Chapter 30 #2
“I will,” he choked out the words and they said goodbye. Trent ended the call.
“Damn, damn, damn.” He needed to pull himself together if he was going to support Charlie. Thinking about her losing her mother gave Trent a reality check. The idea of football and taking her EM HGH-1 serum to enhance his performance seemed irrelevant.
Charlie was the magic, not her drugs. She was good for his soul.
Whip smart, a classic beauty with a surprisingly edgy sexiness, a huge kind heart and giving soul under a matter-of-fact manner to hide it all.
He ached for her all over. So he would go to her, to console her if he could at her mother’s funeral.
He was afraid he was the last person she would want to see after he had caused her so much bad publicity.
He’d be a reminder of all that went wrong.
But he would go anyway because he had to give her whatever he could, whether she wanted it or not. She would let him know.
Charlie had always thought Woodlawn Cemetery was a beautiful place.
Today, wrapped in her coat, she looked up at the bright cold sky through the bare branches of the trees and tried to appreciate the peaceful beauty.
Suzette, Buck, and Diggins stood with her in front of her mother’s casket.
She couldn’t let herself think about her mother being inside or she’d cry. And she’d already done her crying.
There was a good-sized crowd of family, neighbors, and friends standing around them, about twenty altogether, waiting for the priest to begin. Glancing around, she looked for the one person she wished was there. It was foolish. She knew he was in Miami.
There was a smattering of media posted at a respectable distance, but present and watching.
She didn’t care. She was numb to them because she was heartbroken.
About her mother mostly, but also about losing Trent.
It was funny, but the loss of her research career and the potential legacy that she’d worked so hard for wasn’t even a blip compared to losing these people.
She still had Suzette and was glad Suzette had Buck.
She longed for Trent’s comfort but after what she’d done to his career, she wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke to her again.
He’d been out of her league to begin with.
Her world was a different one than his. The deepest darkest part of her knew that she was damaged goods.
She had the gene for the disease and he was as healthy a specimen of a man as she’d ever known.
Out of her league. She didn’t deserve him.
Her mother’s casket was lowered into the ground.
She was being buried next to her husband, her father.
Suzette wept and held onto Buck’s arm but, with her other hand, she held Charline’s hand.
The scene felt unreal to her. She looked around at the group of family, friends and neighbors.
Diggins stood at her other side, sniffling, eyes red-rimmed.
Charline had no more tears, only a deep, entrenched ache in her chest that felt like an ax had hollowed her out. This loss, all the losses she’d suffered one on top of another in this past week, seemed a permanent part of her now. Her mind went to Trent again and she squeezed her eyes closed.
When she opened them again, as the priest droned on, she saw a man walking toward their group. She squinted and her heart stopped, then kicked into high gear as if she’d had a shock.
Trent. People murmured as he reached her, stood at her shoulder and put an arm around her. The priest paused and looked at him briefly. Then he nodded and continued.
Her heart beat fast as she felt the warmth of him and his towering, sheltering presence next to her.
When he took her hand in his, her heart tumbled, the tightness in her chest eased.
His hand was bare but warm even on this cold day.
She felt the strength and purpose in the simple hold he had on her hand.
As she listened to the priest say his final prayer for her mother, she found she had no more tears.
Stepping forward, still holding onto Trent, she took a rose from the priest and laid it on her mother’s casket.
When dark guilt and heavy sorry pressed into her, strangling her emotions, Trent squeezed her hand. She turned into him and he held her, escorting her away from the casket, the grave, the place where her mother would be buried.
“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” he whispered in her ear. She held onto his arm, promising herself she wouldn’t cry anymore, that she would get past her guilt. She would find a way to go forward because she had Trent at her side again.
But as they walked away from the grave, she saw the line of media waiting for them, blocking their way to the cars.
A camera went up and popped a flash in their faces and then the barrage began.
The shouted questions came from every direction as the reporters and photographers closed in around them.
Trent didn’t stop. Holding her close, he silently walked with her toward the family’s limousine, head down against the onslaught.
“Trent, is it true that you took performance-enhancing drugs? Or were the drugs considered a treatment for your injury like it said in your attorney’s injunction documents?”
“Trent, what do you think your chances are of ever playing football again?”
Charlie winced, and then she felt Trent go stiff and stop in his tracks, stopping them both as he turned to face the reporter.
“Football? You’re asking me about my football career?
Who the hell cares? The biggest sin of all this is the loss of a brilliant researcher’s career.
This woman, Dr. Charline Morneau.” He held her tight against him.
They didn’t deserve to get her picture. “You should be asking whether she will ever conduct medical research again, whether her breakthrough serum will ever be perfected and approved for the treatment of horrific diseases.”
The stunned men and women of the press were only silenced for a few beats, but they came back with a barrage of new questions. He ignored them and said what he needed to say.
“I would willingly donate another ten million to the university’s research fund if they would reinstate Charlie to continue with her research there.”
The press went nuts, more so than he’d ever imagined they would, hanging on his words and begging for more.
He knew they’d get some critics, but they would also get some favorable pieces.
He could see that a number of them were lining up in favor of him to be included in the Hall of Fame, spinning it as dedication that led him to take experimental treatment for his injury, that it wasn’t about drug doping.
He had mixed feelings about it. He was looking for favorable press toward Charlie, not himself.
But once again they were inseparable, even in the aftermath.
He turned back to her and, with a protective arm, ushered her into the waiting family limo.
He didn’t presume that he’d be going with her in their limo, though he had every intention of following her home, so he was surprised when she tugged on his hand, pulling him inside with her.
The door closed behind them, shutting out the noise of the reporters suddenly and absolutely. The car glided away.
Trent found himself sitting tight against Charlie on a short bench across from Suzette, Buck, and Diggins. Suzette looked as heartbreakingly sad as Charlie, so he was surprised when he watched a slow smile appear on her face.
“Thank you for being here for Charline, Trent. I know it must have been terribly inconvenient for you.”
He nodded. Had no idea what to say to her. He felt like the devil who’d led her sister on a path to evil. She turned to Buck, who’d been staring, unabashedly admiring him as if he were the man’s idol. Maybe he had been. Before.
“Buck, I’d like a change of scenery from my mother’s home. Let’s have the limousine take us to your house.” Buck tore his eyes from Trent and nodded at Suzette, smiling and squeezing her hand.
She leaned forward and gave the instructions to the limo driver.
Trent wasn’t sure if Charlie was paying attention, but after dropping Suzette and Buck at Buck’s place, they finally reached Charlie and Suzette’s house.
Diggins excused himself to go to his apartment in the ramshackle carriage house and left him and Charlie alone.
He stood in the kitchen with her, looking around at the quaint old space.
It was bright and clean, but reminded him of his great-grandmother’s kitchen.
He wondered if it had been seventy years since it had been renovated.
Aside from the newish range and refrigerator, he doubted it.
He hoped he’d given them enough money to fix the place up at Christmas. If not, he wanted to give them more.
Charlie rested her head on his chest in the circle of his arms.
“Hey? You need some sleep, don’t you?” he asked.
She looked up at him and nodded with a sad smile. Then she took his hand and led him up the back stairs. To her bedroom.
He stood in the doorway, still in his coat, watching her undress.
“What time do you need to leave to get back?” Something about the way she said it, that sensual voice of hers, sent a shiver of carnal need through him, the kind he couldn’t ignore.
Running the timeline through his head, he figured if he needed to get back to the team hotel by midnight, he’d need to get to the airport in Miami by eleven, which meant he’d need to leave the ground in Boston by eight, get to the airport by seven, leave this house by six. He looked at his watch.