Chapter 37
37
Preston
A s soon as I walk into the house, I smell the warm, delicious brownies. Loser brownies, she calls them. My sister’s made them after every loss since we lived together in Raleigh.
From the living room sofa, Maya whispers, “Sorry about the loss.”
“It was bound to end anyway,” I grumble as I flop down in the closest chair, letting my duffle slide onto the floor. “I don’t know why I let it go on as long as it did.”
“Uh, what are you talking about?” she asks.
“Elle.”
“Oh. I was talking about the game, and you getting ejected. What happened with Elle?”
“I told her I was done. We were done.”
“What? Why in the world would you do that?”
“Why do you think? It was a mistake. She’s a distraction I didn’t need. Riley used her to get to me tonight. And it worked. My penalty cost us the game, and my fucking post-season bonus.”
“But wait a second. I thought Elle was helping you with your temper. That being with her and rubbing it in Christian’s face kept you from fighting him.”
“Yeah, well, she was the cause of our fight today.”
Going up on her knees to lean in closer to me, she says, “What did he say?”
“He talked shit.”
“What did he say exactly?” Maya asks with an impatient huff.
“He’s convinced she’ll eventually want him back and said she told him that she was faking it all with me.” Faking it in bed with me is what I know he meant. Was she? Fuck if I know. I thought we were good together, amazing in bed, but what do I know? I haven’t been with a woman in years, and she was just in a relationship with a man who should be a pro at sex after all the women he’s been with.
“Faking it?”
“Riley went to see Elle at the salon yesterday. She told him it was all fake.”
“Did you ask Elle what exactly she may have said to him?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She told me he wanted another chance, would buy her a ring. She didn’t mention telling him anything about us was fake.
“Yes, it does matter, Preston! Christian was probably lying!”
“He knew about the kiss the day we met being staged.”
“So? That could’ve been a lucky guess. Come on, Pres. Don’t let that jerk make you lose something great. You should never believe him over her.”
“The truth doesn’t matter as much as the consequences. Those are all still the same. I lost my temper because of him talking about her, and we lost the game because of that power play from my ejection. Now I’ve lost money since I broke the clause in my contract.”
“You lost the game because the entire team was playing like a bunch of nervous little shits tonight. And you have no one but yourself to blame for losing money, breaking whatever rule of your contract.”
“We’re so close to the championship trophy. One game away. I’m not going to let Elle get in my head and make me lose focus again.”
“So, you’ll just decide to stop thinking about her and that will be it?”
I nod. That sounds like a great plan. “Yes.”
“I hate to break it to you, Pres, but love doesn’t work like that. It’s not something you can turn on or off whenever you want.”
“I don’t…” I start to say that I don’t love Elle, but that would be a lie. “How the hell would you know?” I ask my sister instead of lying or confessing how I feel about Elle. “You’ve never loved anyone before.”
“Yes, I have.”
“What? When?”
“I was young and na?ve to think he felt the same about me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I loved him.”
“Hold on. Are you talking about Riley ?”
“Who else would it be? You’re not the only one who hasn’t had a date in five years!”
Jesus. She loved that fucker? “I didn’t know you felt that way about him.”
At the time everything happened, Maya cried a bunch. Like every day and night. I thought it was the pregnancy hormones, not that she was missing the man she thought she loved. Or she did love him, but I was too blind to see it.
“Would it have mattered?” she asks.
“Maybe.” Thinking about what Elle said yesterday, I ask her, “Do you regret, you know, ever being with him?”
“No, of course not,” she says faster than I was expecting. “It wasn’t easy to give up on my college degree, to know Mom and Dad couldn’t accept me ‘living in sin’, but I don’t regret one second of having Finley in my life. You gave me the strength and stability I needed to get through those first few months when I had a screaming newborn and no clue how to be a mother.”
“You were a great mother to him even before he was born.”
“I loved him before he was born, but that doesn’t mean I knew what I was doing once he came into the world. I felt so…lost. Alone. If you hadn’t been there to help, I’m not sure what I would’ve done.” I’m still wrapping my head around everything she’s just confessed when Maya says, “Enough about me. What are you going to do to fix things with Elle?”
“We may as well be planning a trip to the moon, since neither of those things are possible.”
“Sure, it is. Well, the Elle part. It could be a few years before we can get to the moon.”
Shaking my head, I tell her the truth. “Elle doesn’t want to be with me. If she felt something, she wouldn’t have told Christian that it wasn’t real and that we hadn’t slept together…”
Oh shit. How could he say it was all fake if he thought we hadn’t even had sex?
“You didn’t sleep with Elle? I find that very hard to believe. I was here during your disappearing act on the night of the party.”
“No, we did. I mean, Christian thought we hadn’t. He made it sound like Elle told him we hadn’t been together.”
“So, in other words, he was lying, or at best taking a shot in the dark?”
“I think so.”
“Then you screwed up big time with her, didn’t you, big brother?”
“It still doesn’t really matter. Whether or not we slept together doesn’t prove anything. She was using me to get back at Christian. Hell, maybe to get him back.”
“I don’t believe that for a second, Preston. You shouldn’t either. Elle loves you. So, what if it started out with her wanting to hurt Christian? That lasted like a day before you made her forget all about him. Don’t you remember how hurt she was when she came to D.C. and found out about Finley? She thought you were only with her to pay him back for getting me pregnant.”
“She was…I had never seen her so sad,” I say, hating even thinking about the look on her face when she opened her hotel door that night.
“Because she loves you, you big dummy! You have to fix this before it’s too late! Being with Elle doesn’t make you lose or win games or lose money for breaking your contract. That’s all on your team and you personally for having a temper and not being able to let shit go!”
I consider my sister’s perspective for several long minutes.
Our team did play awful. The guys put too much pressure on themselves tonight, me included. We fucking choked. The stakes were the highest they could get, so we played like we were scared of losing instead of playing to win the trophy.
And, well, I got angry and lost it on Riley twice before I even knew Elle because I was angry at him for getting Maya pregnant. Yes, working with her to make him jealous kept me level-headed for the first four games, but it was never Elle’s responsibility to control my temper.
That shit is on me. Nobody else. I’m the only one to blame.
Just like how deep down I still blame myself for thinking that Maya and Riley dating was a good idea. My best friend and little sister together seemed like a great idea at the time. I thought if anyone could get the playboy to settle down, it was my sister. The way he looked at her, there was no doubt in my mind at the time that he adored her. Which made me think he would treat her like a queen. And I was dead wrong about that.
Me.
I had lived with him and played with Riley for years, watching him go from one woman to the next. It was stupid to think Maya would be any different.
I’m the one responsible for putting my sister in the position that got her pregnant. That’s why I’ve done nothing but help support her with raising Finley since she decided to have him.
And I’m also the one responsible for hurting Elle tonight because I was angry at myself for losing my temper. She came down to the locker room to check on me, to try to calm me down because she cared, and I was an asshole who lashed out at her.
I ended things with Elle because I was upset and scared to tell her I was moving, hurting her before she could hurt me back by calling it quits rather than have a long-distance relationship with me. That’s why I put off telling her. I didn’t want to leave her, didn’t want what we have to ever end because I love her so damn much. So why the hell did I tell her we were over?
“Oh god. I’ve made a huge fucking mistake,” I mutter aloud.
“Yes, yes, you have. So go fix it!”
“I can’t go to Greensboro now. We have a game here in D.C. in two days.”
“The chance Elle will forgive you dwindles every second since the one where you broke her heart, Preston. The sooner you show up at her door begging her to take you back, the better your chance of getting her to forgive you.”
She says that like she’s experienced something similar. No. No way. Still, I have to ask. “Is that…are you still waiting for Riley to show up on your doorstep and beg for another chance?”
Maya shakes her head. “No. I gave up on Christian four years ago.”
“After Finley was born?”
She nods. “Then later, I thought he would find out I had a baby, that he was a father, and he would come running…”
She waited for him. Even after Finley was born. She wanted him to figure out he was a father, to have him beg her to take him back. All because she loved him.
I don’t think Riley felt the same or would’ve stepped up if he knew he was a dad, but what if I’m wrong?
What if I’ve been so angry at him, at myself, that I’ve been wrong for five years?
“Shit, Maya. I think I may have made a huge mistake with you too,” I admit to her with a wince.
“What do you mean?”
“I sort of kept Christian away.”
“What?”
“He asked about you. Several times. And instead of telling him you were going to keep the baby, I would just get into fights with him.”
“When? When did he ask about me?”
“Pretty much every day of practice after you found out until he left for Greensboro. He still asked, even though he knew I would kick his ass for saying your name.”
“Wow. So, for months you kept us apart?”
“I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with him after he ruined your life!”
“He didn’t ruin my life, Preston! Christian and I got pregnant together . It was on both of us for not being smart. The pullout method is not a real method.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, and to keep her from giving me any more details. “You have no idea how sorry I am for introducing the two of you and for interfering afterward. I shouldn’t have trusted him alone with you.”
“You’ve always been there for me and Finley, Preston. I can never repay you for that. So, if you thought we were better off without him, then I trusted you. I trust you more than I would ever trust him.”
She trusts me. She trusted me when I said she should go out on a date with my best friend and look where that got her. But this time, keeping Christian away, it may be a bigger screw up than letting him get her pregnant as a teenager.
“There’s, ah, something else I need to tell you.”
“What now?”
“I got an offer from the Grizzlies, the team in San Diego. Well, that is, if they don’t withdraw it after my ejection...”
“Okay. So, if the offer is still on the table, you’re going to up and move all the way to California?”
“I told you it’s the best offer I got. The other…I can’t afford a pay cut to stay closer…”
“I could get a job to help out. You don’t have to keep supporting me and Finley.”
“Yes, I do. Who else will do it? Christian?”
“I never asked you to take us in. Yes, it was my only option when I was a depressed, pregnant, teenager. But now that he’s getting ready to start school full-time in the fall, I could get a job. I can take care of myself now, you know?”
“Earning a living to support you and him isn’t as easy as you think it is.”
“Well, I’m not asking you to move to California for us. I never asked you to take out vengeance on Christian, either. That…what happened should’ve been between me and him. You shouldn’t have had to give up your life for us.”
“And you think he would have?”
“I doubt it, but I’ll never know now, will I?” For the first time in as long as I can remember, there’s anger in my sister’s voice.
“If you want to tell the son of a bitch, then tell him! You could have done that at any point, but you didn’t, did you? If you think he won’t abandon you both, then you’re still the na?ve nineteen-year-old you were when he knocked you up.”
“Love makes you want to think the best about someone. It has nothing to do with how young I was at the time.”
“Love is nothing but a pain in the ass.”
“Forget about me and Finley, and what happened in the past. What about Elle? You’re just going to up and leave her?”
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Maya. I have to go.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Preston. There’s another team who wants you, isn’t there?”
“Yes. But like I said…”
“It’s less money. You would have to take a cut in pay. So what? Some things are more important than money. And one of them is in Greensboro. You would be crazy to choose anything over Elle. Trust me, if you give up on her without trying to fix things with her, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”