“Playing for the Knights has never been just about money for me, though.”
“You better start thinking about them the way they think about you,” Jarrod said. “I’ve got a sports agent that you should meet.”
“I’ve never needed an agent for the Knights. Only for endorsements and outside stuff.”
“Because you’ve always only taken what they handed you. It’s time for you to make some moves.”
“Maybe.”
“Think of it this way. You making more money is not just for you. It’s for Quincy, and it’s for Chenille, too. And there are a lot of teams who would want to get their hands on the Knights MVP.”
Brayden clicked on ESPN on the TV in the man cave. Looked like maybe Cleveland was going to win the AFC championship. No one saw that coming at the beginning of the season.
“There’s Coach Wyatt now, looking like he just sucked a lemon,” Jarrod said.
The reporter asked Coach Wyatt what his thoughts were on the postseason, and what plans he had to make sure the Knights had a winning season next year.
“You know we’ve maybe got the opportunity to make some roster changes in the off season. A few contracts are up for renewal, and we . . . well, we just have to evaluate all situations, and make sure we are doing what’s best for the team.”
“Are you referring to the fact that Jarrod Green and Brayden Carpenter are both free agents this year?”
“I’m saying that we’re going to evaluate every area of the team and make sure we have the right players in the right positions.”
For the first time all year, Brayden switched to a different channel. Jarrod laughed and shook his head.
“I told you, man.”
The idea that Coach Wyatt might be implying on national television that he was done with Brayden, just because his son had gotten sick . . . Well, that was just unacceptable.
“Give me his number,” Brayden said.
“Whose number?”
“The agent,” Brayden said. “I’m gonna call him.”
Chapter 44
I can tell Brayden has something to tell me that’s going to piss me off, because he’s been walking on eggshells since he woke up this morning. I watch him carefully and neatly hang his towel on the towel rack instead of throwing it on the floor. Then, he puts all of his shaving equipment in the correct places. He even wipes the sink dry.
Yes, he’s absolutely going to get on my nerves this morning.
“You want to meet for lunch today?” Brayden asks as he steps out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.
No matter how many times I see him this way, I never get tired of looking at his perfectly sculpted physique.
“Can’t do lunch. First, Kara and I are taking Quincy to breakfast. Then, we’ve got a meeting with a chemist about making some new lip gloss colors for my clients. They loved the eyeshadows that I put together on the fly, so we want to follow that up with some gloss.”
He nods and chews the inside of his cheek—a sure sign of stress.
“What’s going on? You got something you want to talk about?” I ask.
Brayden grunts a reply, but instead of sharing what’s on his mind, he walks into our closet. I follow him. We’re going to get this over with right now. I don’t want to spend the whole day worrying about what he’s keeping from me.
“Brayden.”
He turns to face me and sighs. I grip the edge of the bed, because I know it’s coming. The bomb he’s about to drop.
“What is it?”
“It’s good news, actually,” he replies.
“So, lay it on me. I love good news.”
“Well, the league just approved a new expansion team in Portland, Oregon. The Portland Beachcombers.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
Brayden sits down next to me on the bed. He takes my hand. Aw, hell. This is worse than I thought it was going to be.
“The owners want me to be a franchise player. They’re going to build the entire team around me.”
“Why are you talking about this? The season isn’t even over yet. It’s only January.”
“The season is over for us. Deals are already being made, and the Knights haven’t reached out to me with any offers for a new contract. I can go wherever I want. Even Portland.”
“If you accept the offer.” I snatch my hand away.
“Why wouldn’t I accept the offer?”
I can think of a host of reasons he wouldn’t accept, but the thing I can’t get past in this moment is the fact that he didn’t even mention that he was considering this. I stand up and start pacing our bedroom.
“Because I don’t want to move to Portland, for one,” I say, finally answering his question.
“Don’t move, then. Stay here with Quincy, and I’ll go to Portland for the season.”
I press my lips together into a deep frown. He already knows how I feel about us living apart, especially after what happened with Quincy.
“Do you know what it means to be a franchise player?” Brayden asks. “Do you have any idea what this will do for my career?”
“Your career.”
“Yes, my career! The career that pays for all this.”
Now he’s pacing and waving his arms around the closet, lingering on my shoe collection.
“I never asked for all this.”
“Being a franchise player means a higher salary, more endorsements, and a better future. A legacy for my son.”
“Our son. And what about my career? My work isn’t in Portland. I’ve already given up most of what I do. Now you’re asking me to give up the last piece of it.”
Brayden takes one hand and slides it down his face in frustration. “You and Quincy can stay in Dallas.”
“What the hell are you giving up?”
“I gave up half a season with the Dallas Knights, Chenille. That’s why we’re here right now.”
“We’re not living apart, and we’re not living in Portland. I say no to both of those.”
“You don’t get to say no to this. You don’t get to take this from me, Chenille.”
“So you don’t mind only seeing me once a month?”
“It’ll be more than once a month. We’re millionaires. We can fly out more than once a month.”
This is how it begins. We plan to see each other every other weekend. Then, one of us has a meeting or event, and we have to cancel. We FaceTime each other at first; then it tapers off. Then he meets a groupie at a game, and . . .
My mother told me about the groupie ho that just slid up to him while we were at the hospital during my son’s surgeries. I thought it would stop when we got married. It never stops.
“You don’t trust me,” Brayden says. “You think that just because we’ll be working and living separately for part of the year, that I’m going to fall in the first vagina that I see.”
“Why are you seeing vaginas?”
“Come on, Chenille! This is about all the bad things you believe NFL players do to their wives.”
“It’s about all the things they really do, not just what I believe.”
“And you think I’m like the rest of them.”
“I think you’re a man.”
“Your husband.”
“Where is all this coming from? Since when were you unhappy here? I didn’t know that you were even thinking of doing this.”
Brayden shakes his head. “Are you hearing what I’m saying to you? Dallas may not be an option anymore.”
“I’m saying no to this, Brayden.”
“I’m. Saying. Yes.”
We stand for a moment, glaring at each other, neither of us willing to bend, neither of us willing to compromise.
I break first, spin around on one heel, and storm out of our bedroom.
Straight to Quincy’s nursery. I pick him up out of his crib. He laughs and smashes his hand into my face like nothing is wrong.
Everything is wrong.
I g
rab Quincy’s boots and shove them into his bag. I have to get out of here in a hurry. Toddler boots are the worst to put on. They never go on quickly.
“Chenille!”
I hear Brayden calling my name, but I ignore him. I’m not talking to him until he’s saying something that makes sense. Not having a conversation with me until he says he’s not going to destroy our family.
Quincy still giggles as I pile him into the car seat and toss his bag on the floor of the back seat.
“Want to go see Auntie Kara?”
Quincy claps. No objections from him. It’s crazy how kids can be oblivious to drama going on right under their noses.
Brayden’s saying yes? He’s saying yes!
I speed down the driveway and try to get to the freeway as quickly as possible, because it’s almost time for Highway 121 and Highway 114 to gridlock with the rush hour traffic and DFW airport traffic, and that’s the quickest way to Kara’s apartment.
Shoot. I’m wrong. It isn’t almost time. It is time.
My phone rings on the car Bluetooth, and I roll my eyes when I see NFL Bae flash on the screen. That nickname is supposed to make me smile when I see it. Instead my eyes cloud with tears as I hit ignore on the touch screen.
How could he be considering this? Portland freaking Oregon. First of all, black people do not live in freaking Oregon. I don’t know any black people there. It’s too far from my parents. Shit, it’s too far from Brayden’s parents, too. Second, has he heard of the Cascadia Subduction Zone? Why would he move our son to a city that is about to fall in the freaking ocean?
The Bluetooth phone rings again. I hit ignore again.
His career is good in Dallas. It’s great. We’ve got everything we can ever want. We’ve invested well. If he retired today, we could live like celebrities for the rest of our lives. Why does he want to destroy us? Why does he want to tempt himself? Groupies with build-a-Barbie body parts, looking like Kardashians-slash-strippers-slash-Instagram-booty-clappers-slash-models will swarm him like a bunch of angry honey bees forced out of their hive.
Third time the phone rings.
“What!” I yell. Quincy stops giggling.
“Chenille . . . I . . .”
“Why are you doing this to us? Why?”
“You have to trust me, honey. This is going to be good for us. You’ll see.”
“No, no, no . . .”
“How about, how about you take a year off from your makeup business. Just one year. Help me get established in Oregon . . .”
“No! NO! You don’t get to do this!”
Tears pour from my eyes. I knew from the very beginning it would always come to this. His freaking NFL career was always poised to eclipse everything I do. I knew I would disappear into him, into his life. He’s trapped me in Dallas. With a baby. With him.
I pound the steering wheel and scream at the top of my lungs. I disconnect the call. Not answering again. I refuse to disappear.
Traffic is opening up again, so I accelerate. Gotta hurry and get through this day, so that I can plan. I need a strategy. How can I keep it all? My husband, my business, my freaking life. I want all of it.
No, no, wait! Brake lights. My foot slides to the brake a second too slow. And then my car is smashing into the one in front of me. And then another car hits us from behind.
I feel consciousness fading. It’s too quiet in the back seat.
I struggle to turn my head and see, but the airbag is in the way. I can’t see. My head is wet and sticky.
I close my eyes. I just need to rest a seco . . .
Chapter 45
Brayden moved through the hospital hallways on autopilot. He’d gotten the call that no one ever wants to receive, that his family had been in an accident and that he needed to get there as soon as possible. No details had been provided, so he could only think the worst. And their little family couldn’t take anything worse.
“Where’s emergency?” Brayden asked the first hospital employee he saw. “My wife and son are there . . .”
This was not Baylor. Brayden didn’t know his way around this hospital.
The orderly’s eyes lit up. “You’re Brayden Carpenter.”
Of course. He recognized Brayden. Who in Dallas wouldn’t?
“I am, but right now I need to find my wife and son.”
Perhaps the somber tone to Brayden’s voice shook the orderly out of his fandom, because his facial expression changed to match the seriousness of Brayden’s.
“The emergency department is on the north side of the hospital.”
Brayden blinked a few times and then started to read the signs, because the orderly was less than helpful. On another less critical occasion Brayden might have given him a tongue lashing, but he needed his energy. He couldn’t waste it schooling a hospital employee on good customer service.
“Let me just take you there,” the orderly finally said.
Brayden breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Brayden followed the orderly through the hospital, silently praying that the caller had been overly cautious when she’d contacted him. He actually convinced himself of just that. Out of an abundance of caution, because he was a celebrity, the hospital staff had made a big to-do about contacting him. Chenille and Quincy were fine.
The orderly delivered Brayden to a nurses’ station in the emergency department.
“You should be able to get your answers now,” the orderly said.
Brayden didn’t even open his mouth to ask a question. He just gave a pleading stare to the nurse and hoped she didn’t make him go through any additional hoops to find out what was happening with his wife.
“I’ll call for a doctor,” the nurse said. “Go ahead and have a seat.”
Brayden sat, but he couldn’t relax. If everything was fine, the nurse would’ve told him. She would’ve eased his mind, but she looked nervous. People always gave themselves away with body language. A person could always tell when there was bad news coming.
“Mr. Carpenter.”
Brayden turned around in his seat to face a very young looking doctor. Too young, in Brayden’s opinion, to be a surgeon.
“I’m Dr. Torres, the lead cardiothoracic surgeon.”
“Cardio? Are you working on my son? We have a surgeon. Dr. Benjamin. He’s been operating on my son his whole life.”
“Yes. We’ve reached out to Dr. Benjamin. He’s out of the country on vacation, but he will be calling us for a consultation. In the meantime, your wife is stable. She’s going to need reconstructive surgery on her fractured pelvis and surgery to repair her broken ribs, but after some rehabilitation, she will be fine.”
“What is happening with my son?”
“That is a bit more complex. When he was thrown from his car seat, four of his ribs shattered, puncturing the good side of his heart.”
Brayden’s hands shook involuntarily. Quincy only had half a heart to begin with. What kind of twisted fate would allow the good side of his heart to be destroyed?
“Is he going to make it? Please tell me my son is going to make it through this.”
“We’ve examined his surgical options. It doesn’t look good without a heart transplant. We’ve put him on the transplant list.”
Brayden nodded with his lips pressed in a grim line. A heart transplant. Dr. Benjamin didn’t want to crack Quincy’s chest open again. He had been hoping the arrhythmia would resolve itself and that he wouldn’t need a transplant. Now Quincy no longer had a good side of his heart.
“He’s high on the list, but if a heart doesn’t come available in the next few days, he is going to have some severe issues. His heart defect and previous surgeries have already compromised his other vital organs to a degree.”
“Can I see him?”
“Yes, but he’s unconscious. He’s on bypass and in a medically induced coma. A healthy child could survive on heart-lung bypass for weeks, but Quincy cannot last that long.”
“So if we don’t get a heart, h
e’s going to die?”
“Yes, but we are near the top of the list now.”
“Can I give him my heart?”
“Even if you were a perfect match, we couldn’t harvest your heart and give it to your son. You need your heart to live.”
“I don’t want to live if my son dies.”
“UNOS, the organization that regulates the transplant list, decides who gets hearts, so they might direct your heart to another person, even if we would take your heart—and we wouldn’t. That is assisted suicide, which is illegal.”
So many thoughts went through Brayden’s mind. Could he commit suicide in a way that could give his son a heart? What if he shot himself in the head? Right in the hospital, so that they could take the heart right away. Or maybe slit his wrists in the emergency room.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dr. Torres said. “Most of the methods of suicide would destroy the heart and not give us a viable organ. And again, we probably wouldn’t be able to use your adult heart in his chest. The best thing for you to do is pray that a heart becomes available soon.”
“So I’m supposed to pray that someone else dies? I’m praying that someone else’s child doesn’t wake up tomorrow? How in the hell can I pray for that?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but you are a man of faith. I’ve heard you talking about it on TV. I thought it might give you some comfort. Come and sit with your son. Maybe being in Quincy’s presence will help.”
Brayden followed Dr. Torres to the cardiac intensive care unit. He put on a gown and mask and prepared himself for what he was about to see.
But nothing could have prepared him for this.
Brayden had seen his son post–heart surgery before. Since birth he’d had tubes running through his nose and an incision down his rib cage. But this was different. Quincy looked battered.
Both of Quincy’s eyes were puffy black and swollen. His lips were swollen, cracked, and tinted blue. That meant he wasn’t getting enough oxygen—Brayden knew this from Quincy’s previous surgeries.
“Why are his lips blue? He needs more oxygen.”
The Outside Child Page 19
