by Kyra Lennon
I spent another day at home with Jessica, once again enjoying the peace. I got a text from Bryce at lunchtime, and he invited himself over for dinner again. His message made me laugh because, just like Deanna, he wanted to keep me busy, and he knew cooking was a good way for me to stay occupied. I decided to make creamy lemon chicken with pasta, and Bryce arrived while the chicken was cooking. I’d been in the living room with Jessica, trying to encourage her to take her first steps. She’d been edging her way around the furniture for a while, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she let go and started to walk unaided, but she hadn’t quite found her confidence yet.
“Has she still not done it yet?” Bryce asked, laughing, as I stood behind her, her little hands gripping onto my fingers.
I shook my head. “She won’t let go. She just makes me follow her around the room. I think she’s enjoying leading me all over the place.”
He smiled. “She’ll get there.”
“You wanna take over while I go check on dinner?”
“Sure.” He stepped forwards and Jessica toddled towards him, not letting go of my fingers until she reached Bryce’s legs and wrapped her arms around them. Laughing, he lifted her up. “Hey, Jessica. Why are you giving your mommy such a hard time over this walking thing, huh?” She giggled when he tickled her tummy. She looked so cute in her blue and white stripy dress, her curly hair a little wild and untamed since we hadn’t left the house all day.
I left them to it, and went to the kitchen to make sure I wasn’t burning anything. In my slightly foggy state of mind, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d accidentally drizzled the chicken with vinegar, or something equally as ridiculous, but everything looked and smelled as it should. Just ten more minutes before I had to go back and start cooking the pasta.
As I left the kitchen, Bryce was walking towards me with Jessica holding his fingers, the way she had held mine. I stopped at the end of the hallway and knelt down. “Come on, sweetheart,” I said. “Come to Mummy.”
Bryce twisted his fingers a little, trying to get her to let go, but she wouldn’t. He had to walk with her all the way to me before she let go and fell against me. Bryce straightened up and I looked up at him. “I don’t think today’s the day.”
“Too bad. It’s been a while since I witnessed a kid taking their first steps.”
“Well, the day’s not over yet. Maybe after a rest, she’ll try again.”
As it happened, Jessica was done with walking, and after we’d all been fed and she’d had a little more play time, she was ready to be bathed and put to bed. Bryce waited for me down in Radleigh’s man cave, where he made several more unsuccessful attempts to beat Jesse’s Pacman score.
“Jesse’s rigged this,” he said, glaring at the Pacman machine. “He must have. That score is impossible to beat.”
Laughing, I curled myself up on one of the bean bag chairs, placing the baby monitor beside me. “Or, you just have to face the fact that you can’t keep up with the kids anymore.”
Bryce dropped into the bean bag chair beside me and said, “Now you mention it, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I haven’t told anyone except Richard yet, but I’m planning to retire at the end of the season.”
My eyes widened. “Wow.”
He smiled. “In the soccer world, I’m ancient. If I don’t leave on my own terms, I’ll get kicked out soon anyway. Thirty-three is like eighty in soccer years.”
It sounded ridiculous, but it was the truth. Younger players were coming up all the time, and people love to see new talent. Thirty was pushing it when it came to making the main team, and Radleigh had just passed that milestone. It wouldn’t be too long before he’d have to make a decision about what to do next in his career.
The way things are going, though, that might not be a concern of mine.
“So, what will you do?” I asked.
“Well…” He shrugged with fake modesty. “I’m pretty rich. I could actually retire.”
“Sure. But you’d be bored in the first twenty minutes.”
Bryce grinned. “I sure would. There’s talk that Ethan might be leaving at the end of this season, and Richard would like me to stay on as a coach.”
I smiled. “So, he’s basically just trying to keep hold of as many staff as possible?” With me potentially going back too, it seemed as though Richard wanted his A team to stay the way they were when I’d arrived.
“Something like that. I’d like to do it. I’m kinda over the travelling, but I can probably suck it up for a few more years if it means still being involved with the Warriors. I don’t know what else I would do if I didn’t have soccer in my life. There wasn’t very much else I wanted to do aside from playing.”
“It’d be cool if you stayed on for a while. It’d give you time to figure out what you want to do next.”
“Yeah. Also, it’ll be good to have a hand in training the next generation of kids blindly wandering into the insanity of life in the public eye.”
I nodded. So often people didn’t consider the celebrity aspect of being a soccer player for a high profile team. In some ways, that wasn’t such a bad thing, especially if they had the same mindset as Jesse had had. He was so focused on the game, he really didn’t consider or care for the fame part of the deal. Those who wandered into it knowing and wanting the fame were the ones who really needed the extra training. They were already too self-assured, and needed someone to remind them of what mattered. Team work. The game.
“You wanna watch a movie?” Bryce asked, looking over at me.
“Sure. What do you feel like watching?”
“Your call.”
“What if I want to watch something girly and romantic?”
He rolled his eyes over-dramatically. “I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.”
I gave his arm a quick squeeze. “You’re a real pal.”
He grinned as I stood up to find a movie, and while I was choosing, he picked up the bean bags and moved them around, putting them in a position where we could see the TV better. After some deliberation, I chose Notting Hill. It might have been ancient, but it served two purposes. It would make me laugh, and it would make me think of home. If I wasn’t allowed to visit England, I’d just watch movies about it until I got a chance to go back.
Bryce and I snacked on the individual vanilla and raspberry crème brulées I’d made us for dessert as we watched, and when the movie ended, I let out a huge sigh.
“How come everyone else gets a happy ending?” I asked, flicking the TV off with the remote then dropping it on the bean bag beside me.
Bryce shifted his eyes to me. “Really, Leah? You’re sitting here with Mr Can’t Keep A Girlfriend, asking about happy endings? I’m not best person to advise on that topic.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Well, at least we’re both pathetic.”
“That’s why we get along so well. We’re both doomed to sit here together watching crappy movies and bitching at the world.”
Turning my head towards him, I said, “I guess there are worse places to be.”
Bryce grinned and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and I shuffled closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder. “That’s true.”
After a short silence, I said, “What will he do, Bryce? Is he going to choose me?”
His silence sliced through me, re-opening the unhealed wounds I carried on my soul. I needed him to say yes. To tell me Radleigh would come home. He must have felt me grow cold in his arms because he held me tighter.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he said softly. “I wish I did. But I can tell you what I do know. If he makes the wrong choice, if he chooses her, he’ll regret it. When she’s bored of him and finds someone new to screw around with, he’ll regret letting you go.”
I looked up at him. “Do you think Sarah regrets letting you go?”
“Oh, God no. Neither of us were happy for a long time. It just took me saying so to put an end to it. I think if I hadn’t, we’d hav
e stayed together forever.”
“I don’t understand that. It’s usually the woman who speaks up if she isn’t happy. If she was really that miserable with you, why not just give it up before?”
“Well, I don’t think she was miserable.” He smiled. “But we were more like friends than husband and wife. Everything had become mechanical. Our routine never changed.”
“If she’s happy now, would she spend her weekends drinking?”
He shrugged. “Not my problem anymore. Not unless anything she does puts the girls in danger. If she’s unhappy now, it’s not me making her that way.”
I put my head back on his shoulder. “We need to find someone for you. I really did think Bethan might be the one.”
“She was a great girl. But probably not someone I’d start a whole new life with.” Bryce sighed. “I miss having a family life. I don’t miss how stale life with Sarah had gotten, but I miss coming home to someone. I miss the kids.”
“I can relate. I mean, I still have Jessica, but I don’t get much in the way of conversation from her. If I’m lucky, she might say ‘mama’ now and again, but… it’s not much to work with.”
Chuckling, Bryce said, “When she starts talking, you’ll wish she’d shut up for five minutes so you can have some peace!”
“Yeah, Deanna said that to me once.” I laughed. “Right now, though, it’d be nice to have someone permanently in the house I can talk to. I mean, the housekeeper comes in three times a week, but I can hardly follow her around and make her talk to me.”
“Why not?” he teased. “You pay her enough.”
“Good point!”
I shifted my position again so I could reach the bottle of water I’d placed on the floor by my feet then took a sip. I turned to Bryce again. It was strange to me that he’d had such a hard time finding someone new. He was the kind of guy all women say they want. Good-looking, with thick, dark hair and beautiful eyes. Incredible biceps. He dressed well, and had an excellent sense of humour. Plus, he was caring, understanding, great with kids, and good fun. What was not to like?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.
“Like what?” I smiled.
“I don’t know. You looked thoughtful.”
Shaking my head, I sank back into my bean bag again. “It doesn’t matter. God, how did we get here, Bryce? It’s like, one minute I was arriving in L.A with this massive expectation of an amazing job and a fresh start, and then this insane chain of events happened, and now… now I could end up with as little as I started with.”
“Nah. I don’t see that happening. For one thing, you’re way too stubborn to settle for anything less than you want. You’re the kind of woman who always picks herself up and moves on to something better.” He paused then let out a loud laugh. “You know what the first thing Radleigh ever said to me about you was?” I shook my head again, my eyebrows pulling together with curiosity. “He said you looked like the kind of woman who could kick his ass and still have him wanting to come back for more. I think he was imagining you as some kind of strict British headmistress type, but with a dark side.”
“Ha! He thought I was an uptight prude, and he told me as much. Do you remember… there was a night when we were away for the weekend and we went to a club. It was the night I met Miguel, actually. Radleigh told me I needed to get laid so I wouldn’t be so uptight. I nearly punched him in the mouth.”
Bryce laughed. “I do remember that night. Because he looked pretty shocked when he came back from annoying you. He was so pissed that you were into Miguel. I told him to quit being a prick around you, then maybe you might be willing to get to know him. Instead, he pretty much pissed you off at every turn.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I hated him for a long time. But then things changed.”
“You know, the biggest wake up call he ever got in his life was when we came to London and you didn’t accept his apology right away and jump into bed with him. I don’t think he expected you to be that easy, but when you told him you wanted him to feel the same pain you’d felt… it changed everything.”
I flinched a little, remembering how callous my words had been, and a sharp pain ricocheted through my body, like a flashback to how hurt I was back then. I wasn’t even sure I’d meant those words I spat at him, but they flew out of my mouth and my heart broke, certain they’d cemented a definite end to the us that hadn’t really begun yet.
“How so?” I asked, shaking my head to bring me back to the here and now.
“Because it showed him for sure that you cared about him for more than who he is to the rest of the world. That you saw through it all. You didn’t just back down for the sake of being able to tell people you were Radleigh McCoy’s girl. You let him know how you felt, and you stood your ground. Honestly, it was pretty harsh, because he’d suffered. Believe me, he suffered. But he wouldn’t have responded to anything less. I’ve never known him not to screw a girl out of his system before. That was his thing. If anyone got too close, he’d move on and then sleep with as many women as possible until the feelings went away.” He shook his head. “Not with you, though. The number of women he turned down after you left was unreal. That’s how bad he wanted you. Nobody else held any appeal anymore.”
Bryce hadn’t told me much I didn’t already know, but I felt my heart start to crack open again at the reminder of all we’d been through, because none of those things mattered anymore. Not since he started considering Jen as another option. A better option. I tried to blink away the tears filling my eyes, but there was no stopping them, and Bryce reached for my hand then pulled me back to him again.
“I hate this,” I said, wiping the tears away.
Bryce placed a hand on my cheek, softly stroking with his thumb. “I know. And you don’t deserve to be going through it.”
His eyes were soft on mine, his breaths a little shallower than usual. His gaze dropped to my lips for the briefest moment. He moved his head a fraction closer to mine, and a flash of “what if” ripped through my mind. What if I let him kiss me? The question had burst and flitted away into the ether before it had fully formed.
Because there was never a question. And I didn’t need to answer.
And Bryce didn’t either.
He stopped and closed his eyes.
“Bryce,” I whispered.
He dropped his hand from my cheek as his eyes opened again, and as they met mine, he said, “In another time and place, huh?”
I let out a small laugh. “Something like that.”
Bryce rested his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-”
“You don’t need to explain.” Raising my head slowly, I kissed him on the cheek. “I get it.” With a smile, he nodded. “Come on. Let’s go get some coffee.”
“Coffee sounds good.”
Chapter Three – Some Elaborate Form of Foreplay
The old me would have lost sleep over that little moment with Bryce. I’d have questioned what it meant, how I felt, if I’d made the right choice.
The old me might have even made a move on him.
But there was no need to dwell on it. I already knew what it meant. Bryce Warren had been, for want of better words, my first Westberg crush. He was the equivalent of that guy at school who was good-looking and kind, and who you talked about with your friends, but while you appreciated how incredible he was, you felt more admiration and warmth for him than crippling despair because he hadn’t noticed you. Now, I was lucky enough to call him a friend. And I loved him for every time he’d been there for me, and everything he’d done to keep me together when I wanted to fall apart. Our friendship meant way more than us falling into bed together because we were hurting and lonely. When we left the man cave and had some coffee, everything clicked back to normal. No awkwardness or tension. The moment passed and everything was as it was supposed to be between us.
In the morning, I woke up with that same old feeling of heaviness in my heart. The same old ache that reminded me that alth
ough I was awake, the nightmare continued. Radleigh hadn’t made a decision. Or, if he had, he hadn’t told me. I’d become an expert at painting a smile on my face, and that morning was no exception.
I went to Deanna’s to pick her up for our shopping trip, and right away, my mood lifted. The woman had magic powers, I swear. We headed into the city and hit the shopping mall, and although I couldn’t shift the heavy weight crushing my chest, coffee and cake does make everything feel a little better. The downside? On our way back to the car, we got caught in a freak rain shower which soaked us right through. Instead of going straight back to Mitch and Deanna’s for lunch, I had to go home and change. I left Jessica with Deanna after dropping her back to her place, then drove, shivering, back home.
“Oh my God,” I muttered as I took off my soggy shoes and placed them on the shoe rack by the door to dry off. Instead of traipsing water through the whole house, I peeled off my sodden jeans and shirt while standing on the plush welcome mat, then, dressed only in my underwear, I ran up the stairs with my wet clothes in my hands, and dumped them in the wash basket. Shivering, I went to the closet to pull out some fresh clothes – another pair of jeans and a thin black jumper – then hopped into the shower to warm myself up and rid myself of that horrible damp feeling after being rain soaked.
When I was done, and feeling substantially less gross, I quickly reapplied some make-up, and threw my wet hair back into a ponytail; I could dry it properly when I got back to Deanna’s. As I padded down the hallway towards the stairs, I stopped dead when I heard the sound of a key in the lock. Aside from Radleigh, Mitch and Deanna were the only other people who had a key to the house, but Mitch and Deanna were at their house. I crouched down where the wall met the bannister along the hallway, and peered through the bars as Radleigh walked into the house.
My heart ceased to beat for a moment before it sank into my stomach. Why has he brought her here? Why isn’t he at work? Where are the kids?
Christ. Had he made a decision now? Was this it? Was he bringing her to the house for some privacy? Like a kid bunking off school so he could make out with his girlfriend? As my heart started up again, banging incessantly, I willed it to calm down so I could hear what they were saying.
