One Kiss to Win

by Romi Hart

  “You really think you have any right to be coming at me with this shit?” He snapped back, his tone harsh. “I don’t know how you couldn’t mention it before. How did it not come up? Why did you keep it from me?”

  “Because I expected the exact reaction I got!” I shot back before I could think about how sharp I’d sound. Well, only thing now was to roll with it.

  “You really looked at my life and thought that there was room for a family there?” He pointed out, voice simmering with anger. “You have your life and I have mine, but I’m not looking to get dragged into dating you just so you can fill out your perfect little image of a family.”

  “You seriously think that’s why I wanted you?” I took a sharp breath in as the words sunk in. “So I could have a Dad for Jacob?”

  He stayed silent, and I knew that he was thinking the same thing as me. That the connection we’d had felt so electric from the very first moment we encountered each other. He knew what he was saying was bullshit, but I wasn’t sure that I could convince him of that fact without playing into the exact stereotype he had made up in his head and applied to me.

  “Samantha, I just don’t think it’s going to work out,” He sounded robotic, as though he was forcing the words out of his mouth. “I….I know we have something but I don’t want to let anyone down.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded. “Let me down?”

  “I need to go,” he mumbled, suddenly shutting off and leaving me with a sense of panic in my chest. I needed more than that. I didn’t want this to be the last I heard from him. I felt as though the ground had tipped out from underneath me, something shifting in a monumental way that I knew I needed to fix at once.

  “Adam,” I spoke urgently, hoping that I could keep him on the line for just a moment longer. “We…please. Just give us another go. I’ve never met anyone I’ve felt this connection with before, not in my whole life, and it has nothing to do with my kid or anything else. Just you.”

  He stayed silent. For a moment I thought he had hung up the phone, but I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, feverish and heavy, as though I had just hit him with something that he wasn’t ready for.

  “Sam, I can’t…” He trailed off, and there was a sudden helplessness to his voice that made my heart ache for him. “I can’t do this. I need to go.”

  And with that, he hung up the phone and left me standing there in silence, nothing but my own thoughts whirring through my brain as I tried to make sense out of what had just gone down. I felt ridiculous for thinking that anything good could have come of this, but still, there was that heavy lump in my throat now that I knew the door had been shut for good. A few minutes ago, I could have fooled myself that things hadn’t quite ended yet, but now he had all but said the words “you’re dumped.”

  And, as I drove to pick up Jacob and tried to recompose myself so he wouldn’t tell that anything was wrong, I wondered why. Because there was more to that terse, tense conversation than him just not wanting to have a kid in his life. If it had been that simple, then I would have believed him straight out, but what he’d said about letting people down echoed through my brain over and over again. Who had he let down? Why? How? Did he have a kid that no-one knew about? Was that what this was about?

  I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but my mind was already whirring as I tried to fill in the blanks. Well, it was something to keep my mind off the sinking sense of sadness in my chest for the time being. I arrived at the park, and Jacob came barrelling towards me, a smear of mud on his cheek and an enormous smile on his face.

  “You have a good time?” I asked as I led him back to the car, and he nodded.

  “Great time,” He replied. “Awesome.”

  I managed a smile at how excited he was, glad that I had someone to take my mind of the situation with Adam. Because it was impossible not to be even a little happy in the presence of the most precious thing in the world.

  7

  “It just needs a little something…more, you know?”

  Irina traced her fingers over the screen of her tablet as though underlining her point. She had my article pulled up, and the two of us were going over it together to figure out how we could make it a little punchier.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, a creeping sense of dread moving up my back as I tried to figure out what she wanted from me.

  “You said you were in touch with him, right?” She raised her eyebrows at me expectantly. “I just want something a little more personal, that’s all. Something to differentiate this from the rest of the sports profiles that are out there. Do you think you could manage that?”

  I stared at her for a moment. Of course, she had no idea what had happened the week before between Adam and I, that he had dumped me with a vehemence that I didn't know was possible until that moment. I had kept my mouth shut about everything that had happened in the hopes that everyone would just forget about our weird little dates, and sure enough, everyone lost interest in getting the details out of me. But that also meant that I couldn't tell her the truth – that I never wanted to see Adam again, only because I wanted to see him too much. I knew even a glimpse of him would drag me straight back down into the hole that I'd been digging myself out of since that phone call in the car park. I still couldn't put my finger on why he had gotten under my skin so quickly, but that wasn't important. What mattered was the fact that he had, and now I had to be a grown-up and move by it like everyone else my age who was dating.

  “You are still in contact with him, aren’t you?” Irina cocked an eyebrow casually, as though sensing a hint of gossip on the horizon. I nodded without thinking. I was so used to giving her what she wanted that it was almost second nature to me now.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I agreed. I could shoot him a few texts and get a couple of quotes. As long as I made it clear it was for the article, then he couldn’t exactly get funny about it. And besides, I had no intention of letting this opportunity slip by me just because I’d caught a bad case of the feels.

  “Good,” she nodded. “You should set up another meeting and see if you can get something else out of him. Something a bit meatier, a hook that we can sell this on, you know?”

  “I do,” I confirmed, and she cocked her head at me.

  “Everything alright?” She asked. “You’ve seemed a little down the last couple of days.”

  “No, no, everything’s great,” I blurted out quickly. “I’m just thinking about the article, that’s all.”

  “If you’re sure,” she eyed me for a moment as though she didn’t buy my reply, and then seemed to shrug and let it go. If there was one thing she knew about me, it was that pushing the point was only going to get me feeling trapped.

  “I’ll try and get the expanded article to you by the end of the week,” I promised, and darted out of that office before she had a chance to say anything else or force me into contact with any other guys who’d broken my heart. Before I had a chance to back down, I pulled my phone from my pocket and zapped off a text to him. Nothing complex; just a bland, unemotional message asking if I could ask him a few more questions. I was about to dump my phone back in my pocket when it buzzed with a reply.

  “Already?” I mumbled to myself as I headed for the door and back to my car. My heart skipped a beat as I hovered my thumb over the message, lingering in this glorious moment where there could be some actual good news in there for a change. Then, scolding myself for dancing around the point, I pressed it and read what he’d written.

  “Sure. I think we need to talk anyway. Tomorrow?”

  I stared at the screen. I could still hear his voice in my head from the phone call the week before, the strain and sadness and finality of it. And now, here he was telling me that he wanted to talk? I knew I should have held back a little, that I shouldn't have let him in so fast, but before I knew it I was typing out an excited response, giddily agreeing to seeing him and organizing the where and the when.

&
nbsp; As I drove back to my place, I couldn't shake that little voice in the back of my head that told me that I was just going to end up with my heart broken once more. I knew that I shouldn't get so excited, that he was just as likely to want to correct a couple of things he said as anything else. But maybe – just maybe – things could be different. Ever since that phone call, I felt as though I'd been bending over backward trying to figure out precisely what it was that was keeping him away from me, and maybe I could get an answer. At the very least, perhaps we could leave whatever had been between us on a better note than that angry phone call.

  The rest of the day sped by, and I hurried through all my chores and everything with Jacob so that I could clear the time in the middle of the day to meet Adam for coffee. No drink – that seemed significant. I found myself trying to guess what it was he wanted to talk to me about, and then telling myself off for doing the same. I needed to get myself together, and soon. I couldn’t be a dithering, dizzy schoolgirl with a crush tomorrow. I needed to get this story and make sure that I produced the best article I could, whether or not I had a crush the size of Jupiter on my subject or not.

  I found myself sitting in the coffee shop, clutching the Dictaphone like it was a safety blanket and glancing around nervously as I waited for him to arrive. He wasn’t late, but I was early as hell and already hyped on the espresso I’d allowed myself while I was waiting. Every guy who walked in had me snapping my head around in excitement, but Adam pushed it right to the wire and walked in at the exact minute we’d agreed to meet.

  As soon as he entered the room, it felt as though everything slowed down for a split second. That feeling I’d had next to the car on the call with him, the one where the earth felt like it was tipping out beneath me, it happened again but somehow it felt good this time around. I found a smile breaking over my face as soon as I laid eyes on him, and he flashed one back at me. It was brief, but it was enough to send a shock of excitement through my system.

  “Hey,” he greeted me, sitting down in the chair opposite mine and looking at me intently, as though my face held a hundred secrets that he wanted to commit to memory. “It’s…it feels like it’s been a while.”

  “It really hasn’t,” I shot back without thinking. “The last time…”

  I trailed off as I remembered what the last time had been. That phone call. I shook my head, and clicked my Dictaphone on. He looked down at it and took a deep breath, as though he’d forgotten it was going to be there.

  “Is this okay?” I asked, gesturing to the small device, and he nodded after a brief hesitation.

  “Yeah, yeah,” He assured me. “I need to get this out. I’ve sat on it for too long.”

  “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? Or is this for the article?” I asked, eyes wide.

  “Both,” he smiled, but there was a nervousness there that made me want to reach out across the table and wrap my arms around his neck right there and then. I clenched my fists briefly to distract me, and nodded.

  “So…?” I prompted him gently. “It sounded big.”

  “I don’t know if it’s all that,” he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then began to talk.

  “When I was a kid, I was in foster care,” he began haltingly. “I…my mother passed away and my father was a real piece of shit. It was just me and him at home for a long time, and he was…abusive.”

  He shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe these words were really coming out of his mouth. I stared at him, utterly silent.

  "Shit, it still feels strange to admit that," he murmured, and then went on. "They pulled me out of his house when I was five and I was bounced around the system for a long time. That's how I got into football – one of my foster fathers was a coach for the local team and he insisted that I get involved."

  He bowed his head, as though ashamed of the next part.

  “I hid it for so long,” he continued. “I just felt so awful that all of it had happened. That my father hadn’t even wanted me, you know? As soon as I started coming up in the league I just left it all behind me and focused on making myself a stable life that no-one would be able to take away from me.”

  His voice was low, but he finally managed to raise his head and look me in the eye. I could tell just from the expression on his face what a big deal this was to him, and my heart swelled as I realized that I was probably the first person he'd told it to.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked gently. “I mean, I’m glad you are, but why now? Why for this article?”

  “I know it sounds like a line but I’m just so tired of hiding that part of myself,” He explained. “I was so ashamed of it all, and for what? I was so frightened of anyone finding out where I came from, thinking that I was some kind of charity case or some shit like that. I couldn’t handle the thought of people seeing me differently.”

  “But no-one would,” I promised him. “I can’t think of anyone who’d treat you anything less because of this…”

  “When I was first playing, back in the UK, everything was so fucking competitive,” he ran his hands through his hair, as though even just reliving the thought was stressing him out. “Anything that people could use against you, they would. The other players, the fans of the team you were playing – they’d use anything they could get their hands on to push you off your game, so I hid all that stuff and I never got over the panic about what would happen if someone were to find out.”

  “But you want me to put it in the article?” I cocked an eyebrow. “Why?”

  "Because I trust you to tell it right," He replied, a smile curling onto his lips at last. "I trust you to tell my story the way I want it told."

  I beamed at him. It was all I’d really wanted to hear. He reached out and took my hand between his and looked intently up into my eyes, and my stomach flipped.

  “What – what are you…” I trailed off, the skin-on-skin contact sending an explosion of sparks across my skin. I’d never felt anything like it in my life.

  “This isn’t just about the article,” he went on, eyeing me intently. “This is about…shit, Sam, I’ve never felt anything like what I have with you with anyone else.”

  My heart was hammering in my chest, and I was trying to remind myself how I had felt the last time, how it had been as though someone had punched me hard in the chest and left me reeling. But the way he traced his thumb over my knuckle lightly, not caring who saw – I could have swooned on the spot. I was falling for him again, falling straight back into him. And I didn’t want to pull away.

  “I’m so sorry for how I reacted when you told me about your son,” he went on, hesitating before he said the last two words but finally getting them out.

  “Jacob,” I filled in for him, and he smiled at the sound of the name

  “Jacob,” he repeated, as though testing the feel of the word out on his tongue. “When you told me about Jacob, I just…I kept on thinking about all the shit my dad put me through, all the crap I went through just to survive day-to-day, and how much that fucked me up and…”

  He paused for a moment to take a deep breath before he continued.

  “And the thought of being in that position with someone else, with a little boy no less, that scared the shit out of me,” he finally finished up. “But I don’t want to let my stupid neuroses get in the way of what we have here.”

  “You want to…you want to give this a try?” I asked, and he nodded with a smile.

  “I really do,” he reached out to cup my face briefly. “And I’m not saying that I’m not going to mess up, or freak out once in a while, but you’re worth it. And I’ll bet he is too.”

  I leaned across the table and kissed him then. I just couldn’t hold back a moment longer. It was a sweet, short, chaste kiss, one that told him everything he needed to know. There was nothing I could say that would tell him what he wanted to hear more than that, and as I pulled back, he eyed me with a grin.

  “So, is that a yes?” He asked. I nodded
.

  “It is,” I replied dreamily, feeling as though I was in some kind of romantic comedy and we had just reached the third act. But it wasn’t going to be that easy – not yet.

  “But we need to keep this on the down-low,” I warned him. “My picture turned up in some newspaper from when those paps were following us, and I don’t want that for me or my son.”

  “No problem,” he held his hands up. “We’ll have to just sneak around a little, but that’s okay.”

  “Do you think you can actually make that happen?” I cocked my head at him. “I mean, that’s not going to be a problem for you?”

  “It’s not going to be easy, but I can get my security team a little tighter, make sure that I’m less vocal about where I’m going to be at certain times,” he assured me. “I’ve never had to do something like this before. We’ll have to play it by ear but I’ll do everything I can to make sure you two have your privacy.”

  I stared at him.

  “This is going to be hard, isn’t it?” I frowned, a furrow appearing between my eyebrows. Adam nodded.

  “Probably,” he admitted. “But I don’t think that’s a good enough reason not to try.”

  I couldn't help but laugh then; laugh with joy, the emotion bubbling up and over me till it burst out my mouth into peals of giggles. He frowned, smiling slightly as he watched me laughing myself stupid.

  “Is everything alright?” He asked, in that gorgeously British way of his, and I nodded.

  “It’s amazing,” I replied, reaching out to take his hands. “Look, you’re right. I can’t think of any good reason not to give this a try. I…I’ve never met anyone like you before, Adam.”

  “I’ll have to keep you away from the rest of the team,” he joked. “It’s just a couple dozen more mes.”

  “Sounds tempting,” I cocked an eyebrow and he feigned offense.

  “I’ll definitely have to keep you away from them now,” he continued, and got to his feet. “Can we…get out of here? I feel like taking a walk.”