The Single Daddy Situation

by Layla Valentine

  Despite balancing two low-paying jobs and school, Logan’s mom had still found time to spend with him. There’d been plenty of times where they’d spent the day in front of the television because she didn’t have the energy to do anything else, but he had still valued the time.

  And now, twenty-seven years later, here he was with his own seven-year-old. There were more zeroes in his bank account than he’d ever expected to see in his entire life, but he couldn’t find the time to pry himself away from his work. Maybe that was acceptable to some of the other men and women in his industry, but Logan knew that their personal lives had suffered as a result.

  He had to find a balance, but he didn’t know how. He wanted the best in life for Emily, and there was always the nagging voice in the back of his mind that he had to work himself to death to achieve that goal. Deep down, he worried that if he pulled too far away from his work, they would struggle like he and his mom had. The feeling was the driving force behind his lengthy workweeks and evening meetings. He knew it, but he couldn’t get rid of the anxiety.

  Blowing out a long sigh, he unlocked the screen of his phone to check for any new messages. Satisfied that there were none, he made his way out of the foyer, past the spacious kitchen, and up a set of exposed stairs.

  He was already late; he didn’t see what difference a few more minutes would make. The least he could do was check on Emily to make sure she was okay.

  A slat of sunlight brightened the hardwood floor from where it streamed in through the slight opening in Emily’s door. One of many lessons passed down to him by his mother was a respect for the privacy of others, and as far as he was concerned, that extended to his seven-year-old daughter. With one hand, he lightly rapped his knuckles against the door.

  “Come in,” Emily called.

  Even at seven, she was already more polite than most adults.

  He pushed the door inward. “Hey, kiddo.”

  Though there was a writing desk just beyond the edge of her bed, Emily always preferred to do her homework on the comfort of the plush mattress. As she turned her head to regard him, a smile brightened her face.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said.

  “How was school today?” he asked, absentmindedly readjusting the band of his pricey Swiss watch. The tic was a longstanding habit, a way to keep his hands busy while he wrestled with his thoughts.

  Shrugging, Emily blew a few strands of dark hair out of her face. “It was okay.”

  He had hoped for more, but he still didn’t want to leave. “I’ve got to go to work for a little bit, but you can watch something on the big TV downstairs if you want to.”

  A faint trace of her smile remained as she shook her head. “I’ve got some homework to do first.”

  Well, that was yet another trait she hadn’t inherited from him. He wanted to ask what she was studying or if she needed help, but how could he offer when he needed to leave ten minutes ago?

  He swallowed against the tightness in his throat. Was this supposed to be so hard? When had it gotten so damn hard?

  “Okay, kiddo,” he heard himself say. “I’ve got to head out, but I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  Pushing a notebook to the side, Emily hopped off the comforter—a pale-green fabric decorated with little cartoon cats. He didn’t miss the wistful look on her face as she closed the distance.

  Logan dropped down to one knee to wrap his daughter in a tight hug. The glint of sadness in her bright eyes was enough to make him seriously consider calling Aaron to cancel the meeting altogether.

  But the meeting was important. They were all important.

  He clasped Emily’s shoulders and offered her his best effort at a reassuring smile as he held her out at arm’s length. “I love you, kiddo.”

  Some of the sadness was pushed aside as she smiled back at him. “Love you, too, Dad.”

  In that moment, the realization struck him full force.

  Eventually, she would no longer forgive him for his slip-ups. He could only hope he still had enough time to make it right.

  Chapter 11

  Logan

  By the time Logan waved goodbye as Estella pulled her car out of the driveway, the sun had long since sunk behind the horizon. He hadn’t expected the meeting to take longer than a couple hours, but here he was. At ten at night, Emily had been sound asleep for close to two hours.

  Logan combed the fingers of one hand through his hair and heaved a sigh as he made his way to the kitchen. Scanning the bottles of liquor in the cabinet beside the sink, he loosened the blue-and-black-striped tie around his neck and shrugged out of his suit jacket. He never dreamed he would pay as much for clothing as he had sunk into his collection of tailored suits and dress shirts. Partly to offset the cost of the attire and partly as a joke to himself, he refused to spend more than ten dollars on a tie. So far, he hadn’t been called out on it, so he figured he was in the clear.

  After he draped the jacket and tie over the back of a tall chair at the breakfast bar, he untucked his shirt and undid the top couple buttons. Finally, he felt like he could breathe. No matter the amount of money he spent to obtain the most comfortable suit available, he was still relieved to return to a more casual mode of dress when he got home.

  As he selected a bottle of pricey scotch from the cabinet, he considered skipping the glass altogether. He was the only one awake. Who cared if he sat in front of the television to drink expensive liquor straight from the bottle?

  Despite the rationalization, he set a stout glass atop the granite counter with a light clink. He kept his pour modest enough—he didn’t see the need to face the next day with a hangover. And in the end, that was all drinking alone ever really accomplished.

  His stockinged feet made little more than a whisper of sound against the hardwood floor as he strode out of the kitchen and into the living area. With a satisfied groan, he sunk into the center cushion of the sectional couch.

  Lately, a quiet night in front of the television was about as much as he could ask for. More often than not, he arrived home later in the evening. He was sad to realize that weeks had passed since he last sat down to eat dinner with his daughter.

  No matter the status he achieved in the professional world, no matter the luxuries with which he surrounded himself, no matter the number of magazine editors who emailed to beg him for an interview, Logan felt no different. As far as he was concerned, right now, he might as well have been that little kid from the bad side of the tracks in Los Angeles. At least then he had friends.

  He hated the empty, hollow feeling he got when he took stock of his life. If he didn’t have Emily, his world would be devoid of meaning. And even then, how much longer would he really have Emily?

  At the bleak thought, he raised the polished glass to his lips and took a long pull as he flicked through the channels. He could use a good television show—a good story—right now. Anything to occupy his thoughts with something other than trepidation.

  The liquor was smooth, but it still burned its way down his throat as he swallowed. The first sip was always the worst, he reminded himself. As he flipped through a few more channels, he wondered what he expected to find at ten o’clock on a weeknight. After he flicked past a cooking show, the commercial on the screen came to an end.

  The faint drone of cheers preceded the announcer’s voice as the man welcomed viewers back to a women’s MMA championship fight. Even before the man said Kady Erickson’s name, Logan’s thoughts shot back through time to the woman who had come so close to capturing his heart.

  Four years ago, he had cut himself off from the world of MMA in an effort to distance himself from her. From Mariah Penn. But despite his best efforts to sever the connection, she still haunted his dreams. To be sure, the dreams were good, but he always awoke with a feeling of emptiness he couldn’t shake.

  He still wasn’t sure if he regretted the decision. After all, he didn’t know how it would have ended between them. Maybe they would have tried to form a real relationship, and
the entire thing would have gone down in flames. Maybe they’d be married now. He didn’t know, and that was the problem.

  Ever since he and Aaron had founded their business, Logan’s mantra was one of a decision-maker. He didn’t second-guess himself. He was a leader, and uncertainty was the bane of a leader.

  In life, nothing was more uncertain than matters of the heart.

  He had felt himself plummeting as he fell for Mariah, and he had been desperate to stop his descent. After twenty-four hours together, he knew he shouldn’t have harbored the sorts of feelings he had for her. He knew that such a strong emotional pull would only end in heartbreak, one way or another.

  The strength of their bond scared him so badly that, in the past four years, he had hardly bothered with casual sex. Though he doubted he would ever come across someone who elicited such a strong emotional reaction, he hadn’t wanted to take the chance. Instead, he’d kept himself busy with work.

  Ultimately, his decision to forgo the self-destructive tendencies that had marked his existence for the first few years after Caron’s death had been solid, financially speaking. The less effort he put into slowly killing himself with liquor and one-night stands, the more brainpower he had left for his work.

  Even before he made an effort to push Mariah from his thoughts, Logan knew the attempt would be futile. There was a fifty-fifty chance he had made a tremendous mistake by pushing her away, but at the time, he had been more than happy to take those odds.

  Rather than shift his focus away from Mariah, he reached to the lower level of the stone coffee table to retrieve a sleek, matte silver laptop. With one more sip from the glass of scotch, he typed her name into the search bar.

  He expected to see recent updates on her MMA career, clips of her fights, even interviews between her and sports newscasters. But any report on her recent matches was dated more than four years ago, and so were the video clips of those same matches. The most recent bit of news he could find was a press release that was two years old.

  He clicked on the link and scrolled down, then felt his eyes widen.

  “No way,” he breathed.

  After two years of intense physical therapy, Mariah Penn had announced her retirement from MMA. In a championship match in Las Vegas—the same fight he had promised her he would attend—she had been kicked in the knee. She was rushed off the mat to receive emergency surgery for a torn ACL.

  Eyes wide, mouth slightly agape, Logan leaned back heavily in his seat. How didn’t he know?

  Because you purposefully stayed away from anything that had to do with MMA, dumbass, he reminded himself.

  If Mariah hadn’t gone on to pursue a career in MMA, then what had happened to her? According to the article, she hadn’t planned to leave the San Bravado area. And, if memory served, her mother lived in the city, though her brother was farther north in Tacoma, Washington.

  Four years, and he could still remember where her family lived. He had been smitten, all right.

  Another, newer article mentioned Mariah in an assessment of Kady Erickson’s career. Four years later, and Kady’s only loss was to Mariah. According to the author of the article, a former MMA competitor and current commentator, Mariah’s retirement had been a significant loss to the world of mixed martial arts.

  But if she hadn’t become the MMA star he was so sure she was destined to be, then what had happened to her?

  He didn’t know what he expected to find when he searched for a schedule of upcoming matches in San Bravado, but he didn’t stop until he’d bought himself a ticket for the Saturday night fight.

  There was no guarantee Mariah would be there, but he doubted he would have a better shot at coming across her in person. He had never been a fan of social media, and the thought of creating an account for the express purpose of internet stalking a woman he’d slept with four years ago was more than a little creepy.

  Right, and showing up at an arena hoping she’s going to be there isn’t creepy.

  He brushed away the thought before he could fixate on it. All he wanted was to know that she was okay. There were too many stories of athletes who suffered career-ending injuries and went on to homelessness or substance abuse. If he could just see her to know she was all right, he could rest easy.

  She wouldn’t even have to know he was there. He could satisfy his concern from a distance, and then he could disappear without so much as a sideways glance in his direction.

  Even as he went over the veiled excuses in his head, he wasn’t sure what he was trying to rationalize—his feelings or the sneaking suspicion that he was acting like a creep.

  Chapter 12

  Mariah

  A wave of happiness hit Mariah as she spotted her friends in the center of a section of seats halfway between the door to the concession stands and the center stage. Even at a distance, she could see the excitement on Corrine’s face as she waved both arms in the air.

  Since she had been running late, Mariah hadn’t stopped to grab herself a drink or a snack—she didn’t want her friends to think she had blown them off. But damn, was she tired.

  The last time she had worked a late-night schedule had been at the start of her tenure in the call center where she met Hazel and Corrine. But even then, her shifts had ended at midnight, not four in the morning.

  No matter how tired she was after a ten-hour split shift spent standing or arguing with drunks, Mariah still needed time to decompress when she got home. It was no surprise, then, that her normal bedtime was closer to sunrise.

  Returning Corrine’s enthusiastic wave with all the vigor she could muster, Mariah picked her way down the stairs to join her two friends.

  “Hey, sweetie!” Corrine greeted, stepping forward to wrap her arms around Mariah’s shoulders.

  Mariah’s smile came a little easier as she returned the warm embrace. “Hey, how are you guys?”

  “Pretty good. Not going to lie, we did a little pregaming before we came here.” Corrine paused to offer Mariah an exaggerated wink. “It’s Saturday, you know? Got to live it up while we have the chance.”

  Their other friend, Julia, giggled and nodded. “We did a few tequila shots at a bar by my apartment. Don’t worry, though. We got a driver from one of those apps.”

  Mariah couldn’t help the burst of laughter at Julia’s bubbly tone. For years, Julia had seemed more brooding than upbeat, but once she quit her job at the call center where they’d all met, she came out of her shell. That had been close to four and a half years ago, but Mariah still marveled at the transformation. She was happy for Julia, and she could only hope someday she’d find her own metamorphosis.

  Corrine waved to the chair at her side as she sat. “One of the ladies I work with was telling me today how the fights are great places to meet guys.”

  Of the three, Mariah was the only one who was single, so she knew at whom Corrine had directed her remark.

  Mariah wrinkled her nose. “Picking up dudes at an MMA fight seems a little… unorthodox. Plus, I feel like most of them are drunk and smelly, anyway.”

  Snickering, Julia nodded her agreement. “That’s what I said, too.”

  Even if Mariah wasn’t under the impression that the men in the stands with them were smelly drunks, she felt that her days of searching for a man at any venue were on hold. She hated to admit it, but the yardstick she used to measure men had been all but ruined. Her standards had always been high, but these days, they were damn near impossible.

  As the current match wore on, Mariah exchanged work stories with her friends, updated them on the television shows she had watched recently, and shrugged when they asked if she had considered searching for a new job. She had, but whenever she perused job search websites, she was always discouraged by the list of required qualifications for any position that looked remotely interesting.

  When Corrine’s husband arrived with Julia’s long-term boyfriend, Mariah suddenly second-guessed her decision to stop by the fight before another painstaking shift at the club.
The men handed each woman a beer and a soft pretzel.

  Eyes wide, Corrine glanced from Mariah’s empty hands to her husband and then back.

  Before she could offer the apology that undoubtedly rested at the tip of her tongue, Mariah held up a hand and forced a smile to her lips. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

  So much for a girls’ night, she thought as the bell rang to signal the end of the fight.

  Though she had warmed up to the idea of an evening in the company of her two friends, she hadn’t anticipated that their significant others would be in tow. She didn’t mind Julia’s boyfriend, Steven, but she couldn’t stand Corrine’s husband. The man had cheated on Corrine at least once, but Mariah expected there were plenty more instances they didn’t know about.

  But Corrine had never been one to give up easily, and apparently, that sentiment extended to her cheating husband, too. She claimed that she and Jeremy had talked in depth about the affair, and that he had expressed sincere regret for his actions. Mariah trusted her friend, but she didn’t trust Jeremy.

  Mariah bit back a sigh. “Hey,” she said, glancing over to the little group. “I’m going to go grab myself a drink. I’ll be right back.”

  As she pushed herself to stand, her gaze met Julia’s pale blue eyes. A pang of sympathy flashed over the blond woman’s face as she mouthed the word “sorry.”

  In response, Mariah widened her fake smile and picked her way back to the set of steps. Once she was at the top ring of the bowl-shaped stadium, she blew out a weary sigh. Maybe she could just leave, could send the girls a text message to say she had been called into work early.

  She could, but Mariah hated lying to anyone, especially her friends. She’d tell them the truth before she made up a fake story about being summoned to the club before the start of her shift.