by Max Monroe
I felt painfully out of place, like a pepperoni that had mistakenly made its way onto a vegetarian pizza.
“Language,” his mother tittered under her breath.
“What is going on?” Quinn questioned. “Seriously, what is fucking going on with you guys? Why are you acting like this? Please, someone fucking explain to me what is happening right now.”
“Quinn Bailey,” his mother stated in disapproval. “I do not want to hear you talking to me or your father that way.”
“Well, I didn’t want you guys to act so cold and distant toward Cat, but I guess we can’t always get what we want, huh?” he retorted and then paused. “Look, I’m not trying to be disrespectful here, but your behavior is ludicrous. It doesn’t really add up. I feel like there is something you’re not telling me here…”
Instead of standing there and listening further, I turned on the faucet at full blast to drown out their voices. Dabbing cold water on my face and quietly humming the theme song to Star Wars, I did everything but let my ears hear the conversation occurring in the garage.
By the time my hands had been washed and my face dried, I stepped out of the bathroom and found Quinn standing in the kitchen.
“Ready to go, kitten?” he asked, his voice sad and quiet, but his lips somehow managing to offer a soft smile in my direction.
“Um…sure…I just need to get changed real quick,” I answered with a nod, even though, technically speaking, we were leaving a little earlier than we needed to. “Anyway, it’s probably better we get to the airport sooner rather than later so I’m not late for work and we don’t miss our flight.” My stomach clenched as the words left my mouth. I knew his sudden need to leave had nothing to do with airport arrivals.
Nor did my desire to escape. The entire visit had taken its toll on me, the suffocating tension making it harder to breathe by the second.
“Yep. I think you’re right,” he agreed far too quickly. It was like he couldn’t stand still in this house for a second longer. “How long will it take you to get ready?”
“Just a few minutes.”
I only needed to change into my uniform. My hair and makeup had already been done in the name of making a good first impression.
Which, obviously, hadn’t occurred.
I walked upstairs to his bedroom, and anxiety forced my brain to focus on simple tasks: get dressed, brush teeth, spray on perfume.
It’d only taken me a couple of minutes to switch out of my clothes and repack my small carry-on. By the time I made it back downstairs, Quinn met me near the entry with his keys in his hand.
“Hey, Mom, Dad!” he called toward the living room. “We’re going to head out!”
Both Beau and Dixie Bailey managed to meet us at the front door. His mother hugged Quinn tightly. His father shook his hand. And both just offered brittle smiles and halfhearted waves in my direction.
“It was nice meeting you,” I whispered, and even I couldn’t hide the sadness in my voice. “You have a beautiful home.”
I didn’t receive more than a nod in response.
Instantly, nausea filled my stomach.
God, this is awful.
With his hand pressed gently to my back, Quinn led me out of the front door and toward the car.
Once we were buckled in and he reversed out of his parents’ driveway, leading us down the long dirt road that led away from his childhood home, I snuck a glance at him out of my periphery.
His lips were firm. His brow furrowed. And his knuckles gripped the steering wheel tightly.
I understood his silence.
I’d accidentally overheard most of his conversation with his parents, and at one point, I’d had to stop listening out of fear, because of the choking anxiety that what they had been about to say would have been too painful for my own ears to digest.
I honestly didn’t know what to say or do in that moment.
I had no words of encouragement, no reassuring thoughts to share.
All I could do was stare out of the window and watch the trees pass by as Quinn drove us out of Boone Hills and in the direction of Birmingham’s airport.
Ten minutes into our drive, he reached out and gripped my panty-hose-covered thigh with his hand, squeezing it gently, but other than that, all stayed silent between us.
Both of us were too lost in our own thoughts to share.
Cat had been painfully quiet as we’d driven to the airport to catch our flight back to New York, and I had no trouble understanding why.
My parents were people I’d respected my whole life. I knew they had prejudices, and I knew they often closed their minds to anything outside of what they’d grown up thinking was normal—Den and everything they’d done to him was more than proof of that.
But, shamefully, I’d never fully understood the depth of their bias, the strength with which they held on to the evil of intolerance.
In all other scenarios, I’d always been the first person to stand up for the equal rights for people of all backgrounds, all proclivities, all lifestyles, all sexual orientations, and all races.
Cat’s skin didn’t register as different; it was just beautiful.
I was a man in love, and anything Cat had to give, any life Cat had lived, I wanted to be a part of it.
I’d naïvely assumed my parents would feel the same, such was the saturation of my emotion in my every move, thought, and choice. Surely, I’d thought, they would know that by bringing Cat home, I was making a statement. One that said this person was worthy, she was meaningful, and she was mine.
Beyond all other things, all preconceived notions and long-standing misconceptions, they should accept Catharine as theirs—as a future member of the family.
But naïveté was a mighty and devious conduit to dissatisfaction. For, my parents—people I’d loved nearly indiscriminately for my whole life—weren’t any of the magically accommodating things I’d wanted them to be and couldn’t see the worth of a woman whom I considered to be worth everything.
I felt ashamed and wholly disappointed in myself that I’d been so ignorant to the situation for this long. I’d taken Cat into the lion’s den of toxic bigotry, and I’d done it without warning.
Me, though…I’d had advanced notice. I’d just ignored it.
Denver had been going through this for years.
I suddenly felt like crying for all I hadn’t given him, for how profoundly I hadn’t understood.
Catharine’s comfort was my first priority, but it seemed impossible to achieve when I’d created this.
How did I explain to the woman I loved that, deep down, I’d known my parents would not treat her with human decency and acceptance?
Inside, I felt tortured. The sharpest knives, the ones that cut the deepest and would never truly heal, were the ones they’d used.
“I, um…” Cat said into the silence of the rental car. The fog in my head cleared, and I snapped into awareness. Unwittingly, while lost to my own thoughts, I’d been leaving Catharine to wallow in her own. After an hour of near silence, there was no telling what she was thinking. “When we get to the airport, I’ll have to check in like I would for work and then board the plane before you, obviously.”
I glanced between her face and the road, squeezing the hand I’d placed at her thigh nearly an hour ago. “No problem, kitten. I know you’re working. I just shanghaied you for your layover.”
And how splendidly it had gone.
Fuck, why hadn’t I just taken her to a hotel and spent all night making love?
“Right,” she murmured. “Okay, then.”
I didn’t like the way her words weaved and danced with distrust in my head.
Just how much damage have I really done here?
“Wish I could be with you, though,” I added. It was a statement of truth as much as any time since I’d met her, but now, it felt like she needed to know.
She nodded and then spoke, her sad words weighty. “Me too, Quinn. Me too.”
Why did it
feel like she wasn’t just talking about the airport?
Mr. Lancaster peeked his head out of his office, and I lifted mine from the spot where I’d had it leaning against the wall. His voice cracked like a whip. “Get in here, Quinn.”
I nodded and replied, “Yes, sir.”
It was time to face the music after one of the longest nights of my life.
After arriving at the airport, Cat had gone her way, and I’d gone mine. She’d checked in through work, and I’d gotten my ticket like a normal passenger, and even when we’d gotten to the gate, she had things to do. As she’d disappeared down the jetway, I’d marveled at how you could be so close to someone, be in the same fucking building, and yet feel so far away.
My laugh had been mordant as I’d realized how precisely it mirrored where we were emotionally. We were together. We were in love. And yet, we were fucking miles apart, her lost to her thoughts while I floundered in mine.
But then a bad day had turned worse, our flight, in the end, delayed by eight fucking hours. We’d finally taken off in the wee hours of the morning, and by the time we were wheels down, I was already an hour outside of my window for making it to morning weight lifting on time.
Because of the rush, Cat had taken RoyalAir transportation home from the airport, and I’d gone home in an Uber and then driven my truck—delivered to my house in Far Hills from Teterboro by my trusty, ever-complaining assistant, Jillian—straight to the stadium. Because of that, in all of the ten hours we’d spent in close proximity to each other, we’d barely spoken a word. My gut felt rotten, discarded, and left for dead; I’d gone against it during every time I’d caught Cat’s eyes. It told me to reach out, to flag her down, to pull her somewhere private and set our world to rights. I’d convinced myself giving her time was the better option.
I was a stupid bastard.
If that scenario itself had been hell, someone was about to turn up the fucking heat.
I settled into the soft leather of the chair in front of my boss’s desk and waited for him to speak first. I didn’t think anything I had to say on my own would be appropriate.
“Coach Bennett tells me you missed most of morning weight lifting this morning.”
I nodded. Unfortunately, it was fucking true. It wasn’t like I could pull the wool on this one.
“He also tells me your concentration was all over the place today.”
“Sorry, Mr. L. Maybe it took an impromptu trip to Alabama.” Oh, but the truth was comical sometimes.
“You can’t joke your way out of this, Quinn.”
I bit into my lip and swallowed.
Mr. Lancaster’s voice was gentle but unyielding as he went on. “You know I like you. My wife and daughter adore you. And you’ve been one of the best leaders this team could have asked for. But this kind of behavior is poisonous. Not only is it unacceptable on an individual level, but the other players on this team look to you as a role model. Your behavior affects theirs, and when you don’t take the team, its time, and its schedule seriously, the rest of them don’t either.”
I nodded, struggling to find my voice enough to choke out a, “Yes, sir.”
“I’m not taking any immediate action, but you should consider yourself on probation. Any other indication that you don’t take your job and the time of others seriously, and I’m going to have to do something about it none of us will like.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, finding my voice somewhere close to my boots—right along with my pride. “You have my word. This is the end of it.”
His eyes gentled, and I swear, it was a look I’d only seen him give two people before—his wife and his daughter.
“You’ve been around for so long, Quinn, I think of you as more than just my quarterback. I’d like to think I know you pretty well, and it doesn’t take a genius to see where this is coming from.”
I nodded. I knew he knew. She’d been in his stadium, in his tunnel, rambling along as I fell in love with her right before his eyes.
He was no idiot, and I’d be one if I tried to deny it.
“Is she worth all this?”
I looked to the door, my jaw hard as I worked through how best to express my thoughts. It was all a mess in there, my brain scrambled with the dogged determination that I could have both the girl and the dream job. Things were haywire today, but I just needed to find a way to manage it better. To put them both at the top and accept nothing less from myself.
He waited patiently until I found the words I was looking for and turned back to him.
“You know I love the Mavericks?” I asked. I’d dreamed of playing in the National Football League my entire life. And this team, this family, was more than I’d ever envisioned.
He jerked his chin up in ascent.
“You know I don’t go home during the season?” I went on, questioning his knowledge of everything me.
This time, he nodded.
“Then you know there’s only one reason I’d do anything to challenge either of those commitments.”
Finally done with practice, I strode from the stadium and out to my truck, intent to call Cat and touch base. After arriving late, my day had gone from shit to even shittier, and I was desperately hoping hers was a little better.
I’d played terribly—which meant I ate a lot of fucking dirt and ached like a premenstrual woman from getting literally destroyed by the entire defensive line—had a meeting with my boss I’d happily never relive, went to five promotional shoots Georgia Brooks had set up for game day photos, team photos, the Mavericks merchandise line, and so on. It’d been the longest ten hours of my life.
The team had been quiet in the locker room, and everyone gave me a wide berth. They didn’t tease, they didn’t taunt, and they didn’t question.
No doubt, part of it was the toxic cloud of energy I found myself cloaked in with every passing minute as I let the despair of this whole fucking thing weigh me down. And the other part, I suspected, was that they were disappointed in me. Being late wasn’t the behavior of a team leader, certainly not this close to the season, and it wasn’t what they’d come to expect out of me. And to top it off, I’d been like a fucking lump of shit on the field, tossing interceptions up like I was Oprah. You get an interception, you get an interception!
I unlocked my truck and tossed my bag in the back, climbing inside before pulling my phone out and lighting up the screen to check the time. It was just past four p.m., and Cat was leaving for Cincinnati today.
My chest clenched as I realized I also had a missed call from her while I’d been occupied. I scrolled to her name, ready to hit the button to dial when a sharp knock on my passenger window scared the living fuck out of me.
“Jesus Christ,” I cried as Jillian climbed into the passenger seat and, horror of horrors, Nathan, my publicist, climbed into the back.
“No,” Jillian denied. “I am awesome, but I am not Jesus.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “And he definitely isn’t.”
“Are you crazy? You can’t just ambush me and climb into my truck like this.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can do anything I want. But, if you’d have been paying attention instead of looking down at your phone, you’d have seen me waving my arms like a fucking wind sock for the last thirty seconds as I approached.”
“We have a problem,” Nathan broke in from the back seat, his voice nasally and judgmental in one.
I waited for him to go on, as did Jilly, but he didn’t. She got frustrated. “What do you want? An invitation? Tell the man what’s going on, for shit’s sake!”
“Photos of you on the flight home from Alabama surfaced last night, speculating on why you’d be so willing to miss practice. People are theorizing about injuries, even saying you’re not taking the game seriously anymore. Partying, fucking your way around the globe, that kind of thing.”
I scoffed a harsh laugh. “Well, that’s fucking ridiculous. It’s not true, any of it, so what does it matter?”
“Because your image m
atters, Quinn. Now that you’re causing a stir, people are going to be coming out of the woodwork, trying to smear your reputation. You’re going to have even more public scrutiny, and everything you do will be used against you.”
My chest suddenly felt like it weighed as much as the stadium. “Fucking great.”
“I just read on a site that you’re falling down on your training and your game is slipping. There’s speculation that you’ve lost your touch.”
“I had a bad practice! One!” I shouted. “Today. How the fuck would they know this?”
Nathan shrugged. “There are a ton of people who work within these walls who are willing to share little snippets for money.”
I shook my head as I tried to gather my thoughts, fought against all the demons circling my intestines and squeezing, and actually won. “It doesn’t matter. Today was an anomaly. All of this shit will settle, and then I’ll fucking destroy it when we play Minneapolis this weekend.”
Nathan and Jilly shared a look, but I was done. I couldn’t waste any more time talking about this garbage and letting it infect me any further. I had more important things to worry about.
“Do your jobs. Jilly, you know what I care about. Clean socks, food in the fridge, and a schedule I don’t have to keep. And you…” I looked at Nathan. “I pay you to deal with this so I don’t have to. Don’t fucking call me unless the sky is falling.” He looked shocked, but I was so beyond caring it wasn’t even funny.
I grabbed my phone from the cupholder and turned in my seat to face the steering wheel. “Now, both of you get the fuck out of my truck.” I sighed, let go of a little of the anger, and added some manners for good measure. “Please.”
Thankfully, they both knew I was serious and followed orders immediately, leaving me to the silence of the cab of my truck once again. I relit the screen, pushed Catharine’s name, and put the phone to my ear.
I’d never heard a more mocking ring.
In fact, it’d mocked me straight to her voice mail.
The midafternoon sun filtered in through the sheer curtains of my window and gently lit the room in softened hues of orange and gold. Normally, I’d savor such a soothing, beautiful sight, but today, all I could do was lie in my bed and mindlessly stare up at the ceiling.
