Team Player: A Sports Romance Anthology

by Adriana Locke

  “I’m moving to California,” I say abruptly. Her eyes widen before she catches the reaction and controls it.

  “Oh, I thought . . .” She stops the nervous tugging of the sheets. “Oh.”

  “I told you my ex moved there. She keeps making it harder for me to see Kiera.” I sigh wearily and scrub a hand over my face. “She’s just pissed because she didn’t get more out of the divorce.”

  “They say it’s cheaper to keep her,” Avery says with a cynical twist of her lips.

  “Then ‘they’ don’t have my lawyer or my pre-nup.” We share a smile that comes a little easier to us both. “At the last minute, she pulled some crap so I have to go to LA to see my baby girl for Christmas, when she was supposed to come here for two weeks.”

  “I’m sorry, Deck.”

  “Yeah. So am I. It’ll just be simpler for me to live out there.” I hesitate for a moment before sitting on the edge of the bed, within touching distance if she decides to touch me. “I’ve been offered a front office position with that new expansion team the San Diego Waves. President of Basketball Operations, with the possibility of partial ownership eventually.”

  Ever the journalist, curiosity and questions stack up in Avery’s wide eyes.

  “And we are off the record, by the way,” I remind her. “This isn’t public yet.”

  “All right, all right. I get it.” She pulls her legs up to her chest, resting her chin on sheet-covered knees. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. It works for me personally, so I can be closer to my daughter, and professionally because it’s the kind of opportunity I’ve wanted, but didn’t think I’d get for at least another five years.”

  “That’s great, Deck.” Her face has become the mask she showed me when we first started hosting her show together three weeks ago. “I’m happy for you.”

  “I don’t want you to be happy for me, Avery. I want you to tell me that what we had the last twenty-four hours is enough to build on. That when I go away, we can try to build more.”

  “You saw me last night.” Her mouth is the only thing wavering in her obstinate expression. “You know I’m a mess.”

  “We’re all a mess.” I scoot closer, palm her jaw and press my forehead to hers. “We’ll figure it out.”

  She shakes her head against mine, not breaking the contact between our skin.

  “There are some things I need to figure out on my own. Questions not just about Will, but about myself that I need to answer.” She mirrors my touch, her hand cupping my jaw. “As much as I enjoyed last night, as much as I . . .”

  She swallows, shutting her eyes.

  “Deck, deep down you know I’m not ready.”

  I glance up to find her cheeks wet again, tears leaking from under her closed eyelids. I want to deny it. As much as I want to convince her that she is ready; that I’ll make her ready, or be ready enough for both of us, I know it doesn’t work that way. I still hear her sobs and feel her shaking in my arms, recounting the horror of finding Will in their apartment. I still hear her agony over his last words to her.

  “Okay. I accept that you’re not ready. I have to go to California, and I know you have to stay here in New York.”

  I dip my head to kiss her, coaxing her lips open for a languorous dueling of tongues that quickly ignites fire in me. In Avery, too, if her nails digging into my back are any indication.

  I give her hair a gentle tug until she’s looking directly into my eyes.

  “The time may not be right, but we feel right, Ave. Tell me you see how right we feel together.”

  Her nod is the only answer she offers, sniffing at the fresh tears I know aren’t all for Will. Aren’t all for her. I know that some of them are for me. I bend to kiss her cheeks, darting my tongue out to gather the salt of her tears.

  “Hey, look at me.” I gently angle her face up so we have no choice but to see one another. “Promise me that when you have the answers you’re looking for, that when you’re ready, you’ll find me.”

  She leans deeper into me, uncaring that the sheet drops, baring her stubble-burned breasts. She takes my mouth in a kiss that is part consolation, part declaration. She eases away, licking her lips like she can taste me there.

  “That’s a promise I plan to keep.”

  13

  Avery

  “Are you sure about this, Avery?”

  I ease into my cashmere coat and turn to face my mother.

  “Yes, definitely.” I pull my hair free of the collar. “Mrs. Hattfield only lives fifteen minutes away. I’ll be back in time for dinner. Promise.”

  “It’s not getting back I’m concerned about.” My own brown eyes stare back at me from my mother’s face, inlaid with concern.

  “I know you lost Will, and he was your future. You loved him,” Mom says. “But Will was her son. It may not feel like it now, but you’ll find someone else. Marry. Have a family. You will move on. She only had one son. The pain of losing a child, you can’t imagine it.”

  I finish tying the belt of my coat with slowed hands and a rapid heartbeat. Will wasn’t my future. I wasn’t in love with him, and it’s a different man I already can’t get out of my mind. The one who kissed my tears and rocked my world just days ago. I felt lighter after telling Deck the truth, and right now I want to tell someone else.

  “Mom, there’s something I haven’t told you.” A self-deprecating laugh escapes me. “Hadn’t told anyone really until a few days ago.”

  I get my nose for news from my mother. A journalism professor at Georgetown, it kind of broke her heart when I chose to attend Howard. She may have chosen the classroom, and I chose the field, but she still has the inquisitive mind of a journalist, and the questions gather in her eyes and between her brows as a frown.

  “Okay.” She leans against the stairway bannister in our foyer. “What is it?”

  Considering how closely I’ve guarded this secret, you’d think I’d reveal it with some ceremony. Not on my way out the door with the car already running and warming up.

  “Will and I, well . . .” I drop my gaze to the hardwood floor and tug at the fingertips of my leather gloves. “We weren’t happy at the end.”

  I glance up after a few moments of quiet. It’s not a stunned silence. It’s a knowing one. My mother doesn’t look surprised, merely curious, waiting for more.

  “I suspected as much,” she finally says. “I could tell as soon as I met him that Will was a sad man, but you made him happy. As happy as one person can make another, but ultimately our happiness doesn’t hang on other people. We have to first be happy with ourselves, and I don’t know that Will ever was.”

  Now I’m stunned. We haven’t talked much about Will’s suicide. Mom knows I found him in our apartment, but not much else.

  “I was getting my things from the apartment because I’d broken off our engagement.” The soft admission reverberates through the foyer. “I had agreed to wait to tell everyone. He wanted that, for us to be sure, but I was sure.”

  Rarely have I seen my mother truly off kilter, but I do now. Her mouth forms a little O of astonishment, before she covers it with her hand. She crosses the few feet from the stairs to reach me.

  “Oh, baby.” She takes my face between her hands. “I had no idea. You’ve been blaming yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Mama, he left a note.” I lean into the soft comfort of her hand. “For me. It was just to me, and I never told anyone. I kept it. I didn’t show the police or . . .”

  A sob breaks free from my chest, and tears leak into her palm.

  “What did I do?” I moan. “Did I . . . should I . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Shhhh.” She pulls me close, the Chanel perfume she’s worn for decades a reassurance that breaks whatever tendrils of control I have. My tears pour out, an unrelenting, inconvenient storm. “It’s okay, baby. Let it out.”

  She rocks me in an ancient maternal rhythm that no one teaches; the same one she used when I fell and scraped my knee. When I
experienced my first heartbreak. When I buried Will a year ago. After a few moments, she pulls away, hands on my arms so she can look into my face. I sniff and pass my coat sleeve self-consciously under my runny nose.

  “No, honey. That’s not how it works.” She gives a sad shake of her head. “Will was obviously a troubled man, and I know it feels like cause and effect. Like you broke it off and he ended his life. We experience life, all of us, in the bad and the good times and the good people and the ones who hurt us. Everyone does. There are some people life is just harder for than others. Will was one of those, but you told me before how he struggled and didn’t always take his medication.”

  “I don’t want to make this about how he failed as a person. I don’t want to blame him,” I rush to say. “I’m not trying to ease my guilt.”

  “Well I am.” My mother’s eyebrows elevate. “Because you have nothing to feel guilty about. Will hurt in a way that we will probably never understand, and for that there is no one to blame. But there’s a difference between blame and responsibility. We are each responsible for ourselves. And what Will did, he was responsible for.”

  That’s a distinction I’ve tried to make to myself more than once, but I always seem to come back to my part in it, and anything I could have done differently. I nod, leaning forward to kiss her cheek before fastening the buttons left undone on my coat.

  “I hear you, Mama.” I walk to the door and give her one last look over my shoulder. “I’ll be back.”

  “Hey, you aren’t planning to tell Mrs. Hattfield that, are you?”

  Was I? On some level, I feel like I need to get it off my chest; like I owe her an explanation.

  “You told me,” my mother says, gripping my hand. “I’m glad you did, because I think you needed that, but that situation is already complicated enough for her. Knowing you and Will broke up only makes it more complicated. May just make it harder, and right now she feels you are the only one in the world close to understanding her pain.”

  I think of our conversations over the last year. Not many, but each one, a release, a relief for us both.

  “Don’t take that away from her with information that makes no difference,” Mama says. “That does no good. It might make you feel better, but it does nothing for her, and she’s your first concern now. That note was to you and you alone. Private. I just want her to be able to move on and accept your comfort. It wasn’t your fault. She’ll know that, but knowing this would only raise more questions, and she already has enough of those.”

  I’m playing Mama’s words in my head when I pull up to Mrs. Hattfield’s. I park my father’s Tahoe in the driveway, noting the dying rose bush in front of the house. The grass is longer than the last time I was here, even though it’s winter. Her house, always neat and perfectly kept, appears slightly disheveled. I ring the doorbell, waiting. When there is no answer after a few moments, I walk over to the garage, peering in and finding the Cadillac Will used to tease his mother about.

  “Are you a pimp, Ma?” he’d ask laughingly. “Rolling around in your Cadillac.”

  I mouth the words, smiling at the image of Will seated in the living room just beyond the doors of this house. One year we helped Mrs. Hattfield trim her tree. Will roasted marshmallows in the fireplace. His mother and I had hot chocolate, and Will had cider. My life with him rushes back to me in vivid detail; the colors, the scents, the touches, the laughs, the tears, the good and the bad. All of it inundates my mind and blurs my vision.

  And I miss him.

  Not all the hurt we caused each other at the end. I miss the boy I met at a public library, who crushed on me for years without letting me know. Who took me trick or treating with his twelve-year-old cousin for our first date. I laughed with my friends about it, but we all thought it was sweet.

  “God, Will.” I shake my head, blinking at the tears freezing before they fall. I turn to leave, my steps dragging toward Dad’s SUV.

  “Avery?”

  I turn at the sound of my name, and Mrs. Hattfield stands at the front door, her chin wobbling and her face already streaked with tears. I run, avoiding little patches of ice, needing to get to her. As soon as I’m close, her arms stretch out and she pulls me into her. Her sobs vibrate into my chest.

  “I miss him.” Mrs. Hattfield weeps unashamedly, her head buried in the collar of my coat. “God, I miss him so much.”

  “I know,” I whisper, my pain communing with hers. “So do I.”

  And it doesn’t matter if I was wearing his ring. If we were lovers or friends at the end. If he cheated or how we injured each other. All that matters is that I loved him, and so did she. That besides the woman I’m holding, I was closer to him than anyone else on the planet. She and I knew his strengths and his weaknesses like no one else ever did, and can console one another uniquely.

  We stand like that for I’m not sure how long. Long enough for the winter cold to bite through my gloves and whip beneath my coat. I pull back and look through the open front door. It’s dark in there. No sign of life. No savory smells of food cooking or the pine scent of a live Christmas tree.

  “Get your coat, Mrs. H,” I command gently. “You’re coming home with me.”

  I didn’t get to tell my mom I was bringing someone home for Christmas dinner, but when I arrive, Mrs. Hattfield in tow, she doesn’t look surprised and already has an extra plate at the table.

  “How’d you know?” I ask her quietly while we set out side dishes.

  “I know you.” She smiles, pride in her eyes that has nothing to do with anything I’ve achieved or a goal I’ve crushed. She’s proud of me for who I am, not for what I’ve done. Mrs. Hattfield and I share a tearful smile at dinner before we say grace. Still sorting through the tangle of guilt and shame and pain and fury, I hope one day soon I’ll know me, too.

  14

  Decker

  “Who’s next?” Seated on the couch of the San Diego hotel suite, I stretch my arms above my head.

  “It’s the last of the day.” My assistant Marla looks up from my schedule on her iPad.

  “Thank God for that.” I crook a grin at her. “Is it too early to start drinking?”

  “You drinking?” she scoffs. “What? One of your protein shakes?”

  “That would be nice.” My smile beseeches. “Could you?”

  She rolls her eyes, but her smile is good-natured and longsuffering, two things anyone working with me needs to be.

  “Let me get you set up for this last interview,” she says. “And I’ll run up the street to grab one.”

  “From that place I like, right?” I push my luck.

  “Yes, from the place you like.” She shakes her head and swipes across the iPad screen. “Gimme a sec and I’ll brief you on this last one.”

  I’ve lost count of how many reporters I’ve talked to today for the San Diego Waves’ media blitz. I, along with other front office executives, have made ourselves available to the press for questions about the new NBA expansion team, our draft prospects, and the upcoming first season. My canned responses have started losing their shine. The more tired I get, the more I feel like the jock still wet from the shower, no compunction giving half-naked interviews, and less like the guy in the suit scoping talent and making multimillion-dollar decisions. Thank God this is the last of the day.

  “It’s your old network,” Marla says with a smile. “SportsCo.”

  I stare at her, my heart banging against my rib cage. I’m holding my breath like some lovesick chick waiting to hear Avery’s name. She texted me congratulations when my position was announced, but didn’t really engage much beyond that, even when I tired. Not that I’ve tried much. She asked for space, and I’ve given it to her. Though I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out. We only worked in close proximity for three weeks, and we only had one night, but I miss everything about her. I lick my lips before I ask the next question.

  “Oh yeah? And uh . . . who’d they send for the interview?”

  “Huh? O
h. Lemme see.” Marla trails her finger down the screen until she reaches the bottom. “Mike Dunlov is the reporter from SportsCo. Ring a bell?”

  “Sheesh.” I suck my teeth. “A bell? No, more like a gong. I can’t stand that guy.”

  Disappointment settles on my shoulders, but I square them, refusing to droop. When she’s ready she’ll come. Avery’s too strong-willed for me to force the issue. We had our night. She knows how good we are together. She needs time to heal, and I’m giving it to her. That’s the thing with a full-court press. You have to know when to apply it, and when to let up, or it’s useless.

  When there’s a faint knock at the suite door, Marla disappears from the sitting room to answer. I look up, grinning at Jerry, the cameraman who danced with Sadie that night.

  “How you doing?” I stand and wait for him to shift enough of his equipment to shake my hand.

  “Good, Deck,” Jerry replies with a smile. “Congratulations on all of this.”

  “Thanks, man. I . . .”

  The words disintegrate from my lips and from my mind when Avery, not Mike Dunlov, walks into the sitting room with Marla. She looks beautiful as usual, but her hair is different. It’s curly, the way I told her I like it. The way it was the day we met in the locker room. She gives me her professional smile, but there’s a glint in her eyes that says she knows what I look like under this suit. We are intimately acquainted, and the closer she gets, the thicker the air becomes with our knowledge of each other. Unspoken, the memory of our moans, our rough fucking, our tenderness charges the air, and even though we’re having a silent conversation, it becomes obvious that Marla and Jerry sense something.

  “Uh . . .” Jerry’s eyes move between Avery and me staring at each another. “Where should I set up the camera and lighting kit?”