Be Mine Page 17

  Finally, she raises her head. Glassy eyes meet mine and then drop to my extended palm. Slowly, she lifts her arm and gently rests her small fingers on top of mine.

  I close my fingers around hers. “I won’t let you down,” I swear.

  “I’m afraid of letting you down.”

  I pull her into my arms, tumbling back against the tile floor. I’ve never been more uncomfortable or happier in my life. “You could never.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Nick

  As Chip walks across the bar, his eyes catch and hold on every reflective surface. He loves looking at himself, which is consistent with his selfish attitude. It’s kind of amazing that he was able to last in the league as long as he has. From what little I gathered from other teammates before meeting Chip today, no one really cared for him.

  When he was traded, no one seemed unhappy, but I thought that was because we’d just won a Championship with me behind the center. Now, I realize that it’s because he’s an asshole and a bad teammate, not to mention a general shitstain of a human being.

  Lainey does not want me confronting him. I have a game tomorrow. I should be in my room concentrating on the plays, reviewing the defense, prepping for the interview this afternoon, but I want to deal with this now. That way my head will be clear.

  I notice that Chip has a manila envelope in his hand. What did Lainey say? That this pencil dick took pictures? I entertain a short fantasy of catapulting from my chair and beating the piss out of Chip. I wonder how fast the video of that would go viral. Five minutes? Ten?

  I grind my back molars as Chip reaches me. He slides into a chair without fear. Why didn't he play like that on the field? It was his hesitation that got him beat more than once. Then I notice the rapid pulse in his neck, the light sheen of sweat near his hairline, and the nervous movements of his fingers as he taps the envelope.

  He's anxious. It's a mix of excitement but also of fear, and that settles me more than anything. Leaning back, I throw an arm across the top of the velvet banquette.

  "More game film?" I say easily.

  His eyebrows furrow, and my confidence grows. He thought I'd be the nervous and scared one. Not today, son. Not today.

  He chokes out a smart-ass laugh. "If we're talking about the fucking game, I guess so." He slides the envelope across the table. I don't make any move toward it. Instead, I keep my eyes on him.

  "What's the point of this?"

  "The pictures? I'm trying to save you, man." He clasps his hands together and leans forward. "This girl is toxic, and these pictures are just to show you exactly how. Or maybe you're into the orgy thing, which, hey, is none of my business, but this sort of thing can really be a distraction. And you know what Coach says." He invites me to finish his sentence, but I'm not playing any games with him, not even fill-in-the-blank.

  He makes a small face. "Anyway, obviously, no distractions. Elaina Valdez is a big fucking distraction; not to mention the girl probably carries around more diseases than a ship carries sailors, am I right?"

  "No."

  Confusion sets in. "What do you mean, no?"

  "I mean, no, I don't believe Lainey is a distraction or that she is likely to be a carrier of any diseases or any other rancid thing you can come up with. Tell me, why Lainey? What do you have against her?"

  He tries to shrug it off. "I've got nothing against her. I'm trying to protect you."

  "By printing out pictures of Lainey with other people? Those pictures will embarrass her. They don't impact me at all. I don’t give a shit what she did in the past. I've got to wonder why you're so concerned with one woman who you don't even particularly like. Unless…" I trail off. Unless those pictures aren't about harassing Lainey at all, but rather, they're about affecting me. "Jesus, this isn't about the girl at all, is it?"

  He throws up his hands. "Finally, yes! It's all about protecting you and your image. I don't want—"

  I hold up a palm to cut him off. "It's about the fact that you're jealous as fuck that I took over your position. You could give two shits about Lainey. You want to get into my head and see me fail. You'd probably love it if I lost my head and threw a few punches. I'd get suspended. The media would crucify me. That’s why you planted those rumors about me not being a team player. You saw how I looked at Lainey two years ago and thought, I’ll fuck with both these people with one blow."

  Chip's face turns white. "N-no," he stutters. "That's not why I brought this up at all. I want to win."

  "That may be the single truthful thing you've said since you sat down. You do want to win, but you're not in the limelight anymore, and it's killing you that your backup is." I push the table back, far enough that it punches Chip in the gut. Standing up, I pick up the envelope and fold it in half, small enough that I can shove it into the inside pocket of my suit coat. "I'm done here. See you at afternoon walkthrough."

  "Don’t forget. There’s more where those came from," he hisses as I start to walk away.

  I take a moment before turning around to face him. He doesn't deserve to see my anger. Indifference will needle him more than anything. "I have no doubt that you do, which is why whatever you're selling here isn't worth buying."

  "Ask Lainey if she feels the same way," he mocks.

  I lean down, bracing one arm on the table and one arm on his chair back so that all he sees is my stone face. "You're desperate and craven. There's no point in bargaining with you. What you don't see, because you're so damn myopic, is that you've lost your leverage. You led with your trump card, and it wasn't good enough. I'm going to go win tomorrow and then the next game and the next. I’m dragging this team to a second Championship, and when I’m done, it won’t matter how many pictures you have of my soon-to-be wife.” Chip’s head jerks back in surprise. That’s fucking right. I’m going to marry Lainey, adopt Cass, and ruin Chip. “The press will rightly label you a predator, desperate and washed up. My team will lay down their collective lives to keep me, and the town will kiss my feet. We both know that winners can do anything they want in this world."

  "And if you don't win?" he says hotly.

  “We both know I will.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Lainey

  “Your parents are amazing, Charlie.” I lean over to pin another flower in Charlotte’s hair. “The way your dad looks at your mom—like it’s the first time he’s laid eyes on her and he can’t bear to look away—is swoon-worthy.”

  Charlie wrinkles her nose. “They get to be a little much; both them and Nate’s parents. I swear Uncle Noah and Aunt Grace were fooling around in the car before they got to the rehearsal dinner.”

  I hide a smirk under the guise of searching for the right-sized sprig to stick into the bride’s bun. Grace Jackson’s lipstick did appear to be smeared when they arrived at the swanky downtown Chicago restaurant, but, whereas my friend and her fiancé might be squirming from embarrassment, I think it’s beyond adorable and inspirational. These two couples have been married over twenty years each. I didn’t know my father, and my mother never remarried.

  Maybe if I’d met Nick’s parents sooner, I would’ve understood what a truly good man he was and given in to my impulses earlier.

  “You look gorgeous.” I stick the last of the flowers in Charlie’s hair and bend down to plant my face next to hers. We stare at each other in the mirror. My best friend is marrying her childhood sweetheart today, a boy who needed nine whole years to get his head on straight. Would I have had the patience for that? “You deserve so much happiness, sweetie.”

  Tears glisten in her eyes. “Do I? Sometimes I feel like I have too much in my life, and everything that has happened is some kind of leavening effect.”

  “You mean the cancer?”

  She nods, the tears slipping down. I dab them carefully away. “No. You’re going to beat it. You did before. We all love you too much to let you go.”

  All my troubles with Chip seemed insignificant when we heard Charlotte’s cancer was back. N
ick had to keep playing ball, so I stepped in to help with the wedding details between his best friend and his brother.

  After the opening game, Nick told me that he wasn’t able to beat Chip to a pulp like he wanted to but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that Nick was going to have to deal with Chip for the rest of the season.

  “Once I win the Super Bowl again, I’ll be able to kick him off the team no problem,” Nick had declared as if winning the Super Bowl a second year in a row was as easy as tying a pair of shoes.

  But Nick keeps winning and so I seal my lips shut. In his defense, Chip hasn’t said a word to me since Nick confronted him.

  We’re still keeping our relationship on the downlow. Charlie’s got a lot of her mind. From time to time, she gives us suspicious looks so I start fights with Nick to throw her off the scent. I think it’s working—either that or she’s distracted by other, more important, things.

  I slip my arms around her slender shoulders and squeeze her tight.

  Her head falls down to press against my head. “I love you, Lainey.” She takes a deep, calming breath and stands up. “You know that your happily ever after is waiting for you. I hope you don’t wait too long to grab it.”

  The wedding is beautiful—an absolute spectacle, although surprisingly small in scale given the wealth of the two families involved. I’ve never seen Charlotte so happy. The couple recites their own vows. The heartfelt emotions that ring in each word bring tears to the eyes of everyone present. I keep my own gaze locked to the floor, afraid of what others might see in my eyes. From across the aisle, though, the intense stare of Nick bores into me.

  It's impossible to ignore him for long. He corners me during the reception as I take a break from dancing with Cassidy.

  “How are you holding up?” he asks, shoving a champagne flute into my empty hand.

  “My feet are beginning to hurt.” I wiggle my toes in the white satin, red-soled shoes that Charlie insisted on buying—so we matched, she’d said. “But this is the best party I’ve ever been to.” Cassidy is running in a circle with a few other kids at the edge of the dance floor that had been laid on top of the grass. “Your home is beautiful.”

  “I actually grew up in the city. Dad bought this place for Mom, and we’d come out here on the weekends, take the boat out onto the lake, roast a few marshmallows on the beach, make huge piles of leaves.” He eyes the magnificent estate with a fond, familiar glance.

  “Your mom didn’t mind you tracking all the dirt and stuff into her house?” Nick’s family money blows me away. It’s a good thing I met him in Texas otherwise, I never would’ve been able to convince myself that he could love a woman like me—a teenage mom with a humiliating past.

  “Nah. The dirtier the better. Besides”—he smiles impishly and my heart does a flip—“she had two boys. It was either accept that her home would be a tornado or live every day in despair.”

  “Well, she looks amazing, so I’m guessing she didn’t spend the last twenty odd years in despair.” I sip on my champagne. “That’s not the face of someone who’s spent much time, if any, dwelling on unhappy things.” We both take in his mother’s beautiful face. Grace isn’t a classic beauty, by any means, but the peace and happiness that is imbued in every atom makes her glow like an angel. Noah can’t keep his eyes off her.

  Nick slouches beside me. “Speaking of unhappy things, how is our girl doing?” He nods toward Cassidy.

  “She’s handling it pretty well.” My grandma had passed away in her sleep a week ago. I brought Cassidy to the funeral. It was the first time I’d seen my mama in three years. She broke down crying, telling me that kicking me out was the worst thing she’d ever done. I don’t know if it’s because she knows I’m seeing Nick or whether she genuinely missed us. We’re taking it slow. “If Grandma had been a bigger influence in her life, it might have affected her on a deeper level,” I admit. In that, I suppose, there was a small blessing for being kicked out of the house when Cass was young.

  “I take it you haven't told Charlie yet?”

  My gaze swings toward my beautiful friend who is on the other side of the room; one arm linked through her gorgeous, uniformed husband’s while the other clasps the hand of a well-wisher.

  “I'll tell her after the honeymoon.” Charlie is in the midst of cancer treatments, a hospital room kitted out in this very house.

  “She’ll be upset,” Nick predicts “She likes to know everything.”

  “I’ll tell her about everything at once after her treatment is over. Including us. Besides, I’m betting Nate will have made her so blissful that any sharp edges will have been worn down by the time she floats her way toward me.”

  Nick snorts into his glass. “I talked to my parents. They want to take Cassidy for a while.”

  “What for?” My cheeks burn at the thought of Nick talking to his parents about our sex life—as if the things we did were so crazy, she couldn’t be in the same zip code.

  Nick tilts his head so I’m forced to look him in the eye. “Lainey,” he says with a hint of impatience, “the only thing that's keeping us apart is Chip. I thought I’d be able to let it go for the season, but I want you at the games every Sunday and in my bed every night. That’s not going to happen until we work out the Chip problem.”

  “What are you gonna do? Have you brother’s SEAL team take him out?” He’s silent for so long that I nudge him with my shoe. “Nick!”

  “Sorry.” He gives me a crooked grin, “I was indulging in a little fantasy. But you’re right. We can’t actually do that since I can’t win football games from prison. Or maybe I could, but not the right ones. So let’s strategize.”

  “In the middle of your brother’s wedding reception?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Yup. You’re not going to leave Cassidy, and my mom would kill me if I left before the wedding party, so let’s use our time wisely.” He pulls me over to an abandoned table and pulls out a chair.

  With a huge sigh, I lift up my frothy blue skirt and take a seat. He positions himself next to me so we can both keep an eye on Cassidy.

  “The dilemma we have here is that Chip is a bitter dickhole who wants to prevent you from being happy. Why?”

  “I don’t think it’s me,” I say. “At first, it was. In the beginning, he didn’t want to be saddled with a groupie and her kid. He paid me off.” I slide my eyes toward Nick, who seems completely unperturbed by my admission.

  At my pause, he jerks his head around from Cassidy to me. “What? Am I supposed to think less of you for that? The guy had a multi-million-dollar contract and wouldn’t step up to raise his own child. You shouldn’t feel one ounce of guilt. I’d have taken that money. I think I’d have less respect for you if you’d turned it down.”

  “Oh,” I say in a small voice. My heart swells to almost unimaginable proportions.

  “Back to your theory…” he prompts.

  “Right. My theory.” I pin my eyes on Cassidy’s wild curls because if I look at Nick, I’ll either attack him or completely break down. “After you and Charlie came to town and we got to be close, I think he was worried that I’d make him look bad. He wanted me to keep my mouth shut about our connection and threatened to take Cassidy away from me if I didn’t. He had gone to a lawyer and recorded it. Later, he played the recording for me. Basically, the lawyer said that I could be shown to be unfit, and that I’d lose Cassidy.”

  “But then he’d be awarded custody, and he can’t want that,” Nick points out.

  “True. I guess I wasn’t thinking it through. Now though, I think he wants to punish you. You’ve taken his place. You won where he failed, and if he has any inkling about how you feel…” I blush and my eyes fall to my hands. It sounds so presumptuous when I say it out loud.

  His larger hand covers mine. “How I love you, Lainey? Is that what Chip believes my feelings are?” His legs shift closer, the black wool of his tuxedo pants coming into my still-downcast view. “Because he’d be right. I do love you
. And I love Cassidy. I want us to build a life together, and if that means tearing Chip down, sending my brother’s SEAL team after him, or destroying his reputation, then I’m all for it.”

  Wetness pools in my eyes. I can’t look at Nick because if I do, I’ll start bawling. I tell him as much. “You can’t say those things to me,” I whisper hoarsely.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve wanted to hear them for so long.” I raise our clasped hands to my mouth. “Because I love you, too. Whatever it takes to remove Chip from our lives, I’m in for.”

  His free hand cups my face, a thumb brushing away the tears of joy that I can’t stop. “All right. We’re in this together now, Lainey. No backing out. No running away. If you do, I’m coming after you.”

  “Promise?” I say with a watery smile.

  His eyes darken. “Promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nick

  I toss the investigative file on the table. "This is what Tom was able to come up with in five days."

  Lainey doesn't touch the stack. Her face is nearly colorless. I have the same sick feeling in my stomach.

  "He found all of this in only five days?"

  The file is at least two inches thick. "Yeah."

  "I don’t know if I can bring myself to look."

  I place a hand over the top of the brown expandable folder. "Then don't. If it's going to make you feel sick or guilty, then don't."

  She raises stricken eyes to meet mine. "How many were before me? How many after?"

  It's the after ones that will torment her. I had wrestled with what to share with her, knowing that guilt would be the most powerful emotion she'd suffer rather than elation that we have enough to string Chip up by his gonads.

  "I didn't count." That's not a lie. I didn't count because I knew she'd ask. "I'm going to ask you for a favor. You don't have to grant it, of course, but give it some thought. Looking at this information is going to bring back bad memories, plus, because I know you, I know you're going to be wracked with guilt. You're going to torment yourself with what if questions. What if I'd spoken up earlier? What if I'd challenged Chip? What if I hadn't taken his money to provide for my baby?"