Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance)

by Alycia Taylor

  So now I’m sitting here on the balcony of the five star Hotel Claris in downtown Barcelona and I’m pinching myself to make sure it’s all real.

  “What are you doing?” I looked up to see Paul standing in between the French doors of our suite and the balcony that attached to it. He was wearing one of the fluffy, white robes they left for the guests and I was wearing the other. We’d made it in time to watch the Sunset. After watching it we were both feeling so romantic that we had to try out the giant, fluffy bed. Paul took his shower first afterwards while I sat out on the balcony and had a glass of wine.

  “I was pinching myself,” I told him.

  He laughed and came over and put his strong hands on my shoulders. “Are you making sure you’re awake and not dreaming?”

  “Exactly,” I told him. “Sometimes it’s all so surreal.”

  He leaned down and kissed the side of my face. “I can understand that. But this is real. Get used to it. One of my goals is to make sure you have to pinch yourself on a daily basis to ensure that it’s all real. I don’t ever want to stop surprising you.”

  I reached up and put the palm of my hand on the side of his face. “I love you, Paul. You know that I don’t need all of this. I was in love with you when you lived in an abandoned gym.”

  “I know,” he said. “I love you too.” He sat down next to me. I wanted it to be like this forever. I wanted to believe that someday we would get married and have children and grow old together. I know it was still soon to talk about it, so I hadn’t brought it up. It was maybe too soon to think about it, but that, I couldn’t help. The only problem was that there were still two questions that poke at my brain sometimes…two things I needed to ask Paul to explain.

  “Can I ask you a question, babe? Two questions, actually?”

  “Sure, anything,” he said.

  “Well, I’ve been wondering since that night we went to look for my mom at the church…how was it that the pastor knew you by name?”

  He hesitated and for a second I felt a flutter of doubt. I chastised myself for it. Paul had given me no reason to do anything but trust him. He finally said, “I dated a girl who had a problem with drugs. I took her there for her meetings sometimes and for a while I volunteered at the church…when I had the time.”

  “I thought that you said you never really had a serious relationship.” I didn’t want to sound like I was accusing him of things, but I really needed to understand. Surely a man wouldn’t take a woman he barely knew for drug treatment.

  “That’s the truth. I have never had an actual relationship until now. I only went out with her once, but I was stupid and let things get complicated.”

  “Yet you decided to help her with her drug problem…after only one date?” I guess that’s the part that didn’t really make sense.

  He sighed. “I went out with her one night. We saw a movie and had dinner. When I took her home she invited me in. I should have said no, but I didn’t so I have no excuses. We had sex and I also agreed to do it knowing I didn’t have any more condoms. She got pregnant. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months when she called and told me. I knew that I had to step up and be a father, but I had no desire to be a husband…or even a live in boyfriend to this girl. I gave her money and I told her I would come and see her often…I didn’t know yet about her drug problem, but I figured it out pretty fast. I went over one time when she was about five months along and I found her and some guy sitting on the front porch of her apartment, smoking meth. I freaked out and I physically removed the guy from her front porch and I tried to make her go to the hospital and have the baby checked out. She said that if she did that and she tested positive for meth…social services would come and take the baby as soon as he was born.”

  “He?” I asked.

  He looked sad and he had to swallow hard as he said, “Yeah, it was a boy. I was getting used to the idea of having a baby. Marie and I had decorated the extra room in my apartment for him and I was already trying to think of names…I couldn’t stand the thought of someone taking him and putting him in a foster home….I didn’t make her go to the hospital that day. Maybe if I had things would have turned out differently. Then again, maybe not. Either way I will always regret that for the rest of my life.”

  “She didn’t stop using?”

  “I thought she had. She told me she had. Since I didn’t live with her, it was hard for me to know the truth. I should have looked closer…I should have let her come and live with me…that was what she wanted. I should have put the safety and well-being of my child above all else.” He paused there and looked as if he was hoping I’d let it go. We were in too deep now. I had to know who I was sleeping with.

  “What happened?” I finally asked.

  “I forced her to go into treatment,” he said.

  “You forced her?”

  “I threatened to stop paying her bills and I told her that I would take the baby from her when he was born and not let her see him. I was a dick about it and just thinking about it makes me hate myself all over again, so yeah I would call it forced…or maybe even bullied.”

  “It’s a common mistake,” I told him. “We think we can “fix them” but the problem is they have to be willing to do the work. When you love someone that’s hurting themselves…It’s almost impossible to just sit back and watch it happen.”

  “I didn’t love her, Jessie. I’ve never been in love before, until you. I loved my baby and this woman, his mother was a means to that end.”

  I took his hand and I cringed at the tears that welled in his eyes as I said, “What happened to him, Paul?” I knew this would be the harder part for him to talk about.

  His voice was shaky and I almost wished I hadn’t asked as he went on, “She went to the meetings for a while. I found out later that she never stopped using. She stopped the meth because it was easy for me to tell when she was using that. She started taking pills…OxyContin.”

  “Like my mom.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. That’s why I called your mother a druggie that night. It gave me flashbacks and freaked me out….She was taking lots of pills. She wasn’t paying her bills or buying food with the money I gave her. She was buying drugs. One day she didn’t show up for her meeting and I went to her apartment to get her. She didn’t answer the door and I was mad. I busted it down and I found her in a pool of her own vomit. She overdosed. By the time the ambulance got there, she was dead. They tried to save the baby, but he was gone too.”

  I had tears streaming down my own face now. I couldn’t believe he’d gone through all of that. My heart was breaking for him. “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I know that you have to take responsibility for being a part of the pregnancy…But, otherwise it sounds to me like you did the best that you could. I am sorry you had to go through that.”

  “Me too,” he said, “The thing was, I wasn’t a child. I knew what the consequences of unprotected sex can be.

  ******

  Our first morning in Barcelona we watched the sunrise while we had breakfast on the terrace. It started out subtly and little by little it covered the haze that hung over the city with a pure white light. I don’t know about Paul, but as I watched it, I felt the weight of the past few months dissolving and as they did, I felt as light as the breeze blowing across the beautiful old city. After breakfast we took a walk down to the docks and saw some of the city. We window shopped along the stores on the beachfront and I made a mental note of the ones I wanted to come back and explore later. There were entertainers out in the streets, playing guitars or dancing or juggling. It seemed like the entire city had waked up with the sun and they had all come out to play. We found our way to the pier and got on a ferry that took us out to a small island for our first snorkeling lesson. I had marveled at the brilliant clear blue of the Mediterranean Sea while we stood at the edge of the ferry and looked out on it, but that was nothing compared to standing on the beach. The sun was vibrant and the beams shone down onto the sand and made it spark
le like millions of tiny jewels had been scattered across it. At the edge of the shore where the sea met the sand, the waves rolled in gently and their white foam tips would break up as it lapped at the edges. I was speechless at first and then I started snapping pictures like the crazy tourist that I was.

  The tour guide gave us a rundown on what we would do and see. They had given us all brochures and a manual as well. There was a number to call on the brochure if they lost the card. After about an hour lesson, the equipment was passed out and we suited up for our adventure. I was used to the Los Angeles beaches where the water was freezing and you couldn’t see a thing under the cover of murky water. The Mediterranean waters were so different. They were so clear that we could see all the way to the sea bed below. I put on my face mask and snorkel and Paul and I entered the water hand in hand. The first thing I saw was a big, orange starfish. My only regret was that I couldn’t squeal and tell Paul to look. Instead I tapped him and pointed. He looked and smiled. Then as a crab scuttled across the sea bed, I did the same thing. I may have even pointed out the shoals of fish that were impossible to miss as they darted first this way and then that. I was in awe of our new environment and I wanted to take in everything.

  We floated on our stomachs and let the waves carry us along lazily as we watched the sea life below us. It was an amazing four-dimensional theatre and as we watched it the warm sun warmed our backs. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I’d ever been a part of and I was disappointed when the trip came to an end.

  We took the ferry back to the pier and after going back to the hotel to change we had dinner at a place called, La Dolce Vita. At first I thought it was strange that we were having Italian food while in Spain, but once we finished I had no regrets. Paul ordered us a bottle of wine and we had a table near the window where we could look out over the ocean while we ate. The food lived up to its five-star rating and I was so full afterwards that I felt like I could have been rolled right out.

  We took a walk through the city then. The sun was just going down and casting an orange glow across everything. We walked through a little plaza where the pigeons seemed to outnumber the people. There was a fountain in the center of it and in the center of that, a statue of a mermaid. The mermaid spit out the water and it would spray up into the air in brilliant colors of red and green and blue. The tall buildings around the edges were brightly colored and there were vivid flowers everywhere. As darkness descended on us, the bright, twinkly lights of the city began to take the place of the sun and cast a dim glow across everything as far as we could see.

  Every day we spent there, we did something different. We went to museums and parks and concerts, and some days we just spent hours walking on the beach and collecting seashells. We spent out nights making love and we would wake up every morning in each other’s arms happy to start another day together. I woke up on our last day there with a mixture of excitement because I missed everyone at home, and regret because I was going to miss Spain like crazy. Paul was already gone from the bed and I found him as I was sure I would, standing on the balcony watching the sun finish coming up out of the ocean.

  “Hey, good morning.”

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he said, “How did you sleep?”

  “I sleep like a log here. I’m going to miss it. I told him.

  “The sleep or Spain? He asked.

  “Probably both,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, I’m going to miss it too. This was my first trip out of the country if you don’t count Mexico.” But we have a lot more adventures to look forward to. Look, I found this for you.” He handed me a pink seashell. It was huge, about the size of my fist and curled into a perfect crescent and its smooth exterior looked like it had been polished to a brilliant shine. That was the other beautiful thing about the beaches here. The seashells washed up whole more often than not. I had found a whole sand dollar just the day before.

  “It’s beautiful, thank you.”

  “Open it,” he said.

  “Open it?” I repeated. I was looking around it and didn’t see any buttons or hooks. I can’t remember what it felt like.”

  “Yeah, it’s hollow inside. Move that little flap on the end and look inside.”

  I moved the delicate little sliver of shell slowly and carefully because I didn’t want to break it. When that was out of the way, I looked inside. There was a little white velvet box inside. I pulled it out, not daring to hope that it was what I wanted it to be, and I looked at Paul. He had slid down to one knee and when I looked at him he took my left hand in his right and said, “Jessie, will you marry me?”

  I felt the tears streaming down my face again. He opened the box and I was staring down at a princess cut sapphire set in white gold. It had a delicate ring of diamonds around the primary stone. I had never seen a more beautiful ring and I loved most of all because it was different. I also loved knowing he had gone to pick it out by himself. My hands were shaking and so were Paul’s.

  “Oh my God! Yes! I’ll marry you! Yes! Yes!

  I know I sounded like I was having an orgasm, but I didn’t care. I was over the moon excited and I would tell the whole world if they cared to listen. Paul took the ring out of the box and took my hand in his. He slipped the ring on my finger. It fit perfectly. “I love it.” “How did you know the size?” I asked him.

  “Marie helped with that part,” he said.

  “It takes my breath away,” I told him about the ring. “Thank you so much.”

  “You make it look good,” he said. “But, I don’t think this matches,” he took the lapels of my robe in his fingertips and pulled on it gently.

  “What? My robe?”

  “Mm hmm, and whatever you have underneath too. We don’t want anything clashing with the ring.”

  “Maybe I should step in off the balcony?”

  Paul looked around. “Maybe…You saw that guy on the beach yesterday though, didn’t you?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The bare-assed naked man that no one even seemed to notice but us.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said.

  “My point is, no one here is too affected by nudity, and you look a hell of a lot better than that guy.”

  “You think?”

  He laughed, “I love you…all of you…but if you looked anything like that guy, trust me, I would have never asked you to take off the robe.”

  I stood up and brushed past him with a dramatic flourish. Once inside, I took off the robe. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Paul grinned and dropped his robe too. He came over to me and in one grand swoop; he picked me up off my feet. “What say we try that big tub in there with the jets?”

  “I say you come up with the best ideas.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I started the water in the big sunken tub in our suite. Paul stood back and ogled my naked body and then all of a sudden he said, “You got this part?”

  “Sure,” I said, wondering what he was up to. I reached into the basket on the counter of supplies the hotel had given us as part of our package. There was a bottle of bubble bath oil in there. I opened it and put it to my nose. It smelled like jasmine. I thought twice about pouring it in. It was going to make Paul smell like a girl. I smelled it again and decided that the only one who should care about that was me and I didn’t. I poured in the entire little bottle.

  While the tub filled, I sat down and admired my ring again. I can’t believe I’m getting married. I can’t believe I’m marrying Paul. Just a few months ago he was struggling fighter protecting his family and I was a girl with smelly clothes….how far we’ve come.

  The tub finished filling and I turned it off. “It’s ready,” I called out to him.

  “Okay, go ahead and get in, I’ll be right there. Don’t start any of the fun stuff without me.”

  I stepped into the tub and sat back into the deep bubbles. They smelled really good and the warm water felt great. I rested my head against the curve of the cool porcelain and waited.

 
“Are you asleep?”

  I smiled and said, “Not yet, but if you don’t hurry…”

  I heard a clink noise and opened my eyes. There was a brass ice bucket resting in a decanter next to the tub, a whole slew of scented candles which he was lighting as we spoke and an IPod in a deck with speakers.

  “Wow! What’s all this?”

  “It’s our celebration,” he said.

  “What are we celebrating?”

  He looked shocked as he continued to light candles. “Our engagement,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah…I didn’t forget, I just hadn’t heard that we were celebrating.”

  He finished lighting the candles which he had lined up along the mirror and then he pushed the button on the IPOD. Music began to waft slowly from the speakers. His final touch was to shut off the overhead light. The scented candles were doing the trick. Now, we had ambiance. He poured two flutes of champagne and sat them on the side of the tub and then slid in behind me. I felt his hands go around my stomach and gently pull me back against his chest.

  "Mm you feel good." He whispered into against my hair. The feel of his breath so close to my ear gave me a chill.

  I put my head back against his shoulder and said, “You feel good too.”

  He was running his hands across my body. The water and slick soap acted as lubricants as he massaged first my thighs and then shoulders. When he finished that, he put his lips on my neck and after a few soft kisses, he bit down. It was just a little nibble but it gave me a shudder. He ran his mouth up along my neck to my jaw and up to my ear. He sucked my earlobe into his mouth and held it between his teeth. He flicked it back and forth with his tongue just the way he did with my clit when he eats my pussy. He had me squirming from side to side and finally I turned my head to the side and met his lips. It was a soft kiss at first, but it rapidly accelerated. I pushed my tongue into his mouth and the feel of his warm tongue against mine elicited a moan from one of us. I was so into the kiss, that I’m not even sure which one. I had ahold of his face with my palm on one side and I moved his face back just a fraction of an inch so that I could deepen the kiss. I ran my tongue back and forth along his, stroking it. I felt his hand slide down across my stomach and lightly brush against my pussy. I felt him start to pull it away again but I was in no mood this morning to be teased. I lifted my legs one at a time and put them on either side of his. Then I took ahold of his hand and pushed it down between my legs. He licked my bottom lip and let out a low growl as he felt me guide his fingers inside my pussy lips. His other hand had found one of my breasts. That was what I was in the mood for. I kept one hand over his between my legs and slid the other one up and covered the one that was rolling my hard nipple between his fingers. Then I let my body relax back into him and I turned my head back so that I could let my tongue slide back into his mouth.