Georgia took my other hand and squeezed. “We’ll stand by your side. Oh, and one more thing. If that baseball player doesn’t track you down and drop to his knees at your feet, then he’s an unworthy fool.”
My sex—the very thing that had seemingly held me at a disadvantage was now my greatest weapon. I just didn’t know how to hone it into something I could easily wield, something that could expose the monsters.
17
Killian
“We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.”
-Bernard Malamud, The Natural
I’d been home for all of an hour when someone leaked the details of my record-breaking contract to ESPN. From there, news spread like wildfire to every major outlet in the country. My phone had been ringing off the hook ever since.
During the day, the endless interviews and promotional shoots were enough to keep me from fixating on the way I’d left things with Ari. But at night, I wasn’t as successful.
It had been seven days since I’d held her. A week spent putting one foot in front of the other, inhaling, exhaling, and dealing with the nagging sense that I’d lost something that couldn’t be recovered. Like maybe I hadn’t just left her, but a piece of myself back at True North.
No matter what I did, the hole in my chest refused to scab over, constantly reopening over the smallest things. Just yesterday, someone had gotten onto the elevator in my condo with a puppy, and I swore I could feel the blood gushing down my chest and soaking through my shirt.
Clearly, I wasn’t going to last much longer and, in desperation, had asked Bailey to meet for a drink. As he was now over twenty minutes late, perhaps I hadn’t fully conveyed the severity of my situation.
“Excuse me, are you Killian Reed?” A feminine voice purred in my ear.
I turned toward the blonde with a forced smile, keeping my eyes on her face and not the tits that were dangerously close to falling out of her dress. “Yep.”
“Would you sign this for me?” She slid the napkin in front of me with a pout. “Pretty please? It’s Marissa.”
I scrawled my signature across the napkin and handed it back to her, mustering up enough enthusiasm to drawl, “Here you are, Marissa. Hope to see you at a game.”
Her eyes flashed with lust as she dropped another napkin into my lap. “I hope to see much more of you at my place later.”
“That’s flattering, but I’m good,” I said tightly, handing it back to her with another fake smile. I didn’t need to see it to know she’d given me her phone number. It made the tenth one in the last five minutes.
“I bet you are.” She winked and placed it on the bar in front of me. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Fuck.
My hand was starting to cramp from all the autographs I’d given. I hadn’t really considered how my contract was going to impact my ability to enjoy a beer in peace. If I had, I would have had Bailey come to my place.
A blast of cold air from the front door announced someone’s arrival. I glanced up at the mirror above the bar, just as Bailey ducked inside.
The weekend crowd parted easily around the third baseman, but it had nothing to do with his size or celebrity. Bailey just had one of those faces. The looks of confusion followed him damn near everywhere he went, with people actively trying to work out how it was they knew him.
A few patrons would assume he was just another regular and go back to their conversations, but others would become convinced they’d seen him in a movie—you know, the one with that guy who gets the girl.
Before the end of the night, some brave soul would likely come up to ask if he was in ‘that Vikings show’ on TV. When it was all said and done, though, only three or four people would leave here tonight, having correctly guessed his identity.
I envied his ability to live in disguise.
“Sorry, I’m late. I didn’t want to come,” Bailey joked as he slid onto the empty barstool beside me. The humor in his eyes fled when he caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. “Christ, Reed. What the fuck happened to you?”
I raised my pint glass, signaling the bartender for another round. “You were right—about all of it.”
He didn’t crack another joke or make some reference to me seeing the light. Instead, Bailey ordered a whiskey and demanded I tell him everything.
“Wow,” he stated once I’d finished, staring down a bottle of absinthe on the back of the bar. “So, you just bailed?”
“What was I supposed to do—stick around when it was obvious I was taking advantage of her injury?”
“Hey, could we get your autograph?”
“Not right now,” I barked at the trio of women lingering behind my bar stool. After offering some very colorful assessments of my anatomy, they stomped back to their table.
Bailey leaned back on his stool with a low whistle, palms raised in surrender. “Easy there, killer. Damn, you’re in rare form tonight. As far as your issue, I’m simply trying to understand why you didn’t at least have a conversation with the woman before taking off.”
“You said yourself, she never would have looked at me had it not been for the brain injury—”
“I said no such thing,” he interjected. “Christ, I know I’ve messed with you over the years, but it was all done in fun. Since when did you start taking me seriously?”
Never.
The bartender slid another beer in front of me. I glared at the glass, trying to remember if it was my fourth or fifth. I knew I wasn’t drunk—not yet—but I wasn’t exactly sober enough to keep my thoughts to myself either.
I paused to sign a couple more autographs before continuing. “Look, I can’t help but feel that the seizure was my fault. When I told Ari I wanted a relationship, she got scared. Fuck, I was scared too, but then I went and kissed her anyway—”
“You might be the richest son-of-a-bitch in baseball, but you aren’t a god, Reed,” he said dryly. “Not everything is about you. So, you kissed—big deal. From the way you described it, sounds like she was a willing participant. Sometimes, bad shit just happens, and if you spend your life trying to find the reason behind it, you’ll miss out on everything.”
It would have been easy to buy into what he was saying and absolve myself of any guilt, but the persistent ache in my chest begged to differ.
I took a long drink, trying to shake my last memory of Ari. I didn’t want to remember her like that. I’d been haunted by the look of nothingness in her eyes, tormented by thoughts of her body thrashing violently in my arms. “Look, it is what it is. Right now, more than anything, I just need some advice on how to get over it.”
“How to get over it,” Bailey repeated, the side of his mouth tugging up into a smirk. “And what makes you think I have the answer?”
“C’mon, cut the shit,” I grumbled, pressing the heel of my hand over the invisible wound on my chest. “You do this all the time—just tell me how to make it stop hurting.”
I didn’t care if his answer involved a cask of Macallan and another night on the old inflatable flamingo, I’d do it if it meant exorcising the ghost of her from my head.
Bailey cocked an eyebrow. “Do what all the time—fall in love? C’mon, Reed. You know me better than that. Feelings are messy—I mean, look at yourself!”
“Love—” I didn’t bother hiding the disgust in my voice. “Who the fuck said anything about love? It was just one kiss.”
“Observe.” Bailey retrieved several limes from a nearby caddy and lined them along the bar before lifting his empty whiskey glass. “This is your brain—”
“I swear to Christ, if your next sentence involves my brain on drugs, I’m knocking the barstool out from under you,” I growled.
Bailey rolled his eyes, pressing his thumb and index finger into the okay sign. “Sure you will. You know what? Seems like you’ve got this all under control. I’ll just leave you to it—”
I pinched the bridge of
my nose and groaned, “Fine. I’m sorry. Just tell me what to do.”
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, think of this glass as your brain. Now, these limes represent some area of your life. You’ve got baseball here—”
He began dropping the pieces of fruit, one by one, into the glass. “Your friends, family, and casual sexual encounters—or in your case, an extensive collection of porn. Right now, you’re spending time in the friend area. Later, it’s definitely going to be the porn one—”
“Is there a point to any of this?” I should have gone to a therapist or priest—someone who didn’t know shit about my life.
“My point is that you keep your areas separate. You wouldn’t combine your friends and love sections any more than you would, say, the family and porn ones—which is illegal in most states, I might add.”
Bailey dumped the limes back out on the bar, along with several drops of whiskey before snagging another lime wedge. “We’ll call this one Ari. Here’s where it gets interesting. By introducing her into the mix—”
He paused to return the limes back into the glass before squeezing the piece in his hand over them. I wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t just left them in the glass to start with, but as it was one of his rare moments of seriousness, I kept my mouth shut.
“She coats your entire brain. So, you might be in the friend area now, but you’re thinking of Ari. Your mom calls up and wants to serve meatloaf at the next family dinner, and you find yourself wondering what Ari’s favorite food is—”
“Yeah, now how do I make it stop?”
He dropped the last lime into the glass with a shrug. “You don’t? You’re in love, Reed. Accept it. Learn it. Live it.”
I’d chosen the wrong moment to take a drink and ended up inhaling a mouthful of beer into my lungs. After coughing until my eyes were streaming, I croaked, “But I’m not—we just met a little over a month ago.”
A hand tapped my shoulder. “Could I—”
“Yep.” I twisted around and scribbled my name across a napkin, grateful for the distraction.
I needed a minute—who was I kidding? It was going to take days to break his ludicrous assumption down into something more palatable. Minus the one kiss and a dozen or so dirty fantasies, there was nothing there that would suggest a lifelong commitment and house in the suburbs.
Sure, seeing her in pain had ripped me to shreds, but anyone in my shoes would have reacted the same way. If that Fynn guy had gone down in the middle of class—well, it was hard to picture as it hadn’t happened—but I was reasonably certain I would have felt the same.
“Reed?”
I blinked to clear my thoughts before shifting my attention back to where Bailey was watching me with an amused grin.
“You’re looking a little pale. It’s a lot to take in, I get it.”
I drained the rest of my pint and turned it around on him. “What I can’t wrap my head around is how a man who proclaims to have never been in love is suddenly an expert on the subject.”
“Never said I was an expert. No, I’m more of an observer, you might say. I’ve seen enough to know when a man is fucked in the head over a woman—and you, my friend—are completely fucked.”
The longer Bailey watched me with that shit-eating grin of his, the more I found myself wanting to stuff his mouth full of limes—anything to shut him up.
“So, you’re telling me the great Conor Bailey has never been wrecked over a woman before? Not even once?”
Bailey’s grin faltered. He tapped his phone, where it lay against the bar, checking the time. “Christ, it’s getting late.”
I pushed. “I take it that’s a no. So really, for all you know, I might just be dealing with some residual lust where Ari is concerned. We didn’t have sex, so I’m stuck fixating on what might have been, yeah?”
“Residual lust, huh?” Bailey tapped the edge of his phone rhythmically against the bar top. “If you buy that, I’ve got some ocean-front property in Colorado I’d be willing to sell you. Answering your question—no, I’ve never been in love. But I am just buzzed enough to admit that there was a girl I was hung up on a few years ago.”
Maybe it was the beer and lack of sleep catching up to me, or just a sense of morbid curiosity that prompted me to ask, “Who?”
Bailey resumed his study of the bottles of alcohol lining the back of the bar, his brow tight with concern. “Like I said, it’s late. Did you drive here?”
I shook my head. “No, I did the app thing. Didn’t know how parking was gonna be and wasn’t up for a hike on crutches.”
He nodded at my long-winded answer before picking up his phone. “I’ll order a sober ride.”
“We can talk while we wait. C’mon, don’t make me the girl here—” I was poking the bear. I knew it, but I’d long considered Bailey an open book. Anything that would cause him to shut down completely seemed cause for concern.
My teammate was quiet for a long moment, avoiding my question while he ordered our car. I assumed that was the end of the discussion, so I was more than a little surprised when he turned to face me.
“It was about—shit, five years ago? We spent one night together and when I woke up the next morning, she was gone. The end. I need to hit the head. Keep an eye out for our ride, will ya?” Bailey slid off the stool, his usual grin back in place as if the confession had cost him nothing.
I watched as he made his way to the back, regretting ever asking him to open up. Because, if a girl he slept with once was still fucking with his head five years later, then I didn’t have a chance in hell of ever getting rid of Ari.
Blasts of cold air hit my back as people came and went, and I watched dispassionately until one man, in particular, caught my eye.
My father.
He seemed to hesitate as he scanned the bar. I shook my head, wondering how often he snuck into the city for a fix. My jaw tightened at the memory of my mother putting on a pot of coffee, prepared to wait up until he made it home safely.
Son-of-a-bitch.
For a minute there, I’d actually considered he was calling because he wanted to rebuild our relationship, but he was always going to be this. The guy who had no trouble jumping my ass over following the rules and not letting people down couldn’t take his own advice.
Was my mother waiting up now, trying to convince herself he just had a meeting that ran late? Was she telling herself the same thing she’d often told me—hate the addiction, love the addict?
I wasn’t even aware I was pushing off the bar until my feet were on the floor. I grabbed my crutches and began fighting my way through the crowd, gearing up for a showdown.
“Joe!” I roared when I was about ten feet away, hearing the note of hysteria in my voice. When he didn’t turn around, the madness gave way to fury. I began elbowing people out of my way to catch up.
“You’re Killian Reed!” someone loudly exclaimed, patting my back.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I muttered under my breath, before giving the guy a tight nod. Fortunately, my father was still blissfully unaware I was in the room, which worked well for what I was about to do.
Bailey emerged from the bathroom, his eyes narrowing in confusion when they landed on me. I felt the heat in my face, fully aware I probably resembled a tomato, but there was no controlling the fire in my veins. Not now—not when the last twelve years had been a lie meant to placate me into obeying.
I turned away from my friend’s pointed stare, coming up behind Joe just as he stepped up to the bar. He leaned forward and out of reach of my hand, loudly calling out, “I’m looking for Conor! Anyone here named Conor?”
My arm dropped, along with my jaw, and I began trying to back away, only to find the crowd had boxed me in, clamoring for me to pose for selfies or quickies—it was hard to differentiate.
Bailey chose that moment to stick his fingers in his mouth, emitting an ear-splitting whistle that could be heard for blocks.
“I’m Conor!” he bellowed, wa
ving his hands.
My father turned at the noise, his jaw flexing when he noticed my presence. “Killian?”
I nodded and jerked a thumb toward Bailey, no longer trusting myself to speak—or think. It seemed I didn’t know anything anymore.
Bailey stopped to pick up the tab, but I kept my head down and followed my father out of the bar, feeling like a delinquent. My teammate caught up to us and, unaware of the tension, called shotgun. I was perfectly content to sulk in the backseat with my thoughts.
At several points during the drive, my father lifted his eyes to meet my focused stare in the rearview mirror while Bailey poked at random buttons, trying to find music.
When it became clear that alcohol and technology didn’t mix, my father took his eyes off me to intervene. “Right there, Conor. You got it. Play whatever you want.”
“Thanks, Mr. Joe,” he mumbled, sounding infinitely less sober than he had back at the bar. “Reed’s got a broken heart, so he needs a song, you know? Just a little pick-me-up.”
I winced as Bailey dropped a proverbial bucket of chum where I was swimming, knowing there was no escaping this shark. Reed men didn’t get their hearts broken because they never let anyone in.
“Yeah?” My father made brief eye contact with me before shifting his attention back to the road.
“Yeah,” Bailey slurred in response. “It’s always the quiet ones that get ya.”
My father remained unusually silent, even when Bailey managed to sync his phone to the car, blasting hard-core rap through the speakers. I wasn’t quite sure how lyrics about putting a Glock in someone’s ass and fucking bitches were supposed to make me feel better, but it did save me from having to make conversation.
When we pulled up in front of Bailey’s condo, my father parked and turned back to me. “Can I give you a ride home?”
As tempted as I was to avoid any discussion with him, my misplaced anger had fled the moment I realized he wasn’t at the bar to drink. Besides, if he wanted to give me a lecture, it was better to get it over with while I was still somewhere between sober and drunk.
Through The Water: Fairest Series Book Two Page 22
