Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(79)
I choke out a laugh, which immediately turns into more tears before Viv hugs me close again.
“I don’t know what to do, Viv,” I whisper out hoarsely into her shoulder.
She pulls back from me again and smiles sadly as she squeezes my hand. “None of us do,” she says quietly before turning and nodding at the bartender.
“Can I get both of these in like, a bigger glass?” she says, pointing at the two martinis.
The guy gives her strange look.
“Yeah, just, dump ‘em in a pint glass or something. I’m drinking for two now, it appears.”
She turns back when he walks away and gives me a wry smile as her eyes dip to my belly.
“Or three, I guess.”
43
Austin
If you ever have the opportunity to wake up hung over after a five-day bender on a boat, I strongly suggest you tell that opportunity to go fuck itself.
Kyle’s yacht heaves in cadence with the rolling of my stomach. And during this, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in the spare galley bedroom, holding my head in my hands and trying to see straight.
Jesus Christ.
The last five days have been a fucking blur. The morning after Natalie left, when I woke up to Buckley licking my face on the couch and the Waylon Jennings record spinning vinyl hiss on the stereo?
Yeah, that’s when it really sunk in. That’s when the storm hit.
My mom had come over later, wringing her hands and shaking her head.
“Look, Mom, get mad at me, not-”
“Oh, I AM,” she snaps, looking at me the way moms do when they’re mad at you more for making them HAVE to be mad at you.
“Austin, how could you?”
“The thing with the girl from the papers-”
“Oh my goodness, Austin, sweet Natalie having to READ about it like that? My goodness you should’ve seen her face, it’d have broken your heart!”
I know for a fact it would have.
“Mama, you gotta listen to me.” My mind is still foggy from the all-night whiskey and country music bender, but I look my mom right in the eye.
“It ain’t real. She’s lying just to make a name for herself or try to shake me down. I swear I never even went near that girl - not before Nat and sure as hell not after.”
Mom stops her fidgeting hands and nods. “Well good.”
“Doesn’t change anything.”
I slump down at the kitchen counter, trying not to think about the funny looks, the jokes, the stolen glances - all the interaction with that girl that happened in this very room.
Hell…spreading her out across this very counter in the most fantastic way.
Mom gives me a sad look. “Is she-”
“Gone? Yeah.” I nod at the legal folder with the papers half-spilling out, and my mom’s whole face falls.
“Oh…Lord, Austin.”
“Yeah.”
Mom runs her fingers over the rosary on her neck, but then she nods at me, looking calmer than I’d have expected.
“Natalie did what she thought she had to do, honey.”
I shake my head, dropping it to my hands.
“It’s hard, Austin - this life of ours on this earth. We don’t always get what we want, and I can tell you-”
Her face grows small as she looks down.
“We don’t always get to pick who we love, and even then, we don’t always get to choose who we stay with.” She looks up at me sadly, and I know who she’s talking about.
My father.
“Life isn’t always fair, Austin.”
I stand then, moving to my mom and hugging her tightly.
Funny how even as a grown-ass man, a hug from your mama feels like it can cure cancer.
“So,” I grumble. “How is Harry these days.”
Mom pulls away and half smiles. “I asked him to leave.”
My jaw drops. “Really?”
She nods.
“But sometimes life makes you choose, and you’ve got to do what you need to do. Natalie did.”
My jaw tightens. “So you’re saying she NEEDS to marry this asshole?”
Mom shoots me a look at the swear.
“Sometimes you’ve got to let the ones you love do what they need to do, even if means you’re not part of it.”
It was later that day when I signed the papers and sent them to my lawyer.
And after that is when I went off the deep end. After that is when I opened a bottle of bourbon, poured a drink, and then pretty much made that my game-plan for the next five days.
Kyle, being the good, true friend he is, joined in - at least for as long as he could. When you’re a forty-million-dollar arm-cannon who’s season hasn’t started yet, you can put in some days off. The FBI, however, seems to have a lower tolerance for fucking off from work to get wasted, and after Kyle’s second sick day, I think they called bullshit pretty fast.