“Does Mom know?”
Dad stares at me from his hospital bed, an IV running from his arm, a cannula in his nose, looking less like a legend and more like a washed-up train wreck.
“Does she have to be here?” His sneer comes out more like a slur as he directs his droopy gaze at Evie.
I tighten my grip on her hand, pulling her a little closer to my side. “She is my wife, and you will treat her with the respect she deserves. Anything you have to say to me, you can say to her. We’re a team. Not that you know the meaning of that word.”
My mind is still reeling from the knowledge dad has been having an affair with a woman half his age, right under my nose. Apparently, he’s been spending a lot of time in Sacramento, keeping tabs on me without my knowledge.
I’ve been so focused on protecting Evie, making sure no threats were close to her, I wasn’t watching my own back and noticing the snake in my yard.
Bethany confessed he’s been here at least two or three times a week in the past year, as much as he could get away from work.
Which begs the question.
Does he have a different woman in every city where his clients live?
I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s a selfish bastard, only concerned with his own needs and wants.
“Your mother doesn’t care what I do, as long as I provide her with a big house to live in, a luxury car to drive, and diamonds to wear. We haven’t slept in the same bed in years.”
I take a step forward to finish off what the heart attack couldn’t accomplish, but Evie pulls me back.
“Don’t let him bait you,” she whispers. “Find out what you need to know, then walk away.”
She’s right. Of course, she’s right.
There’s too much at stake now to continue to let him dictate the direction of my life.
“Did she sign a prenup? Or do you stand to lose half your fortune if she files for divorce?”
“We started out with nothing. There was no reason to protect myself, then.”
Still only worried about himself.
I’m about to give him a lot more to be concerned with.
“Here’s the thing…Dad. I’m going to tell Mom everything I know. I’m going to move her in with me. If you come within a hundred yards of my building, I’ll have you arrested. I can already prove you’re a danger to my wife, so it won’t be that hard to have a PFA taken out against you. If Mom wants everything she’s entitled to, then you will give it to her. Or else.”
He narrows his eyes, which doesn’t look the least bit threatening in his current situation. “Or else what?”
“Or else all the dirt I’ve been collecting on you for years is going to come to light. Losing half your money pales in comparison to jail time.”
Dad relaxes back into his bed, a bored expression washing over his ashen face. “You’re bluffing. You don’t have anything on me. Where would you even think to do anything like that? You’ve never had the balls most of your teammates do.”
My balls are feeling untouchable just now. “I learned from the best. You taught me to wait and keep quiet and not strike until the time was right. That time is now. I have a decade worth of your illegal activities stored on flash drives.”
His eyes widen, though he doesn’t move a muscle. It’s obvious he’s trying to read me for any tell that might give away the truth of the matter. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“No. I wouldn’t dare. I would act. Fuck with my family again, and I’ll ruin you.”
My hands are shaking as I reach for the hidden bottle of tequila in the cupboard.
Being strong for my wife and mother is one thing, but Dad’s right.
Standing up to him, man to man, is a whole different ballgame.
Now that it’s over and done, the magnitude of the situation is barreling into me like an unseen safety.
The sound of drawers sliding open and closed floats from the bedroom, where Evie’s probably changing back into her sleep shirt.
“I can’t believe you did that!” she calls, her voice laced with excitement. “I’m so fucking proud of you, Rob! Do you really have enough dirt on him to use as leverage?”
“Yeah,” I croak out, the burn of the liquor coating my throat. “I wasn’t lying.”
And I won’t hesitate to put him in prison if he forces my hand.
Still, it’s gonna take this whole bottle to calm my nerves and prepare me for the potential fight ahead.
It will be ugly, drawn out, and there will definitely be collateral damage.
Including Mom.
A sob claws at my chest. What the fuck am I going to say to Mom?
How am I supposed to destroy her world with my words?
What kind of son does that?
And why should she believe me after everything I pulled this past year? I’ve been just as big a dick to her as Dad.
I’m in the process of draining my fifth shot when Evie steps out of the bedroom, an immediate frown pulling at her lips. “What are you doing?”
I raise my glass in her direction. “Toasting the beginning of the end. I know it’s not your usual lemon drops, but do you want one?”
“What do you mean, my usual lemon drops?” She approaches me on slow feet, staring at the bottle of tequila like it’s the enemy. Obviously, she prefers vodka. Or Ouzo.
I shrug and pour myself another glass. “That’s what you and Alex always drink. You have a special routine with him. Never with me.”
Bitterness taints my voice.
“You were never around enough for me to have a special drink with you, Rob,” she says softly. “Doesn’t it feel good to come out of hiding?”
If my body was a pressure cooker, now would be the time for that hissing noise to appear.
I can feel it building, working its way out from the recesses of my gut, gearing up for an explosion. With all the alcohol swimming through my veins, I’m powerless to stop it.
And part of me doesn’t want to.
Evie’s words strike me.
I’m done hiding.
I laid all my cards on the table tonight, and showed my father just what kind of man he’s dealing with.
A man just like him.
Maybe it’s finally time Evie knows it, too.
I promised her we’d get it all out in the open, and I’ve only got four months left to do that. If I miss this opportunity, it’s pretty likely my balls will shrivel up again and I’ll never go through with it.
I throw back another shot and gesture to offer her one.
She might want to be a little loosened up to hear what I’m about to tell her.
She declines with a shake of her head, then grabs the bottle, dumping the rest down the kitchen sink before I can stop her. “Don’t do this. Just because you stood up to him and showed him you know how to his play his game doesn’t mean you’re anything like him. You are so. Much. Better.”
“I’m not better than anyone.”
Evie’s body sways slightly before me. “Yes, you are. You’re the best man I know.”
A haunting memory of her time in the psych ward returns to me. She needed to know why I loved her. “Is that why you love me? Because you think I’m the best man you know?”
She pries the glass from my hand and sets in the kitchen sink. The scent of expensive tequila hangs in the air around us. “I love you because of who you are. You’re so much more than I ever gave you credit for, and I’m sorry I didn’t always see it.”
That makes me laugh. I can’t help it.
The times in high school she accused me of being a manwhore, a dumb jock, only trying to get into her lacy little panties feel like a lifetime ago.
She puts her hands on my chest, gazing up at me with all the trust in the world in her eyes—which only makes me feel worse. “I love you because you’re honest, good, hard-working, stubborn in the best way, and loyal to a fault. None of those are adjectives I associate with your father. You’re everything he’s not.”
“And yet I am a professional football player, up to my eyeballs in a culture that thinks it’s above reproach. I’ve also cheated on my wife, and I’m not gonna lie, Evie. I fucking love alcohol.”
“You did not cheat on me.” She jabs my chest, then pulls back. “If it weren’t for me forcing you into another woman’s bed, you never would have done it. By your own admission, you didn’t even enjoy it. And you have always worked to separate yourself from typical football culture. You’re one of the good guys, Falls, no matter how much you might deny it. You can overcome the alcoholism, too. You are the strongest man I know. And it has nothing to do with your muscles.”
“Those muscles are pretty strong.” I take a step back and hold my breath, the buzz in my brain reaching a fever pitch. “They’re the reason you have no memory of the three days before you were attacked.”
Evie tilts her head to the side.
Or maybe that’s my world tilting on its axis, I’m not entirely sure.
She swims before me, a mirage on the verge of disappearing forever.
“A tire iron to my skull is the reason I lost that time,” she returns with an even voice.
I shake my head, but immediately decide that’s a bad idea. Bile swims up my throat, erasing the burn of the tequila with a more powerful, acidic sting. “No, it was me. You tried to pull me off Jackson, so I hit you. Knocked you unconscious. I didn’t even know what he’d done to you until I was trying to wake you up. I was hellbent on revenge, but I should have checked on you first.”
Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. Every fucking memory I’ve relived of that day pours out of me.
She needs to hear it all.
She deserves to know who she’s really been avoiding in bed for the past month.
So, I restart from the beginning.
“I can’t tell you what happened before I found you. My role begins when I thought some exhibitionists were fucking on the side of the trail I ran down to find you after practice.”
Images of that day, the excitement I can still feel over her finally being mine return just as fresh as the day it all happened. I slide down the wall as I finally give up fighting against these demons which have dragged me down for six long years.
“At first, my only concern was you coming up from the other end of the trail and being freaked out over the scene. I spent useless minutes thinking of a way to keep you from seeing them.”
A laugh that sounds like it comes from someone else cuts through the momentary silence. “Honestly, I didn’t want anything to ruin my plans for later with you. You called yourself my girlfriend, and all I could think about was cashing in on that inside The Lady later that night. I had every intention of fucking you until you forgot every name in your vocabulary except mine.”
I’m vaguely aware of Evie sitting on the floor beside me. But her words sound garbled in my haze, like the static on a radio station that’s too far out of reach.
“I would have liked that.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” I laugh, thinking about the fierce woman I knew before that day.
One who never fully returned. Just like the old me didn’t.
“I wanted to warn them they were getting it on in poison ivy, and that was when I noticed your hair. I spent three years mapping every curl on the back of your head when I sat behind you in class. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it was you sooner. I think it took a few seconds to really sink in, what I was seeing. When it did, I just fucking saw red. All I could think was someone else was touching what was mine. I never considered what you were going through, what you were feeling. My feet started moving before my brain fully caught up.”
I close my eyes and see every detail. The green leaves rustling on the light breeze. The uneven, rocky terrain beneath my feet. The sight of another man on top of my girl. The way she thrashed beneath him, trying her to best to land a knee to his balls.
I can smell it, too. The scent of my own sweat mixing with the wild honeysuckle growing on either side of the path. The rapidly evaporating hint of her perfume she’d bathed me in only two hours before.
I can still taste her chocolatey flavor on my tongue.
I hear the birds calling in the overhead canopy; the sound of his grunts echo in my brain. Evie cries for him to get off her, her pleas stifled beneath the rapid beating of my pulse in my ears.
Jagger bushes claw at my legs as I run faster, faster. I feel the revolt of my heart, already cracking in my chest.
“He heard me coming. He looked at me. He knew who I was and what I was going to do to him. But, it wasn’t fear in his eyes. It was satisfaction. Like he already knew he’d won. He bent over you, and I was so fucking angry. It wasn’t fair for him to have you first. The night you fell asleep on my lap in my basement, I never touched you. I didn’t even peek anywhere I didn’t think you’d want me to. Then, that motherfucker had your tits in his mouth and I thought, hell no. Those are mine. That body belongs to me.”
“I fell asleep on your lap in your basement?” Evie’s sniffled question barely punctures my trance. It’s not enough to make me stop and answer her.
“I kept wishing I could run as fast as Alex because it felt like an eternity before I got to you. I hauled him off you while he still had his face between your tits and just lost my shit. I was going to end him and then I was going hunt down Eddie and kill him, too.
“I was unstoppable and justified. Everyone who had ever touched you before me was going to be removed from the equation. Because I was better than them. Because I loved you more. Because I waited for you to want me to touch you. Because no one but me was ever going to touch you again.”
Evie’s soft sobs float on the periphery of my memories.
“When someone tried to stop me from ending Jackson’s pathetic life, I could only think of one other person who wouldn’t want me to make him pay. I was already making plans for Eddie next, so I put every ounce of my muscles to good use. I never looked before I struck.”
“It was me,” Evie sobs.
I meet her gaze, but only see the seventeen-year-old version of the grown woman sitting before me. “It was you. I hit you.”
Her blank eyes stare at the sky; her cheek swells and bruises before my eyes.
I reach out a hand and caress the spot.
Judging by the expression on her face, she finally understands why I do that.
Apologizing with words doesn’t mean much. Saying I’m sorry with my touch suddenly seems ridiculous.
Time to finish what I started.
“I don’t know what made me turn around. I think I heard you. Somehow, through my blinding rage, I heard you gasp for air. When I saw what I’d done, I was horrified, but my brain was still lagging behind a few minutes. I kept trying to wake you up, even though you looked dead.”
“Papou told me you thought I was dead,” Evie stutters.
Did I say that to the officer who took my statement? I don’t remember.
“It wasn’t until then I noticed what Jackson had done. I was so focused on being jealous of him sucking on your tits before I could, I didn’t pay attention to what he was really doing.”
Evie lets out a sound that will likely haunt me in new dreams.
Nightmares.
Same difference.
“Everything came to a screeching halt in my world in that instant. He hadn’t loved you; he’d marked you. That’s why he looked at me like he’d won. He knew what he was going to do.” I gesture to her chest with my chin. “Your left nipple was torn completely off, only hanging by a thread. There was so much blood everywhere. I kept thinking I’d lost my chance. Lost my chance to touch you, to suck those nipples in my mouth. I already knew you’d never be the same. It’s funny.” I lean my head back against the wall, the memories blurring with the present and my older perspective.
“What’s funny?” Evie sniffles.
“As much as my mind was running behind up until that time, it flipped and started moving faster than my body could keep up. I knew there was more blood than there should be from your visible injuries. I couldn’t figure out where it was all coming from. I knew you wouldn’t want anyone to see your naked chest, so I tried to cover you up without doing any more damage. I knew you needed help, and that we needed to get away from Jackson because I was pretty sure he wasn’t dead yet.
“So, I picked you up and off we went. Only, by then shock was starting to set in. I couldn’t keep you in my arms. I repeatedly tripped over my own two feet. My knees were shaking. I think I was calmly hysterical, if that makes any sense. I kept talking to you, pretending you were only mad at me because I’d seen your boobs in less than their finest state and without your permission. I tried to get you to forgive me. Promised to do all your calc homework, buy you all the chocolate you could eat, bring you your favorite flowers.”
I still don’t know what her favorite flowers are.
“What are your favorite flowers, Evie?”
“Roses,” she chokes out.
“Roses,” I repeat. “I would’ve bought you roses. What color?”
“Yellow.”
Like the ones she left on my locker when she was trying to convince me to go to Homecoming with her.
She gave me her favorite fucking flower, and I threw a fit like a goddamn spoiled jock because I was supposed to ask her to Homecoming.
“Anyway, you started coming to, and I have never been so fucking simultaneously grateful and terrified in my life. It was obvious you had a concussion. You threw up all over my shirt; you faded in and out. You thought I was Jackson at one point. You told me your boyfriend was going to kill me, and begged me not to touch you because you loved him.”
Evie gasps, the same sound she made when I hit her.
“Yeah.” I nod, feeling the sickest joke of the cosmos punch me in the gut all over again. “The first time you told me you loved me, you weren’t even really telling me. You were telling him.”
“He didn’t deserve any of my words. I’m sorry I ever wasted a single one on his ears.”
Me, too.
I’m sorry, too.
Sorry doesn’t change anything.
“I don’t remember much after we got back to the Ironville High campus. Mike and Alex found us and were yelling at me, but you wouldn’t talk to me anymore. You closed your eyes and I didn’t think they’d ever open again. My whole bedroom was every shade of blue I could find, but not the same as your eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever see that color again.”
Evie crawls toward me, wrapping her body around mine until I can barely breathe.
She holds on as our sobs compete for loudest, ugliest, most gut-wrenching.
We’re not a team, anymore.
Teammates don’t work against each other this way.
I have no idea what time it is when I find my voice again. “So, now you know.”
She startles at my shoulder, like she could have possibly fallen asleep, curled up with the monster who failed her so completely. “If it’s not too much trouble, would you tell me everything about all the days I forgot, too? I don’t remember our first kiss, and that’s always bothered me.”
My brain struggles to comprehend her request.
Why isn’t she pushing me away?
Slapping me?
Reviling me?
Giving as good as she got like the fucking fighter she is?
“You…you want to hear about our first kiss?”
“Please.”
Until dawn casts our home in a pinkish-gold wash of new beginnings, I tell her stories of all the things she doesn’t remember.
Because she wants me to.
I carry her to bed when she falls asleep, and tuck her into the cloud she asked for the night I won the Heisman.
I run a quick errand and leave yellow roses on the nightstand, then kiss her soft lips before leaving for the team’s training facilities.
I have to make her proud of me again.
She wants the best quarterback she’s ever seen.
I can’t undo the past, but I can fucking own the present.
And the future.