CHAPTER 4 KAYLEE
We’re somewhere around the fifth course—I think—when Ben takes a bite of the fish and wrinkles his nose.
To be honest, I’ve lost count of which course we’re on and all this food is weird anyway. I’m hungry and I just want a juicy burger and fries, though typically that’s not really on my diet. I’m more of a grilled chicken and veggies kind of girl.
He takes another bite of the fish then sets his fork down. “You wanna get the fuck out of here and grab a burger somewhere?”
It’s like he can read my mind.
I giggle. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We stand and head toward the exit. We thank the hostess for a nice evening but explain that we have another place to be, and then we walk hand-in-hand out to the car waiting for us.
“In N Out Burger drive-thru,” Ben tells our driver, and we’re quiet in the backseat for a few beats when he says out of the blue, “Her name was Tatum.”
I glance over at him with my brows knit together in question.
“The one woman I loved. Or at least I thought I loved.”
Oh my God, he’s actually opening up. I nod in encouragement for him to go on.
“You gave me a piece of your puzzle, and I want to give you a piece of mine. I wanted to do it back in there, but I didn’t want to taint our good time with my history.”
He pauses and looks out the window, and he keeps his gaze focused there while he talks.
“She moved to Great Falls in the middle of my junior year of high school. She was a year younger than me, but we were in the same math class. I was living with my dad because my mom’s house was a revolving door of new men, and I invited her over after school.
I was her first. She wasn’t mine.” His tone is flat as he talks.
He sighs, and I reach over and grab his hand.
He keeps talking, his gaze moving down to where our hands our joined.
“My entire life was football, but I let her in, too. I didn’t have a lot of time between maintaining my C average and practices or workouts.
I chose to sign with the University of Montana, three hours from Great Falls, but we decided to stay together.
She had a car and came up for every home game, and I thought she was it for me.
It was so easy, and while a part of me felt like I was missing out on my college experience, I thought she was worth it.
Even though my parents’ divorce had turned me off to ever wanting marriage, she made me believe it could work.
I bought a ring even though we were too young.
We’d been together four years when I was drafted in the first round by the Chargers. ” He glances out the window.
I’m staring at his profile, and his jaw clenches.
“So what happened?” I ask.
He finally turns to look at me. I see the emotion still there despite all the time that has passed. For as emotionless as he kept his tone, he can’t hide it from his eyes.
We turn into the parking lot for the burger joint. There are a few cars ahead of us in the drive-thru line.
He presses his lips together and shrugs. “Things I’m not ready to get into…but suffice it to say she’d been fucking someone else.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “God, I was a fucking idiot. College should’ve been parties and experimentation and fun, and instead I was tied to her.”
It’s clearly one of his life’s greatest regrets, and now I see why he developed the reputation of the league’s greatest party boy. He missed that stage of life most people experience in college.
“You weren’t a fucking idiot,” I say softly. He glances over at me. “She was.” I want to add more—that she gave up a great guy, and who would do that? But even as I’m about to question it, I realize I’m sort of in the same category.
I don’t want the life that goes with being married to a professional athlete. It’s been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, forced on me since I was just a twinkle in my dad’s eye.
Interestingly, though, Ben’s been playing a decade now.
His playing career won’t last too many more years, and the more time I spend with him, the more I can see him in filling that role of the man in my dreams that never had a face.
The fuzziness is starting to clear as I can imagine a future with him in it.
“Thanks for saying that,” he says. “My mother killed my trust in women when I found out she’d been stepping out on my dad, and Tatum murdered what little I had left.
It’s why I decided commitment just isn’t for me.
I was taught from a young age that women cheat, and so I’ve built a wall of protection.
They’re both still back in Montana, and they’re basically best friends these days.
It’s a strange dynamic and it keeps me the hell out of Great Falls. ”
“Not all women cheat,” I say softly. I want to dig more into the commitment just isn’t for me comment, but I let it go. For now. “Where’s your house located? Great Falls?”
He shakes his head. “About an hour and a half southwest of there. Far enough to stay away from both of them, but word travels pretty quickly when I’m in town.”
“Seems like there aren’t many places you can just go to get away from everything,” I muse.
“I’ve brought a lot of that on myself, though. I stepped into a certain role and built a brand on it, and now it’s just what people expect from me.”
“Is that what you want out of life?” I ask.
I get the feeling from his tone that it isn’t.
He built a certain reputation maybe to get back at an ex when he was young and in his twenties, but now he’s in his thirties and approaching the end of his playing days.
Goals and values transition and change as we move through different stages of life, and as an outsider getting to know the person inside, I can’t help but wonder if he’s living his life based on the world’s expectations of how he should live it rather than how he wants to live it.
We’re pulling up to the drive-thru speaker now, and he never gets the chance to answer—probably exactly how he wants it. We’re getting deep back here, and that wasn’t part of the agreement. It wasn’t part of the plan.
The car pulls up to the speaker and stops with it right outside Ben’s window so he can place the order.
“What do you want?” he asks me.
Well if that isn’t a loaded question.
“Just order two of whatever you’re having,” I say without thinking it through. He’s a professional athlete. He can likely put down a few more calories than I should even consider putting down.
“Two double doubles with cheese.” He glances at me. “You want a shake?”
I nod. “Chocolate.”
“Both with chocolate shakes.”
We’re quiet while we watch the action inside through a long window. Workers mill about, and the place is busy on a Sunday night. Nobody inside knows that the back of this car holds Aces star tight end Ben Olson and his new fake girlfriend, the sister of Jack and Luke Dalton.
The anonymity is nice, and it’s even nicer sharing it in the back of a car with a guy I’m starting to have real feelings for.