Player: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (75 page)

“
S
o
, you got the cash?”

I roll my eyes at Matombo; “Have I ever not, buddy?”

He grins slowly, his teeth yellowed and his dark lips cracked from smoking the stuff. Fuck
that
. Give me a nice bump or a hit through a vein; I'm not smoking any of this crap.

This shit is poison, you know?

“I'm just fuckin with you, pal.” He cackles out the rattling laugh of a junkie and steps aside to let me into the hovel of a home. It's the shittiest, most run-down hovel in the shittiest, most run-down slum in Kinshasa, which happens to be in - you got it - the shittiest, most run-down city in all of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

You know what, let's just call it the worst fucking place on Earth, and I'm here to shoot poison up my veins.

“You gotta try this, friend.”

Buddy, pal friend; all rules of the game with junkies like us. No one uses real names, because real names make the fact that you're selling to and injecting each other with slow death a bit harder to stomach. I call him buddy, he calls me pal, and when one of us
inevitably
flatlines, it'll just be easier. You can say, “oh, yeah, that buddy was a real pal,” and just move on. It dehumanizes it, which makes sense because doing heroin is just about the quickest way to shed your humanity I can think of.

The real fucked up irony here is that we use names like “friend” to describe people we barely know or give a shit about, who’ll be ghosts before we even know it.

I'm buzzed from the half-pint of vodka and the Percocets I popped on the walk over, and I blink to try and focus on the bag of grey powder in Matombo’s hand; “I think you got sold shitty coke, man.” I frown, eyeing the sketchy looking powder. It's not heroin, that's for sure.

He grins; “It's a mix, my friend; special blend.”

I make a face; “Fuck that, it looks fucking disgusting.”

“It's devil-powder.”

“Huh?”

He grins again, those cracked, yellowed teeth gleaming in the candlelight of the apartment hovel; “Coke and gunpowder.”

Fuck. That.

“I'm good, man.”

“Try some.”

“Seriously, I'm good. Lemme just get that H and get goin-”

The nickel-plated gun in his hand also gleams in the low light, albeit a little differently than his teeth; “Don't be rude,
friend
. I invite you into my home, I offer you some refreshments-” He nods at the gunpowder-coke; “You really going to disrespect me like that?”

Gee, where are my manners?

“Fuck it, let's do this.” And really, at that point, it's not even because of the gun. At that point, it’s because the demon inside is roaring at me for a hit of
something
, and I
honestly
want it.

* * *

I
'm
out of my Goddamn mind later, yelling like a fucking rabid dog as I run through the dark slum streets of Kinshasa, banging on walls, tearing at my own clothes and looking like a fucking maniac. My blood is on fire, my brain chugging along like a freight train without brakes. I think I fight someone on the way back to the Blackriver barracks - someone crazier than me obviously to want to fight a guy that looks like me - but I'm not totally sure later.

All I know is that in those moments, when I can block out the rest of me and bury everything else about myself deep inside and cover it with substances and poison, I find peace. It's a broken, shattered, tainted peace, streaked with blood, drugs, and the last remnants of my humanity and spirit, but fuck it, I can sleep.

Besides, who needs their humanity when they're going to be dead soon anyways?

T
he ding
of the seatbelt bell rouses me from sleep, and the memory of my slow self-induced death march back in Africa. The taste of that night is still bitter on my tongue, and I blink and rub my eyes as I sit up.

That was a long time ago.

The stewardess on the Archer Holdings jet comes around and gently offers me a drink when she sees I've woken. I shake my head.

You'd think they'd have stopped even offering booze on these fucking planes, between me  and Hudson.

Sobriety is- well, sobering. We all had our demons back then, and we all swung at them differently. Logan literally hit them, Hudson drank them away.

I found heroin.

Heroin takes a little piece of you every single time. It whittles you down, takes away your soul, your heart, and your love of anything else but
more heroin
. It does this until there's nothing left but you and it. You're its prisoner, and it owns you.

And I fucking hate feeling owned.

It's William that fixed me and got me clean. And Logan, of course. I mean, shit, the guy was also trying to get Hudson clean, but when we got back to the States for the first time in years, he and the Old Man both helped me while I sweat out the poison in my veins. They held me down while I shook with the need for more; answered with support when I cried out at the demons clawing at my skin and tearing my eyes out. Withdrawal sickness is some
real
shit. It's the closest to actual hell I've ever been, and I've come pretty close.

Of course, none of this is to say a drink doesn't sound amazing right now.

Booze I could probably do, because that was never really my problem. But I just don't; not anymore. After you clear heroin and get the controls to your life back in your own hands, you pretty much never want to let something else drive ever again.

No, I traded vices, and for a while there, I had a great one; a perfect vice, a secret, exquisite vice.

Peyton.

As broken as I was, as shattered as I felt, and as lost in the void as me. Two broken pieces fit if you make them.

Or not, I guess.

It wasn't perfect, but it worked; and it worked amazingly. I hated the sneaking around, and the lying to Logan's face about what I’d gotten up to the night before, or who I'd been
with
, but she was worth it. Until she lit out like a bat out of hell, that is. No word, no discussion; not even a fucking argument. Just a “no more” and it was done; end of story.

And then she was gone.

I almost want to laugh at the current situation of Peyton disappearing; this is becoming a habit. And just like a habit, here I am chasing after her again like a fucking idiot. Guess I've still got a touch of those aforementioned addiction problems.

I'll find her though, I just need to find her before she gets herself hurt, or killed.

I tighten my seatbelt and rub my eyes again as I feel the plane start to descend into Turkey;
Fuck, who needs a drink.

I
t’s
cold in the cell, and my teeth chatter as I hug my knees to my chest. They’ve cleaned me a little, but I’m still shaking as I look down at the red stains on my hands and under my nails; Bill’s blood.

Bill, who’s dead.

Bill who
I killed
.

I know I wasn’t supposed to hear the whispered conversation of the other deputies from over at the intake desk at the station. But I did, and now it’s burning a hole in my gut.

“Remember old Bill Martins?”

“No shit! From over on McDermott street?”

“Yeah, he was seein her Mama.”

“How bad?”

“Dead.”

“Holy shit…”

I
killed
a man, his blood is staining my hands, and I have no idea what that means for me now. And that looming unknown has me shivering more than any cold chill ever could make me.

There’s the clanging of the door down the hallway, and I bite my lip and curl-up tighter into a ball on the bench inside the cell;
This is it. They’re coming to tell me he’s dead and that I’m going to die now too.
This is small-town Texas, and it doesn’t matter what horrible shit Bill did to us; people
knew
him.

Even, purposeful footsteps move down the hallways, and I close my eyes and push my face into my knees.

The steps stop in front of the bars of my cell; “Peyton?” A man’s voice says quietly.

I nod but say nothing;
Just get it over with, just tell me.

The man says nothing though, and slowly I open my eyes. I see his shoes first; dark black and fancy looking; nothing like a deputy’s boots. I slowly follow the shoes up to trim, tailored-looking pants, up to a matching jacket, unbuttoned, and a crisp white linen shirt open at the neck. I look up sharply into the man’s face, and I’m suddenly frozen. His face is kind but focused, strong and chiseled, and yet there’s a soft look in his eyes.

…His strangely familiar looking eyes.

There are dark lines of tattoo ink showing through the open neck of his shirt, and the contrast of the man in the expensive looking suit with the chest tattoos has me puzzled.

He smiles at me then, a grin somehow both dark and brooding, as well as disarming at the same time; “You
are
Peyton Rivers, right?”

I nod slowly.

He grins; “So, it seems you’re my half-sister.”

The floor just sort of drops out then;
strangely familiar looking eyes
. The dizziness starts to take me then as he roars at someone down the hall to open the door. And then he’s got me, holding me upright and wrapping those arms around me; “I got you, kid; I got you,” He’s saying quietly; “And I’m getting you out of here.”

I’m looking down at my feet to avoid the stares of the deputies and the sheriffs and the other people in the station as we move through it, but he leans close to my ear; “Head up, kid. You didn’t do anything wrong, so show ‘em all that you’re made of something stronger than them.”

I’m still floating, still sleepwalking through this waking daydream turn of events when we step outside, and it’s then that I look up and see
him
, standing next to a black car.

Holy shit
.

He’s all dark eyes and dark brooding silence, with tattoos running the length of the arms folded over his strong-looking chest. And as soon as our eyes meet, I know I’m more lost than I’ve ever been.

“Peyton, this is my broth-” He shakes his head; “This is Bryce.”

It doesn’t happen right away, but I think we both knew the writing on the wall the first time our eyes met coming out of that police station in Texas. And it’s perfect, because broken sees broken, and somehow we both see a fix there. It starts innocently enough, and then grows far more serious;
too
serious. It’s a whirlwind of two shattered storms crashing together, and it’s passion and
love
, and something even deeper than that.

…Until I find- well, until I find out that it’s all bullshit

And then it’s over.

I
shake
my head as I step out of the shower and grab a towel from the back of the door, trying to clear thoughts like that out of my head.

I frown at my reflection in the hotel bathroom mirror; still completely un-fogged given the cold-water shower I've just taken to try and fight the heat of the day and grime of traveling. I need to not think of things like that; I need to not think of
him
, in any capacity.

But of course, not thinking of Bryce Connors is like
not
thinking about the splinter under your skin, or the cut on the inside of your mouth that you just can't stop playing with. I'm angry that he's followed me here inside my head like this. I'm pissed that, even here on the other side of the world at the hotel on the edge of the spice district of Istanbul, I can't even take a shower to try and clear my head without him invading my thoughts and creeping into the darkest parts of my desires and my fantasies.

I toss the towel aside as I stretch out face-down across the bed by the window and let out a sigh;
Goddammit.
Ten-thousand miles between here and the hallway of the hospital back in New York and I still can't stop thinking about the way he pressed against me. All the shame and the guilt and the forbidden heat of that moment comes rushing back; the traitorous feelings of want and desire when I should be worried about the safety and whereabouts of my only family.

Damn him
. Damn the way his eyes blazed like that, in the way they always do that sets a match to something inside of me. Damn the way our bodies pressed together like that, the heat of the forbidden and the nevermore roaring like a barely contained eruption.

Damn the way I felt alive - actually
alive
- for the first time with him.

The way I clung to him like a raft in a storm. The way the screaming rains and gail-force winds of the tempest that was the two of us still rings in my ears a year later.

I bite my lip and close my eyes as I think of that first stolen and forbidden kiss. The kiss that seared itself across my lips deeper and hotter than any cigarette burn ever did, and immortalized itself into my life stronger than any tattoo ink ever could. That first kiss that ignited and burned into something fierce and something wild. The kiss that quickly moved to more kisses, and more
than
kisses.

I feel the spark somewhere deep inside of me as my nipples stiffen at the memory, and shiver as they graze across the silken sheets beneath my body. The familiar heat blooms between my legs, making me bite my lips and move almost unconsciously against the sheets as I let the temptation of the forbidden fantasy creep into my mind.

I hate that he does this to me; hate that he makes me feel this way, with the instant effect he has on me.

Still
.

It's never gone away, either. For a full fucking year, every single time he manages to get through my defense or every time I stumble and let the memory of him or us into my head, I feel like this.

I moan softly as fingers trail traitorously over skin, feeling my body tremble beneath them.

Saying I hate it is the biggest lie of my life.

My fingers trail down my sides, slipping beneath me to feel the roaring heat there and how wet I am as I think of Bryce Connors. That hard body, the bottled fury that somehow makes him a devil in bed and yet makes me feel more protected than I've ever felt in his arms after. Those rock-hard arms, themselves covered in his own ink and his own scars from his own demons and his own battles.

I blush deeper as my fingers slip into the honeyed wetness of my pussy, thinking of the ways those arms moved me, and the ways the hands and fingers attached to those arms teased and played me in ways I'd never felt. And
God
, that tongue. There's no way any man outside of a fantasy should have a tongue as wicked and as perfect as that.

I groan into the sheets and then roll onto my back as I let my thumb drift across my aching clit, rubbing myself in slow, deliberate circles as my breath and my pulse begin to quicken in staccato hitches. I gasp as I slip a second finger inside, imagining the toe-curling, star-seeing way it felt every single damn time he entered me; every time he filled me with that perfect cock of his.

I'm moaning loudly, louder than I should be. But I stop caring as my forbidden fantasy of the wickedly tempting man I need to forget swells around me, carrying me closer to that sweet release. I'm crying out, my fingers moving quicker and faster over my clit and deep within my pussy as I start to drift over the edge of my climax.

The door to the room splinters inward off it's hinges, and I shriek as a man crashes through with a gun in his hands and the blazing fire in his eyes.

And then he starts laughing.

Oh you have got to be motherfucking kidding me,
I growl to myself as I gasp and yank the sheets over my body while he laughs and laughs and laughs.

Ten-thousand miles away from him, ten milliseconds away from coming while thinking of him, and the man from my forbidden fantasy literally comes crashing through my door.

What the fuck is Bryce doing here?