“You don’t usually have more than one or two. Is everything okay?”
Brody rubbed the back of his neck. “Marlene had a visitor when I went to see her this morning.”
I suddenly lost my appetite. “Oh?”
“Willow. She thinks she can just walk back into our life and everything is going to be okay.”
Something about the phrase walk back into our life made me feel even more uneasy. “Did you two have a fight?”
“No.”
I nodded. We ate in silence for a few minutes.
“Just a lot of bad memories.”
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I didn’t. The air was thick, and it was difficult to swallow as we danced around other topics over dinner.
After dinner, Brody lay in bed while I brushed my teeth in the master bath with the door open. “I’m not going to be flying back with you Sunday night. The station is sending me to Miami after the game.”
“Oh yeah? Who you heading to interview?”
“Payton Mara.”
I finished brushing, pulled off the headband I wore while I washed my face, and was about to flick off the bathroom light when I noticed one of Brody’s jerseys hanging on the back of the door. It was a practice jersey, but his name was emblazoned on the back. My fingers brushed over each letter in the dark. E-a-s-t-o-n. I was totally falling for him. There was no way to stop it at this point. I just had to hope that when this fall was over, Brody was there to catch me.
Knowing why his head was where it was tonight, I had two choices. I could get into bed, snuggle up next to him, and wonder if he was thinking of her while we drifted off to sleep. Or . . . I could chase away those bad memories and leave no room for him to be thinking of anyone but me.
If I’m going to fall, I might as well free fall and enjoy the ride down.
Stripping off my T-shirt and sweats, as well as my underwear, I slipped the practice jersey over my head. It skimmed down to my ass, barely covering me. Perfect.
Brody was staring blankly at the TV, so I walked to the dresser it was mounted above and set down my folded clothes with a bend that revealed my entire bare ass.
“Fuck, I love that. My name across your back and that perfect round ass.”
I turned around and tilted my head coyly. “Thought you were sleepy?”
“I’d have to be dead to fall asleep with you looking like that.” His voice dropped lower. “Turn back around.”
“You just want to look at your own name,” I teased, but I turned around anyway. The bed creaked as he got up.
“I’d brand my name across that ass if I could.”
Crude, but the sentiment made me swoon a bit nonetheless.
His footsteps vibrated on the floor as he walked to me. Warm breath tickled my neck when he leaned down and spoke into my ear. “Bend over. I want to use you.” He rubbed my shoulders. “I’m a little drunk and want to forget anything else exists for a while. Except me, inside you. Where everything feels right. You good with that, babe?”
I swallowed and nodded. It was exactly what I wanted. No room for anything except the two of us. At least for tonight.
Chapter 26
Willow
Sunday afternoon, I had just turned off the game when there was a knock on my door so light I wasn’t even sure that it was a knock until the second rap came.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. Abby Little from across the hall.”
As I unbolted the double set of locks, it struck me as funny that she felt compelled to use her last name. As if “Abby from across the hall” wouldn’t be enough to identify her. Or even just “Abby.”
“Hey there.”
“Can I come in?”
I glanced over her head to the shut apartment door behind her. “Sure. Does your mom know you’re here?”
“She’s got company. She told me to come see if you were home.”
That didn’t sound good. “Is one of your aunts or uncles over?” I didn’t even know if she had any.
“No. It’s the tired guy.”
“What tired guy?”
“The one who makes Mommy tired.”
Coming down off a high would do that to you. My apartment was pretty lame—other than the TV, there wasn’t much for a five-year-old to do. I honestly wasn’t even sure what a five-year-old did do. “Do you have homework?”
“No.”
I didn’t have a kitchen table, only a single lonely stool that was counter height. I lifted Abby up and sat her on it. “Want a snack?”
She licked her lips and nodded. God, this kid was so easy to please. I supposed we appreciated the simple things in life when we were deprived of basics. Having an addict for a mother, those basic things often included food, medical care, and attention of any kind. I pulled a box of Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs from my cabinet and showed Abby. “Cereal okay?”
She nodded fast and gave me a big smile. Every time my mother dumped me at Grams’ house, Grams always cooked up a feast. Up until that moment, I hadn’t thought anything of it. I guess I just figured that she was my grandma—grandmas cook. But seeing Abby walk in made me realize for the first time that Marlene had probably known I was hungry, too. There was so much about my grandmother I’d taken for granted.
After Abby’s belly was full, I washed her bowl and considered the situation. What would Marlene do? She would have asked me what I wanted to do.
“What do you want to do this afternoon, Abby?”
“Can we go to the park?”
“Sure. But we better go tell your mom and get your coat first.”
The familiar smell of burnt plastic hit me when I opened the door to their apartment. “Lena?”
She didn’t answer. But the smell of crack told me what she was doing. “Stay here a minute, okay, Abby?”
I left Abby in the kitchen and walked to the bedroom. “Lena?” I called again.
Nothing.
I knocked on the door, not realizing it wasn’t fully closed. “Lena?” The impact inched it open. Enough so that I got a look at what was inside. Lena was on her knees, her head bobbing up and down while the loser crackhead who had been coming around held a fistful of her hair in one hand and a crack pipe to his lips with the other.
I froze. And not because seeing a woman giving a blowjob was shocking. Privacy and humility hadn’t exactly been rampant in the abandoned houses I’d spent time living in with other junkies. No, I froze because of the crack pipe. I wanted a hit almost as much as I hated the shit.
The loser caught me staring and sneered. My watching was doing it for him. He took another long hit from the pipe, fisted Lena’s hair harder and thrust his hips, so she had no choice but to take him deep into her throat as he came.
I wanted to vomit.
I wanted a hit of that pipe.
I needed to get the hell out of there.
I grabbed the first small jacket I could find in the closet and rushed Abby toward the door. It could have been her watching that.
“We can go?”
I was already opening the door to get the hell out of that apartment. “Mommy said it’s fine.”
Abby and I took the subway downtown. There was no way I was taking her to a park in our drug-infested neighborhood. That experience wouldn’t be good for either of us. I also needed to get far away from temptation. So I took her to a small park I walked by every day, not far from where Grams lived.
We spent an hour in the park. I sat on a bench and watched Abby play with a little girl about her age. At one point, she ran over to me and asked if she could take a juice box from the little girl’s mother. At least she was smart enough to ask permission before taking things from strangers—even moms in the park. That was a good sign, since God knew who she might be around with her mother falling back into drugs.
It was starting to get dark, and both of us clearly weren’t ready to go back uptown. So on a whim, even though I’d already visited Marlene earlier today, I decided to take this little
toothy, grinning girl to visit my grandmother. We headed toward Broadhollow Manor together.
The nurse stopped me at sign-in. “She’s not doing that well this evening.”
“What do you mean? I saw her earlier, and she was fine.”
“I don’t want to get you nervous. It could be nothing. But she’s a little lethargic. More out of it than usual.”
“Did a doctor see her?”
“Yes. And we’re watching her for any signs of change. This sometimes happens with Alzheimer’s patients, you should know. They have good days and bad days. It’s difficult at times to know if a bad day is just a normal bad day or something we should be concerned with.”
“Can I see her?”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to warn you. She’s had a good few weeks, but she does have bad days sometimes. This could just be one of them. We have a call into Brody but haven’t reached him yet. Just to keep him apprised.”
“I think he’s away at a game.” It stung that they would call to alert Brody, but not think of me. But I deserved it. “Is it okay to bring Abby? She’s my friend’s daughter, and we were around the corner at the park, so I thought I’d drop in again.”
“Sure. Marlene was sleeping when we last checked in. But if she wakes up while you’re in there, she just might be a little more confused than usual.”
I explained to Abby on the walk down the hall that we were going to visit my grandmother, who sometimes got confused, but I didn’t want to scare her, so I left it at that. Cautiously, Abby and I entered Marlene’s room.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I found her sleeping peacefully. She didn’t wake up during the hour we sat there, but the nurses came in every fifteen minutes and checked her vitals and told us everything was fine. Eventually, Abby started to yawn. It was almost eight and probably close to her bedtime. So I said goodnight and left my cell phone number at the nursing station, asking them to call me if anything changed. Even though the nurse said they would, I didn’t put it past them to clear it with Brody first.
After we got back to our apartment building, I tucked Abby in at my place and told her to lock the door so I could go check out what was going on next door. The door to her apartment was unlocked—in this crappy neighborhood. That alone was enough to tell me there was no way I was sending Abby back to sleep there tonight.
Inside, I was relieved to find Lena sleeping alone in her bed. There was drug paraphernalia all over the place. On the way out, I grabbed a cell phone that was on the kitchen counter, hoping to find it unlocked and to see if there was anyone who could take Abby until things with her mother turned around. I knew from experience this wasn’t going to be a one-night thing.
Abby told me her grandmother’s name, and I went into the other room to call her. It definitely wasn’t the first time the woman had gotten a call about her daughter. There was no shock in her voice at all.
Sophie, Abby’s grandmother, only lived a few blocks over, so when she agreed to take Abby, I offered to bring Abby by. There was no reason she needed to see her daughter’s place the way it was.
The chilly November air felt good as I walked back toward my apartment. Sophie lived in a decent building, and she and her husband had invited me in for coffee. I’d stayed until I saw Abby was comfortable at their place. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Abby seemed so unaffected by being shuttled all over. Craziness had already become her norm. She just didn’t know that her life was crazy . . . yet.
A few blocks from my house, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A local number was flashing on my screen when I dug it out.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Garner?”
“Yes.”
“This is Shannon. I’m a nurse at Broadhollow Manor.”
I stopped on the street. “Is everything okay?”
“We just called an ambulance. Your grandmother’s stats are declining. Everything may be fine, but—”
“I’m on my way.”
Chapter 27
Delilah
Whatever fear had taken up residence inside of me was slowly beginning to dissipate. Three nights of sharing a suite with Brody in sunny Florida had given me back my confidence in us. I still hadn’t given up the room that WMBC paid for, not wanting anyone to ask any questions. Although, at this point, it was common knowledge that Brody and I were a couple. Some of my male colleagues who held a grudge because I was promoted over them had taken to making snide remarks whenever I walked in the room, alluding to how women reporters secured their interviews. I hated it, but not enough to stop dating Brody.
After the game against Tampa, then locker room interviews Sunday afternoon, Brody and the team got ready to head to the airport while I was meeting Michael Langley to drive down to Miami. The team was loading their bags on the bus outside of the hotel when Michael pulled up in a shiny red Jaguar convertible, the top already down.
Brody and I had talked about who I was traveling with, so it wasn’t a surprise to him. But that didn’t mean he was happy about it, by any stretch of the word. He wasn’t angry, really. I would say it was more of an alpha-possessive-caveman-style jealousy thing he had going on. Strangely enough, I sort of liked it.
After stowing his bags under the bus, Brody returned to say goodbye. Michael waved but stood by his car a few feet away, waiting.
“Can you take off on Friday?”
“I think so.”
“Offensive line is off on Friday. I want to take you upstate. Show you my cabin.”
“You want to show me your cabin?”
“Yeah. And my cock. I always want to show you my cock. But I want to show it to you in my cabin Thursday night.”
“How can I refuse such a tempting offer?” I laughed.
“You can’t.” Brody wrapped one arm tight around my waist and pulled me close. “We’ll leave Thursday after you get off work.”
“Okay.”
He moved closer, our noses almost touching, but I could see the glint in his eyes. “You know I need to show him that you’re mine.”
“Are you going to lift your leg and pee on me like a fire hydrant?”
“My sweet girl’s into some kinky shit. But I’m game if you are.”
I nudged his chest with my elbow.
“Seriously. Have a safe trip. And tell fuckwad to keep his eyes and hands on the road, or he’ll have me to deal with.”
“Yes, Tarzan.” I playfully rolled my eyes.
“Come here, Jane.” Brody’s hand squeezed the back of my neck while his mouth devoured mine. I became completely lost in the kiss. The spectacle he was making as he leaned me back in a dramatic dip and kissed me like there was no tomorrow didn’t even register with me. Until he lifted us from the dip and released my mouth and the entire team who had been watching from the bus began to applaud.
I wanted to kill him then, even though he had warned me. Before he loosened his grip, he surprised me by slipping something over my head. It was his jersey. He wasn’t kidding about wanting to brand me.
“Take good care of her.” He nodded to Michael as he opened my car door.
The first few minutes of the ride were uncomfortably quiet. Eventually, Michael spoke. “So. I guess I know why you didn’t want to go out with me.”
“Sorry. I probably should have told you. But when you first asked, we weren’t dating yet, and I really was busy like I said. And then the next time, we still weren’t dating when I said yes, but by the time we—”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.” He glanced at me, then back to the road. “I’m not gonna lie and say I’m not disappointed. But I won’t make things uncomfortable.”
My shoulders relaxed a little. “Thank you.”
The three-hour drive was actually really relaxing. The warm Florida sun beat down on my head while the wind from the open top kept me nice and cool. Between starting my new position a few months ago, meeting Brody, and then worrying about the reappearance of his long-lost ex, I had been really
stressed lately. “I’ve never been in a convertible. I love it. Did you rent this car?”
“No. I actually have a home down here. In Miami. I keep a car at the house.”
“I didn’t realize that. Is it far from the hotel?”
“Twenty minutes with traffic.”
“Oh. I can take a cab from there, so you don’t have to go out of your way.”
“I don’t mind. But you’re welcome to stay at my place instead of the hotel.”
My eyes flashed to him.
“Relax. I have a guesthouse. You’re welcome to stay there. We don’t even have to be in the same building.”
“Thank you for the offer. But I’ll just stay at the hotel.”
Michael shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. He was so easygoing. Staying in his guesthouse probably shouldn’t have been an issue. Yet somehow it felt wrong. The hotel was definitely a better idea.
Traffic slowed to a crawl once we hit the Miami strip, and my phone buzzed in my bag. I dug it out and read the text from Brody.
Brody: Sitting on plane. Delayed. What are you doing?
I decided to screw with him a bit.
Delilah: Having margaritas poolside and working on my tan. Good thing I tossed a bathing suit in my bag.
Brody: With Langley?
Delilah: Who else would I be with?
Brody: You’re fucking with me, right?
Delilah: Guess you’ll find out when you see my tan marks.
Brody: Your ass is going to have my hand marks when I see you.
Delilah: Hmm . . . I might like that.
Brody: Are you fucking with me?
Delilah: About the drinks and pool? Yes. The handmarks . . .
Brody: I’m getting wood on the plane next to a 325-pound linebacker.
Delilah: LOL
Brody: Just announced we’re finally cleared for takeoff. Gotta power off. Wish you were coming home with me. Even after three days with you, I miss you as soon as I leave.
My heart swelled a little in my chest. The man quite literally charmed the pants off me, without even trying. I was crazy about him and finally learning to sit back, relax, and enjoy it.