One More Step

by Colleen Hoover

  The first time she saw me play football in Manchester, I proposed to her. It was after she said yes in the stands of Old Trafford Stadium that she told me she was pregnant from our first night together in London.

  I was terrified.

  But not Vilma.

  She was ready.

  She was ready to love me, marry me, and make me a father. Motherhood didn’t scare her a bit. She charged after it as though it was her destiny.

  And that was just the beginning.

  After that, our life became a carousel of babies and football. She traveled with me with a toddler on her hip and another baby in her belly. Then we had those twins we spoke of the first night we met, and just when we thought we were done creating life together, another surprise baby turned us into a family of seven, with four boys and one girl.

  Vilma was happy.

  Which was incredible because it was utter chaos in our small Manchester flat. At one point, we had four children under the age of five, and not a night went by when we didn’t have a little one sleeping in our bed.

  Bloody hell, we were happy.

  Until cancer came into our lives and slowly sucked all the vibrant sunlight from my beautiful wife’s body and all the passion for football out of mine.

  Since her death, I’ve been a shell of a human trapped in agony and pain, darkness and destruction. Seven years of being an absent, angry father. I’ve been so horrible to all my children that my young Vi had to become a fill-in mummy at the age of five. She’s so much like her mum that it’s hard to look at her sometimes. Blonde and strong and challenging, she is the epitome of her namesake. She’s not even the oldest of the lot, but the boys all look to her for guidance. And bloody hell, I’m middle-aged and so do I.

  The twins, Tanner and Camden, are all right, all things considered. They’re a lot like their mum too. They see life through rose-tinted glasses despite the fact they lost their mum as toddlers. They’re growing up to be joyful little troublemakers, no thanks to me.

  Then there’s Booker, our baby boy, who’s now as old as Gareth was when Vilma died. He’s a quiet, sensitive little eight-year-old who was only one when we lost Vilma. He probably won’t even have a single memory of her, and that kills me. He deserves to remember her. He deserves a life with a mother.

  And our eldest, Gareth, the surprise Vilma and I didn’t expect but welcomed with open arms. He was our first and started our family. He grew our love exponentially. He was eight when Vilma died, and he’s now turned into an angry teenager who resents me for how I treated his mum before she died. He looks at me with so much hatred that I fear he’ll just run away one day.

  And he’s right to resent me. I resent myself. I hate that I’ve abandoned this family that I created with the love of my life. Things need to change.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the letter that Vilma wrote to me. The letter that I’ve not touched in the seven years she’s been gone. Honestly, I haven’t wanted to read it. I don’t want to read her last words to me because then she truly will be gone.

  But today I received a job offer to manage Bethnal Green Football Club. And as much as I’ve not missed the world of football since I left it after Vilma got sick, I find myself wavering on my answer.

  Maybe this letter will be like getting help from my wife—hearing her voice again. Maybe this letter can give me the answers I so desperately need. Or maybe this letter will mean certain death…

  I unfold the worn paper, and my eyes well at the sight of Vilma’s handwriting. I run my fingers over the letters, feeling the warmth of her through the paper. She touched this paper. She poured out her heart on this paper. This…is my wife.

  I lift it to my face and blink away the tears to read.

  My Dearest Vaughn,

  The night I met you, you told me about losing your parents. You told me that you were over that pain. And what did I tell you? That grief has no timeline and no expiration date. It lives forever.

  I hate that I said those words to you, my love, because I do not want this pain to live forever in you. I want you to find joy again. Happiness. Love. I want you to have more children with that super sperm that gave me my five beautiful little ones. The world needs more Harrises, my love. And our Harrises need you. Our children need their father.

  Please be gentle with Gareth. He is a strong, stoic little boy who has not left my bedside since I became sick. He acts tough, but he has a pain inside of him that I believe only a father can help mend.

  And don’t let Vi waste her whole life taking care of her brothers. She is a giver, but she needs to be selfish from time to time. The boys will make it hard for her to find love, but you must instill some boundaries, or they will truly occupy her whole life.

  Funnily enough, I do not worry about the twins. Tanner and Camden are cheeky little sods who will get everything they want in life and probably more than they should have. It will take strong, intelligent women to tame them, and for that, I am grateful because that means they’ll have a piece of me with them as they grow old. You recall that it was my challenging strength and endurance you loved most about me?

  My baby Booker. My sweet, precious boy that I can still feel the warmth and weight of against my breast. Watch him closely, Vaughn. I did not get enough time with him, and I fear he will struggle quietly because of this. He will look up to his brothers and you…be there for him, please.

  I do not know how much time will have passed before you open this letter, but I know that despite your pain and despite your grief, you need to hold onto your passion. Teach our children passion, Vaughn.

  Teach them football.

  You always said you fell in love with me at the pub. Well, I fell in love with you on the pitch. Watching you play with such passion was the single most inspiring moment of my life. Let our children experience that love. Let football heal our family.

  Your Eternally Loving Wife,

  Vilma

  I exhale heavily, choking back the sobs that are wracking my entire body. I should have read this years ago. I should have given football to my children all these years they’ve been begging me for it. I should have known that Vilma would know just what to do…even in her death.

  “It’s time for a change,” I say, folding the now-damp paper and tucking it safely in my pocket. I turn and walk away from the cemetery.

  Grief will likely live with me forever because my passion for Vilma is the most profound experience of my life.

  But another passion burns inside me. And if my children are anything like their mother, they will feel that passion too.

  I will teach the Harrises how to play football. And we will heal. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be immediate. But I truly believe that in time…football will bring our family back together. It has to.

  THE END

  Actually…this is the beginning!

  Vaughn and Vilma’s love story began in the 1980s and their ending is the beginning of the bestselling Harris Brothers Series. Check out this complete series to see how the world of British football put this beautiful, broken family back together. Book 1 is Challenge!

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  www.amydawsauthor.com

  CALL ME HEATHER

  * * *

  BB EASTON

  Copyright © 2020 by BB Easton

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Jovana Shirley of Unforeseen Editing

  No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ONE MORE STEP would mean certain death, sure, but this woman is not going to jump.

  I should know. I’m her therapist.

  Or I was, up until yesterday.

  I pull my eyes
away from my infuriating former client, standing on the roof of my Midtown office building in three-inch stilettos, and force myself to unclench my teeth so that I can speak to the police officer standing next to me.

  “This is a ploy for attention, and you are playing right into her hands. Please, take your men and go back to the station. This is exactly what she wants.”

  The uniformed officer folds his arms across his chest. “I can’t do that, sir.”

  I let out an exasperated sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose, where I can feel a vein beginning to bulge. I do not need this shit today. “You’re negotiating with a terrorist.”

  “I’m negotiating with an emotionally unstable citizen who has threatened to splatter herself all over my jurisdiction if you don’t go up there and talk her down. Now, go. We don’t have all day, Doctor.” He says the word Doctor with such disdain that he might as well have substituted it with Dickhead.

  “With all due respect, Officer, this is only going to reinforce her behavior. As her therapist—”

  “As her therapist, you should know that I could have your goddamn license revoked for this. What the hell is wrong with you, man? Get up there and get your client!”

  I crack my knuckles one by one as I march up the concrete stairs and shove my way through the heavy glass doors of the Atlanta Center for Behavioral Health. I’ve been a therapist here since 2013, and never have I had a client as maddening as this one. I should have cut her loose months ago when I realized what she truly was, but I didn’t.

  And now, I’m paying the price.

  I storm past the reception desk and security guard station, earning sympathetic looks from my helpless coworkers as I mash my finger into the glowing button next to the elevator.

  One of the security guards clears his throat just before the doors open. “We’re here if you need us, Dr. Keaton.”

  I snort under my breath as I enter the metal box that’s going to deliver me to the beast. The doors shut, and I press the button for the top floor.

  “She won’t speak to anyone, Doctor,” the police officer told me when I finally came outside. “She wrote on a piece of paper that she’ll only talk to her therapist, Dr. Sterling Keaton. It says that if anyone else goes up there, she’ll jump.”

  I watch my reflection shake its head in the mirrored elevator doors as I replay his words to me.

  This is what I get.

  I’ve devoted my entire adult life to helping people with mental health challenges. I spent almost all of my twenties in college. While my buddies were out getting drunk and chasing girls, I was holed up in the university library. I took every unpaid practicum, internship, and residency I could get my hands on for additional experience. And within five years of earning my doctorate in psychology, I became one of the most sought-after, well-respected cognitive behavioral therapists in the metro Atlanta area.

  There isn’t a single disorder in the DSM-5 that I can’t treat.

  Except hers.

  The doors open on the fifth floor, and my hard-soled shoes make a satisfying racket as I stomp across the polished tiled floor and down a hallway painted a color we in the mental health world refer to as “agreeable gray.” At the end of the hall, I yank open a metal door marked EMERGENCY EXIT. The concrete stairwell is meant to take people down to the street in case of a fire, but it will also lead you up to the roof in the event that you’ve been playing with fire—or in my case, a certain fiery redhead who is now making a spectacle of herself and forcing me to dance for her like a marionette.

  When I get to the top of the stairs, I take a steadying breath and choose my thoughts carefully.

  She is not going to jump. Therefore, she has no power over you. You are calm. You are concerned. You are in control.

  With a deep breath, I assume my neutral therapist expression and push the roof access door wide open. It’s overcast today, and windy, but the threat of rain has done nothing to cool the humid spring air swirling across the hot black roof.

  Avery is standing on the raised ledge directly in front of me with a triumphant smirk on her full pink lips. She’s dressed in her usual “oversexualized lawyer” attire—as I’ve come to conceptualize it. Her crisp navy-blue dress clings to every curve of her hourglass figure and ends a few inches higher than any judge would consider appropriate. The three-inch heels on her nude pumps make the legs she’s showing off look an extra mile long. Her coppery auburn hair, which usually falls around her shoulders in salon-perfect waves, now ripples in the breeze behind her like a villainous cape. She is cunning, confident, manipulative, and remorseless.

  A classic psychopath.

  I didn’t see it right away, simply because Avery didn’t want me to see it. She came in claiming to have symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and insisted that she was ready to do the deep work needed to make progress. She said she sought me out after seeing my interview on 60 Minutes about the disorder. She came in every week, right on time. She flattered me. She flirted with me. She pretended to have the disorder, pretended to be improving when, really, all she was doing was seducing me.

  That’s what psychopaths do. Their brains are completely incapable of feeling empathy, and thus, the only thing they learn through therapy is how to be better psychopaths. Avery sees people as objects that will give her what she wants if she plays them the right way, pushes the right buttons. And what she wants, what she’s wanted since the moment she saw my piece on 60 Minutes, is me.

  I wish I could say the feeling wasn’t mutual. But I am a man, after all. And Avery is…Avery is a goddamn bombshell. And I’m not just referring to her body, which she takes great pride in dangling in front of me like a juicy steak, but also her razor-sharp mind. Her megawatt smile. Her self-confident charisma. Her sexy, throaty laugh.

  I knew by our second session that she was malingering as something she wasn’t, but I kept seeing her week after week. I played along, acting like I didn’t know exactly what she was because I’m attracted to her. Plain and simple. I enjoyed having my ego stroked by a beautiful, powerful woman, and yesterday, that careless indulgence blew up in my face.

  Avery arrived to her appointment five minutes early, wearing a form-fitting gray suit and a provocative smile. I found out why a few moments later when she hung her purse and blazer on a hook by the door and took her seat in the armchair across from me.

  Avery wasn’t wearing a bra.

  Her perky, peaked nipples strained against the silky blush-colored fabric of her blouse as she lazily arched her back and tossed her thick auburn hair over her shoulder. I became aroused immediately, and she knew it. Avery watched me with amused, hooded eyes as I crossed my legs and hid my erection behind my notepad. But I maintained my professionalism and began our session as planned. It was attention-seeking behavior, so I knew the worst thing I could do was reinforce it with a reaction.

  But that’s the thing about attention-seeking behavior. It tends to escalate until you can no longer ignore it. Which is exactly what happened approximately ten minutes later when Avery began to slowly unbutton her blouse.

  At the time, I told myself that I’d let it go on as long as I did because I was being a good behaviorist. I was ignoring the behavior no matter how extreme the escalation, but we both know the truth.

  I didn’t want her to stop.

  What I wanted was to jerk her infuriating ass out of her seat by the shoulders, slam her against the nearest wall, and give her exactly what she’d been begging for all these months.

  But instead, I reached behind me to my desk phone, hit the speaker button, and dialed security.

  Once Avery Oliver was escorted, kicking and screaming, out of my office, I told my secretary not to schedule any future appointments with her. Then I locked myself in my office and angrily masturbated into a wad of tissues.

  Twice.

  “Dr. Keaton, you came.” Avery smirks, her tone on that last word suggestive, as if she can read my thoughts.

  “You didn’t give me much of a
choice.”

  Her predatory eyes, rimmed with perfectly applied makeup that she didn’t even have the decency to fake-cry off, flare at my response.

  “You didn’t give me any choice at all. Cheryl won’t book me another appointment. You refuse to take my calls. All I want is to apologize, but—”

  “Apology accepted,” I snap. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” I turn to go, knowing that every second of attention I give her is only reinforcing her behavior more.

  A blood-curdling scream paralyzes me as I reach for the door handle, and the crowd below gasps so loud I can hear them, even over the hum of the industrial-sized air conditioners on the roof.

  I turn to find Avery exactly where I left her, lips pursed in delight.

  I take a deep breath and place my hands on my hips, staring down the length of my tie at my polished wingtips. It’s too damn hot to be out here in a tie. I loosen it slightly and try to compose myself before addressing the drama queen on the ledge.

  She is not going to jump. Therefore, she has no power over you. You are calm. You are concerned. You are in control.

  “Ms. Oliver—” I begin to scold.

  “Call me Heather, and I’ll sit.” She tilts her head and raises her eyebrows innocently.

  “That’s not your name,” I grind out between clenched teeth.

  “Do you whisper it when you make love to her, or do you growl it?” She narrows her eyes at me, scorned. “Or do you keep your mouth shut while you thrust into her because you’re afraid you’ll say my name instead?”

  “Ms. Oliver, please, just get down from there.”

  I reach out an emphatic hand, and Avery takes one deliberate half-step back. The spike of her heel lands mere inches from the edge. The onlookers gasp again, and her amber eyes flicker like twin flames.