CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Hardy
“ Y ou didn’t have to do this. Drive him home, I mean,” Whitney murmurs from the passenger seat beside me as Joey sits in the back, a grin so big it’s like his whole face is a smile. “I’m more than capable of driving my car.”
Why haven’t I thought about her being out here by herself before? It might be where she goes to work every day—and I’m in no way discounting her ability to take care of herself—but it’s a rough area that feels even shadier at night.
Why didn’t I pay more attention to it before? To the night she jogged into the school because she thought someone was following her?
Because you’re not used to caring about someone before now. Because you never thought to think it.
But I do. And I am now.
The woman works here daily. Most nights on her own after Martin leaves. She’s fucking fearless.
“I never said you weren’t capable. I just figured you might like some company.”
She slides me a side-eye. She had believed that this trip would provide an escape from the conversation she didn’t want to have.
“You feeling okay?” I ask. She looks pale.
“Yes. Fine. I think I’m catching something is all.”
“Turn right here,” Joey says from the back seat where he’s practically bouncing with excitement.
But as we turn the corner, red and blue lights light up the darkening sky. I chance a glance over at Whitney whose face is a muted mask of concern.
“Coach?” Joey asks from the back seat, trepidation laced through his tone. His seat belt is already off before I even stop the car.
She glances over her shoulder at him. “I’m sure everything is fine. Stay here while I see what’s going on, okay?” She meets my eyes briefly before sliding out of the car.
It takes everything I have not to go after her. To be the line of defense for her in case something’s wrong. But I remain where I am with my hands gripping the wheel and random comments coming off my tongue to try and calm the worry that emanates from Joey.
“It’s probably nothing—”
But before I can finish the sentence, Joey opens the car door and runs into the arms of the woman Whitney was just speaking with. I watch their reunion. The tight bear hug. The hand smoothing down her son’s head. The wipe away of a tear before he can see it. The brave smile on her face when he leans back and looks at her.
Whitney puts her hands on both of their backs and ushers them out of sight. I stare after where they just were for a few seconds before I remember how we got here.
“How about because we had sex, and then when I didn’t go to your place, when I explained why and you so casually played it off, you went out with someone else instead?”
I pull my phone out and open up social media. What the hell photo is Whitney talking about?
I see it within seconds. Me in the green shirt and my date, Kayley was in a tight, white dress that left little to the imagination. It was from three months ago on the first night of Xfest, an EDM music festival I was asked to attend.
But the gossip site it’s posted on said it was from an after-party I went to the night Whitney came to me at the stadium.
Fuck.
If I were her, I’d be pissed too. I’m so wrapped up in scrutinizing ways to prove to Whitney otherwise that I don’t notice her heading back toward me until the passenger door opens.
“Is everything okay—”
“Just drive,” she says quietly and then reins back in her emotion. “Please. Can you just get us out of here?”
I back out of the driveway as a means of response. Unsure where I’m driving, I meander through the streets, feeling like she needs a few minutes. Simply dropping her off and leaving her alone doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.
Nor is it what I want to do.
So I navigate the streets of wherever we are like a driver lost without directions.
“His dad’s a dealer. Always has unsavory people, criminals, whatever you want to call them, in and out of that damn house. It’s not the first time there have been cops there, but ... hell if I’m not constantly worried about Joey. About what he sees and the danger his parents choose to actively put him in.”
“Bloody hell.” I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “That’s brutal.”
“She’s so hell-bent on loving her husband that she’s neglecting her son.” She sniffs but it doesn’t hide the anger in her voice. “How do you justify that? How do you fix that?”
“I don’t know that you can,” I murmur as I take yet another left.
“Exactly,” she says quietly as she looks out the window as I pull up to a red light. “I’d like to think that I can, but I can’t. Parents picking drugs over their kids. Like that’s a shocking twist.” There’s a level of disgust in her voice that goes way beyond what just transpired, and I can only assume somewhere in her personal story she understands this in a way no kid should.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can think to say, but I’m pretty sure it’s sufficient for the woman who refuses to allow anyone to pity her.
“So am I,” she says softly. “I know from experience how it feels for your mom to love something like that more.”
I reach over and place my hand on her knee. Her body stiffens, and I forget we’re in a “fight.” But I do something I never do, I let her in. “Yeah. Me too.”
Her head whips over to look at me while I continue to stare straight ahead. Fuck, man. “In my case it wasn’t drugs, but it was just as powerful. Money. Power. Affluence. It sounds bloody crazy, but she sold her soul and, in a sense, her son for them.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I repeat back to her what she said to me. “So am I.”
I drive aimlessly, snaking through the streets that have seen better days but don’t pay much attention to them. I’m lost in my own thoughts about figurative wounds that never heal and how easily they split back open unexpectedly at the inanest thing.
Whitney sighs and shakes her head in my periphery. “It’s a helpless feeling but I try my hardest.”
“It doesn’t go unnoticed.”
“The only thing I can do is give kids like Joey the same reprieve I had—soccer. This academy. A place where for just a little bit of time, they can feel like the world is a better place and hasn’t passed them by and forgotten about them.”
Jesus . The visual those words evoke is both gut-wrenching and beautiful. And you only added to it that first day you didn’t show.
“There’s no other love that should come between a mother and her child. None . Not a husband. Not a lover. Not a drug. Christ .” She says the words about Joey but has no clue how much they speak to me and the life I’ve lived.
I turn to study her profile as she looks out at the city beyond, so taken with her words that I miss that the light has turned green.
A horn honks to jar me out of my thoughts.
“Look, about earlier . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Of course she doesn’t. “I think you like to be angry,” I say.
Her sigh and crossing her arms over her chest are her only responses.
“It’s easier for you that way,” I explain. “It lets you take what you want, and rather than deal with what comes with it—emotions, sensations, desires—it’s easier to hide behind the anger than admit you want me again.”
“How did the subject turn from Joey to me?”
“Because one thing we can’t fix and the other one we can,” I say and swerve around a person on a bicycle that veers out in the road. Her silence weighs down the car. “For what it’s worth, I found the photo you’re upset over. I get why you’d be after seeing it, but I didn’t go out after you left the other night. I’m an arsehole, I’ll admit it, but not to that extent. The only woman I wanted again that night was you.”
And since then too, but that’s an admission I’ll save for another time. One that’s not marred with the gravity of Joey and his family and therefore sounds insensitive.
But make no mistake, the want is still there and stronger than ever.
She scoffs. “Like I believe that.”
“Believe what you will but that picture was from Xfest three months ago. You can see the sign in the background. It’s the white hashmarks. Look up any pictures from this year’s festival, and you’ll see them.” I shrug. “Not sure why that site posted it now. To drum up views or likes or whatever, but I guarantee you I didn’t go out after playing a full game, a practice, and then being with you. The night after a game is my recovery period: ice baths, cold showers, stretching, and tape review. It wasn’t driving down to Miami the other night after you left, partying till closing, then driving home.”
She opens her mouth and then closes it, our eyes holding longer than is probably safe while I’m driving.
“Sadly, when you’re in my life as you’ve become, you can’t believe everything you read, and if you do, you have to take what you learn with a grain of salt. It’s horrible. It’s frustrating. It sucks. But that’s a big lesson everyone in my inner circle has to learn.”