Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Foster
“Are you smiling?” Reid asks as I drop the kettlebell to the floor. We’ve been working out at the gym for about thirty minutes.
“What?” I glance over at him, my brow furrowed.
“That.” He points at my face. “You’re smiling,” he accuses.
“Is that a crime?”
“You’re usually all scowly and shit,” Landry chimes in.
“Scowly? Is that a word?” I ask him.
“If not, it should be. They can put your picture next to it in the dictionary.” He chuckles.
“It’s not a word,” Knox tells him, “but they’re not wrong. You are smiling, or you were.”
I turn to Baker. “A little help here?”
Baker shrugs. “The lips were definitely tilted.” He nods.
“Whatever. I don’t know if I was smiling, but who cares if I was?
” I was thinking about Eden. She arrived at my place forty-five minutes early today because she wanted to be the one to bring breakfast this time.
It’s become our thing. Since her second day of working at my place, I have made her breakfast, and she eats with me.
Then, I leave her be to do her thing. We’ve been back to the children’s home together once more since our first trip, and I’m thinking of asking if she wants to go again tomorrow.
So, yeah, I was probably smiling. It’s been a long damn time since I’ve spent this kind of time with a woman, even if she’s being paid to be at my place three times a week.
We haven’t talked about the kiss I gave her on Monday before she left, or the hug. I can still feel her in my arms, but it’s fine. I was caught up in the moment and how comfortable I feel with her, and I lost my head. Today, everything was fine, as if those two moments never happened.
It’s nothing. We’re just… friends, I guess, and it’s nice to share that side of me with someone who understands. I’ve been hiding that part of me for so long, it feels… freeing not to have to hide it.
“Oh, it was a smile. Teeth and all,” Reid says. “Now, what I want to know is what caused this unprecedented reaction from you?” He smirks.
“I was thinking about how I’m going to kick your ass.”
Reid tosses his head back in laughter, and the other guys join in. And I try like hell to fight it, but just as they claimed earlier, my lips tilt into a grin.
“That.” Landry points at me. “There it is again.”
“Are we working out or what?” I ask, moving on to the leg press.
“We’re working out. Also, it’s my anniversary this weekend,” Knox says. “Corie isn’t ready to leave Alexander yet, not for a night out, so I was thinking you all could bring your families, and we could have dinner.”
“Fine, I mean that cuts into my baby-making time, but for my little sister, I’ll do it.” Landry sighs.
“Fuck off.” Knox laughs. “You’d better be there. If you make my wife cry because of your absence, I’ll be the one doing the ass kicking.” He scowls at his brother-in-law.
“I’ll help.” I raise my hand, and Landry glares at me. “What? The guy is trying to do a nice thing for his wife.”
“My sister.” Landry defends himself, but it’s no use. Knox won’t let this argument die. In fact, neither of them will.
“Husband trumps brother,” Knox says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Pfft,” Landry scoffs. “Brother is for life.”
“She’s mine for life,” Knox says. From the tone of his voice, you know that there is no arguing with him over this. Corie is his forever, and he’ll argue with her brother until he’s blue in the face to get his point across.
Not that I blame him. I admire him—hell, all of them, and what they’ve gone through for the women they’ve chosen to spend forever with.
None of them gave up on what they wanted.
I can’t say the same. I let my hurt feelings and my history of feeling rejected guide me, and I didn’t fight. I just walked away.
I’ve been thinking about that day a lot more than usual. The night my life changed in so many ways. I was drafted to the Rampage, and I thought for sure I’d be going to bed that night with my fiancée.
“So, what time?” Baker asks, pulling Landry and Knox out of their Corie battle.
“Let’s make it early. Around one? We’ll eat lunch. We’re still trying to get Alexander on a sleeping schedule. Little man thinks it’s party time at 1:00 a.m. Maybe if everyone is there, keeping him awake, that will help with the process.”
“Takes time,” Baker tells him. “I think Cam was six weeks before he started sleeping through the night.”
“Coral was three months,” Reid tells him. “Although Bellamy would tell you that’s my fault because every little sound she made, I was rushing to hold her.” He shrugs. “She’s a daddy’s girl, what can I say?”
“Yeah, your wife talked to mine.” Knox laughs. “I’m not allowed to do that, thanks to you.” He pretends to glare at Reid but ends up laughing instead.
“I can’t fucking wait,” Landry muses.
“It’ll happen,” Knox says, slapping a hand on Landry’s shoulder.
A pang of envy hits me hard in the chest. I want what they have.
Growing up without a family, I was certain that I’d found the woman, the love of my life, that I would create my own with.
I swore to myself that not a single day would pass by that my kids and my wife didn’t know what they meant to me.
Then she said no.
My life changed that day. My dreams for what my future would look like got pushed to the back of my mind. In the very dark recess, the place I don’t allow myself to visit to avoid the crushing pain of disappointment.
By the time I realized I should have fought for her, it was too late.
Too much time had passed, and if social media was anything to go by, she’d moved on.
I wasn’t hurt that she’d moved on. I expected it.
What hurt the most was how complete her life looked without me in it.
The things we planned, the life we dreamed of, she was living with someone else.
She was dating a doctor. I’m assuming someone she worked with or met at medical school.
I stopped looking her up after that. It hurt too much to see her living the life we planned.
I think that’s what hurt the most. She dreamed with me. She contributed to the conversations about our future and where we wanted it to go. She changed her plans, and I wasn’t included.
That’s what makes the loss feel heavier.
Not that she said no, but that she once said yes.
She stayed in the dream with me long enough for me to believe in the life we were going to share.
Long enough to shape the dreams for our future around the idea of us.
Knowing that someone trusted me with that kind of hope, and then changed their mind, is a quiet kind of ache.
One that doesn’t fade quickly. It just settles in, reminding me that some futures don’t disappear all at once: They dissolve when they aren’t chosen.
The only choice I’ve truly ever made in my life is football. I loved the game. It was solid, steady, and never turned me away. I’ve given my life to my career. It’s all that I have, and I’ve made my peace with that. Life has proven to me over and over again that we don’t always get what we want.
I didn’t get the girl.
I didn’t get the entire dream, but I did get a piece of it.
I was drafted, and even through the heartbreak of losing her, and the life we’d planned, I gave every piece of myself to the game, to the Rampage, and along the way, finally, something gave back.
The game gave me my family. My four best friends and their families, by extension.
They chose me, not out of pity but out of friendship, and we formed our Rampage family.
It's different from what I had imagined, and the ache is intense as I watch them fall in love and start families. The pain lives inside me, but there’s also happiness for my brothers. I want that for them. I just wish it could have been for me, as well.
“You with us over there, Vaughn?” Reid asks.
“Yep,” I say, pulling myself out of my thoughts.
“Saturday, my place, one o’clock,” Knox says.
“My wife is going to ask me what to bring.” Baker grins.
“Damn, we’re all wifed up.” Landry chuckles. “Foster, my man, we need to find you a good woman.”
“I had one once,” I blurt out, then curse under my breath. The room around me grows silent.
“You never told us that,” Knox says quietly.
“She’s not mine anymore.”
“Tell us about her,” Baker says, wiping his face with a towel.
“It’s all in the past.” I try to brush them off, but I know my friends, and they’re not going to pass up this opportunity. They’ve never pushed me, but I think my luck with that has finally run out.
“A past we know nothing about,” Reid says gently. “Whatever it is, you can tell us, man.”
Eden’s words from a past conversation pop into my mind.
She told me that I need to trust them, and I know she’s right.
Hiding my past from them is stupid, but the little boy inside me, the one who lived through constant rejection, balks at opening the seal that used to be so tightly closed you’d need a jackhammer to open it.
That is, until Eden came into my life.
“It’s not a big deal. We made plans. I was still executing those plans, while she was changing hers.”
“Yeah, we’re going to need more than that,” Landry tells me.
I’m not going to go into the whole gamut of my past standing here in the gym, so I give them a small piece. “We met in college. Dated, fell in love, planned a future. The day I was drafted, I asked her to marry me. She said no. Her plans changed, and they didn’t include me.”
“Fuck,” Knox mutters. “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t know her, but I know you, and I can tell you she wasn’t the one for you.”
His comment makes me angry. It’s irrational, but it bubbles in my gut all the same.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, fisting my hands at my sides, fighting against the anger to keep it at bay.
She was the one for me, and I didn’t fucking fight for her.
I didn’t fight for us, and it’s the biggest regret of my life.