Chapter 25

Van

The buzzing noise is more like an annoyance, and I’m pretty sure it’s a fly zipping around the bed. It’s enough to wake me up, but not enough to make me want to hunt down the pest and kill it.

Besides, Simone’s warm, naked body wrapped up in mine feels too good to disturb right now. Both of us like to sleep with the air-conditioning turned down low, preferring to burrow naked under the covers and use body heat to warm us. Trying to put an end to the pesky buzzing sound isn’t worth giving up the small cocoon we’ve made for ourselves.

Simone mumbles, “Turn that thing off.”

I find this amusing, since you can’t turn off a fly, but then it hits me: that’s not an insect making that noise, it’s my phone.

Specifically, it’s the repetitive buzzing that occurs when you get several texts in a row while on vibrate mode.

I come wide awake, my first worry that something’s wrong with Etta. I throw the covers down—ignoring the yelp of surprise as the cold air hits Simone—and roll toward the nightstand, where I’d left my phone charging. I always turn it to vibrate before I go to bed.

Tugging the charge cord out, I hold the phone up, and I’m surprised to see the text icon sporting a red notification bubble containing thirty-six text messages. There’s also a bar notification that I’ve missed eighteen calls.

“What the fuck?” I mutter as I sit up in bed, pushing back against the headboard. Wiping my eyes with the back of one hand, I’m vaguely aware of Simone sitting up in bed beside me. I don’t look at her, but I can feel her gaze upon me. Blinking my eyes, I go to my texts first.

I note that I have texts from Etta, Coach Pretore, Alex Crossman, my agent, Dan Silvers, Lucas, and Max.

My heart sinks as I take in the fact that something has happened that has a variety of different people in my life contacting me.

“Van?” Simone asks hesitantly.

I don’t answer, but roll right out of bed, feeling the need for some distance and space. I feel the need because an overwhelming sense of panic hits me from nowhere, and I think I might choke on it.

My hands shake as I take a few steps from the bed, my shoulders hunched as a shaking finger taps on Etta’s message first. There are actually several and I read them in reverse order, scrolling backward.

The most recent came in just moments ago.

It will be fine. I promise. Call me as soon as you get this.

The next about ten minutes prior to that.

It’s not that bad. A lot of hypotheses. It will die.

The first just a few minutes before that.

Article is out in Sports World. Attached is link. It’s also on the news. I’m sorry, sweetie. We’ll get through this. Call me.

I don’t call Etta as requested, and click on the link.

“Van?” Simone calls again. “What’s wrong?”

“The article came out apparently,” I mutter as I wait for the site to load. I hear Simone get out of the bed and feel another moment of acute panic as she walks toward me. I swallow hard against it, and force myself to hold my phone down at an angle so she can see the article when it loads.

When it appears on the screen, her sharp intake of breath is a good indication of how shitty this article will be.

The headline reads THE UNKNOWN MADNESS OF VAN TURNER.

“What the ever-loving fuck?” Simone hisses in outrage, and yet I suddenly feel an emptiness welling up inside of me.

My eyes scan the article, but I take in very little. Phrases and concepts leap out at me. I see the small photograph of the reporter, Jack Vernicki. I have almost no physical reaction to the fact that I recognize him as the man who sat next to me in the waiting room at the prison. He’d said he was seeing a family member, but it’s clear that was a lie. In fact, I’m figuring the way this went down is he was there for a news article, and he recognized me. He questioned me specifically why I was there, and then he heard the guard call my old name, Grant VanBuskirk.

I guarantee you he researched that name and hit pay dirt, linking Van Turner to the little kid whose father slaughtered innocents. And here I thought Arco was to blame.

I know I’m likely to hurl my phone into the wall if I read the article, so I ignore it, flipping back to my texts. Simone gives a tiny snarl of outrage, and I barely hear her say, “I wasn’t done reading that.”

Not my fucking problem.

I scan the texts, barely paying attention to Simone as she scrambles back across the bed to grab her phone. I assume she’s going to look up the article, but I don’t need to know anything about it. The headline told me everything.

Vernicki was exploiting the insanity angle of my father’s case. Arco’s attorneys pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, hinging their arguments on a psychiatric diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies, or some shit like that. I don’t quite remember.

Vernicki wants to make big headlines, so he’s going to exploit my greatest fear. That people would think me just like Arco.

My stomach rolls as I flip through the texts.

Coach Pretore wanting to meet with me immediately.

My agent wanting to hire a public relations expert for “cleanup.”

Alex Crossman wants to meet as well, probably just to offer the support of his captaincy.

And Lucas and Max both want to know if I’m okay.

I can’t even respond to any of them. I don’t know what to say. More important, I don’t want to open the door to conversation about this. I want to be left the fuck alone, because that has worked well for me my entire life.

“Oh, this is bad,” Simone murmurs, and my head turns to find her kneeling on the bed. Gloriously naked and without giving a self-conscious shit about it. Huddled over her phone, reading the article.

“What does it say?” I ask flatly. At a minimum, I need the Cliff Notes version.

Her head turns, eyes filled with sorrow for me. “It’s a recap of Arco’s case, and that the reporter recognized you at the prison. He linked you by your old name, took some photos as you got into your car too. Acknowledges that court records of your adoption are sealed and that Etta Turner refused comment.”

“That much I could figure out,” I mutter as I go to my suitcase, pulling out a pair of jeans. When I hazard a glance back at her, I find the weight of her stare heavy.

She nods, her eyes filling with more sadness, and she tells me what I suspected. “The main gist is hypothesizing on any similarities you have with your father. Your aggression in the league, the fact you don’t date and aren’t married, that you never give interviews. That sort of thing. Horseshit, really.”

I can’t even muster up any rage over this. Just a complete sense of helplessness that it’s out there in the open, and once again, I’m going to be scrutinized because of having that evil prick as my father. I can feel those parts of me I’d so boldly shared recently start receding behind my armor locking into place.

My own need for self-preservation causes my brain to start frantically searching for solutions; the most obvious is how I can avoid every single fucking person who knows about this story now.

After putting on my jeans, I don a long sleeved T-shirt and snag some socks from my bag. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I put them on, refusing to look at Simone, because I can’t stand the worry in her expression.

“What are we going to do?” she asks me, and I can feel her moving across the mattress closer to me.

I push off the bed quickly and walk across the room to sit in a chair. I act like it’s because that’s where my tennis shoes landed after I took them off yesterday.

After I put the first sneaker on, I look up to see Simone’s covered herself with the sheet, and that tells me she’s feeling vulnerable. That pisses me off, because I don’t have time to worry about her feelings right now.

“Van…what are we going to do?” she repeats, this time a little more firmly. Pushing at the wall I’m sure she can see rising back into place.

“We?” I ask her caustically. “Why is this a we thing? Last I heard, your dad was a prominent doctor, not a serial killer.”

“Van,” she chastises me.

“Listen,” I say with no small amount of frustration. “I need you to stay out of this. It’s hard enough to deal with the fallout of all this shit, but I don’t need to worry about you at the same time.”

It’s a copout and I know it is.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Simone replies.

“You see, but I will,” I tell her adamantly. “And fuck…it’s hard work just letting you in. I’m constantly judging my actions and trying to figure out if they measure up to what I think are acceptable standards for you. And while I’m worrying about that shit with you, I’ve now got to deal with the entire world knowing about my shame.”

I hadn’t meant to say that last part, but it totally slipped out.

Simone pounces. “Your shame?”

“Yes, my fucking shame,” I bark at her. “Do you know how dirty and disgusting this shit makes me feel? I’m swept up into his sickness just by association. How many people are looking at me and wondering is he like his father?”

My shame only increases when Simone looks at me with pure pity. What I fucking wouldn’t give for just one of her old-fashioned eye rolls to let me know that I’m being a dumbass, but fuck if that look on her face right now validates I’m a fucking pussy for even thinking this way.

“I’m getting out of here for a bit. Need some space.”

“Please don’t do this,” she says quietly. She’s shaking her head, looking at me with keen disappointment.

“Don’t push me away, Van,” she murmurs. “I know that might seem the easiest thing to do, but you should lean on me. I’ve got your back on this.”

I stare at her for a moment, the anger that had been oddly missing when I learned about the article starting to rise within me.

“You’ve got my back?” I ask with derision as I stand. Advancing across the room toward her, I ask again. “You’ve got my back?”

Simone stands from the bed, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders with the sheet draped around her. “I do.”

Coming to a stop just inches from her body, I sneer at her. “And just how do you have my back, Simone? Just how are you going to support me through this?”

“By standing beside you. By defending you. By telling and showing the world that you’re kind and generous and loving and—”

“I fuck you, Simone,” I tell her in a low rumble of a voice. My tone shocks her and her mouth drops open. “I give you orgasms. I laugh at your silliness. But I am not kind nor generous nor loving. So you’d essentially be lying on my behalf. Is that how you’ll support me?”

“You’re more than that,” she whispers, but she doesn’t sound so sure now.

“You know I’m not,” I say softly, but with such confidence she’s powerless to argue. “And besides that, do you think people are going to accept what you’re saying? I give a little interview with the media and proclaim I’m a good guy, but instead the media shows highlights of all my fights to speculate that I’m a violent person. I know how this shit plays out. It’s why it’s easier to keep people out.”

“Van,” she says slowly…cautiously. “I get you’re angry, and maybe the natural thing is to drive away those that care about you—”

“You’re wrong,” I tell her. “I don’t intend to drive Etta away at all.”

I let the implication hang heavy between us. I expect her to get the hint that this little adventure I took into being a normal person in a normal world just got derailed. It’s fight or flight, and I’m flying.

“Spell it out for me, Van,” Simone finally says, and I note her voice sounds as empty as her eyes look. For the first time since I met her, it appears Simone isn’t going to pursue me with the relentless determination I’ve come to know her for.

This relieves me.

Right?

I soften my voice but forge ahead with what needs to be said. “I made a mistake. I should have never gotten in this deep with you. Should have never opened myself up like I did.”

“Sounds like you’re blaming me for some reporter who wrote an article about you,” she says softly, but the anger is unmistakable.

“No, not blaming you. Just angry for taking myself off the radar to begin with.”

Technically, it’s true that the only reason I went to that prison to see Arco was because that first time I fucked Simone drove me to it. All of the feelings she’d dredged up inside of me, and the excitement I felt for finally having her, and the way she seemed determined to insinuate herself in my life.

Well, it was imperative I have my confrontation with Arco. I realize now that just that tiny bit of Simone I had was enough to give me some type of hope. It prompted me to deal with my past.

It put me right in the sights of a reporter who recognized me at the prison. Talk about dumb fucking luck.

Talk about the fact that may have never happened had I not met Simone.

I don’t say that with blame. Only with the acknowledgment that Simone changed my life in so many fucking ways, and not all of them were good.

“Would you like me to leave?” Simone asks stiffly.

I shake my head. “No. Keep the room. You have a ticket for tomorrow’s game. Return flight. Enjoy yourself. Root your brothers on.”

“But you’re going to…what?” she asks as a method to pump me for my plans.

“I have no clue what I’m going to do, but I know right now, I’m getting out of here for a bit.”

“So, what…you’re going to go back to hiding in plain sight? Doesn’t work that way. You’re a professional athlete. You are now in the media spotlight.”

“Not for much longer,” I tell her resolutely. “Not after this season is over. I’m done.”

“What?” she gasps.

“Done. I’ve got more than enough to retire on after almost ten years in the league. We’re going to win the Cup. It’s the only other goal I’ve ever wanted and I can hang on for another week to get that goal. Then I’m gone.”

“I’ll go where you go,” Simone blurts out. “Doesn’t matter where.”

I refuse to let images of Simone and me having a happy home together infiltrate my brain. I shake my head at her, trying for a gentle letdown. “No. Not now. I need time. Maybe later.”

Simone’s eyes go dark and her voice icy. “No, Van. That’s not how this works. There is no later. It’s either now—when you need me the most in your life—or not fucking ever.”

I stare at her a long moment, knowing this is the point of no return with Simone. Every instinct screams against what I’m about to say, but I say it anyway. “Then it’s not fucking ever.”

I expect her to fight, call me names, or at the very least try to seduce me into submission. But Simone merely gives a tiny nod and turns her back on me. A bolt of pure panic seizes me for a moment, something that feels entirely wretched and unbearable. It’s the realization that for the first time, Simone is letting me walk away without a fight.

The buzzing of my phone catches my attention, giving me respite from the helplessness I’m feeling, and I look down to see it’s Etta calling me. I ignore the call, but I know I’ll talk to her later.

But for now…I need to escape.

Striding across the room, I refuse to give Simone a backward glance. Maybe I’m just being overly dramatic and she’ll be here when I come back for my bags, all shored up and ready to take me on again. In fact, I bet that’s exactly what she’ll do.

Maybe that gives me some confidence to walk out the door, or maybe it’s my stupid side choosing to believe that shit.

Whatever internal lies I let myself believe, I have sufficient strength to take me from the room.

From Simone.

Right down to the hotel lobby.

And then I’m confronted with my worst nightmare.

A sea of reporters all waiting for me when I get off the elevator.

All wanting to know the answer to the question I’ve asked myself over and over again.

Am I anything like Arco?