King of the Court

by Melanie Munton

  “An actual whoopee cushion?” I said, astonished. “Really? Could you be less creative?”

  She threw it at my face, but I easily dodged it. “It was all I had at the time. I’ve been a little busy lately, too.”

  She scowled the entire way back to her bedroom, slamming the door on my laughter. I didn’t even bother with a shower. I just grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and shut myself inside my bedroom with the intention of not waking up again for another six hours. Minimum.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  “No freaking way,” I muttered to the ceiling.

  I still hadn’t spoken to Cam. Most of my anger had diminished since the scene in my dad’s office. But I still wasn’t quite ready to face him. Not that we’d had much time to talk, anyway. I’d decided it best to just wait until the tournament was over and things settled down before we hashed things out. I hoped it wasn’t him at the door. I didn’t have the energy to go down that road today.

  The doorbell rang again and with great effort, I pushed myself out of bed and quickly headed for the door.

  A familiar face greeted me when I opened it. “Mom?”

  Her smile was tight. “Hi, sweetie.”

  “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” I ushered her inside.

  “I didn’t even know I was coming until last night,” she said with a small laugh. “I knew your plane got in this morning, so I thought I’d catch you at home.”

  I gestured for her to take a seat on the couch. “Is everything okay? Are Grandma and Grandpa all right?”

  She set her purse down beside her. “Oh, yes, they’re fine. Nothing’s wrong.”

  “So, you just felt like a surprise visit?”

  She was wringing her hands nervously in her lap. “Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Zoinks. That sounded serious.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “No, I’m good, thank you.”

  I braced myself. “What’s going on?”

  She took a measured breath and let it out. “Your father called me the other night.”

  I fell back against the cushions, both shocked and annoyed. “He did, did he?”

  She nodded. “Yes, he did. And I knew it must have been important because you know he never calls. He said that you and he had gotten into a fight last week.”

  “Yeah, but so what?” I shrugged. “We’ve had fights before, which was why I didn’t feel it necessary to tell you about this one. We’ll figure it out eventually.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was regret I saw in her expression. “I know. And trust me, I wouldn’t be making a big deal out it if he hadn’t told me what it was about.”

  That got my attention. “What exactly did he say?”

  She fingered the opal pendant necklace around her neck, a Mother’s Day present I’d bought for her two years ago. “A lot. That was the most we’d spoken to each other in nine years. He admitted that he overstepped when he warned Cam away from you.”

  I’d explained the whole Cam situation to her after the internet had basically broken due to our scandalous headlines. It couldn’t have been avoided. She’d called me freaking out about the whole ordeal.

  “He said…” She briefly closed her eyes before settling them back on me. “He said that you blamed him for the divorce.”

  I waited for her to finish the rest of that sentence. When she didn’t, I prompted, “And? What of it? He was the one who left, after all. He was the one who chose his career over his family, so it was his fault.”

  Her eyes crinkled in pain. “That’s not exactly the whole story.”

  Everything else around me ceased to exist.

  “Excuse me? You care to explain that?”

  She touched her forehead, as if dabbing at sweat. “I never told you everything that went on between us before the divorce was finalized. Our marriage was great in the beginning. Having you only made it better. Then he started getting looked at by bigger colleges, and he started traveling a lot. Eventually, it got to the point where we were moving around so much and we hardly ever saw him that I felt like we’d become complete strangers. We’d grown apart.”

  “I know all of this.”

  She rubbed her hands down her pants. “What you don’t know is how big of a role I played in the break-up, too. When I was at my wit’s end with the situation and his frequent absence from our lives, I gave him an ultimatum. I told him that he had to quit his coaching job and find something that would allow him to spend more time with us, or I would leave him and take you with me.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. That was the first time I’d ever heard anything about this.

  “He begged me not to do that,” she continued. “He said he’d make an effort to be home more, and was willing to go back to taking jobs at smaller colleges if it helped. He even suggested going to marriage counseling. But none of that was good enough for me. He said he couldn’t give up coaching because it was the only job that he would ever be happy doing. I filed for divorce not long after that.”

  My brain was short circuiting. This wasn’t what I’d been told for the past nine years. This wasn’t what I’d been led to believe. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  “Your dad didn’t really chose his job over us, Reese,” she said, emotion seeping into her voice. “I forced a decision on him that was completely unfair of me. I’d always known how passionate he was about coaching, and it wasn’t right of me to ask him to give it up. I see that now. I know how big of a mistake that was. I was just being selfish at the time, and I thought that I’d know his true level of devotion if he was willing to give it all up for me. For us. But I was very wrong. I didn’t handle the situation well at all.”

  I felt like the last nine years of my life had suddenly been wiped out and were slowly being rewritten inside my head.

  Why was everyone in my life suddenly lying to me? Why had they all been withholding information from me? Since when did they think I needed to be shielded from the truth?

  “How could you not tell me that?” I demanded. “How could you let me believe the worst about him? I refused to even speak to him for a while in high school. How could you take my father away from me like that?”

  Tears escaped her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “Most of it was me being bitter and spiteful. I wanted you to be as angry with him as I was, which I’m so ashamed of myself for. No decent mother would ever do that. But part of it was also because I didn’t want to see him hurt you in the same way. I’d already seen him doing it for years by that point. Missing your school activities and not being there for all the important stuff. I thought that if you didn’t want him around, then you wouldn’t get your heart broken.”

  “My heart was already broken when I thought he’d abandoned us! And it broke even more with every year that passed because I only got angrier and angrier with him.”

  She pulled a tissue out of her purse and wiped under her eyes. “I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t realize then how much damage I was doing. I let my pride get in the way. I just don’t want you to hate your father because of me. I thought that this internship with him would give you guys the chance to start over. I know I should have told you all of this a long time ago.”

  I shot to my feet and paced across the floor. “Why didn’t he ever tell me this? He’s had countless opportunities over the years to throw you under the bus and prove that it wasn’t all his fault. Why didn’t he? Especially when I gave him nothing but grief for so long.”

  She sniffed. “Probably because he didn’t want you to hate me, too. For whatever mistakes your father made during our marriage, he was always a very honorable man. He was never one to sling mud. He did what he could to keep our relationship afloat. But after I filed, he never caused any issues. He just signed the papers and said he’d give me whatever I wanted in the settlement. All he asked was that we had shared custody of
you.”

  I gripped my hair at the roots, wondering how bad it would hurt if I just ripped it all out. The things I’d said to him over the years… God, I couldn’t believe how cruel I’d been. No, he hadn’t been completely innocent, but he hadn’t deserved the resentment from a wounded teenager in need of a major attitude adjustment.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said after blowing her nose. “I never stopped loving your father. But I realized that I couldn’t handle a life like that, and I didn’t want to continue living unhappily. For you, though, your father would have. If it meant keeping you happy, he would have stayed with me even though he was becoming just as miserable as I was. I guess he was always stronger than me.”

  I looked at my broken mother crying on the couch, pouring her heart out after nine years of silence. I knew I should have been angry with hero—furious even—and I was a little. But more than anything, I sympathized with her. I could understand what it was like to be with someone who was so in demand and lived in the spotlight. I knew that kind of jealousy, when you didn’t want to share him with anyone else, let alone millions of people. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for her, married with a child. But I could understand a small portion of her pain.

  It sent unbearable pain through me even now just thinking about never being with Cam again.

  “You weren’t weak, Mom.” I sat down beside her and squeezed her hand. “True, you could have been more honest with me, but I can understand why you weren’t. I’m not saying it was right, but I get it.”

  She gave me a watery smile. “You’re being too nice. You know, he said the reason he called in the first place was to apologize for all the ways he’d failed me during the marriage. He mentioned something about you telling him he’d never actually apologized.” She met my gaze. “I forgave him. I think that was the first time I’d ever acknowledged it out loud.”

  I recalled the many years of bitterness she’d felt for my dad. I hoped those days were now over. I knew we’d never be the same family again. But it would be nice if we could at least all be in the same room together and not bite each other’s heads off.

  “I’m proud of you, Mom.”

  “Thanks.” It was her turn to squeeze my hand. “I know it’s not my place to interfere with your relationship, but I think you should give him a chance to explain. He sounded pretty upset about your argument.”

  I’d reached my emotional overload quota for the day. Having another draining conversation like this with my dad wasn’t something I could process in that moment.

  “It’ll happen at the right time,” I told her. “He’s completely preoccupied with the tournament right now, and I don’t want to bring even more stress down on him. I’ll wait until the games are over.”

  We both leaned back against the cushions, taking a breather from the emotional rollercoaster.

  “I hope you know that despite how poorly we both handled everything,” she said softly, “your father and I love you more than anything.”

  “I know, Mom. I love you guys, too.”

  It was much easier to push everything off—my conversations with my dad and with Cam—until the end of the tournament, rather than deal with it all now.

  It appeared I’d be a very busy girl come next week.

  43

  Cam

  The two weeks between my fight with Reese and us arriving in New York flew by in such a blur I couldn’t even keep track of what day it was.

  When Coach had put me in for the second half of the Best of 16 game, I’d ended up setting a record for the most three pointers ever made in a single half of a tournament game.

  The Best of 8 game in San Diego had been a different story. The team we’d played from some small school in Indiana had gone into the game with a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners attitude. And hey, could you blame them? Everything was on the line during these games. They played tough, and the game ended up going into double overtime. Krys and Colt had both fouled out, so things had gotten dicey there for a minute.

  Thankfully, we’d pulled off the win, and now we were in New York.

  The Last 4, the ultimate in sports stand-offs.

  Four teams, battling it out for a spot in the coveted National Championship Game. The games in the Last 4 round were played over a two-day period, followed by the championship game two days later. This year it was taking place at the historic Madison Square Garden in the heart of New York City.

  We’d beaten our opponent two days ago in the first game.

  We were playing for the championship trophy tomorrow night.

  And you’ll never guess who we were playing against.

  Give up?

  Belvedere University. The BelV Bastards.

  Fucking Trey Warren, the biggest bastard of them all.

  Because of course, it had to end this way.

  ***

  “Coach Bradley,” the reporter at the press conference called out. “Your team has already lost to BelV once this year. What adjustments do you plan to make for tomorrow night’s game?”

  Coach chuckled. “Come on, Roger. They’re sitting right over there. Do you really expect me to discuss my strategy?” The crowd of reporters laughed. “The simple answer is we plan to focus more on what our weak spots were last time…”

  I zoned out as he finished answering the question. I hated these damn press conferences because there were always fake. You could never say what you really wanted to because you were on national television. You could get into major trouble if say, you announced on the air that your opponents were a bunch of pussies who deserved to get their asses handed to them on a silver platter.

  However true that statement might be.

  Instead, I had to paste on a friendly smile and maintain an amiable attitude.

  Despite the fact that I had Warren the Asshole glaring and smirking at me every two seconds. He was damn lucky he still had all those fucking teeth.

  Usually, the teams held separate press conferences, but this was a whole different situation. The network airing the game wanted both teams present at the same time, with the head coach and all the starters, to “build the dramatic tension.” They said it would be far more compelling for viewers.

  NCU vs. BelV.

  Donovan vs. Warren.

  Oh, the fight.

  The sports world had been in a giant tizzy ever since the championship game was set in stone. Our schools had never faced each other in the championship game before. So, not only was this the most epic rivalry game ever to be played, it was also history in the making. You couldn’t turn on a TV without hearing about the game. You couldn’t open a browser tab on your phone without reading some headline about me and Warren facing off against each other. Especially after the whole fight incident.

  Coach had explicitly said there were to be no questions directed to me about the damn fight. The reporters had beaten the story to death right after it happened and enough was enough. They especially liked to post pictures of Warren’s bruised and battered face before it’d healed. It might have gained him some sympathy in certain people’s eyes. But there were enough NCU fans all over the country who would hate BelV no matter what the circumstances.

  I guess everyone had finally learned that our rivalry wasn’t so childhood friendly.

  Someone asked Boyd about his injury in the last game. He’d sprained two of his fingers, but thankfully they weren’t on his shooting hand. Coach sat on my right, and Jesse, Colt, and Krys sat on the other side of Boyd to my left. The BelV players answered a few questions before someone addressed me.

  “Cam!” a woman shouted. “BelV held you to only fifteen points last time you faced them. How are you planning to handle their pressure defense this go-around?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, we’ve played several more teams whose defensive strategy is tough, like BelV’s, so I think we’re a little more prepared than we were last game. They might have one of the toughest defenses in the game, but we also have one of the toughes
t offenses. I expect it to be aggressive from start to finish.”

  “Especially if someone can’t control his temper,” Warren spoke up, sending the audience of reporters into hesitant chuckles.

  I directed my smirk at him. We had gotten so good at playing off the whole rivalry thing as no big deal on the surface, while loathing each other entirely underneath.

  “I make no promises,” I said into the mic. The crowd laughed again.

  Warren responded with an evil smile, his signature look.

  Another reporter stood up. “Cam, I heard that you’ve been having problems with the same knee you injured four years ago. How’s it holding up? Are you taking any precautions with it leading into this game?”

  What the fuck.

  How the hell did he know that? Only a handful of people knew. Reese wouldn’t have said anything, I knew that. And Dr. Kowalski wasn’t allowed to say anything. Would Coach have spilled the beans? And if so, why?

  I decided it didn’t matter, anyway, because it wouldn’t affect anything.

  “I think you must have gotten your information wrong,” I said, grinning. “My knee is stronger than ever. As with a ruptured patella tendon, I experience some soreness sometimes but there isn’t any new pain there. I’ve had a great physical therapy team behind me this year. They’ve been working with me and it’s better than ever.”

  “By physical therapy team, you mean Reese Bradley?” Warren snidely asked.

  It looked like he was about to say something else, but his coach leaned over and covered his mic, whispering something in his ear that made him shut right the fuck up.

  A younger woman raised her hand. “Addressing the issue of you and Reese Bradley, Cam, how do you thin—”

  “No more questions,” Coach said firmly and stood up. “This press conference is over.”

  Guess they also forgot the topic of Reese and I was strictly off-limits.

  I’d probably better steer clear of Coach for a while.