by Nora Flite
Her eyes were shiny, and she looked so small in that chair. “What do you suggest, Hunter? If you try and come clean about banging your publicist and getting her pregnant while trying to show the world that you’ve changed, no one will ever trust you again. You could lose your deals with Croc-Cooler and Outside the Boxers, not to mention future sponsorships.”
Rapidly I shook my head. “I don't give a fuck about any of that bad press shit right now, Jo.”
Leaning forward, she pressed on with her voice rising. “And football? Your father told me that if you couldn’t prove you've changed that he'd trade or cut you from the team. I don't think he was kidding.”
My heart shriveled at her reveal. “That’s total bullshit. He wouldn't. He’s just being an ass like always.”
“Fine then, Hunter. Go tell papa you got your P.R. rep knocked up. Have a few drinks first. It will make it easier. Go. Now.”
I could swear my molars were cracking from my tight jaw. "You really want me to leave?"
"How many times do I have to say go?"
I wasn't sure if she was serious about me going and telling my father what had happened, but the fact that he’d threatened my career and had the nerve to tell Jo about it pissed me off so much that her demand was easy to follow.
Ripping the door open, I spoke coolly over my shoulder. "We aren't done discussing this. But you're right. Maybe I do need to speak with my dad."
She straightened up like someone had knifed her in the back. Jo watched me until I couldn't see her anymore, the door slamming behind me.
I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but driving straight over to Dad’s house when I was this angry was definitely the wrong move. Instead I called Reese and asked him to meet me at the Clubhouse bar. I wasn't sure what I was going to tell him, but Reese was the best friend I had and the smartest guy on the team.
The Clubhouse bar was the local hangout for the Hawks and their fans. It was a huge sports bar covered in Hawks paraphernalia from over the years. My least favorite part about it was that my dad’s jersey from the 1982 Super Bowl was hanging in a frame over the doorway. I always made sure to sit facing the opposite way.
I found Reese at the bar. “Want a drink, brother?” he asked.
“Just a soda,” I said. “I need a clear head, man.”
Hearing me turn down a chance at a stiff drink was enough for him to reevaluate me with lifted eyebrows. “What’s going on?”
Dropping on a stool, I hunched forward and rested my forearms on the bar. Tell him. He's the only guy who can give you advice. I didn't trust anyone else with this bombshell news yet. “I might as well just get to it. You know Jo, my P.R. rep? Well, we slept together that night in LA.”
Reese smiled at me, showing too many teeth. "Okay. That doesn't sound like the bad part."
Running my hands down my face, I started to laugh. It came out in quick, loud barks. “She’s pregnant, man. I got her fucking pregnant.”
His smile faded away. “Well, damn."
"That's it? Well, damn?"
Throwing back the last of his beer, he pointed it at me. "Do you know what you’re going to do?”
“I haven't got a clue. I mean, we just found out, and she’s acting like she's alone in this, as if I'm not even here.” My palms came down hard on the bar. "No, actually, she does think I'm here—just clearly too much of a piece of shit to help her with this."
“Put yourself in her place. She’s probably scared shitless that she ruined her career. And maybe yours, too. She’s trying to be tough, I bet.”
That did sound like Jo. "I still need to do something."
“What do you want to do?” Reese asked. “I’m sure your dad’ll be happy to throw some money at the problem and make it all go away. No offense.”
I shook my head. “Jo would never go for that."
"And you?"
Reaching for the soda the bartender brought over, I paused with my fingers hooked under the tab of the can. "Call me crazy, but I don't want her to have to erase this."
Reese was grinning again. "You dig her."
Ruffling my hair, I bit back my half-smile. "She's sexy, smart, and like you said—tough. I guess that qualifies as 'digging' her."
"Okay, so you like her, and you don't want her to get rid of the baby, but is Hunter Daniels Junior, the most sought after man in the country, ready to be a dad?"
He was joking around, trying to ease the air. It reminded me of when I'd played polka music for Jo earlier, back when I'd been focused on her ankle and that had seemed like the biggest problem in our lives.
Our conversation was interrupted by my phone ringing. Thinking it was Jo, I answered it.
It wasn't Jo. It was my father.
“Bauer told me you left practice today," he snapped. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Hunter? This is—”
I hung up on him.
“Who was that?” Reese asked.
“My old man." I downed more of my drink, swishing the soda around my mouth. "Coach told him I never went back to practice. We’re still in the off-season, and his P.R. hire needed someone to take her to the hospital. I play the good guy, it bites me. Nothing I accomplish will ever be enough for him."
“Wait until he finds out about your bun in the oven. You have to tell him, right? Before he finds out some other way?”
“I’d love it if he found out the wrong way," I chuckled cruelly. "Seeing his face as he read it in the paper in public, man."
“Come on, brother, no you wouldn't. You need to be the one to tell him.”
"Here's the thing," I said, facing him. "If I tell him, he'll lose his mind."
"Nothing to be done about that."
"You're wrong." Reaching over, I grabbed a beer from behind the bar, knowing no one would stop me. "If he's going to berate me, I might as well soften the blow with some booze."
Reese slapped me in the arm, cheering as I downed the bottle.
It burned me down to my guts.
But it didn't remove the nugget of distress over how I was going to tell the world I was about to be a dad.
I squealed the McLaren to a halt in the mansion’s driveway, kicking up a spray of gravel. I hated going to my childhood home because it reminded me of my shitty upbringing.
Sure, when I was a kid, I had everything I could ever want as far as toys and material crap was concerned, but all I wanted was for my dad to treat my mom right.
He never acted like she was his equal. She was his servant and his verbal punching bag. He wasn't even faithful to her. She fought back for a little while, but by the time I was a teenager she had given up and just became his puppet. It didn't take long before I couldn't stand being around either of them.
I opened the mansion door and stormed in. “Dad?” I yelled out in the foyer beneath the two sweeping marble staircases. Aldous, the butler who had worked for my family for as long as I could remember, greeted me.
“What is the matter, Mr. Daniels?” He scanned me over. "Have you been drinking?"
“No more than usual," I chuckled. "One or six, wasn't counting.”
“Oh dear,” Aldous said.
“Oh dear is right. Is my dad home?”
“Yes, I’ll go get him for you.” He climbed the stairs to track down my father.
A couple of minutes later, Dad appeared at the top of the stairwell wearing his smoking jacket and a frown. He addressed me gruffly. “Junior. What is this nonsense? How dare you leave practice early. And Aldous says you're drunk?” I wasn't, but I was beginning to wish I was. “You’re disturbing the entire household.”
“What entire household? It’s just you and Mom.” I walked up the stairwell and met my dad at the top, just outside of his study. I made sure to look him square in the eye. "We need to talk."
"Of course we do. You're a wreck, is Jo doing anything I'm paying her for? Why is she letting you out on the town acting like a jackass?"
"Jo is doing plenty," I said, my hand squeezing the banister. I hated how
he talked about her like she was my handler, but worse that he thought she wasn't working hard. Especially when I knew how upset she was at the moment. "She got hurt today, I left to help her."
He folded his arms in his jacket. "She gets paid to keep you in line, not to pull you away from football."
"Speaking of that," I laughed. "I heard you're thinking of trading me from the team."
My father's mouth lines grew deeper. I could have filled them with water and it wouldn't have spilled. "I see. You came here to start a fight about that."
“No, I came here to try and be honest with you. I have news that's better for you to hear from me than anyone else."
"How the hell did you fuckup this time, Junior?"
He didn't seem surprised. Not one bit. That was my breaking point. "You'll love this. Ready? You're about to be a grandfather,” I said matter-of-factly.
That’s when my dad socked me in the jaw.
I spun sideways, nearly falling down the stairs. Gripping the banister, I held my mouth and stared at him with a mix of shock and delight. "How long have you wanted to do that?" I asked, feeling for loose teeth.
“You moron," he growled. "You absolute idiot. Do you realize what you’ve done? What kind of gutter trash did you knock up?”
Black fury turned my voice thick and hot. "I might be a moron, but Jo isn't trash."
"Jo?" he asked, his hands falling to his sides. "She's the one? I hired her to keep this exact thing from happening! That dumb bitch! She—"
I came very close to hitting my father. Stomping forward, I shoved him backwards—he leaned on the far wall, gawking at me with seething disgust. "Blame me," I said softly. "If you have to hate someone, let it be me. Jo did nothing wrong. Whatever you do, remember that. I'm the fuckup here, remember? Just me. No one else."
Over his shoulder, I saw my mother watching. Her face was unreadable. It smothered what was left of my anger, and all I had now was a sense of feeling lost. I'd gone and made sure that this secret couldn't be used against me.
But the truth wasn't much safer.
My hope was that I'd be the only one to suffer, that Jo would keep her job—her reputation—somehow. I wanted this to work out. And the longer I stood there, facing down my father with his bitter disappointment and my mother with her ghost-like presence, the less I felt it could.
I turned my back on them and walked out the door.
"Hunter!"
My father ran across the lawn, his jacket flapping. I half-faced him, my hand on my car door. "Didn't you say enough back there?"
Breathing heavily, he straightened and put his hands up. "Ignore your pride a moment and listen to me." Ignore my pride? He was one to talk. "You messed up. We can both agree there. But let's talk solutions."
My hand fell from the car. "I'm listening."
His voice evened out. "If it gets out that Jo is pregnant, you'll lose everything. This family will look terrible, it'd be a huge scandal."
I smirked wide. "You're not endearing me to listen, Pops."
"Marry her."
That made me freeze, my voice pitching high. "Ex-fucking-scuse me?"
"It doesn't have to mean anything. But a baby with your under the radar girlfriend turned wife will keep the dogs away. Hell, people will probably love it. Celebrity weddings and babies make people spend dollars."
"You really have no boundaries."
"You're the one with no boundaries, sleeping with your P.R. agent." His hair waved in the air, his mouth a bloodless line. "It's the only way, Junior."
"This plan," I said, considering him suspiciously. "You came up with it awfully fast."
His face was smooth as stone. "Let's just say after your little fiasco with Poppy, watching you go insane as some poor excuse for coping—" I laughed sharply with disgust, he ignored me and kept going. "—I had a feeling you'd slip up."
"Got it. You expected this would happen and you were ready." Opening my car, I sat inside, speaking to him through the window. "I bet you're real glad you did. Real smug that you were right about me."
I didn't hang around to listen to him. As much as I hated my father, something else was bothering me.
Marry her. Marry Jo.
My dad was a bastard for telling me to fix this or else he'd burn her world down. Mine, too. But there was something else here. A thing so black and slimy and such a part of me that I drove faster just to try and escape it:
I loved this plan.
It meant I'd get to see Jo—something I couldn't get enough of and itched for constantly.
Pulling out my phone, I did the only thing I could think of.
I messaged Reese for advice.
8
Jo
Lanie came over as soon as I called her. I told her about my ankle over the phone, but not about the pregnancy. She arrived at the door with a couple of pints of ice cream and a six-pack of beer.
“Nothing makes me feel better like a drink and Ben and Jerry’s,” Lanie said, trying to make me feel better. Then she saw the pile of tissues on the cushion beside me. “Are you alright, sis? Is your ankle really that bad?”
Lying back on the couch, I shoved the pile of tissues away so she could sit. “I have some news."
“Now you're scaring me," she laughed nervously. "Did you get fired?"
“No. But I expect I will. Lanie, I’m . . . pregnant.” My eyes filled with tears, the puffy skin burning and raw from the constant saltiness.
Lanie put her hand on my shoulder. “Oh, Jo! How did this happen, are you sure?"
Sniffling, I took the pint of ice cream and held it to my forehead—I hoped it'd soothe the throbbing pain. “That night in LA. I thought we used a condom, but maybe we didn't. I don’t know anymore.”
“It's Hunter's?" I was almost offended by her surprise, but she was quick to give me a firm hug. That was better than any ice cream. "Does he know?"
“Yeah, we found out together when he took me to the ER for my ankle.”
I was about to finish the story when I heard a knock on the door. Lanie stood, staring between me and the door. "Uh, did you order pizza or something?"
I shook my head, my eyes wide.
"Are you expecting someone?"
Again, I shook my head. "Oh no, what if it's Hunter?" I'd made him leave earlier and I already regretted that. I'd just been so unsure and terrified.
Lanie got up and squinted through the peephole. Shooting me a look of pure shock, she opened the door. It wasn't Hunter who walked in, though for a second, in the low lights of the apartment hallway, I could have been fooled.
But Hunter's father had none of the same charm or pleasantness of his son. Maybe he never did. He was wearing some kind of flamboyant looking jacket and he smelled like whiskey.
“Who might you be?” he asked Lanie.
She gawked at me helplessly—she must have known who he was by sight.
“This is my sister, Lanie. Come in, Mr. Daniels,” I said, trying to act cool.
He entered my living room with a benevolent expression on his face. He seemed like he was trying to be nice, and that made me trust him even less. “Hunter told me everything, Miss Cooke. I come to you tonight with three options for how we can all move forward."
Leaning forward, I grabbed for my crutches. I was feeling vulnerable on my couch with my ankle propped on a table beside some bottles of beer. "Options? What?"
He glanced at the ice cream and drinks, then back to me. "The first option is the quickest. I think you know what I mean, and it’s the easiest way to put all of this behind us. If money is an issue, I’d have you under the best care with the best physicians and the bills would be covered by myself—”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, hating Hunter’s dad for even suggesting that I get rid of the pregnancy.
Lanie shut the door loudly. "Hey, excuse me, but who do you think you are to come marching in here to give my sister options?"
“I'm the man who wants to stop two careers from being ruined
thanks to some stupid hormones," he said, his quiet calmness worse than if he'd shouted. "Hunter will lose everything if the world finds out he got a one-night stand pregnant."
I scowled, but he was hitting on the same fears I'd had so far.
"Plus," he said, "I'll make sure that all of your past professional failings come to light. Not only will you be the harlot that seduced a pro ball player for money, but you’ll be known as the person who got Camille Von Ella hooked on drugs again. You told her to be thin, and gave her what she needed to stay that way. That’s how it will look once I’m done with you. I know all about how you P.R. people play your little games.”
Hunter’s father stepped closer to me, and I leaned into the couch. “That never happened!"
“The truth rarely matters in these cases,” he continued. “You should know that. My, you really aren’t very good at your job, are you?”
Lanie jumped in to defend me. “Hey, don’t talk to her like that.”
He leveled his stare on me. “This situation is difficult for all of us.”
I seethed at his every word. I wanted to kick him out, but I needed to know what his plan for Hunter was.
When he saw I was done, he went on. “Option number three I think you will find to be the most amenable. You and Hunter will be married, and soon. You will pretend as though you’d been secretly dating, but ironically enough, didn't want the media attention. People will buy it; it makes for a good story. Then, when your pregnancy news comes out, it won’t be a scandal that will topple the Hawks' franchise. Hunter has already agreed to my terms, but I need to know that I can trust you not to ruin it all. Do we have a deal, Miss Cooke?”
The drumming in my chest became a stampede that hurt my ribs. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't speak. He wanted me to marry Hunter? Beyond that, to lie about our lives, our relationship?
He thought this was an actual option for me?
“I think you need to leave, Mr. Daniels,” I said.
“I’ll go, but we’re not through yet. Think carefully on all of this, Ms. Cooke,” he said.
Lanie shut the door behind him, whirling on me right after. “Holy fuck, that guy is off his rocker.”
