by Lexi Wilson
I had to tell him, that was all. I just had to tell him.
Chapter 20
Barrett
I’d done Bama a good turn, even if she might never know it. And yes, there was kind of an ulterior motive about it, but I’d still done something good for her. The PowerShot people wouldn’t drop her from the campaign if I said I wanted her there and I’d work with her. She’d get to stay and she’d get to keep making the kind of money you make from being a commercial spokesperson, and having more time with her, I might have a better chance to figure her out.
When I came back to the house from my afternoon jog, little did I know that Bama was not the only thing I hadn’t figured out.
Trotting up the semicircle driveway in front of my house, I found her sitting there on the front steps. It hadn’t been that many years since I last saw her, and she could have walked right out of one of those pictures of her from when we were together – the pictures that tanked our relationship.
It was my blonde who was like a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. The one woman that I didn’t just fuck. The one that I actually let myself love.
Seeing me slow down as I ran up to the house, she stood up. There should have been music for that moment of her standing up to greet me. The blonde hair billowed around her shoulders. The off-white sleeveless blouse and matching slacks seemed to flow down her body to the matching shoes. I almost stopped dead in my tracks, seeing her just standing there after so long.
The bad things didn’t hit my mind at first; only the good things, the sexy things, the “NFL player drafted right out of school and turned into a star” things. I practically relived every time we went to bed.
I wasn’t wearing anything but short-shorts, ankle socks, and running shoes. As she looked me up and down, I had the feeling she was reliving all those things herself. Now, like then, she was the most tempting thing I ever saw.
“Hello, Barrett,” said Shelly, and her voice still reminded me of wind chimes. “You look wonderful.”
There was a caution in her tone, as if she were afraid I might still be mad at her. She might have been scared I’d blow up at her. And, I might have – if I weren’t so shocked to find her there in front of my house.
Shelly, the woman that I almost married, was the only woman who knew where I actually lived because back then, the time when I was just feeling my money and what I could do with it, she was the one who’d helped me pick out the house. She’d expected us to live here together. So did I, until I found out what else was going on.
Walking up to my front steps, I was just a few items of clothing away from being naked, the way she liked me best. I held out my hand to her and she took it, not to shake, just to hold. “Shelly,” I said. “What brings you around here?”
“It’s been a few years, I know,” she said. “When you won the Super Bowl, I was so happy for you. It was your dream come true, I know. I wanted to call you, or at least write, but I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me, even then. So, I was just proud of you from a distance.”
“So, you wanted to congratulate me in person now?”
“It’s not just that,” she said. “There’s something else. Something I want to talk to you about. I was hoping we could talk, if you had time.”
“I thought we said everything we had to say back then,” I said.
“We did at the time,” Shelly replied. “But there’s something else. Something else that I couldn’t bring up then. I hoped we could have a chance to talk about it now.”
Considering the rest of my history with women, I was pretty sure I knew what was on Shelly’s mind. After all the women who’d teased, pouted, cried, and bitched at me for a chance to be the one who got to stay in my bed longer than one night, I expected this to be Shelly’s pitch for getting back together. I really didn’t want to hear it, any more than I wanted to hear anything that any other woman had to say after having one night together.
But, Shelly had always been different from the others. She was the first love and the only love, and there’s a tug that you feel from your first love that’s different from any other woman you ever know.
That was why I decided to send her packing after hearing her tell me how much we belonged together. I’d give her that much and she’d never bother me again.
I let her into the house, got her a drink, and had her wait for me downstairs, in the living room, while I got myself into the bathroom to clean up after my run. I half expected to come out of the bathroom wrapped in nothing but a towel and find her in my bedroom, waiting naked in my bed. It was a scene I’d played more than once.
But when I finished my shower and stepped out into the bedroom wrapped in nothing but a towel...no Shelly. She hadn’t tried to pull a fast one to get another crack at my dick. I seriously had to wonder what I would have done if she had. After all this time, would I actually not be able to stop myself fucking Shelly again before sending her off? Well, I didn’t know the answer to that one. But, my recent history with Bama gave me a clue. Much as I had the one-time or one-night rule, I’d broken it for her. By not being in my bed when I got out of the shower, Shelly thankfully didn’t give me the chance to see if I’d break it again.
This, however, only made me more curious to find out exactly what was on my almost-wife’s mind.
_______________
Talking to women in cafes seemed to be a theme in my life lately. There was a coffee house a few blocks from my house, and that was where Shelly and I went. We got a table next to the front window. I got a bottle of juice, she got a latte, and she made a mysterious little smile at me.
“Notice anything different?” she asked.
She wiggled her fingers on the table. I glanced down at her hand and saw things sparkling there. When we were together, I had bought her some expensive jewelry, including some rings, but not like the ring that she was wearing now. I bought her a sapphire and a ruby. What sparkled on her finger now, which I was noticing for the first time because I’d been so busy just remembering her, was a really noticeable diamond.
Looking back up at her, I said, “Is that…”
“It is,” she said.
“Engaged?”
“Last week,” she said as she nodded.
I blinked, not from the diamond, but just from the thought of my ex marrying someone else. “Wow. Well...um...congratulations, I guess.”
“Thank you. Chris and I are very happy.”
“Chris, huh? Another pro athlete?” Searching my memory, I couldn’t think of who this might be. There was a Chris in the Rangers, but if he’d been going with my ex, I would have heard about it. I couldn’t think of any other Chris in the NFL, or anywhere else in pro sports, that it might be.
Shelly cleared it up for me. “No. He’s a local news producer.”
I nodded. “Oh. News guy, huh? What kind of news? Real news, or…”
“No, Barrett,” she said. “Not the kind of ‘news’ where they send people out with cameras to sneak around and stalk famous people. I don’t have anything to do with people like that anymore.”
“I guess that was kind of a cheap shot,” I admitted.
“It was fair,” she said. “You remember what I was like.”
“I remember I didn’t know you were like until the pictures started showing up.”
She looked honestly sad. “I regret that, Barrett. One thing I never told you is, that’s the kind of example that was set for me when I was a girl. My mother was like that. She was raised to use a man for status and success instead of trying to make something for herself. I guess I picked up her bad habits.
“I’ve had to do some growing up since we broke up. I had to learn how to want a man for himself, instead of what I thought I could get out of him. And, that’s why I came to see you.
“I’m getting married now, and it’s a real relationship, not something where one person is using the other. Barrett, getting married is like turning a new page in your life and becoming someone that you weren’t before
. And before I turned my page, I wanted to deal with some things in my past and take some responsibility for some things that I did.”
“If you’ve come to apologize for what happened back then,” I told her, “Shelly, it was back then. We’ve both moved on. We said everything we had to say at the time. There’s no need for us to go over all that again now.”
She sounded a little anxious when she said, “It’s not just an apology, Barrett. There’s something else. It’s not just that I’m sorry. I also came to make a confession. I have to get something off my soul, something that I should have told you when it happened. I’ve been carrying this since the time we broke up. I have to – I need to – confess it now.”
With no clue to what she could mean, I guessed, “What? Was there another guy, is that it? You were screwing around?”
“No, nothing like that.” She really seemed to be getting nervous now. “Barrett, when we were together, something else happened, something I kept mostly to myself and never told you. In fact, no one knew...except the doctor.”
My heart jumped a bit, hearing that. “Doctor? What doctor?”
“The one who performed the procedure.”
Getting a little scared, I reacted, “What procedure?”
More scared than I was, she answered, “The one that...ended what happened. I wasn’t ready for what happened. I was young and single, since we broke up and weren’t going to be together any more, and I couldn’t do it on my own. I was immature and scared and thought I was going to be rich, but ended up with nothing. I just couldn’t… There was no way…”
The coldest feeling started to crawl all over me. I didn’t like what I was hearing, or where it seemed to be going. “Are you trying to tell me…”
Shelly looked and sounded haunted now, and I had the worst feeling in the world because I was already guessing why. “I couldn’t keep it, Barrett. I couldn’t tell you because I thought you’d deny it was yours, or you’d accuse me of sleeping with someone else, and I was scared of what I’d have to go through to get you to accept it. So.., I didn’t keep it. I went to a doctor, and…”
The horror of what I was hearing was like a cold hand grabbing me by the throat. “And so...you got…” I began, but I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“It was all I could do,” said Shelly, her voice cracking. “I was ashamed. I’d never been really ashamed of anything until then. When we broke up, I was disappointed and hurt. But when I found out about the pregnancy, I was ashamed. And after the procedure, I was even more ashamed. It left me so depressed…”
My horror flashed into anger. My voice rose. “Stop calling it a damn procedure! Say what it was, damn it! You got an…” I somehow stopped myself from shouting the word in this public place. I looked around, as nervous as I was angry, and forced myself to speak lower, but I was seething inside. “You got an abortion! Goddamn it, you got pregnant with me and aborted my kid! You got a fucking abortion!”
Shelly couldn’t look me in the eye any more. She looked down and away from me. “I did. I didn’t keep it. I had a doctor stop it.”
My mind was reeling. I leaned back in my seat, angry, shocked, unbelieving. “Goddamn it. Goddamn it. An abortion. I never knew. I never knew.” Pain and rage burned up inside me. “You never told me. You could have told me! I could have provided for it. Damnit, I could have given our kid the best life. I could have given our kid the best of everything.”
I slammed my fist on the table, and this time I didn’t care who the hell heard it or saw it. “That didn’t have to happen! You could have told me! I could have given it the best!”
Sadly, she looked back at me and asked, “Could you have given him or her a father who was there all the time, instead of just visits?”
“There are kids who grow up just fine with shared custody and you know it,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that!”
“At the time, it was all I thought I could do. I couldn’t go into this new life that I’m starting, still keeping this secret from my old life.”
I snapped at her, “Well, it’s fucking late as hell to be telling me now, isn’t it?”
She hung her head. “I know.”
The pain just ran out of me like blood from a cut. “Damn, Shelly. You remember what I told you about my old man. You remember what I told you about what it was like with him, how it was between him and me.
“I was never looking to be a father myself, but I always promised myself that if I ever got to be some kid’s Daddy, I’d be a better Daddy to them than mine was to me. Even if I wasn’t there all the time, I’d be a better father than he was. I would have loved that kid. I would have been the kind of father to my kid that I never had myself. And you…”
I shut my eyes and turned my head away. I’d taken hits in the field, but I’d never felt anything that slammed me like this. “You never even gave me a chance.” Turning back to her, I showed her in my eyes and on my face what she’d just done to me. “You never gave me a fucking chance.”
She had tears in her eyes, the last thing I needed to see. “I’m sorry, Barrett,” she said helplessly. “I didn’t know any better.”
“I guess neither one of us did,” I said bitterly. “I didn’t know better than to fall in love with a woman who loved what I had more than she loved who I was. And, you didn’t know better than to do...that...with my child.” The words twisted up in my heart. “With...my...child. My baby. My little boy. Or little girl. My kid, that I’ll never see, never hold, never love.”
Shelly’s tears were flowing freely. She really was sorry. She really did feel remorse – for all the good it would do now. “I had to tell you, Barrett. I had to get it off my conscience. I had to-”
“Well, I hope you and your conscience are good now, Shelly. And, I hope you and Chris have a good life. I hope someday you can give him a kid. A kid that he can do all the things with, and take care of, like I never will with…” For the first time since my mother’s funeral, my voice started to break up. “With my little…”
It was all too much, just too much. I got up from the table, not even bothering to finish my juice. I didn’t want to drink or eat anything. I just wanted to dry up and blow away. I took one last sad, angry, agonized look at the woman I once almost married.
“We’ve got nothing more to say, Shelly,” I told her. “Just... No more.”
I staggered out of the cafe without looking back at Shelly again. I left her there, along with so many memories of things I could have done, and who I could have been, that would never happen.
Chapter 21
Bama
What had failed with Quinn finally succeeded with Vera – in a way. I went to Vera’s office at headquarters to try to persuade her somehow to give me Barrett’s address. Frankly, I didn’t know how I was going to pull this off, because she was every bit as observant of the rules about these things as Quinn was. I didn’t know what kind of song and dance I was going to have to do for her, or how I would have to plead with her or wheedle her, or what I’d have to resort to, in order to get what I wanted and needed out of her.
But, I had to tell Barrett I was pregnant, and I needed it to happen someplace where no one and nothing else would intrude on us or distract us. I reasoned it had to be at his house, where it would be just him and me.
“One way or another” turned out to be “another.”
I went to Vera’s office, all right. And as soon as I arrived, before I could start working on her, she told me to sit down. There was something I needed to hear.
Well, I had a certain amount of apprehension about that. What new complication to my life was she going to throw at me? I wondered. My blood ran cold at first, when Vera gave me the news that I had come this close to being dropped from the PowerShot campaign. You know the old saying about dollar signs in someone’s eyes. That gave me this awful image of dollar signs flying away from me and disappearing over the horizon. But, she said I’d almost been dropped. What was it that had save
d me?
I couldn’t believe it when she said it was Barrett. Quinn had told her the whole story of how and why PowerShot had wanted to go forward with the campaign, with only Barrett as spokesperson. But Barrett, she said, had insisted on keeping me. And PowerShot valued him so much that they wanted to keep him happy. So because of him, I was still on board.
That was a relief. And, it was something that I was ready to use. I was going to ask Vera to give me Barrett’s address so that I could go to his house and thank him in person for standing up for me and not letting me be cut out of this opportunity. But before I could, she was called away on some other business. I asked if I could wait and talk to her afterwards, and she said okay.
Vera letting me hang out in her office turned out to be the break that I needed.
Some of Barrett’s fan mail was on her desk. And, on her desk with those envelopes from fans was a big envelope into which she was going to stuff them. And on that big envelope was a sticker – with Barrett’s home address on it.
Yes! I had struck paydirt! I whipped out my phone and took a snapshot of that envelope. Then, I wrote a note, basically lying that I’d gotten a call from my mother and that she needed something, and I would catch up with Vera later.
I hightailed it out of headquarters, jumped in my car, and drove myself as fast as I could without getting pulled over to the wealthy neighborhood where Barrett lived.
_______________
I parked in the semicircle driveway in front of his McMansion and was sitting on his front steps when his car pulled up and parked and he jumped out, with a look of absolute surprise on his face. Naturally, he would be surprised to see me, since I wasn’t supposed to know where he lived. But, Barrett’s expression now was strangely something more than just plain surprise, and I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.
