Chapter 17 #3
I snorted with a headshake and glanced down at my phone again as I left the building. I needed to find Harper and tell her to wait for me at the beach. The need to know why my mother was at the game was giving me proper anxiety.
Are they in the Press Box? It should say it above or on the door. I messaged as I walked.
Yeah, that’s it, the Press Box. Alex replied.
As the chill of the evening air bit into me, I glanced up at the glass-fronted VIP rooms that sat at the top of the main stand. I could faintly see two figures in there, but from that distance, you couldn’t tell who it was.
I was oblivious to the stream of people who were making their way out of the stadium. Where are you?
My brother replied, I’m just outside in the corridor. She said she’ll only be ten minutes. She’s taking ages. I’m so bored.
I glanced around the area for Harper, but it was hard to see through the bodies of people. Go home already, the game is over, I felt like shouting.
Wait there. I thumbed back. Raising my head, I half-heartedly thanked some college girls as they told me what a great game we’d played. They clearly weren’t watching me.
OK. Alex acknowledged my instruction.
“Phoenix, where are you going?” I heard Harper call out as I wound my way through the droves of people. Relief sank into me as she ran over. I stopped and pocketed my phone. “Aren’t we meeting the others at the beach?” Her pretty features were twisted in confusion.
The crowd had thinned out, but there were still plenty of people around us. I gave her a reassuring smile and took her gently by the arm, walking us both towards the tunnel that led into the main building. “My mother’s here with Alex.”
“Your brother, Alex?”
“Yeah.”
She gave me a disbelieving look and glanced around. “Really? How do you know?”
When we were both out of the way, I released her arm and turned to stare down at her. Even with my head clouded with thoughts of my mother, I could appreciate how beautiful she looked in my top. “Because I saw them by the tunnel during the game. I have a feeling that something’s wrong.”
“Is that what was bothering you during the game? I thought you weren’t yourself.”
“Yeah.”
“So, she came to see you play? Isn’t that a good thing?” Harper said, misunderstanding.
“No. She didn’t come to see me play. She’s here for a meeting, something to do with Mayor Summers. I saw her talking to a member of his staff just before the snap.”
Harper’s eyes widened, and what little color she had in her face drained away.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked, taking her by the arms, concern for Harper soaring above anything else.
She swallowed, her eyes scanning my face, before she pulled away and dropped to her haunches. Sliding her backpack off one arm, I watched as she started to rummage through it.
“I have something to show you.”
“What?”
“Just a sec,” she rasped, appearing distressed. As she pushed to her feet, Harper thrust a small photograph under my nose.
“What’s this?” I said, stepping back and taking it from her shaky fingers. I didn’t like that she was upset.
I scanned the image of a player wearing the Epic Eagles colors. He was receiving an award.
Harper’s eyebrows inched towards her hairline as I glanced at her and then back at the photo.
“It’s a picture of Dominic Summers when he was your age,” she explained, pointing towards it with a flustered expression.
“So?” I replied, turning it over and looking at the back.
Harper snatched the picture back and pushed it into my face again. “So, look at it.”
Craning my neck, I pushed her hand down so I could focus on it properly. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you see it?”
My eyes narrowed as they fell on the face of the main guy in the image. “Shit, Harper. What the fuck, I don’t have time for this. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“He looks exactly like you, Nix.”
I felt a mixture of shock and anxiety, and I peered down into the snap, taking in the brown eyes, square jaw, and dark hair.
What the fuck?
Recognition pulsed into my senses as I held the photo at a distance and then drew it back. She was right, there was a resemblance.
All the muscles in my stomach clenched.
My eyes darted to hers, and a bark of laughter split my lips. “What are you saying, that the mayor is my father? Fuck, no way.” I whisper-shouted, glancing down the tunnel before pushing the photo towards her chest. She grabbed it.
“Why else would your mother be here?” Harper volleyed back as a couple moved past us and walked down the tunnel.
Crap. I didn’t have time to get my head around what she was saying.
“But she said my father didn’t know I existed, so why would she be here now?” Nothing made sense, and it suddenly felt like there were fingers around my throat, and they were getting tighter.
Mayor fucking Summers? No way.
“Maybe she’s here to make things right. Tell him he has a son before you find out. To warn him or something? At the sleepover at Storm’s, he had a file with her new address in there. They’re connected, Nix, they have a past.”
I released another strained laugh. Was Dominic Summers my dad? No freaking way was I that unlucky.
The emotions running through me were overpowering.
An angry mist was forming. Harper was speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words until I felt her tiny hand thread its way through one of mine.
“Phoenix, look at me,” she hissed, cupping my jaw with her free hand and aligning my head so she could reason with my flailing ass.
“Where are they now?”
Shaking my head, I managed to bring myself back from wherever the hell I’d just been. “Alex said they’re in the Press Box.”
I could see from the determination on her face that my girl was with me.
“Let’s go and get some answers,” Harper said firmly, grabbing her bag and shoving the photo inside. She then slid her arm through mine and pulled me down the tunnel
It was then that it hit me, like a sledgehammer.
There is a great possibility that you have found your father.
Disappointment was like the soundtrack of my life, and now it was time to change the record. I felt the buzz of a possible reckoning in my blood. Endless questions and an almost crippling fear only drove me forward as Harper, and I made our way up the stairwell.
The feelings I was experiencing were conflicted, just like those I had grappled with when I met my birth mother.
Following the signs to the VIP suites, we found the right corridor to the Press Box. Harper, who was now holding my hand, whispered. “Are you sure you're ready for this?”
Releasing a ragged breath, I glanced down at her. “I have no clue about anything right now. But I’m glad you’re here,” I replied honestly, squeezing her hand.
“Me too,” she said with a sympathetic expression.
My brother came into view. He was sitting on a chair outside the door to the Press Box, playing something on his phone.
He must have sensed our presence as he lowered his cell and stood up, smiling. I couldn’t return it. I was too het up. My palms were even sweating.
There was a good chance that I was about to come face-to-face with the man who had fathered me.
The same man who had paid off the woman he’d knocked up so he didn’t have to deal with his mistake, a bastard of the worst kind who had wanted me dead.
And I had no idea what to do or say, but I knew I needed to get into that room.
At the end of the day, I had never had any problems dealing with conflict; hell, I embraced that fucker with open arms.
I rolled that thought around my head again; embrace with open arms? Ironic how that was something neither of the people in the room I was about to enter would ever do to me.
And I hated how sad that thought was.