Page 4

I rub my eyes as I peer at the clock. It’s a little after ten, and someone shaking my leg is what woke me.

My eyes focus in on my mother.

“It’s ten o’clock, Travis,” she scolds. “You’ve slept half the day away.”

I don’t point out that mathematically I have two more hours to go to really sleep half the day away.

“The funeral is in an hour,” she says. “I assume you came all this way to attend.”

She was already asleep when I got in last night. So was my father, but my obnoxious banging on the door apparently woke him from his slumber, while my Ambien-drugged mother slept right through it.

“Your father told me to let you sleep it off, or I would’ve had you up at seven.” She straightens and moves to open the heavy curtains that apparently she thought fit this room after I moved out of it.

Let’s face it. This room was never really mine. It was always theirs—their house, their rules. Something they made very clear to me from the start.

Sure, it had Mickey Mouse when I was an infant and dinosaurs when I was a little kid. My mother remodeled it to a hunter green that I always hated when I was a pre-teen, and then my parents sent me away to a boarding school when I hit junior high after they found cigarettes hidden next to a bottle of vodka in my closet.

I graduated eighth grade and headed to another boarding school. When I was home for short breaks and over the summer, I was a guest in my own home—and a burden. Mona was the housekeeper who I assume was paid extra to keep me out of trouble, and I spent more time with her than anyone else.

You know who didn’t bother to keep me out of trouble? My own parents.

They were too busy. Two high-powered attorneys who found each other in the courtroom. They spent more time with their clients than their son.

I always wondered if I was an accident. They never seemed like the type of people who even wanted children, yet there I was. They never gave me a sibling, and instead they handed me off so I could be someone else’s problem.

The only room that ever really felt like mine was at Huntington Preparatory Academy from ninth through twelfth grade. My parents basically paid for my diploma, and I passed through each grade level because I was good at football. I was recruited and headed to Georgia, where again I passed through my basic classes because I needed to keep my grades up to play and my coaches pressured my professors to pass me. I graduated with a degree in communications, as if there’s ever anything I could use that for—maybe broadcasting if I need to, but I have other plans after my playing days are over.

My life is football. It’s the reason I was put on this Earth. It’s how I make my impact, and when my body is too beat up to allow me to use it on the field anymore, I’ll coach. It’s always been my plan.

A ten-year-old daughter stepping into my life unannounced was never part of that plan.

Yet today I’m going to meet her.

It’s all happening too fast…but my immediate takeaway was that I couldn’t allow the girl I’ve thought about every single day since I found out about her to be sent away because some dumbass adult doesn’t know what to do with her.

It happened to me, and I will not allow that cycle to be passed down to someone who shares my blood.

No matter how fucking scared I am. No matter how much I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.

“You smell like a tequila factory,” my mother scolds me some more. “Take a shower and clean yourself up.”

She walks out of the room, and I glare at her back. What a fucking welcome home.

I hate being here.

I should’ve booked a hotel room, but I did what I thought made the most sense in the split second I had to make a decision last night. This girl knows my parents. They’re her grandparents, whether she knows it or not. I don’t know if she likes them, or how she feels about them, but in any event, they are people who are familiar to her.

I, on the other hand, am a complete stranger, and I’m about to rip this poor girl from everything she knows so I can transplant her to another state while she mourns the loss of her parents.

Jesus, this is heavy.

Never mind the fact that I have no idea what the fuck I’m supposed to do with her when I get her home. What about when the season starts? What about training camp? It’s not like I can just leave her at my place. Maybe Tristan can help. He’s my best friend on the Aces, and even though he’s got a wife and kid now, we’re still close. He’s the type of guy who would be there for me no matter what.

On the other hand, I haven’t even processed how to feel about all this quite yet. I’m not a big emotional guy, and I’m definitely not a talker. I guess getting sent away when I was twelve taught me that nobody really wanted to listen, so all that shit stays inside.

I prefer to bottle it then let it out in other ways—when I’m blocking on the field, or when I’m splitting out wide to escape a defender, or when it’s leg day in the weight room, or when I’m running sprint drills.

I take a shower as requested by my mother, and I shave, too, since she asked me to clean myself up. It’s as I’m shaving that the woman from last night pops into my head again.

And it’s not her tits or her ass that pop into my head.

It’s her eyes.

The way they fell onto me.

But it doesn’t matter. She’s in a relationship, and the last time I was with someone in a relationship, apparently I fathered a daughter that would become my responsibility a decade later.

I push that woman out of my mind.

She was hot, and that’s all this is. A sting of rejection.

Today’s about this little girl and her grief. Some woman from the bar last night should be the least of my worries.

I enjoy dressing up, and I chose a simple black suit when I tossed my shit in a bag last night ahead of today’s occasion. When I walk down to the kitchen, I find my parents sitting at the table, both tapping away on their laptops.

My father glances up at me over the screen, and I think for the quickest split second ever that he almost looks…proud.

Maybe I’m still drunk.

He’s never looked at me with pride a day in his life.

He raises a brow and turns his attention back to his screen. “You look like the lawyer I figured you’d become someday,” he says gruffly.

I think it’s his way of complimenting me, but it feels more like an insult.

A lawyer? It’s the last thing I’d ever want to do with my life.

“Coffee pods are located in the drawer under the Keurig if you’re so inclined.” My mother glances up over the rims of her reading glasses. “Thank you for shaving.” She says it with a touch of smugness, like she knew I’d look so much better if I just shaved that shit off my face.

I like it.

The women I take home to bed like it.

I give zero fucks if anyone else likes it.

I’m not even sure why I shaved it other than wanting to make her happy. I’m not sure why I bother. I’m not sure if she’s ever happy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual, genuine smile out of her my entire life.

I head over to make my coffee, and they both tap away on their keyboards. I feel like I’m invading their space as I open the pantry and search for the peanut butter. I find some fancy shit on the shelf, and I grab the loaf of bread and a knife and make myself a peanut butter sandwich. No jelly. Just the way I like it.

Peanut butter is life—right after football.

My father sighs as he shuts his laptop. “It’s going to be a hard day for that little girl. I’m not sure swooping in to tell her you’re her biological father is the right move on a day like today.”

I nod. “Agreed. I’d like to make this day as easy as possible on her. Do you, uh…do you know her very well?”

My parents glance at each other, and I slide into the chair between them.

“Caroline and Simon were good friends of ours, as you know,” my father says, and my mother remains stoic despite the fact that they just lost their good friends. Did she cry when she found out they died? Did she cry for the little girl who’s her granddaughter?

I doubt it…and maybe that’s where my own ability to hide what I’m really feeling stems from. I’m not stoic, exactly. I can show emotion on the field, but that’s about the only place I ever allow it.

“She confided in me a year or so after Harper was born,” my mother admits. “She didn’t say who the father was, exactly, but she bore enough guilt during the conversation that I put it together fairly easily.”

“Your mother confided it in me, too, and it was confirmed when Caroline made the addendum to the will,” my father adds. “As her paternal grandparents, we were invested enough to get to know her, and we’ve had the opportunity to watch her grow.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I ask.

My father clears his throat. “Caroline mentioned that you knew and that she had begged you to stay away. We assumed that’s why you never come around.”

I grunt out a mirthless chuckle. “That’s not why.”

My parents exchange another glance.

“Then why?” my mother asks.

I blow out a breath. I may be twenty-eight, but I suddenly feel like a vulnerable child again under the prying eyes of my parents. “I never exactly felt welcome here,” I say dryly.

My mother’s brows dip. “Excuse me?”

“You sent me away when I was twelve. You kept me away until I was eighteen. I chose not to return once I no longer had to.”

My mother purses her lips and shakes her head as she watches me shovel in half my sandwich in one bite. I usually put down three or four of these a day. I go through a jar of peanut butter every thirty-six hours.

“We didn’t know how,” she murmurs.

My gaze lifts to hers, and for once in her life, she actually looks tormented.

“Everything always came so easily to both your father and me. Law degrees, winning cases, making money. But there’s no guide to parenting, and we didn’t have the first clue how to help the adolescent boy who hid alcohol in his bedroom and was failing all his classes.” Her tone is filled with the sort of vulnerability I’ve never heard from her before, and it’s borderline shocking to witness.

“So you pawned me off on someone else?” I ask.

“That’s not what happened, son,” my father says. “We got you the help you needed. Do you think you’d be where you are today if we hadn’t done what we did? No. You’d be in some ditch with tracks and scars up and down your arms.”

Okay, well that’s a little dramatic. I’ve never even tried heroin.

“If you’re implying I should thank you for my current lot in life because you sent me away when I was young and vulnerable, don’t hold your breath.” I don’t hide the anger in my tone. I would never think to thank them for how I got to where I am. I did it on my own.

But I also can’t exactly say it was through diligent hard work. Dedication, yes, but also talent and a fuck ton of good, old-fashioned luck.

Like my mother just said…everything always came easy to them. Football always came easy to me. It just took a bit of time before I found it.

Parenting didn’t come easy to them, and they tried for twelve whole years. I feel like that doesn’t bode well for the guy who’s about to be bequeathed a ten-year-old girl.