Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(273)

“Uh, guys?” Javier clears his throat behind me, and I turn; “She’s gone.”

Oh shit.

Chelsea frowns, “What? Who?”

“Peyton,” I say, shaking my head; Goddamnit.





5





Peyton




P A S T



I'm two minutes late for curfew.

And I'm terrified.

Two minutes late for anything, with anyone besides Bill, my mom's latest drunk asshole boyfriend of the month isn't anything. Two minutes late is stopping for gas, or timing the traffic lights back through town wrong. It's slowing down to not get busted at the speed-trap you know Sheriff Evans always nabs people at.

Two minutes late is just being eighteen years old and a senior in high school. It just comes with the territory.

But not to Bill it's not.

I'm shaking as I turn the car off and step out. The house is quiet, but the light in the kitchen is on, and I can see the flickering blueish glow of the television in the living room that tells me he's still up, drunk, and probably mad as hell.

It's fine; it's going to be fine, I try and reassure myself, sweating in the Texas heat as I climb the three creaky stairs to the trailer door.

My mother is the first one I see when I open the screen-door, and the fact that her face looks as terrified as I feel is not a good sign.

“Mom?” I say, biting my lip and trying to give her my most pleading look, as if that'll change anything about the storm I know that's about to erupt inside the small trailer.

“Where the fuck have you been?” My mother quickly looks away at the sound of Bill's voice from the back bedroom. The curtain is ripped back as he stumbles out, cigarette dangling from his lips, a bottle in his hand, and his bloodshot eyes narrowed and gleaming wickedly at me. This isn't going to be the first time he's hit me, and I steel myself for the slap or the shove into the wall I know is probably coming.

“You even know his name?” Bill leers at me, shaking his head as he brings the whiskey up to take a swig.

Questions like these are loaded from the start; I have no idea what he's talking about, and any answer I give is going to trigger some sort of wrath. The trick is to find the less bad answer.

“Who's, Bill?”

His fist crashes against the trailer wall loud enough to make both my mother and I jump; “Whoever it was you was out fuckin and bein late with, you little slut!”

I can feel the anger flash hot inside of me, but I push it back down. He knows I was at the evening accounting class I signed up for through the high school vocational program, but it's not like that matters anyways.

“Bill, I wasn't-”

“Don't you dare talk back to me you fuckin whore!”

I flinch as he slams the whiskey bottle down onto the TV stand as he storms closer to me. Talking back to Bill, however warranted, is like throwing meat to the wolves.

“OK, fine.”

“The fuck did you say to me, girl?” He's on me in a second, and I barely have time to gasp as he shoves me back hard against the wall of the trailer. There's an extra glint in his eyes tonight, and the fear I tried hard to suffocate deep inside comes gasping back out.

Bill's hand comes stinging across my cheek, making me cry out sharply as the slap echoes through me. Tears spring to my eyes, even though I hate to show him any sort of weakness. Weakness is something cowardly, bullying assholes like Bill devour.

I could try and apologize for whatever it is he thinks I did, but there's no way to tell which way he wants me to go here, and the wrong way will hurt more.

“Bill, I-” I scream as the back of his hand comes down hard across my face, splitting my lip and making me taste copper as I go sprawling across the floor. I'm shaking now, and I look up towards my mother, who only gives me a small shake of the head and looks away; as if I'm on my own here.

And I am.

“I ain't gonna have no girl under my roof goin’ around spreading her whore legs for the whole fuckin town, you understand me, girl!”

Bill's boot connects with my ribs, making me scream again as I grit my teeth and nod through the tears. I've had one boyfriend, like that even matters, but something tells me we're past discussing the semantics of “slut” with Bill at this point. He's drunker and madder than I can remember him being; so much so that I'm even more scared of this new wildly unpredictable man raging through the trailer.

“Bill, honey-”

“I tell you to open yer fuckin mouth?” Bill whirls on my mother and slaps her hard across the face.

And something in me snaps.

I screech as I launch myself off the floor at Bill's back, clawing at his face and hammering at him with my fists; anything to get him away from my mother, as useless and as passive as she's been letting the man she shares her bed with, beat on her only kid.