Traded (10 page)

“I care deeply, I get hooked, and I won’t go there again. What happened between us, Jake, was a mistake—a mistake I’m not willing to repeat.” She walked into the kitchen, standing on the other side of the half counter as if she needed something between them.

“I’m sorry, Chris. What Troy did…that’s a shitty thing to have happen to you. I probably understand better than anyone what can push you to do something that stupid. But this isn’t the same. I’m not Troy. Chris, please don’t go, don’t move. Stay, stay here with me. Give us a chance.”

“Jake, I don’t want this. I can’t let myself get pulled into you. You’re a catch, but you’re still so wrapped up in your girlfriend that I’ll be the one left on the side of the road with the broken heart. She’ll show up just like she did at your hotel room, she’ll change her mind again, and you’ll go running to her. You didn’t fight for me there. You let me be humiliated. You let her stay. You chose her!” she cried out, rubbing her eyes, willing herself to hold it together. She took a breath and blinked.

“Chris, Jill and I are done, and for the first time I realize how bad a situation it was. I don’t want her. When she showed up at that door, I felt as if someone had sucker punched me. I couldn’t pull my head out of my ass. It happened so fast. If I could go back, I’d do it differently, handle it better. It’s you I want. It’s you, Chris. I want to be with you. Please just give us a chance.”

But she couldn’t take the chance again of getting hurt, so she shook her head and walked as calmly as she could to the door, squeezing the knob, willing her hand to stop shaking. She pulled it open. “Take care of yourself, Jake.”

She wondered for a minute if he was going to argue with her or refuse to leave, but then he seemed to realize better. He started to leave but stopped in the doorway, reaching out and touching her face, her cheek. It took everything inside her not to lean into his hand, to hold herself still.

“Please think about it, Chris. Don’t go. Stay. Take a chance with me. I’m not Troy. I think you know that, and when I say how much you mean to me, I mean it. Please think about it, Chris.”

Then he left.

Chris closed the door and set the deadbolt before leaning against it. Why was he doing this? She couldn’t do this again, and the thought of staying and taking a chance with Jake scared the hell out of her.

How could he let her go? He lifted his hand to the bartender and gestured for another beer. He understood what Chris had said to him, and he felt terrible for how she’d been treated in this mess, but he wanted her to want him.

It was during the lonely drive back to his hotel that he realized Chris did care, and she did want him. She’d just been hurt so badly that she was afraid to take a chance. He understood that kind of hurt on some level, but he was also trying to figure out a way to convince her and show her that he really cared. Did he love her? He could, it was there between them. It hurt, knowing that he had finally found the right one for him but that his own twisted mistakes were responsible for the roadblock between them.

He took the bottle of beer set in front of him, waving off the glass offered again by the bartender, and went over to a table in the corner. The bar had only a few people in it. Suits on the other side, a few women, too.

He pulled out his cell phone and hesitated only a second before punching in the number he knew so well.

“Well, I was wondering if I was going to hear from you.” Logan always got right to the point. He was the one constant in his life, a brother who loved him and understood him better than anyone else had.

“I suppose you heard.” He’d be surprised if he hadn’t.

“I spoke with Samuel. He called to tell me he was getting married. I didn’t know what to say, especially when he told me who it was.” Logan sounded so tired on the other end. Running interference for his brothers required something not many people had.

“She’s pregnant, too.”

There was silence on the other end, but it was the kind of silence that came from shock. He wondered whether Logan was trying to figure out what to say.

“She doesn’t know whose it is.” Might as well get it all out so Logan could lay into him again, but there was still silence and a squeak in the background—maybe the chair Logan was sitting in. “You’re awfully quiet for someone who always has a lot to say, especially when you think I’ve messed something up.”

“How are doing?” Logan asked. That wasn’t what Jake had expected. He sounded worried, concerned.

“I’m okay, considering. I don’t know, Logan. You warned me. Sometimes I just go ahead and do things without thinking of the consequences. I wish I could go back and undo a lot, take the blinders off then and see what I can see now.”

“Sounds like you’ve cleared your head. So what brought on this change of heart?”

“I met someone.”

There was another rustle and squeak in the background. Maybe he’d shocked Logan again.

“You know when you want something so bad that you’re not seeing the whole picture, just what you think it is?” Jake said. “Well, I didn’t really see Jill. I stuck her on this pedestal, and I think I made myself believe she was something she wasn’t. I worshipped her for so long while she was with Samuel. I loved her. But maybe it was all an illusion, loving someone who wasn’t really who I thought she was.”

“Hmm” was all Logan said on the other end.

Jake took a swallow of his beer.

“You know, I worried about what was happening between you and Samuel with Jill. I was never okay with how quickly she went to you, and now she’s back with Samuel. It was like a yoyo—and now she’s pregnant. That I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“So Samuel didn’t tell you everything.” He wondered for a moment what his brother had said.

“I think he wanted my approval. I love you both, and I don’t know how any of this can be resolved between you. If this baby is yours, what are your plans, Jake?”

He wasn’t sure how to take it. He wanted Logan on his side, not Samuel’s, and he hoped his brother wasn’t asking him to walk away, because he couldn’t do that. He remembered the hurt when his father had left them when he was so young. Even though he came back, it was something that never went away. “If it’s my kid, I’ll be its father. No one is pushing me out and denying me that right, not Jill and certainly not my brother. I really hope you’re not expecting that I’ll just walk away to make this easier for Samuel and Jill.”

“Nope. I wouldn’t expect that of you. I’m just worried about how this is all going to play out, and I’m not liking what I’m thinking. What about this other woman you care about? How does she fit into this picture?”

“I don’t know. I want more with her, but I think I may have messed it up and lost my chance.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. You’re the one who never gives up. I’ve seen you, you push. You’ve got a fight in you that makes me proud, but I worry at the same time. It’s something that can also be your undoing.”

“Well, I don’t know, Logan. She doesn’t think I stood up for her. She thinks she’ll always come second to Jill.”

“Will she? She sounds like a smart girl.”

It was the question he’d been trying to answer since he left Chris. He wanted to say she was wrong, but she’d been right about one thing: When Jill showed up, he should’ve made his stand. He hadn’t realized then how disillusioned he’d been. When the blinders finally came off, he’d seen something so beautiful walking away.

“No, she wouldn’t. Maybe I didn’t know it at the time, but Chris could never come second. She’s amazing, Logan. You’d like her.”

There was another squeak in the background and then voices. “Listen, I have to go. I’ve got a situation I have to go handle. But if this girl means as much to you as you say, then you make her believe she will be first, always. Convince her. If anyone can do it, I know you can.”

Jake sat in the bar, finishing his beer, trying to figure out what he could do to get Chris to listen to him. But it wasn’t words that would convince her. He knew that actions always spoke louder.

He loved the feel of the football in his hands. “Wide receivers specialize in pass-catching. Our job is to run passes and get ourselves open and in position for the pass. Sometimes we need to be the block. Some people don’t think of wide receivers as being tough, but remember, kids, to play the position of wide receiver, we have to be tough.” He pointed to his head, taking in the eager eyes watching him. They were so young and impressionable.

“And it’s that toughness you need to have when you catch that ball across the middle.” He snapped his fingers and pointed out to the middle of the field. “You’ve got to go fast, quick, at the same time knowing you’re going to take a hit from a linebacker who’s got maybe thirty or forty pounds on you. These guys are aiming to take you out. It’s what they do.”

Some of the kids’ eyes widened.

“But you’re faster, quicker! Change directions so they can’t get you. You need to be sharp out there and know everything going on all around you and who’s where. Just remember that the game for a wide receiver is just you and the quarterback. You need to be on the same page, thinking the same thing. It’s like a moving chess game, and when the attack comes to take you out—”

“Okay, we don’t attack here, though, kids,” the plump middle-aged teacher said, interrupting Jake before he could finish his talk to the second-grade class he was mentoring in gym. This was public relations. His coach and sports agent said he needed to polish his image, and what better place than with a group of kids in the public school system? “We respect each other out there, no ‘taking out,’” she said with a tsk, as if warning Jake. “And no tackling, because someone might get hurt.” Then she gave him a look much like his mother would.

The kids were watching him with startled, fascinated wide eyes, glued to what Jake was saying. A hand rose from a little girl in the back.

“Yes?” he said as he pointed to her.

“Suzie, stand up when you talk,” the teacher said.

She was cute, with pigtails. “Mr. Wilde, when are girls going to be allowed to play football?”

“Girls can’t play football! That’s only for boys,” a little boy sitting beside her on the ground called out.

“Of course we can! Girls are smarter than boys. My mom even said so,” Suzie said to the boy.

“Don’t be stupid. A girl can’t go on a field with a bunch of men. She’d get hurt. It’s a man’s sport. My dad said women have no business trying to play pro sports that are only for men, and football is a man’s game.”

“Okay, no arguing!” the teacher said. “Brent, Suzie, just so you know, women are already playing football, not in the NFL but their own league. There are women’s teams.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” the little boy said.

“No it’s not, is it, Mr. Wilde?” Suzie added, crossing her arms, waiting for Jake to back her up.

Jake was of the mind that there were some sports a woman shouldn’t play, and he was about to say something but stopped when he took in the raised eyebrows of the teacher.

“So what do you think, Jake? Do women belong in football?” someone said from behind him.

He couldn’t believe it. He spun around and took in Chris walking toward him, wearing shorts and a white tank top, her long hair hanging straight. She was gorgeous and determined. “Excuse me for a minute, kids,” he said, backing away where they could have some privacy. He knew the class was still watching, though they broke out into their own whispered conversations.

“Well?” Chris said.

“Well, I think women have the right to choose what they want to do as long as it doesn’t put them in a position where they’ll get hurt.”

“But sometimes it’s the man who does the hurting. You can’t always protect a woman, no matter how much you want to.” She was so close to him that he could’ve reached out to touch her.

“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do everything we can to keep you safe. It’s our role as men to look after you, to protect you, to love you.”

She was right in front of him, and she looked away for a minute as if considering what to do next.

“Sometimes all a woman has to do is take a chance,” he said, “to forgive, because sometimes when we hurt you, it’s that second chance we need to show you that it’ll never happen again. Once I know you’re mine and you trust me again, I’ll make sure you never feel that you’re second to anything. You’ll always be my first. Be mine, Chris, please.” He held out his hand to her. She looked at it, and he could see how she wanted to take it.

“I got your flowers.”

He cocked his head to the side as she glanced away, then looked back at him.

“And your key,” she added.

He’d have filled every corner of her house with flowers and had them delivered every day, but he knew Chris. For her, it was about commitment. He had to do something that could reach her and let her know he meant it, so he’d signed the papers with the realtor for the second condo, the one she loved. He hadn’t just sent the key for the condo but also a copy of the papers, which had her name alongside his. He knew he was taking a chance, but he had to, because he also knew Chris would never believe him otherwise.

“What if I’m scared? I need a guarantee this will work, Jake.”

“Then I’m telling you not to be scared, because I’m all in for the long haul. So let me carry you across the finish line. Be with me, just you and me.”

Her big, bold, blue eyes softened, and she slowly smiled as she slipped her hand in his and stepped closer. “And the baby? I’m afraid you’ll change your mind.”

“If it’s mine, I’ll be its father, but it will always be you and me. There’s no Jill.”
And no Samuel,
he thought, but it hurt too much to say that. “You and me together can be part of its life. I’d never walk away from that.”

She stared at him for a minute and then leaned into his arms. “No, you couldn’t, Jake. Maybe that’s why I love you. You couldn’t just walk away.”

“Are we going to play ball now, Mr. Wilde?” One of the kids called out.

Jake wrapped both arms around Chris and kissed her before taking in the kids watching and smiling. Without letting Chris go, he picked up the football and tossed it to the boy in the back, but it was the little girl beside him who snatched it up and started running. “Yup, let’s go!” he said.