Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(276)

That was a long time ago.

The stewardess on the Archer Holdings jet comes around and gently offers me a drink when she sees I've woken. I shake my head.

You'd think they'd have stopped even offering booze on these fucking planes, between me and Hudson.

Sobriety is- well, sobering. We all had our demons back then, and we all swung at them differently. Logan literally hit them, Hudson drank them away.

I found heroin.

Heroin takes a little piece of you every single time. It whittles you down, takes away your soul, your heart, and your love of anything else but more heroin. It does this until there's nothing left but you and it. You're its prisoner, and it owns you.

And I fucking hate feeling owned.

It's William that fixed me and got me clean. And Logan, of course. I mean, shit, the guy was also trying to get Hudson clean, but when we got back to the States for the first time in years, he and the Old Man both helped me while I sweat out the poison in my veins. They held me down while I shook with the need for more; answered with support when I cried out at the demons clawing at my skin and tearing my eyes out. Withdrawal sickness is some real shit. It's the closest to actual hell I've ever been, and I've come pretty close.

Of course, none of this is to say a drink doesn't sound amazing right now.

Booze I could probably do, because that was never really my problem. But I just don't; not anymore. After you clear heroin and get the controls to your life back in your own hands, you pretty much never want to let something else drive ever again.

No, I traded vices, and for a while there, I had a great one; a perfect vice, a secret, exquisite vice.

Peyton.

As broken as I was, as shattered as I felt, and as lost in the void as me. Two broken pieces fit if you make them.

Or not, I guess.

It wasn't perfect, but it worked; and it worked amazingly. I hated the sneaking around, and the lying to Logan's face about what I’d gotten up to the night before, or who I'd been with, but she was worth it. Until she lit out like a bat out of hell, that is. No word, no discussion; not even a fucking argument. Just a “no more” and it was done; end of story.

And then she was gone.

I almost want to laugh at the current situation of Peyton disappearing; this is becoming a habit. And just like a habit, here I am chasing after her again like a fucking idiot. Guess I've still got a touch of those aforementioned addiction problems.

I'll find her though, I just need to find her before she gets herself hurt, or killed.

I tighten my seatbelt and rub my eyes again as I feel the plane start to descend into Turkey; Fuck, who needs a drink.





7





Peyton




P A S T



It’s cold in the cell, and my teeth chatter as I hug my knees to my chest. They’ve cleaned me a little, but I’m still shaking as I look down at the red stains on my hands and under my nails; Bill’s blood.

Bill, who’s dead.

Bill who I killed.

I know I wasn’t supposed to hear the whispered conversation of the other deputies from over at the intake desk at the station. But I did, and now it’s burning a hole in my gut.

“Remember old Bill Martins?”

“No shit! From over on McDermott street?”

“Yeah, he was seein her Mama.”

“How bad?”

“Dead.”

“Holy shit…”

I killed a man, his blood is staining my hands, and I have no idea what that means for me now. And that looming unknown has me shivering more than any cold chill ever could make me.

There’s the clanging of the door down the hallway, and I bite my lip and curl-up tighter into a ball on the bench inside the cell; This is it. They’re coming to tell me he’s dead and that I’m going to die now too. This is small-town Texas, and it doesn’t matter what horrible shit Bill did to us; people knew him.

Even, purposeful footsteps move down the hallways, and I close my eyes and push my face into my knees.

The steps stop in front of the bars of my cell; “Peyton?” A man’s voice says quietly.

I nod but say nothing; Just get it over with, just tell me.

The man says nothing though, and slowly I open my eyes. I see his shoes first; dark black and fancy looking; nothing like a deputy’s boots. I slowly follow the shoes up to trim, tailored-looking pants, up to a matching jacket, unbuttoned, and a crisp white linen shirt open at the neck. I look up sharply into the man’s face, and I’m suddenly frozen. His face is kind but focused, strong and chiseled, and yet there’s a soft look in his eyes.

…His strangely familiar looking eyes.

There are dark lines of tattoo ink showing through the open neck of his shirt, and the contrast of the man in the expensive looking suit with the chest tattoos has me puzzled.

He smiles at me then, a grin somehow both dark and brooding, as well as disarming at the same time; “You are Peyton Rivers, right?”