by Max Monroe
He stayed quiet, too fucking quiet.
“Are you ending it?” I asked, my voice growing more strained from the emotion migrating up my throat.
“No,” he whispered. “Don’t get upset, Cat. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I know that things are difficult and complicated between us right now. I’m in the middle of preseason, and you’re always flying somewhere. Hell, I completely missed a weight-training session because of my impulsive behavior and lack of focus. I want us to work, Cat, I’m just trying to figure out the logistics.”
“I want the same,” I agreed. “But I also don’t really know how either.” What Quinn was saying wasn’t false. We had mountains of obstacles ahead of us, and that was just our work schedules. When I factored in all of the other things, it felt like we were trying to climb out of the Grand Canyon.
Silence consumed the line again, and I decided this wasn’t something we were going to solve on a phone call. This wasn’t something we could figure out while I was miles away in Cincinnati.
“Quinn, I think I’m going to go, okay?” I whispered through my tears. “I just need to get off the phone right now.”
“Kitten?” he questioned, and the sound of my nickname stabbed me right in the chest. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “But I think it’s best if I just get off the phone and try to enjoy the night with parents. I’ll try to call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” he responded, and I couldn’t miss the sadness in his voice if I wanted to.
“Bye, Quinn,” I said, and before the tears started to stream down my cheeks and clog my throat, I hung up the call.
Face to my pillow, I cried. I only hoped the cotton of its case would be absorbent enough to get rid of the evidence before I went downstairs to face my parents.
By the time I’d pulled myself together and made my way into the kitchen, both my mom and dad were sitting down at the table, the chicken pot pie my mother had made front and center.
“So…” my mom started, “tell me all about Quinn Bailey.” She glanced at me out of her periphery and smiled as she put a steaming hot helping of food onto her plate.
Just the mere mention of his name threatened another crying jag, but I swallowed hard against the discomfort.
I hated lying to my parents, hated hiding anything from them. But today, after that painful phone call with Quinn, my heart felt too damn broken to relive the discomfort I’d just endured over the past few days.
One day, no matter if Quinn and I were together or not, I’d tell the truth, tell them about Quinn’s parents and the way they’d treated me, tell them about everything that had gone down. But today wasn’t that day.
God, were Quinn and I going to make it?
My heart cried in the form of a breath-stealing ache while my mind whispered, I’m not sure if that’s possible.
Before they caught on to my sadness and uncertainty, I forced a smile to my face and quickly told them a little bit about Quinn. I told them how we’d met. I even gave them a small insight into what the man behind the football god status was like.
But most of all, I kept it short and sweet.
And I skirted around any question about our future.
It was fucking painful.
But I guessed I’d heard enough people say it before… Love hurts.
I wandered my house, waiting while my individual lasagna heated in the oven, a beer hanging from my fingertips.
The space was way too big for me, five bedrooms, five baths, and an entire finished basement, and I explored the square footage like I’d never seen it before.
In some ways, I guessed, I hadn’t.
I’d never really paid attention to the four guestrooms down the opposite hall from my own bedroom, and I hadn’t been responsible for the decorating. Jilly had hired the interior designer for me, requesting a clean, masculine look, and I’d approved it with a nod. None of the stuff around me was really meaningful. I’d hung no personal pictures on the walls, and as I settled onto the bed in my room, I realized sardonically that I hadn’t even had time to bring Cat here.
My girlfriend—the woman I was in love with—had never even seen my house. Psychoanalysts would probably have a lot to say about that, but I wasn’t sure there was some deep-rooted hesitance to bring her that close to me.
No, the truth, I feared, was that it didn’t matter whether she’d been to this house or not because, to me, that’s all it was. A house.
A big, nice house, with a large garage for my truck and a fancy kitchen that I barely cooked in.
But a simple house all the same.
Homes, on the other hand, tell a story about the person who lives there. They reminisce with pictures past and point to things that matter. What tastes make a person feel at peace and what gets their blood stirring. What artwork moves them in such a way that they have to see it every day.
All my house said was that I didn’t really have time to be in it. It was big and empty, and right now, on the heels of such a horrible phone call with Catharine, all it did was make me feel alone.
Resigned to my thoughts, I stood up from my bed and headed for the door, eager to be in the kitchen where the smell of food could at least fool me into thinking this place had something to offer.
I was halfway down the stairs when my phone started to ring in my pocket.
Eager, fucking desperate, I clutched my beer bottle in one hand and dug into my pocket with the other, yanking the phone out and reading the screen as hope shocked me. I hadn’t spoken to Cat since last night, and to say the ending of our conversation could have gone better was putting it mildly. I’d called and left a message when I got out of practice, but she was just as fucking busy as I was. Catching one another on the phone was starting to feel like trying to catch a shooting star from the sky.
But optimism’s exit was swift as I read a name other than Catharine, and I settled firmly back into the depths of reality, where she wouldn’t be calling me back tonight to tell me that she loved me—that’d we’d work things out, no matter the hurdles.
Remorse flooded me as my phone continued to ring, time ticking away and almost robbing me of the opportunity to answer the call that was coming in—from my brother.
Quickly, I swiped to answer and put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“What’s good, Quinndolyn?” my brother said in greeting, and I smiled despite the unwelcome weight in my chest.
“Not much, Den. Not much.”
“Wow. That was seriously depressing. All’s not well on Romance Island?”
“Why does it necessarily have to do with Cat?” I deferred, wondering how he could so easily read me, but after so many years, I’d still been clueless enough to fail him.
I resolved to do better. To be better for him. He deserved a champion who didn’t provide different support based on conditions. He deserved my conviction, not hesitancy, when it came to dealing with my parents, and I swore to myself right then I would change. Denver would never feel like he was fighting that fight alone.
“Well, for one, it’s always about the girl. Watch a chick-flick, for God’s sake. And for two, you never ever sound glum unless it’s about something important. Ergo, new hottie in your life.”
After a deep sigh, I sat down, leaned into the stairs behind me, and explained, “I took her to meet Mom and Dad this weekend.”
“And you didn’t call me?” he shrieked.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” I said with a wince. My eardrum would be ringing for days.
“Well, no wonder you’re in a bad mood. A visit to the Wicked Witch of the Deep South and one of her royal monkeys will do that to you.”
I smiled at his colorful description of our parents, despite the leaden memories of our visit running through my mind. “They weren’t welcoming.”
“What a shock,” he deadpanned.
“They’re not always terrible,” I said automatically, my default setting to defend them. I slapped myself mentally for the offense.
“Yes, yes, they are. Not to you, maybe. Mr. All American, football, perfect, straight son. But to a boy who likes boys or a little mixed-race hottie—”
I was all ready to jump in and tell him I was sorry—tell him he was right about my parents—when what he said registered fully.
“Wait a second. Did I tell you she isn’t white? Did Mom and Dad tell you?”
His voice was blunt. “No, honey. The tabloid I’m looking at right now while waiting in line to check out at Kroger did that.”
“What?” There’d been one blip of a picture in a tabloid a little while back, but the impact had been relatively little—at least, for me. I winced as I recalled Catharine’s parents finding out about our relationship that way.
“You’ve got some big problems, Quinndolyn. And they ain’t got shit to do with dear old Mom and Dad. Your girl’s just been served up to the wolves.”
Fuck. What the hell was in this thing? Were they tearing her down?
I swear to God, I’d rip those fuckers apart…
“Holy hell, the two of you were in a clinch.”
“What? Where?” I asked, feeling fucking helpless that I couldn’t actually see the pictures he was talking about and trying desperately to remember when we might have been so public with our displays of affection.
“I’m not sure. Looks like a hallway maybe. The picture’s a little grainy. But I’m having absolutely no trouble seeing that your hand is on her ass and squeezing more than a handful.”
“Shit!” I yelled, and he laughed.
“Since when do you care if someone knows about your grabbing a woman’s ass, one who’s clearly asking for it.”
“Since it could hurt the woman whose ass I’m grabbing.” The last photo they’d published of us had been PG at best, and all of the commentary had been relatively harmless. I had a feeling from Denver’s initial reaction that this was different.
“Aww,” he murmured. “That’s pretty swoony, bro.”
“Can you just send me a picture of this shit? Please. And tell me why you were being so dramatic about wolves! What are they saying about her?”
“Sure,” he acquiesced. “Just a sec.”
He disappeared from our call while I suspected he was taking the picture and sending it. A text notification signaled in my ear as he came back on the line. “Okay, sent.”
I clicked to put him on speaker and opened the text, pictures of Cat and me at the Birmingham airport the other night spilling out like all of Pandora’s evil. “The fucking airport.”
“Yes!” Denver shouted. “That’s it! It’s an airport!”
I rolled my eyes as I scrolled through the other photos, a bunch of horseshit, meant to do nothing other than tear at Cat’s value and worth. “I was there, Den. I didn’t have to solve the mysterious clues once I saw the picture.”
“Right, right.”
He waited silently while I flipped through the pictures he’d procured, reading headline after headline that went after Cat. They called her trashy and fixated on her race, and I felt a little like I was going to throw up.
I swallowed thickly, murmuring, “Oh God.”
Denver didn’t need to ask what was wrong. He already knew. “So what are you going to do?”
I shook my head and tried to focus. Tried to understand why people tried to tear others down for no reason other than entertainment value. I wanted to go back in time and fix all the wrongs—the visit to my parents, the way they’d treated her, the tasteless fucking article. But none of it could be wiped away, no matter how many calls to Nathan I made.
Maybe I should call him anyway.
“Just keep calling, I guess. Keep being there, ready to talk to her, until she’s ready to talk to me.”
“How uneventful,” he grumbled, and I sighed. My hands were tied. She was in Cincinnati and I was here, and thanks to my probationary status with the Mavericks, there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
“Den,” I called before he could hang up.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for defending Mom and Dad. Just now, and for all the times before.”
His voice was gentle to the point of tender. “You just want to see the good in everybody, Quinn. It’s one of the things I love about you. Honestly, I hoped you’d never understand the real root of them because I knew it would mean you hurting.”
My head dropped forward, the grains of the wood on my stairs swirling before my eyes.
“Just be you. Be the brother I’ve always adored, and Cat will come around. Trust me, I know. It’s absolutely impossible not to love you—even when you’re an idiot.”
“Right back at you, Den.”
“Girls,” Casey announced and flopped down onto one of the beds in our adjoining hotel rooms. “I’m fucking exhausted. I don’t think I can move an inch for the rest of the night.”
We’d completed our last day of mandatory training, and to say we were tired as fuck of anything and everything related to RoyalAir was an understatement.
But two twelve-hour days of mostly boring meetings and presentations would do that to anyone, I guessed.
Nikki grinned. “Good thing we’re officially done with training, huh?”
“God, you have no idea,” he said on a groan. “I refuse to do anything but eat takeout and watch reruns of Friends.”
“My vote is for The Office,” I interjected, and he rolled his eyes.
“That’s only because you have a girl hard-on for Jim.”
“A girl hard-on?” I questioned on a laugh. “That sounds more gross than good.”
He shrugged. “Look, no offense to you ladies, but I’m not the biggest fan of the illustrious pussy. Nothing related to a vagina ever sounds appealing to me.”
“That’s because you’re into dicks instead of chicks,” I teased, and he winked at me from the bed.
“What are we going to eat?” Nikki asked as she slipped off her heels and threw her hair up into a messy bun. “I hope it’s something with fast delivery because if it takes more than thirty minutes to get here, I might start eating my arm.”
“How about,” I started with a teasing grin, “no one sacrifices any appendages in the name of food, and I’ll run downstairs to the little store in the lobby to grab some rations while you guys call in a pizza delivery.”
“As long as the rations include Doritos and Twizzlers, I’m down,” Casey announced, and I gave him a thumbs-up.
“You got it.”
“I swear to God you’re the only person I know who still uses the thumbs-up.”
I switched fingers and lifted my middle one instead. “What about this? Am I the only one who does this?”
He laughed. “Nope. I actually see that a lot more than you think. Especially when I’m working the late-night flight from Atlanta to JFK.”
Nikki giggled and groaned at the same time. “Good Lord, I hate that flight.”
“Preaching to the choir, sister.” Casey raised both arms in the air. “I swear I get stuck with that flight more than anyone.”
I just smiled and headed for the door, calling over my shoulder, “I’ll be back, you little complainers!”
As the door closed behind me, I received several shouts and requests for other things besides Doritos and Twizzlers.
I rolled my eyes as I walked toward the elevator. I wasn’t a delivery service. Those little bitches would be happy and thankful for anything I brought upstairs.
Lucky for me, the little hotel gift shop was still open and completely empty.
Like a vulture looking for its next meal, I scanned the aisles and pulled anything and everything that looked good into my arms. By the time I walked to the counter, both of my arms brimmed with junk of the sweet and salty variety.
“Hi,” I greeted the woman behind the counter as I carefully attempted to drop my snacks near the register. �
�How are you doing tonight?”
“I’m good,” she said as she shut the magazine she was discreetly reading behind the counter and stood up from her wooden stool. “How are—” She paused midsentence the instant her eyes met mine.
Her eyes went wide for a beat, and like a spectator at a tennis match, she glanced back and forth between me and something on the opposite end of the register.
I furrowed my brow at her odd reaction, even glancing down at my clothes to make sure I didn’t have something on my blouse, or God forbid, my uniform skirt tucked into my underwear.
Nope. All good.
Confused, I followed the path of her eyes until I found the source—a gossip magazine. On the cover, a candid picture of Quinn and me at the airport. But it wasn’t like the last cover; this was different. To an outsider, we were basically making out, and his hand was directly on my ass. And above the main cover photo was an up-close profile picture of me that had been taken when I’d gotten my employee badge from RoyalAir.
Oh God.
“Is…is that you?” she asked, and I didn’t know how to respond to her question. I was still trying to process the fact that my face was on another gossip rag.
“Uh…”
She lifted the magazine and held it directly next to my face. “That’s you!” she exclaimed. “You’re Quinn Bailey’s girlfriend!”
“Uh…”
“Can I get your autograph?” she blurted out.
“Uh…”
As the woman reached for a pen and paper, I did the only thing my brain would let me do in that moment, I fucking ran—out of the store, through the lobby, and into the women’s restroom near the entrance.
It was an irrational reaction, but I blamed it on the culmination of everything that had occurred over the past few days. It felt like I’d just hit the rock bottom of the situation.
Could this get any worse?
Like a coward, I locked myself into one of the empty stalls and rested my back against the door.
My heart pounded wildly inside my chest, and I felt like someone had reached their hands inside my throat and closed a vise-like grip around my lungs.
