by Jillian Dodd
His blue eyes are transfixed on me, seemingly looking deeper, possibly into my soul, to see if I believe what I’m saying.
He takes a step toward me, possessively takes my face into his hands, and continues to look at me. He breaks eye contact for just a moment, his gaze shifting down to my mouth. He drags his thumb across my lower lip. I close my eyes as a soft moan escapes.
I tilt my face up, waiting for him to kiss me. Waiting for that perfect moment.
Instead, he drops his hands, walks back into the gym, and looks at the walls. “My wife was jealous of all this, I think.”
I let out a disappointed sigh and then follow him. “I was with an international rock star and DJ, who also owns a production company that works with hot young stars. Truth is, I was never worried or felt jealous. Maybe that was a sign that I didn’t care as much as I should have. All I’m saying is that if I were with you, I’d make sure girls knew I was your wife.”
Why did I just say that? I can’t believe I just mentioned being his wife. He doesn’t want to kiss me. He’s trying to bore me with a tour of his house, hoping I’ll finally get the hint and leave.
I mean, we are here. No kids. No ties. No reason not to …
I follow him around a corner and gasp. “This is my favorite photo of you!”
On the wall in front of us is a mural of Danny holding Devaney with confetti raining down on them. On another wall is a similar version from when he won his second ring, only, in this one, he has both children in his arms. Both are equally touching. Even in a picture version, I can practically feel Danny’s joy.
“So do I.” He grins, leading me around a corner. “We took out the game room to expand the gym, which means this is my wall too.”
“Why is it blank?” I ask. “I mean, every other wall is jam-packed.”
Danny closes his eyes for a moment. When they reopen, they are moist, but he’s wearing the same smile from the murals.
“What?” I say.
He grabs me around the waist and then turns me toward the wall, pressing his chest tightly against my back. Having him hold me like this feels like heaven.
“You know how people make dream boards to motivate themselves?” he asks.
“Like, with stuff they want to buy or places they want to visit?”
“Exactly. This is my dream wall,” he explains.
“But there’s nothing on it.”
“That’s because I visualize what I want it to hold. A third mural like the ones over there with confetti raining down, my children by my side, the fans cheering, the team going crazy, the pride and years of playing and practices, the injuries and pain, the pushing my body, the travel, and the missing my family—all culminated in one humbling, thrilling moment of victory. But when I just closed my eyes, I saw something different.”
“What did you see?”
“You in the picture,” he says, resting his chin on my shoulder.
I clutch my chest, my heart racing, then turn around to face him. “I’d love to be in that picture, Danny.”
We gaze at each other. Both of us knowing what it means. That I want to be with him, share my life with him.
I kiss my index finger and place it on his lips then take my phone out of my back pocket.
Danny looks a little irritated, like I just ruined the moment, but I press a couple of buttons, and then I flip the phone around and show him that I have the same photo of him and Dani.
“I’ve had this picture in every phone I’ve had since it happened. I always wished—”
“That you were there with me?”
“Not just wished really, more like I felt like I belonged there but wasn’t.” Tears fill my eyes. I wipe them away and say, “I don’t know why I’m crying so much. I mean, what the heck? How am I supposed to seduce you if all I do is cry? It’s not very sexy.”
“You want to seduce me?” He lets out a whoosh of air.
“I want to screw your brains out, Danny. Then I want to make love to you and have it be so freaking incredible that it wipes every other sexual encounter you’ve ever had in your life straight out of your mind. I want to win the Championship of Sex when it comes to you.”
He presses his fingers against my cheeks, gently brushing away my tears. “I might have just fallen in love with you,” he says.
“I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you that night on the beach,” I confess.
I kiss him hard—a collision of lips, tongues, and entangled limbs.
He picks me up, carries me to a red leather sofa, and lies on top of me, bringing us even closer while never letting our lips part.
Finally.
I frantically run my hands through his hair as I arch my hips toward him.
A phone rings.
We ignore it.
But then it rings again.
He curses, ripping his lips away as he pulls his phone from his back pocket and looks at the screen. “It’s Phillip.” He presses answer and then says, “Yeah?”
I can immediately tell by the look on his face that something is wrong. He’s already moving toward the stairs, leaving me lying here, like an afterthought.
Which sort of crushes me.
Because that kiss, just like our first one, was everything.
Danny
“You need to get over here,” Phillip says. “We just picked up Devaney from a party. She’s a mess.”
I panic, wondering what happened to her. How she ended up at a party. I start up the stairs and then remember Jennifer. Who I just kissed after all this time.
I turn around. She’s still lying on the couch, her lips red from being kissed and her shirt partially unbuttoned with a sexy bra visible, looking incredibly gorgeous. How I would like to stay here and finish what we started. But I can’t.
“Sorry, that was Phillip. There’s some trouble with my daughter.”
“But I thought she was at the cheerleading slumber party?” she asks, immediately getting up off the couch.
“All Phillip said was that she’s a mess.” I cover my face with my hand and rub my eyes. “I’m not sure I will be able to survive my daughter’s teen years.”
Jennifer takes my hand off my face and kisses it. “It’s probably just girl drama.”
When we get to the Mackenzie house, I find my daughter on the couch in the living room, crying hysterically.
“What’s wrong, honey?” I ask, but as soon as I get close to her, I can tell she’s been drinking, and when she slurs her words and makes exaggerated hand motions, I know she consumed too much—which pisses me off.
“Where have you been?” I yell at her.
She cries some more, stringing together words that really don’t make sense. She seems to be mad at Chase. I turn and notice him standing off to the side of the room with my son. Damon has a smirk on his face, like he thinks this is all funny, but Chase’s face is red, and he looks as if he’s been crying. Angel is clinging to his side, hating that Chase is upset.
I take two steps toward him. “What did you do?”
Phillip touches my shoulder, so I turn around, my face feeling like it’s on fire.
“What happened?” I yell.
Even though my brain is telling me that Chase would never hurt Devaney, the anger I feel is overwhelming, and my daughter is clearly upset.
“Chase picked her up from the party,” Phillip says. “That’s why she’s mad at him. I caught him and Damon in the garage, trying to sneak out. They were going to drive my car, go get her, and bring her home, so she wouldn’t get in trouble.”
I march over to my daughter and grab her hand off her face where she had it buried, and I start acting like a dad. “What were you thinking, going to a party? Why were you drinking?”
Devaney sobs harder then throws up all over the floor. And my shoes.
I hear Damon from behind me mutter, “That was awesome,” as she drops her head into her lap and sings part of a song she liked when she was a little girl.
Chase, who has bee
n stock-still in the corner, is next to her in a flash. He puts his arm around her, starts singing the song with her, and tells her it will be okay.
“I’ll get that,” Jadyn says to me, quickly getting up. “Don’t move.”
While Jadyn cleans up, I’m getting angrier and angrier. What the hell was my fourteen-year-old daughter doing, getting drunk?
I start in on her again. “You lied to me, Devaney. You are so grounded. Like, forever—”
Jennifer touches my back. “Now’s probably not the time, Danny. I’d wait to have this conversation when you’re not so upset and … when she’s sober.”
All of a sudden, Devaney looks up at Chase, like she just realized he was there. “Get away from me!” she yells at him very coherently. “I hate you, Chase Mackenzie!”
He gets tears in his eyes and quickly goes back to his corner.
Devaney starts sobbing again—about everything. Her mom not taking her to the spa tomorrow. About stupid boys. About how no one loves her. About cheerleading. About the divorce.
And I’m finding it hard not to sit down next to her and cry myself. Does she really think no one loves her? That I don’t love her? I’ve spent the last five months since her mother left trying to make sure my children know how much they are loved. That our divorce has nothing to do with them. Have I failed?
Jennifer takes Chase’s vacated spot on the couch. She pulls my daughter into a hug and starts rubbing her hair. She’s speaking in a soothing tone and telling her over and over that everything will be all right. Devaney calms a little but keeps repeating the same things over and over. Almost like she’s talking in her sleep.
While Jadyn finishes cleaning up the puke, Phillip grabs me and takes me outside.
“What the hell happened?” I ask as I pace across his front porch.
“Dani called Chase about a half hour ago. She was slurring, and Chase was really worried about her. He knew from some of his older friends that the cheer slumber party had turned into a huge, alcohol-filled blowout. Dani had texted him and was excited because it was her first high school party and because Dalton Michaels had been flirting with her. Apparently, he’d started texting her this week, but Dani was nervous about it because he had a date to homecoming with a girl on her squad. I guess Dalton kissed Dani, and the girl—who isn’t his girlfriend, just a date—yelled at her in front of everyone and called her a slut. But what freaked Chase out and why he was willing to steal my car and go get her was that she said she was going to leave the party with Dalton, who had been drinking heavily.”
“Jeezus,” I mutter. “Then, what?”
“Chase told her not to leave the party. That he’d come get her. I caught him and Damon in the garage. Chase spilled everything he knew, begged me to drive them. I did. There were cars lined up and down the street. I told Chase I was going in with him, but he said no. A couple of minutes later, he texted to tell me to call the cops and then pull up as close as I could to the door because he’d be out in sixty seconds.” Phillip smiles proudly. “Damon timed him. It took forty-seven. He had gone in there and found her with Dalton, who was drunk and all over her. Chase said something and pulled Devaney away. Dalton threw a drunken punch. Chase ducked, and Dalton’s hand smashed into the stone fireplace instead. Chase said he heard bones crack. Anyway, he got Dani out to the car, and we got the heck out of there.”
“So, Devaney is mad at Chase because he rescued her? He kept her from getting into a car with someone who would have been driving drunk?”
“Yeah, that’s why he’s so upset.”
I shake my head. “I’m not ready for this. How are we going to survive high school?”
“We survived it the first time around,” he says with a grin. “Dani is safe. That’s the main thing.”
“She’s drunk as a skunk.”
“She’s drunk, but she was walking okay, and we did get her to drink some water in the car. If I’d thought she had alcohol poisoning, I would have taken her straight to the hospital.”
I take a deep breath. “Thank you,” I say sincerely.
“You’d do it for me,” he says back. “But I’d appreciate it if you apologized to Chase. He looked horrified when you asked what he did.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll do that and then take my daughter home.”
Jennifer
Devaney is finally mostly asleep. Every once in a while, she wakes up, sobbing. I’m glad that she threw up and got some of the alcohol out of her system. It’s kind of ironic that I ended up here because of alcohol, and now, I’m consoling Danny’s sweet and way-too-young-to-be-drinking daughter over it.
I guess at least I know that you can’t have a sensible conversation with someone who’s been drinking and that it’s important to keep them calm.
The front door opens, causing me to look up and into Danny’s eyes. They look exactly like they did in the photo of him above the toilet. Defeated. I give him a faint smile, trying to let him know that it will be all right.
He goes over and speaks quietly to Chase then sits on the other side of the couch, next to his daughter. “I’m going to take her home now,” he says.
“Do you want me to help you?”
“No, you’ve done enough already.”
I should take that as a nice thing for him to say. Maybe it’s because he’s upset, but the way he said it makes me feel like, if I hadn’t been making out with him on his couch, none of this would have happened.
Very quickly, he and Devaney are out the door.
I walk into the study off the kitchen and sit in my favorite chair, curling my feet up underneath me, the evening we spent together still on my mind. Angel comes into the study and lies at my feet. Usually, she doesn’t leave Chase’s side when he’s home, but she looks as exhausted as I feel. I lean down and rub her ears. She pushes her head against my hand, like she loves it. Pretty soon, she’s rolled over and letting me rub her belly.
From my perch, I can see Jadyn sitting down at the kitchen table with Chase.
“You know you’re grounded,” she says.
“But, Mom—” he argues.
“Chase, what you did tonight was good, but if your father hadn’t driven you, it could have gone very badly. I applaud the fact that you wanted to keep her from going with someone who was drunk. I understand you had good intentions. But you’re fourteen. You don’t have a license.”
“I told him it was a bad idea,” I hear Damon say.
“Damon, why don’t you go downstairs and sleep on the couch tonight?” she replies in a serious tone.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
“And, Damon, don’t forget, you were in the car with him, too.”
I see him walk by the study, on his way to the basement stairs.
“She’s trying to fit in. To be cool, Mom,” Chase says. I feel bad for him. “I don’t understand. She’s already the coolest girl I know.”
Phillip walks into the study with an open bottle of wine and three glasses. He pours a glass, hands it to me, then pours one for himself, and sits in the chair opposite me.
“If Dalton broke his hand, he’s going to hate me because I’m a QB, too,” Chase goes on. “What if I take his—”
Phillip sighs, gets back up, and shuts the French doors. “I’m going to give them some privacy,” he says. “How are you? This is a lot to cope with.”
“We haven’t toasted yet. Can I drink?”
Phillip smiles at me. “You’re getting the hang of it. Well, let’s see. Why don’t you do the honors? My brain is fried.”
“Here’s to your children being safe and to Danny’s empty wall.” I clink his glass and then take a sip of a bold red.
Phillip looks at me kind of funny, but he takes a drink and then grabs a remote to turn on the gas fireplace. Angel wags her tail at him, so he gives her a quick pat and then sits back down.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I say. “I love this room. It’s so cozy.”
“It’s Jadyn’s favorite, too. And
the only room in the house that is off-limits to the kids, which might be why.” He laughs. “So, explain why you’re toasting to an empty wall. I take it, you went over to Danny’s house tonight even though you said you were tired and going to bed.”
“I was going to bed,” I say quickly, feeling like I got caught lying and sneaking out, too. “I mean, originally, I’d been hoping he’d invite me over. But he didn’t. I was a little sad about that, so I was just going to go to bed. He texted me when I got to my room.”
“I told him he was an idiot for not inviting you over. So, did you have fun?”
“Probably not the kind of fun you are referring to, based on your grin,” I say with a laugh.
“Seriously?” Phillip slaps his palm to his forehead and rolls his eyes. “What did you do then?”
“He gave me a tour of his house. Showed me the changes that have been made so far. It was fun. We talked a lot. And it was really interesting to see how the parts of the house that had been redone were so different from the ones that weren’t.”
“Lori wanted their house to be a showpiece.”
“It was fun to see Danny in his study. He seemed happy there. But then he took me to his gym.”
“His favorite place.”
“I suppose. It’s like a shrine to his greatness,” I counter as the doors open, and Jadyn joins us.
Phillip gets up immediately and pours her a glass of wine.
“I so need this,” she says. “What did you two toast to?”
“To the kids being safe and Danny’s empty wall,” Phillip tells her.
Jadyn squints her eyes at me as she and Phillip snuggle up together in the chair.
“And Jennifer was just about to tell me why. Danny invited her to come over tonight and gave her a tour of the house. She likes what you helped him do so far.”
“And we were talking about his gym,” I add.
