Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)

by Aubrey Irons

  “What about her?”

  Don chances a look at me, smiling thinly. “We’ve, uh, we’ve prepared what we feel is a fair settlement for Ms. Roth in exchange for dissolving her involvement with this team.”

  I choke out a breath, shaking my head.

  “You can’t do this,” Landon says quietly.

  “Landon, it’s happening.”

  “You need to listen to me when I say you can’t sell Sam’s legacy out from under him.”

  “Landon,” Don sighs again, shaking his head. “Son, I’m so sorry that this is happening like this, but-”

  “Don.”

  There’s something tight in Landon’s voice that has me looking up from my twisting hands. He’s looking right at me, his face pained, that look of holding something back or wrestling with something that I saw before on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, right to me.

  I swallow, taking a half step towards him, but stopping when his head almost imperceptibly shakes.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispers again, his eyes fierce, his jaw tense, and a pained look on his face.

  “What?”

  “You can’t sell the team.” Landon turns away from me, glowering over the boardroom table, his body tense.

  “Landon-”

  “You can’t sell the team because she’s his daughter.”

  The words hit me like a cold freeze, raking into me, chilling me, locking my feet to the floor and sending a sharp slice through my heart. My eyes blink in shock, trying to process what he’s just said, and my lips are moving, but now words come forth.

  “I- Landon, what-”

  He turns back to face me eye-to-eye, looking shattered and pained. “You can’t sell the team,” he says, quieter this time. “Because Serena is Sam Horn’s daughter.”

  I meet his eye, and something inside of me just rips.

  The ice shatters, the spell breaks, and the freeze snaps. My feet are working again, and without a word, I’m tearing my eyes from him and running from the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Serena

  Twenty-One Years Ago:

  “How come I don’t have blue eyes?”

  My father grins at me, his baby blues twinkling. “Because you just don’t. Everyone has different eyes, you know.”

  “Well how did I get green? Melanie Dursting says they’re green like moss and it means I’ve got moss inside my head and that my brain is moldy.”

  My dad chuckles and picks me up onto his knee. “Do you think you’ve got mold inside your head.”

  “No,” I pout, scowling.

  “Good, me neither. I think you’re too smart a girl to have moldy brains.”

  “So why aren’t they blue, like yours?”

  He shrugs. “Well, sometimes you get your dad’s eyes, and sometimes, you get your mom’s.”

  “Mommy had blue eyes too.”

  My dad smiles quietly. “That’s right, she did.” He peers at me, tucking my hair back from my face. “Now how’d you get to be such a smart six-year-old?”

  “I’m six and a half, Dad.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he chuckles, his laugh rumbling through him.

  “So, if you have blue eyes, and Mommy had blue eyes, why are mine green?”

  “Well it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a mystery, doesn’t it?”

  The words are digging deep into my chest, even as I’m running away from the room and the source of them. They’re still there, cutting me, twisting me, slicing me as I run out the side door and across the parking lot to my car.

  It’s not true.

  It’s not, because it can’t be. Because my father was my father. Of course he was my real father.

  And yet, the doubt is there, lingering and pulling me down like a weight. Why else would I be here? What other possible reason would there be for the multimillionaire owner of a pro football organization who I’ve never met to deed me his team?

  “Serena!”

  I whirl, seeing Landon bolting towards me across the lot.

  “Hang on!”

  “Don’t!” I spit out, holding a finger out and narrowing my eyes at him. “Don’t.”

  “Serena-”

  “Is it true?”

  He pauses, his mouth going tight.

  “Landon!”

  “Yes.” His shoulders slump. “Yes, it’s true.”

  I stagger back, catching myself against the side of my car.

  “How.”

  “I don’t think you should hear it like this.”

  “How!” I bark, fury boiling up inside of me.

  “They met at a league conference or something, I’m not sure. It was short - maybe a week. Your mom didn’t want him to have anything to do with it - with you.”

  I slump against the car, my heart hammering in my chest, the ground swimming beneath my feet. I glance up at him, my eyes suddenly falling on the manila envelope in his hand.

  “Is that it? That the evidence?”

  He nods and hands it to me. I almost don’t take it. I almost can’t even bring myself to touch it, and when I do, it feels cold against my fingers.

  “Serena, I don’t know why what happened back then happened, and I didn’t know Bill Roth, but I know he loved you. And no matter what it says in that envelope, he was your dad.”

  I bark out a bitter laugh. “Except he wasn’t, was he?”

  Landon is silent.

  “Was he?!”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did he know?”

  “No,” Landon says quietly. “Not that I can tell.”

  “How about you?” I say icily, my eyes narrowing at him.

  “What about me.”

  “When did you know?”

  His mouth tightens, his eyes darting over my face.

  “Don’t do this, Serena.”

  “When.”

  He holds my eyes with his before his lips open.

  “Yesterday.”

  A bitter, broken sound falls from my lips. “So, before the fair. Before I went out with you and your daughter.”

  He nods, and my eyes narrow at him.

  “Before you got to fuck me again.”

  His face darkens. “Serena-”

  “Oh! So, hey! Looks like you still get something from all this, huh?”

  His jaw tightens.

  “Still got an easy screw from the girl who you probably always knew wasn’t going to work out here, right?”

  His eyes flash as he steps towards me. “You know damn well that’s not true.”

  “And you still got your board shares, apparently. Hopefully you’ll be able to make due with the paltry, what, five million you’re going to make when they sell?”

  “I am going to figure something out,” he says tensely, taking another step towards me, but I shake my head and point a finger at him.

  “No, Landon. I don’t want you to fix this. I actually don’t want to have anything to do with you, or this fucking team anymore.”

  “Serena, they can’t leave you with nothing, I’m sure there’s a precedent somewhere we can-”

  “Landon!” I scream, almost throwing the envelope full of things I never wanted to know at him. “You’re not listening.” My voice is thin, like it might snap at any second.

  “I do not want anything to do with this place, or the board, or Sam Horn, or you, or the goddamn Rattlesnakes at all anymore. I am done.”

  I whirl and yank open my car door when he grabs my wrist, pulling me back around.

  “Look,” he growls, his eyes flashing at me. “I know I should have told you. Believe me, I know, I just didn’t know how.”

  “Landon-”

  “And you can hate the board, and this fucking team all you want, but at least think of yourself. If you walk away, you’re going to do it with nothing. If you stay, and if we fight, you can walk away with a lot of money. At least think about that.”

  My eyes snap to his.

  Money.

/>   It was money from this team and Sam Horn that bought my mom off. Hell, my dad did okay, but he was never a rich man. It was money that probably swept her away in the first place.

  I am through with money from Sam Horn.

  “Fuck the money,” I spit, yanking my wrist out of his grasp and sliding into the car.

  “Serena!”

  I close the door, and the sound of the engine starting drowns out whatever Landon says.

  Me pulling away insures that I don’t hear it.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Landon

  I’m back at the hospital, the same sterile, chemical chill creeping down my spine. But I’m ignoring it this time. I’m too numb to feel it anyways.

  The neurologist called me when I was halfway back to picking Emily up at her friend’s house to let me know he was awake - really awake this time.

  And so I’m here.

  It’s different than the last time, when my heart broke for the man I knew lying desperate and sick and frail in a bed. Now, there’s a coldness inside for him - the truth of the liar and the fraud that he was still twisting in my side like a blade.

  “He’s been through a lot,” the nurse tells me sternly as we pause outside Sam’s room. She frowns at the harsh scowl on my face and the chip I’m sure she can see resting on my shoulder. “First meetings after something like this can be…emotional.”

  I almost want to laugh.

  “Thanks,” I say brusquely instead, stepping past her and reaching for the doorknob.

  The door closes behind me with a metallic click. Sam looks up from the newspaper in his hands.

  “Hey! There he is!” he starts to beam, but the grin quickly falls from his face at the look on mine.

  “I know.”

  His mouth closes. He nods solemnly. “About Serena?”

  My lip twitches at her name from his mouth.

  “I figured you’d figure it out.” He shrugs. “You’re a smart kid. You always were too smart for football.”

  “Don’t,” I growl, stepping towards his bed. “Don’t try and smooth this over.”

  “It was a different time, Landon.” His shoulders slump as he shakes his head. “I had my career, she had hers. Hell, she had her marriage.”

  I bark out a laugh. “So you slept with a guy’s wife, you knocked her up, and you paid her off.”

  “Yep.” Sam’s voice is even-keeled and firm, his eyes never leaving mine. “Yes I did.”

  “Fuck you,” I mutter, snarling at his arrogance.

  “Yeah, I paid her off, Landon. I paid her in cash and a little piece of my soul every goddamn month for eighteen years. Kept at it even after she was gone - like I might atone somehow.”

  “Cry me a fucking river, Sam.” I bark out a laugh, the sound brittle on my lips. “I used to want to be you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “After Sarah, I wished I had what you had. Nothing holding you back, nothing to leave you hurt and shattered if it ever went away.”

  Sam snorts, waving an IV drip connected hand. “You want this? Being alone, being broken and getting older with no one there to help or love you? Yeah, it’s a fucking cakewalk kid.” He narrows his eyes at me. “And you’ve got Emily, thank God.”

  “Yeah, thank God, because I know that’s one way I’ll never be like you.”

  Sam nods. “Good. Keep it that way.” His eyes drop to the hands in his lap. “Does she know?” he asks quietly as he glances back up at me.

  I nod.

  “I was supposed to die, you know. That was my get out of jail free card. Wouldn’t have to ever face her, just leave her the team and fade away.”

  I shake my head disgustedly at him.

  “I wrote a letter, too,” he shrugs. “It was shit.”

  “Well, there’s no team, either.”

  “What!?” The heart monitor next to him beeps a warning light before calming back down.

  “Don’s convinced them they need to sell.”

  “Cocksuckers! They can’t!”

  “They can, Sam. With Don’s vote, that swings the board. You’re still technically incapacitated, and Serena and I only hold a combined forty-nine percent.”

  I look away.

  “I tried, you know. We both did. We busted our asses to make this fucking thing work, for you.”

  “Thank you,” Sam says quietly.

  “Yeah well, it’s game over now.”

  Sam looks down at his hands again. The consummate ladies’ man with the sharp clothes, the cool cars, and the command of every room he walked into is a shell version of that now. He looks empty, and it’s not just the neon hospital lights, the gown, and the fact that he’s just woken up from a three-week coma.

  It’s something deeper than that eating him from the inside out.

  It’s hard to feel sympathy. As a father myself, it’s hard for me to find a single fuck to give for this man and his remorse. I know Celia wanted him out of her life, but there’s no way I wouldn’t have fought tooth and nail for Emily, no matter the circumstances. This isn’t just Sam “trying to do what Celia wanted”, or “trying not to step where he shouldn’t.”

  Fuck that. He stepped where he shouldn’t have when he slept with another man’s wife and got her pregnant.

  No, Sam didn’t stay away from Serena because he didn’t want to intrude; he stayed away because he could. He stayed away because money afforded him an excuse, and he made the choice to have nothing to do with his daughter’s life.

  He stayed away for him.

  “I just wanted to leave her something, Landon.” He glances up at me, his face fallen. “You can understand that, can’t you? Wouldn’t you want Emily to have something if you were-”

  “Stop, no,” I growl. I jab a finger at him as I shake my head in disgust. “Don’t make us the same, Sam, because we’re not. And you know what the difference is? I’d never leave Emily. Not ever, and not for any reason, which means I’d never have to try and buy her love and respect later.”

  Sam looks away.

  “And it didn’t work anyways, because the team’s gone now. So guess what? You’ve left her with nothing now, you selfish prick.”

  Sam says nothing, looking quietly out the window on the far wall.

  I look at him one more time, this hollowed version of the hero and the mentor I once knew before I shake my head, turn, and walk away.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Serena

  The condo is still empty.

  Except for a couch, a bed, a TV in the corner, and the bare minimum of cutlery, there’s nothing here. No food in the fridge, no books on the shelves, no posters or pictures on the wall.

  Nothing to make this is a home.

  In a way, that’s fitting. This whole experiment in something new couldn’t ever last, and I think somewhere inside I knew that. A city I don’t know, working for my rivals, and doing God knows what I thought I was doing with a man I never should have been doing them with.

  And now the whole thing’s crashing down.

  Shocking.

  I look at the array of papers and documents spread out across the floor in front of me - lies proven to be bitter truths by the contents of Landon’s envelope. Each signature, every photo - all of them a vicious, slicing cut to my heart.

  Every one of them saying my life was a lie.

  I’m trying to process what all of this means - in the scheme of life and what it means for me. In a way, a huge part of me doesn’t give a single shit what any of this says. My dad - that is, the man who loved me, and raised me, and taught me how to be who I am today? Yeah, that guy was my dad, no matter what it says on these documents. My father was the man who taught me to ride a bike, and then drive a car. He’s the man who read me stories and then college acceptance letters.

  The man these papers say is my “real” father doesn’t meet a single one of those criteria. He’s a stranger. A cowardly, home-wrecking stranger.

  And I want nothing to do with him, or his
fucking legacy, and I want nothing to do with his guilt money.

  I slump against the side of my couch, dropping my head to my hands and pushing my fingers through my long hair.

  God, I wish it had been vibrators or a Nigerian prince. A mysterious inheritance from a dildo kingpin or a third world dictator would have been leagues easier than who and what this all turned out to be.

  Sam Horn. The Rattlesnakes. Denver.

  Landon.

  This whole thing spiraled into something I never saw coming, and something I’m still not sure how to get myself out of.

  “Just co-workers”, “just something casual”, “it’s just sex.”

  I said all of those things, many times. To him and to myself, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job of convincing myself they were true.

  It’s all bullshit.

  Because somehow, I fell for the man I was never supposed to. The enemy. The rival. The man I was never supposed to fall for. Somehow, something connected with us - something I’m not sure I’ve ever actually felt. But Landon is Sam. He is this team, and this whole experience, and I can’t do that.

  Part of me is furious he kept the truth from me. But as I sit here on my empty condo floor, the other half of me tries to piece together the how - how do you even tell someone something like that?

  And for a moment, I know he’s right. For a moment, I know he was being sensible, and for moment, I think about the decision he probably had to make concerning telling me and hurting me, and not and still hurting me.

  I want to hate him. I want to be furious, and I want to feel victimized and lied to.

  But in the end, there’s no anger there, only sadness.

  Defeat.

  In the end, I decide I’m just done, with all of it.

  I don’t care about the money, or whatever Landon and I had, because it’s all just too much now, and all I want is my old life. I want my old modest apartment. I want my old bed, my plants in my kitchen window. I want my debts, and my shitty car. I want my friend.