Chapter 40
40
[Bolan]
I watched as Ruthie is escorted by security personnel up the aisle and away from the WAG section. Instantly, my heart races, concerned for Tulane. Had Ruthie gotten a call? Is everything okay?
I scan the seats for Lacey Sawyer, who was sitting next to Ruthie, I see her turned, her back to the field, watching Ruthie’s retreat.
A strong sharp whistle comes from beside me and I turn my head toward Cyrus who is also looking toward the stands. When I glance back at the WAGs section, Lacey is pointing at me, shrugging her shoulders and lifting her hands like she’s questioning something, then pointing up at the suites two levels above the lower level.
I can’t possibly see that far, so I don’t know what to look for, nor do I understand anything other than Ruthie possibly headed up to a suite for some reason .
The rest of the game is a blur. I can’t concentrate, and I’m actually pulled in the seventh after two dropped catches in a row.
“What’s going on with you?” Dalton Ryatt asks me as I take a seat on the bench.
“I don’t know.” I glance toward the WAGs section that I can’t see from my position. Then I climb up to the railing, dangling over it by casually leaning against it, so I can see the seat Ruthie vacated. She hasn’t returned and I’m not liking her absence.
When the game finally ends, I head for the field, not the tunnel and beckon Lacey down to the sideline.
“Where did Ruthie go?” I rush to ask her.
“Hi, Bolan. Nice to see you again.”
“Lace,” Cyrus groans. I wasn’t aware he was behind me.
“I don’t know. The security guy came and asked Ruthie to follow him to a box. I guess her father is up in the suites.”
“Her father?” Ruthie hasn’t mentioned him recently. Then again, I’ve been so focused on other things, I can’t recall asking if the man was still calling her.
“She asked me to tell you which suite she’s in. Said you should meet her there. She didn’t look too pleased.”
Players never rush the stadium seats, and I’m breaking all kinds of protocol, but I don’t have time to race through the tunnel and exit through the locker room.
Everything in me says my wife is in trouble.
Taking the aisle stairs two at a time, I bypass well-wishers. Fans calling out my name. People stepping in my path to ask for an autograph. When I hit the concourse, I sense I’ve made a grave mistake. I’m working against the flow of traffic. Like a stream full of salmon swimming upstream when I want to go downstream.
I worry that too much time passes before I make it up two major levels and then take my chances that Ruthie is on the first base line and not the third base one .
Running from room to room, I brush past fans exiting them, desperate to find Ruthie.
Still in my uniform, I stick out like a sore thumb and since I’m certain I’ve broken a hundred rules, I’m probably kissing my contract with the Chicago Anchors goodbye.
But nothing is more important than finding Ruthie.
Thankfully, on the sixth room, I find Ruthie inside standing near two men.
One is Floyd Everest.
The other is a man I assume is her father.
There is something vaguely familiar about him. An air about him. It’s probably the haughty way he holds his head and the slip of his hands into his slick pants’ pockets.
“As I was saying—” Floyd cuts off as I stumble into the room, my cleats catching on the carpet.
“What’s going on?” I glare at my former lawyer. The one who got me out of Japan but into a bind in the U.S. by proposing I marry his niece in a scheme to become a Chicago Anchor.
Ruthie rushes to my side and I wrap my arm around her shoulder, pulling her tight against me.
“Bolan Adler.” The man with strange familiarity about him, reaches out his hand. His smile is too wide, held too tight. Arrogance covers every inch of him. “Graham Avery,” he introduces himself.
It takes me a moment to process the name. Not that his name doesn’t give him away as Ruthie’s father, but that his name in general is important.
“You don’t happen to be Graham Avery, world champion catcher for New York in the late eighties.”
He smiles wider. “One and the same.”
The man is a legend in the industry. Countless records. Three championship rings. And Ruthie’s father. A man who ignored his child .
We shake hands, but I’m not feeling so honored nor awe-inspired by him.
“What can I do for you, sir?” I glance at Ruthie, giving her an extra squeeze beneath my arm.
“Seems we have a common interest. My daughter.”
I snort, returning my gaze to him, knowing this man has had very limited interest in his daughter over the years.
“And as such, sounds like the two of you are in quite a pickle lately.”
“A pickle, sir? No, I actually love pickles.” I wink at Ruthie, who fights a smile, warring with the corner of her lips.
“My friend Floyd here told me about your predicament.”
I dislike my father-in-law even more with the reference to Floyd.
“My predicament?” I sound like a fucking parrot as I glance toward Floyd, who I fired a week ago.
“You married my daughter to get on this team.”
I turn back to Ruthie but answer this pompous asshole. “With all due respect, sir, I married your daughter for lots of other reasons.” I arch a brow because I’m not about to tell my worthless father-in-law how I feel about his daughter without telling Ruthie first, privately.
“What do you want?” I glance back at the man whose gaze narrows on his adult daughter.
He nods toward Floyd. “You owe my attorney money, for the sale of my daughter.”
I let go of Ruthie and rush the older man, but Ruthie catches my elbow, pulling me back to her.
“You watch your fucking mouth speaking about my wife like that,” I snap, pointing a finger at him. “Your daughter isn’t an object, and she wasn’t for sale. She’s a loving, kind, generous human being, and you’re shit if you think you can bully her or me.”
I turn on Floyd. “And you, you sack of shit, cowering behind this guy. I knew there were a few things wrong with you, but this is a new level. Your niece broke a legal and binding contract. And you did as well, and I should be asking you for compensation, instead.”
My ex-attorney has broken about a million confidentiality laws.
Finally, I gaze at Ruthie. “As for any contract.” I pause, staring into her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I married Ruthie Avery because she agreed to be my wife. There is no contract.”
“That’s a bold-faced lie. You signed a contract with this woman, and I get a cut.”
“Did you even read the contract?” I snark.
I learned the truth from Jared after asking him to forward me a copy of the papers that I hadn’t bothered to read over, simply signing my name because I blindly trusted Floyd.
And, well . . . I don’t read well.
Jared explained that Ruthie asked him to cross off all transaction fees. The dollar amount for any agreement was zero. Ruthie hadn’t married me for one red penny. She wasn’t looking to enforce a legal document. She willingly married me.
And I’m a fucking idiot.
He also explained how Ruthie quit the day she arrived in California, and while he held out hope she’d change her mind, he could tell that Ruthie was changed in general.
She looked happier. Sounded lighter. And he owed it all to me and Tulane.
Since Jared Jacobson and his wife Nylah love their daughter-in-law, they were willing to set her free.
“Whatever cut you think you deserve, you don’t.”
“I’ll ruin you,” Floyd points at me.
He can’t. Because the only things of value in my life are Ruthie and Tulane. And one of them is tucked into my side, holding me back from strangling both these men .
“Gentleman, with all due respect . . . Fuck off.” With my arm over Ruthie’s, I turn us toward the door, but her hand on my belly stops me. She looks up at me, scared but strong, and turns back toward her father.
“I think it’s best if you continue to pretend you don’t have a daughter. And ignore me for the remainder of my life, like you’ve done for most of the beginning. I’m going to do the same to you.” Her voice quivers. “And I take great solace in knowing I will never treat my children like you treated me. And he”—she points at me and then I point at myself, raising a brow and loving the thorns on my flower—“he will be twelve times the father you ever were.”
I chuckle at the reference to my jersey number.
Ruthie turns her back on them and I slip my arm around her again, turning only to glance over my shoulder and point down at her.
“My wife. She’s hot when she turns reckless red.”
This isn’t sexy reckless, this is just standing up for herself red, and I am here for it.
Once we hit the corridor leading to the upper level exits, I spin Ruthie, cup her cheeks and kiss her with all I have. My tongue deep in her mouth, my lips nearly swallowing her. Pulling back almost as quickly as we start, Ruthie follows my retreat, just like she did when we first kissed.
During that experiment.
And I return to kissing my wife, because she’s more than sixty seconds in my life.
She’s my forever.
“That was insane,” I whisper, lowering my forehead to hers, as we stand beside my truck beneath the covered parking lot for the team and staff .
I’d been reamed out for my actions. Sprinting up through the stands that way, I could have been mobbed, injured or worse, according to Dalton Ryatt, who kept rubbing his forehead, muttering about how he wanted to keep me on the team and how I was a prospect for a coaching position. But he couldn’t help me if I kept acting like a fool.
At the casual mention of a coaching position, Dalton had my full attention. However, my wife was waiting in the hallway, and I needed to get back to her, not wanting to leave her side while we were both so raw.
I am her green. And I wanted her to feel nothing but safe and loved by me.
Eventually, Dalton dismissed me.
“Do you understand now why I ignore my father’s calls?” Ruthie asks, toying with the jacket only partially buttoned up my chest.
Rubbing my hands up and down her shoulders, I say, “How can he be like that with you? And why didn’t you tell me Graham Avery was your father?”
Another secret.
Ruthie shakes her head. “Because he wasn’t worth mentioning.”
I nod, agreeing with the sentiment, then playfully pointing at her, swiping down her nose. “But no more secrets, baby.”
“Bolan, we’ve only been married a few months. We can’t possibly fit years into days.”
I chuckle. “Okay. But let’s start here.” I lick my lips. “That kiss.” I exhale. “That fucking wonderful kiss all those years ago. I don’t know what happened back then, but it rocked my world, and I searched everywhere for you. Cafeteria. Bars. Even went into the library.”
“Not the library,” she jests, giving me a slow smile.
“I couldn’t believe you just disappeared. I mean, the campus was only so big.” I sigh, searching her eyes. “But then you were just gone, and out of sight, I guess, out of mind.” I tap the side of my head because she knows I’m a bit of a slog up there.
“But when I saw you in that ballroom. Do you remember how I asked you if I knew you? Like there was something between us.”
In the silence that follows, Ruthie nods. “I remember.”
“Because there is something between us, Ruthie.”
“I felt it, too,” she whispers, tears filling her eyes.
“I’m so sorry it took me so long to find you again, flower.”
Ruthie chuckles, the sound soggy as a tear slips from her eyes. “I’m sorry, too. For all the time we missed. But also, for not telling you right away, when I knew you were you. I should have told you who I was. It’s just that as time went on, I didn’t know how to slip it into conversation. And I eventually convinced myself it didn’t matter. It was in the past. And I love you now.”
My eyelids flap wildly. My heart stammers.
“Say that again, Ruthie.” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own. Like I’ve been hit in the chest with a fast ball and had the wind knocked out of me. I’ve never felt such pleasurable pain.
“I love you,” she says a little stronger, those dark eyes wide and watching me.
“I love you, too, baby.” God, I love her so much, and I’ve never said that phrase to anyone before. And I never plan to say it to anyone else again. Not like this. Only her.
“I don’t want to lose you, Ruthie. Not ever.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Then she clutches my jacket and pulls me toward her, kissing me like I’m fresh air, just like she’s that deep breath I haven’t taken in years.