Chapter 9
9
Liam
Me: Yo, Wy. Do you know anything about kids? Asking for a friend.
Me: Don’t want to mess up your honeymoon, but I’ve got a situation.
Me: Hey! Stop fucking my girlfriend and answer your damn phone.
Me: Don’t look at that celebrity truth garbage. Call me before you freak out.
Me: The kid’s not mine.
I t was a cruel trick that the one woman I would not trust as far as I could throw her was somehow my guardian angel.
The second after Janice had dropped Tess off with a suitcase full of books and stuffed animals, plus another suitcase full of clothes and a box of graham crackers, things had started to go wrong.
All Tess wanted to do was read. So, I let her do it for one day to help her settle in. The next day I tried to get her out to the park. That had been a disaster. This morning, I woke up with the fantastic plan to fill the place with toys and games. If we couldn’t go out to have fun, I’d bring the fun to us.
She wasn’t interested. Worse, she was retreating. Everything I did felt too loud. Too big. Too desperate. She just got quieter and quieter. Harrison had a pool at his house and so I had called him and made plans for us to go over later this afternoon and hang out with his family. He’d agreed and immediately turned it into a team thing, so there’d be tons of kids.
Very chill.
Very fun.
Maybe Harrison would just take her for the two weeks? He was a dad. He knew what he was doing. Except as soon as I thought it, I felt bad. Tess was a sweet kid. It wasn’t her fault I didn’t have a clue.
My phone buzzed and I flipped it over to read a text from Dillon, former Bruiser and my mentor from years ago when I was new to the league. We’d never played together, but Dillon worked for the organization to help rookies acclimate to professional life.
Dillon: Wanted to wait until the dust settled to say, well done, man. You brought the cup home to Portland. Couldn’t be prouder.
Me: Thanks. Means a lot coming from you.
Dillon: Is the celebration still going?
Me: Sure is.
Dillon: Remember, if you need a break and some fresh air, you can always come up to the Cove. I’ve got a house for you and all the peace and quiet a guy could use.
Me: I’ll keep it in mind.
Dillon: Hope you’re not allergic to cats.
Me: Is that a joke?
Dillon: No, this damn town is overrun with cats. It’s a fucking cat paradise.
Me: Okay. Good to know. Thanks for reaching out.
Hmm. Calico Cove. Nick lived in Calico Cove. If I just showed up there, the guy would have a coronary.
Still, Tess would probably like Calico Cove. When I found out Nick was from there, I looked it up. Small town on the ocean. Sun, beaches, lobsters, ice cream. Seemed like a kid kind of place to me.
I went back out to the living room where Tess and Kit were playing chess. Of course, the one game I couldn’t remember the rules to was the game she wanted to play. Give me Monopoly or Life and I could crush it. But Chess? Come on.
“Check,” Kit said and Tess flapped her hands like a penguin in distress. It was so cute, I smiled. For the first time in what felt like days, I smiled. Not smiling went against my nature. It was a relief to do it again.
Kit chased Tess’s king around the board before finally trapping him in the corner. “Gotcha,” Kit said, and Tess, like a total champ, reached across the board and shook her hand.
“Good game,” Tess said.
“Very good game.” Kit said with a twinkle in her eye. Of course, when she looked up at me that twinkle vanished like it had never been there in the first place. “Well, I better get going,” Kit said and pushed herself to her feet.
“No,” Tess said. “Stay.”
Honest to God, the girl had real distress in her face and I was starting to feel like the big bad wolf in the story books. I told Janice this was a terrible idea. I was fucking up on day three.
As a rule, I went with my gut. And my gut was saying: do not leave me alone with this kid anymore . “Do you have to leave?”
Kit’s eyes opened wide like I was proposing we rob a bank. “Um. Yeah.”
“Where do you need to go that’s better than a pool party at Harrison’s house?” I asked her.
“Mike Harrison?” she asked, like she might be tempted by my star winger’s party. Weirdly, the interest in her voice made me…jealous? Like she was happy to see that guy, but I was medicine she had to take every week.
Because you’re a jerk to her, I reminded myself. Purposefully.
See? Everything was off kilter. I did not get jealous over Kit. No. I got angry. I got revenge.
“The one and only,” I said. “He’s got a great pool and he’s having a BBQ and we’re going.”
“A pool!” Kit said to Tess like she knew something I didn’t. “That will be fun.”
Tess nodded like she was trying to make the best of it, and fuck, if I didn’t hate this.
“Please come,” the little girl asked Kit and that sealed the deal. Kit had to go to this pool party. I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my sweatpants and texted her.
Me: Come today and I’ll take 5 grand off your bill.
I watched as her phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans and she pulled it out, looked at the screen and scowled at me.
Me: Not joking.
Kit looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was serious. I was more than serious. I was desperate.
“I’d love to come,” Kit said to Tess. “But I don’t have my swimsuit.”
“No problem!” I said, barely stopping the impulse to do a victory dance. “We’ll stop by your house on the way to Harrison’s.”
“My house is on the other side of town.”
“Then we better get going,” I said, and clapped my hands together the way my father used to when he was trying to get my brother and me excited about one of Mom’s plans. One of Mom’s plans that would inevitably crash and burn.
Tess, for the first time in the three days since she’d been dropped here, jumped to her feet with real enthusiasm and beat it down the hallway towards the guest room where I’d set her up.
Kit looked at me like I was just the saddest sack in the world.
“What?” I asked.
“Five grand,” she said and lifted her phone. “I have it in writing.”
“Five grand,” I agreed and the silence between us pounded.
“Do you know Harrison?” I asked. “Is he one of your dad’s-”
She shook her head, cutting off the word victim. “I never met him,” she said.
“I won’t say anything,” I said, feeling strangely magnanimous. And she looked at me with such gratitude it made me a little sick to my stomach.
“You almost did,” she whispered. “At the bar.”
I couldn’t lie. I almost had. That natural instinct that made me want her to pay for what she did to me had kicked in, and I’d wanted…Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted.
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “What happened isn’t exactly a secret. It was all over the news at the time, and my dad’s still in jail. People will know.”
“As someone who was once embroiled in a scandal, you would be amazed at how short people’s memories are. We’ll tell people you’re Tess’s nanny,” I said.
“No one is going to believe that.”
“Why?”
She shot me a look that I couldn’t decipher. “Weren’t you planning on being a teacher?” I asked her and the air went cold. She obviously didn’t want to talk about that. “You told me that night in Nashville. You wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.”
“You remember that?”
I remembered every fucking thing about that night. That was the problem.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Well, it clearly didn’t happen,” she said.
“Why not?”
She looked at me funny. “You know why not.”
I knew her dad was a crook. I knew she’d seduced me to get me to invest. That was all I needed to know.
Wasn’t it?
Suddenly, it didn’t seem like enough. None of what I knew seemed like enough.
Tess came running back into the room in a navy blue swim suit with goggles on her head and a blow up unicorn floaty under her arms.
“Yes!” I cried when I saw her. “This is the kind of enthusiasm we need.” I held out my hand to high five her. She jumped up to slap it, missing my palm and hitting my wrist.
“Oh wait, I forgot my flip flops,” Tess announced and ran back out of the room.
“Yeah, don’t forget those!” I called after her. When she was gone I confessed to Kit. “I totally would have forgotten those.”
“Listen,” Kit said. “I’ll go home and get my suit and meet you there.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’ll just drive us.”
She shook her head, and if there was one thing I knew about Kit, well two, it was that she was a liar, and she was stubborn as hell. When she put her little chin in the air like that, I knew I didn’t have a chance.
“Fine. But take an Uber. We don’t have time for the bus.”
“You paying?” she asked.
“Holy shit, you are stubborn,” I muttered.
“Nope,” she said. “Just broke.”
I walked over to the drawer in my entertainment console. I pulled it open and pulled out two twenties from the pile that sat in there.
“Is that my money? Just sitting in a drawer?” Her face was screwed up in righteous outrage.
“Technically, it’s my money,” I told her.
“You’re not even using it!”
“What are you talking about? I’m using it now.” I shook the twenties at her. “I’ll text you Harrison’s address. And…” I looked her up and down because this drawer of money made me an asshole and I knew it. “Do you own a dress or anything? The WAGS will be dressed up.”
“For a pool party?”
“They come with multiple outfit changes,” I said, scratching my chin. “I can never wrap my head around it.”
“Well, I’ll come with a suit, shorts and a t-shirt.” She snapped that money out of my hand so fast I got a paper cut. “I’m not a WAG. I’m the nanny, remember?”