Chapter 4
Ican”t read the look on Cane”s face. Maybe being confronted with his actions after all this time has him realizing just how fucked up they were.
If he”s processing just how his behavior led to him not knowing I was pregnant-- good. I hope it fucking stings. I hope the look I”m seeing on his face right now is just over five years of agony hitting him between the fucking eyes. I hope that look means he”s feeling every day of hell I went through when his manager showed up at our door to tell me that Hurricane wanted me gone before he got home from physical therapy.
”Rick. Said. What?”
But when Cane grinds the words out slowly in one syllable sentences, I realize that what I”m seeing raging across his face is something far more intense than regret.
Most people would be afraid of the giant man staring at me with murder in his eyes right now. Most people would be smart to be afraid of Cane right now.
I”m not most people. I never was and, apparently, I never will be.
Despite the fact that he broke my heart, and the crappy way he did it, there”s not a cell in my body that believes for a second that Hurricane would hurt me.
Right now though, I can”t say the same for his former manager.
”Rick said you went into a rehab program that included intense training to get you back on the field after the surgery. You weren”t allowed to have visitors or phone calls.”
I take a moment to breathe, to give Cane time to breathe. He”s clutching the edge of his chair so tightly, I”m worried he”s going to split the thick wood slats into splinters.
”You”d been gone for about two weeks.” I hear myself speaking slow and calm, like I”m trying to talk a grizzly bear down from a rampage. ”Rick stopped by the house one afternoon. He was apologetic, he felt really bad, but he handed me some cash and said that you”d told him to move me out.”
Cane”s head drops, so I can”t see his face anymore. He nods though, silently bidding me to keep going.
”He said that you were committed to getting back in top condition and you”d come to the conclusion that I was a distraction. You sent him to move me out of the house. You wanted me gone before you got home.”
”You believed that?” The lethal look has left his eyes and when he looks at me now, all I see is misery. ”You really thought I”d do that to you? To us? Shit, Junie, you really think I”d have chosen the fucking game over you?”
”What was I supposed to think, Cane? I didn”t know where you went. Your phone was off, your voicemail was full. Rick seemed really upset, he said he”d tried to convince you to wait, see if you still felt the same way when the program was done.
”He said he told you to at least have the decency to tell me yourself, but you insisted that I had to be gone before you got back. He had a moving company come in and pack all my stuff up, he gave me money so I could relocate. He said he was sorry but that you never wanted to hear from me again.”
Cane”s body goes slack. The sturdy wooden chair making a protesting groan as the big man slumps back into the seat.
”He told me you left.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut tightly.
”He told me he went to the house to give you an update on how I was doing and you were gone. Packed up and disappeared. Changed your phone number. Didn”t even leave a note.”
Now it”s my turn to fall back in my seat. For a long time, we both stare silently into the flames.
”Why would I do that, Cane?” I finally speak, feeling seriously wounded that he thought I”d have abandoned him.
”Because you knew I was in rehab, because you knew I”d told Rick I was breaking my contract. You didn”t want me if I wasn”t a pro-ball player. You didn”t want me if you knew I was hooked on the painkillers. Because you didn”t really want me, you wanted the lifestyle. That”s what I thought. That”s what that bastard let me think.”
Something in his words catches my attention and I can”t help but zero in on it.
”Hooked on painkillers? What do you mean?”
Cane swivels his head to look over at me, one eyebrow quirked above a squinted eye.
”Rehab, Junie. They gave me morphine in the hospital. I couldn”t kick it. That”s why I went to rehab right after.”
”I don”t understand, why would they give you morphine if you told them you were prone to addiction?”
”It wasn”t an allergy. My manager ok”d it. Nobody asked me.”
”I thought it was physical therapy. I couldn”t understand why I couldn”t talk to you.”
* * *
Hurricane
Partof the story she got was true, at least. Those first two weeks sucked ass. I didn”t want anyone to see me like that. I had my manager take over my calls and my emails, but I expected Junie to start visiting me when I got past the worst of it.
I was nobody in the big picture of pro sports, so there wasn”t any press to worry about.
Of course, Rick was planning on changing all that as soon as I got back to the game.
It had just been a stupid knee thing, nothing that should have even slowed me down for more than a couple of weeks after the surgery. I”d been laid up in the hospital for a couple of days for no good reason, while Junie crawled up in the bed beside me and watched TV with me and we talked about our plans for the future.
I kept asking her what kind of ring she wanted.
We”d only been together a couple of months, but I knew the moment I saw her that she was going to be my bride one day.
All this time, I thought she”d found out that I”d checked into the program to clean that shit out of my system and left when she found out I”d told my manager to eat shit and tear up my contract.
I didn”t care how much money it cost to get out of it. I wasn”t going back to a business that didn”t give a fuck about me.
Mom lost a brother to drugs when she was still a kid, her dad had been down the wrong road more than once before he finally got clean for good.
I”d watched my older brother dance with the bottle since long before he was old enough to know he had a problem.
The idea that I might have that gene terrified me. I”ve always hated the idea that anything could take hold of me like that and I”d been careful to avoid finding out.
It was in the pre-op paperwork not to give me anything stronger than aspirin, and by the time I knew what had happened, it was too late.
I told Rick I wasn”t going home till I got clean. He found me a program and I went straight there from the hospital.
Yeah, I did entrust him to deliver a message to Junie for me. Just not the one she got.
”I was a week in and still crawling up the damn walls when I told Rick I was breaking my contract.”
I”m looking into the firepit, but I”m seeing my manager”s face when I told him I was buying myself out of the contract I”d signed. I didn”t care how far I could go in the game, I cared that he”d been unapologetic about giving the order to go ahead and give me painkillers that I”d been clear I didn”t want.
The way he”d shrugged and told me it was no big deal, and that ”next time” they”d plan for the rehab program in advance. As many times as I got injured, that”s how many times they were willing to get me hooked on something and put me through hell to get off it again.
It wasn”t about me; it was about how much money I was worth to them.
Football was never my passion. It hadn”t been my plan. I was good at it and it gave me an escape from the chaos back here at home after we lost my dad and my grandfather at the same time.
My mom and my grandmother were at each other”s throats over it, Zephyr was just a baby with no clue that her whole family was coming apart at the seams. Raine was a kid-- hell, I was just a kid! Fourteen years old, full of confusion and anger tailor made for knocking guys down to keep them from getting to a dumb ball.
Hayle was a senior in high school. He was already a wild kid. Our family”s money meant we”d be set from birth and my older brother was never headed in any direction but self-destruction. Suddenly he was seventeen years old and the man of the family.
Football gave me something to focus on and it let me avoid the family drama.
Hayle was holding his shit together when I took the scholarship. He was working at the camp and helping Mom with Raine and Zeph. I thought the responsibility had finally given him some meaning in his life. Thought he”d grown up.
If I”d known how that was going to turn out, I”d have never left the Ridge.
”Cane?” Junie”s hand waving in front of my face breaks the vacant stare I have aimed at the fire. ”Hey, there you are.”
When I come back to the present, she”s right there; standing in front of me looking just a beautiful as she ever did.
She let her hair down at some point and now I can see it flowing in long, chocolate waves that fall over her shoulders, the ends skimming the barest outline of nipples poking through her bra.
For a second, I forget that”s probably due to the chilly night air. Hell, I forget everything. Everything that”s happened in the last five years, everything that we”ve learned today, everything but the woman standing in front of me looking too fucking much like mine.