my skill and fitness. They’re saying if I get drafted next year, I’ll be the ‘comeback quarterback.’”

  “You know,” I said. “We don’t know that the NFL has totally dropped you.”

  “They’ve been silent for too long.” I heard the disappointment and finality in his voice, and my chest constricted.

  “Well, they’re a bunch of big dummies.”

  He laughed. After he jogged around the car and climbed in the passenger seat, I looked up from the paper. “Wonder how this got on your dash?”

  He shrugged. “Someone probably recognized my car and put it there.” He turned the paper so he could look at it. “This article just ran today. Maybe they thought they were the first to show it to me.”

  “Maybe,” I echoed, but still, it just seemed odd.

  He took the paper and tossed it into the backseat. “Remember, be gentle with my Hellcat.”

  I grinned and started up the car.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Romeo

  “Why did you have to agree to dinner with my parents?”

  Her throaty laugh made the fact we had to get out of bed even worse.

  “I figured it would be safer that way,” Rimmel said, running her fingers across my bare abs.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her fingers kept caressing me, flirting along my body. Her touch was light, and even though I’d already had her twice, I felt a deep stirring in my chest.

  But it wasn’t for more sex. It wasn’t from the insatiable desire she made me feel.

  It was because she owned me.

  I loved her with every cell in my body.

  “I figured it would be easier to be in the same room with your mother to go over the details for the event if you and Tony were there too.”

  I palmed her bare hip. It shouldn’t be this way. She shouldn’t feel like she needed a buffer when she was in the same room as my mother.

  Before I met Rim, I never really thought much about what my future relationships might be like or how my parents would be with my forever girl.

  But even if I had thought about it, it would never have been like this.

  I always just sort of assumed everyone would get along. And I wished we did. Not just for me, but for Rimmel. She needed more family and she deserved the love and security a big family could offer.

  Instead, she got me and Braeden.

  We were damn good, but sometimes I worried we wouldn’t be enough.

  “I really wish things were different,” I told her.

  She snuggled a little closer. “Part of me can’t even be upset anymore because your mom loves you. She loves you so much.”

  “Yeah, but that’s no excuse for the ways she’s acted.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Rim?” I asked after a few long moments.

  “Rome?”

  I smiled despite the question I wanted to ask. “What’d you do with that file my mom gave you?”

  Her body tensed just a little, and I stroked her back to hopefully display I meant no harm in asking, but honestly, this was a topic I couldn’t avoid forever.

  “You mean the one on my dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s in my bag.” She tossed out her arm toward where her bag lay across the room.

  “You carry it around with you?” I asked, surprised.

  “I didn’t know what to do with it. It’s not the kind of thing you sit out on your desk or hide under a pillow.”

  “Like a hospital bill,” I quipped.

  She poked me in the ribs. “You totally orchestrated that as part of the sentence against Zach.”

  I shrugged. “I just suggested to my dad, our lawyer, that it didn’t seem fair you had to pay a bill for care Zach was responsible for making you get.”

  “Thank you.” The sincerity in her voice was a relief. I was kind of afraid she was mad.

  “Anything for my girl.”

  “I haven’t read it all.” She rushed out the words.

  “The police report?” I asked.

  I felt her nod against me. “I just can’t… It’s sick to me. How could I live in a world where my father killed my mother?”

  Her words cracked and broke something inside me. I sat up and leaned against the headboard so I could look down at her.

  She looked so vulnerable lying in bed with the white sheets tangled around her and hair falling across her cheek. “Baby, what if that’s not the story? What if all this fear you’re holding on to because you’re scared is worse than the actual truth.”

  “But your mother said…” Her voice faded away as a tear tracked down her cheek. She dashed it away quickly, like she was afraid to cry too.

  “I love my mother, but she’s a drama queen, Rim,” I said point blank. “She does a lot of good in the community and has dedicated herself to her family, but she took it too far.”

  “I don’t know.” Rimmel pushed herself up and tucked the sheet around her, hiding most of her hot-ass nakedness from my eyes.

  “She got that file, barely had time to digest it, and then got a call we were attacke
d and in the ER. She was beside herself with worry, rushed into the room, and said some shit that was really stupid.”

  “You believe her,” Rimmel said, her voice quiet and a little bit in awe.

  I wasn’t going to lie to her. Not even about something that could cause problems between us. I leaned forward, grasped her face, and stared straight into her eyes. “This isn’t me choosing a side. If I were forced to choose, it would be you, Rimmel. I’d pick you over anything, anyone in this world.”

  “But?”

  I exhaled and released her face. “But my mother’s PI wouldn’t have been able to find something if there wasn’t something to find.”

  She glanced down at her lap.

  “Mom is a lot of things, but creating an entire document of false information—especially the type of information it is—she’s just not that cruel, baby.”

  Rimmel’s long, thick hair was hung over her shoulders, and when she looked down, it created a curtain and hid her face from me. I couldn’t see her reaction to my words, but her silence cut like a knife.

  “I think,” she said, her voice almost too quiet to hear, “one of the reasons I’m so upset with your mother is because part of me believes her.” Even her quiet tone couldn’t hide the pure, unfiltered anguish those words made her feel.

  Her shoulders started to shake and a sob ripped out of her throat.

  “Ah, shit,” I swore and pulled her into my lap.

  She cried and cried. Everything she had bottled up inside her since that night at the field seemed to pour out of her until her voice turned hoarse and there was literally no tears left for her to cry.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. Hell, maybe I never had. But the sounds of her sobs and the feeling of her small body quaking under the pressure she felt made me feel wrung out inside as if I too had sat here and sobbed.

  I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. She knew I loved her, and telling her in that moment sort of seemed wrong. Like I was acting like my love was enough to make everything else okay.

  The truth was it wasn’t.

  There was nothing at all that could make this okay.

  So I lay there, both arms tight around her, as she clung to me and cried.

  When her body finally stopped trembling, her voice sounded like sandpaper in the silence of the room. “I am so incredibly sorry.”

  “I’m not. You’ve been holding that in way too long. We’ve got to deal with this, Rim. Pretending it isn’t in the room with you every single second of every single day is madness.”

  No wonder she’d lost weight. She was living in silent torture. And I let her. I’d been focused on my arm, my training, and all my doctor’s appointments. We’d been prepping for Zach’s hearing and going to classes. When she was with me, we escaped into our own little reality, only coming out when we really had to.

  “This thing with Zach is over. He’s locked away. Your scholarship is back, and as smart as you are, I know you’re caught up with classes.”

  She nodded against me.

  “My arm’s healing. In just a couple weeks, this cast will be off. I’ll keep training and stay here with the Wolves. Everything is calming down now, sweetheart. It’s time we tackle this.”

  “I know,” she whispered against me.

  “I’m gonna call over to the house and cancel dinner.”

  “No!” she said and pushed off my chest. Her face was red and blotchy. I reached out and brushed all the hair out of her face. “Just because my personal life is a disaster does not mean the shelter has to suffer.”

  “Mom can handle the event.”

  “But I want to. This is something I’m passionate about. You know how much I love the shelter and all those animals. I can deal with this and put on an amazing fundraiser for the shelter.”

  “I’ll help,” I said.

  “Aren’t you busy with everything you have going on?”

  “It’s off season. I’m nursing an injury. A little time off wouldn’t hurt me. Besides, you need me.”

  “I do need you,” she whispered and averted her gaze.

  It was the first time she’d ever said that out loud. A surge of the instinct to protect her rose up inside me like a tidal wave and pushed out everything else. “You got me. No matter what,” I vowed.

  She smiled and it lit up her entire face. “I’m just gonna go get ready for dinner.”

  “Gimme some sugar.” I tugged her close.

  She giggled and pressed close. Her lips tasted salty from all the tears.

  I watched her move around the room, pulling out clothes in the drawers she’d taken over, and then shut herself in the bathroom. I got up and pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt, and grudgingly pulled the sling back into place.

  I couldn’t wait to be rid of the stupid thing.

  Rimmel came out of the bathroom dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and my Alpha U hoodie. Her hair was in a ponytail high on her head, and her face was washed clean so it looked less blotchy.

  “I like seeing you with my name on your back.”

  She blew a kiss to me across the room. “I know I should probably dress a little nicer for dinner, but I don’t feel like it. Besides, your mother needs to get used to me the way I am. I’m not changing.”

  “Woman, you’re perfect. Don’t you forget it.”

  Rimmel went out into the kitchen to feed Murphy. She was talking to him like he was totally listening, and her voice filled the house. I left the bed all rumpled because I liked seeing the evidence of the sex we just had.

  And because I planned to mess it up again after dinner.

  Rimmel called to me from the front door after she had her in depth talk with Murphy. Before I left the bedroom, I stopped in the doorway and looked back. The messy blankets, her clothes on the bed and floor. From this angle, I could see her brush on the bathroom counter along with some lotions and lip balm.

  I smiled.

  I didn’t know just how right it would feel to have her here with me.

  Rimmel was it for me.

  She was my forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Rimmel

  Romeo was right.

  I couldn’t keep pretending.

  One way or another, I needed to know the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Romeo

  Mom was alone in the kitchen when we walked in. She had a glass of red wine at her elbow and soft jazz playing through the surround sound. Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise like she thought we weren’t going to show. I probably wouldn’t have if Rimmel hadn’t insisted.

  “Roman.” She smiled and pushed off the barstool. “How are you?”

  When she came forward to hug me, I didn’t stop her and I one-arm hugged her back. I was angry with her still, but she was my mother and I loved her. “Thanks for having us for dinner, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome anytime. You know that,” she said, pulling back, her eyes still trained on my face. “I still keep the fridge stocked for you.”

  I felt a pang of guilt because I hadn’t come over here to raid the fridge or just shoot the shit with her since that night on the field. I knew sometimes she got lonely due to my dad’s demanding work schedule.

  “How is your arm?” She glanced down at the sling and splint. “You’ve been seeing your doctors?”

  “Yeah, I have. They say it looks good and they think after some PT, I’ll be good as new.”

  Her eyes swelled with tears. “I’m so glad to hear that. I’ve been worried.”

  I looked away. I couldn’t stand to see that look on her face anymore. I didn’t want to feel guilty for being mad at something she did.

  “Rimmel,” she said, finally taking her attention off me. “Thank you for coming.” I saw her look over Rimmel’s casual appearance, and I knew she must be dying to say something considering the formal way she was dressed in a skirt, heels, and jacket, but to her credit, she said nothing at all.

  “Of course.
Anything I can do to help with the event.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “Holed up in his office. He’s been in there since we got home from court. Said he was working on something that couldn’t wait.”

  “Is he going to join us for dinner?” Rim asked.

  “Oh yes,” Mom answered.

  The tension in the room was palpable, and now that the pleasantries were over, conversation felt forced.

  Mom cleared her throat. “Dinner is ready. It’s in the dining room. Why don’t you two go ahead in, and I’ll just get your father?”

  I led Rim into the dining room and we sat on the long bench on one side of the table. The tabletop was filled with covered dishes, and I started poking around to see what we were eating. My stomach growled loudly as I snooped.

  “Must look good,” Rimmel giggled.

  “Prime rib, twice baked potatoes, salad, and roasted vegetables,” I said appreciatively. “If they don’t come in here fast, I’m gonna start eating without them.”

  Rimmel smacked me in the stomach and laughed.

  My parents entered, and after we exchanged the usual greetings with Dad, they sat down and Mom starting passing food around.

  I piled my plate until you couldn’t see it at all. I’d missed my mother’s cooking, and I planned to load up.

  Rimmel took about a quarter of what I did, and I used my fork to stab another piece of meat off the serving platter and dragged it over to drop on her plate.

  She gave me a bewildered look, and I grunted between bites. “That’ll put some meat on your bones.”

  “Honestly, Roman,” Mom said, but the fondness in her tone couldn’t be ignored.

  “I have news,” Dad announced before everyone had even taken their first bite.

  Except me. I was plowing through my plate like an award-winning sumo wrestler. This shit was good.

  “You’re going to choke!” Rimmel scolded me.

  “Poor thing. He’s clearly starved.” Mom tsked.

  “It’s going to surprise the hell out of you!” Dad went on, totally ignoring the ladies.