CHAPTER 27 BEN
I’ve known Jack Dalton a long time.
Technically I’ve known his sister almost as long—just shy by a couple weeks.
Jack and I are close friends.
We lost touch somewhere in the middle of our friendship, but he’s the kind of guy who will do anything for the people who are important to him. As a teammate, he counts me on that list. But we’ve transcended the teammate bond to form a different sort of bond.
When we were younger, we’d frequent strip clubs, smoke cigars, chug beer, and make stupid bets. When we got a little older, we’d frequent strip clubs, smoke cigars, chug beer—for me, anyway. He graduated to gin—and make stupid bets.
We played on the same team and then we played for different teams, but when we ended up on the Aces together, it was like no time had passed at all.
We went out to a club the night we realized we’d both been traded to the same team.
We had a hell of a lot of fun. And then he met Kate the next day, and while our friendship still existed, it changed to something else.
He didn’t want to go to the strip clubs with me anymore.
He didn’t want to smoke cigars anymore.
He still drank gin, though, and we still had a hell of a good time making stupid bets.
And that’s where I land this morning. We’re standing in the pool house he converted into his personal workout shed, and I look over at the set of treadmills in front of the mirrored wall.
“Who are the scratches from?” he asks, nodding toward my arm.
“Your sister,” I say. It’s sort of fun to poke the bear, if I’m being honest, but he obviously thinks I’m just kidding.
“Fuck off, man,” he says.
I quickly change the subject. “A hundred bucks says I can run a mile faster than you.” I stretch out my calves.
I’ve had a recurring cramp in my calf during workouts this off-season, and Tony tried to explain to me that it’s because I drink beer.
He said I’m depleting my sodium levels and taking electrolytes from my body without replacing them.
I think he’s full of shit and it’s just something that comes with age.
Jack laughs as he glances at the treadmill. “You think you’re faster than me? You’ve got twenty-five pounds on me, man.”
We’re both lean and muscular, and we’re close to the same height, but he’s right. Our weight is just distributed differently and that couple centimeters I have on him must be where all my weight is.
“You don’t think you can beat me?”
He laughs. “Make it a grand and you’re on.”
I nod, and we each get on a treadmill and start it up. He turns up the music—not Nickelback, to my dismay, but some classic rock—and I warm up by jogging a few paces first while he does the same. “Ready?” I ask.
He nods, and we each click the buttons on the treadmill to program it for one mile. “Set,” he says.
“Go!” we both say at the same time, and I crank up the speed on mine as I lower the incline so I’m running on a flat surface. He tilts his to a slight decline so he’s running downhill, but I’m focusing less on him and more on my own speed. I’m pacing myself so I can sprint at the end.
It’s as I pass the three-quarter-mile mark that my calf starts cramping up.
“Fuck!” I yell, but I run through the pain just like I would if I was in a game.
Jack’s concentration doesn’t break, and his treadmill slows to a walk before mine does. “Four minutes, thirty-nine seconds,” he yells proudly over the music.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I glance at my clock that’s flashing twelve seconds more than his time. I try to walk off the cramp, but it’s not happening.
He turns the music way down. “The calf again?” he asks, and I nod.
He heads over toward a cabinet where he keeps all sorts of vitamins and supplements, and he tosses me a bottle of salt tablets. Then he opens his refrigerator and tosses me a Gatorade.
“Stop drinking beer, dude,” he says.
I laugh through the pain paired with the fact that I just lost a thousand dollars. “You sound like Tony.”
“Stop thinking it’s because you’re old. I’m a year older than you and my legs don’t cramp like that.”
“Because you’re fucking perfect,” I mutter as I lie on the ground and attempt to stretch it out.
He comes over to help me out the way the trainers do, bracing my leg and moving it backward. “Definitely not perfect,” he mutters. “But smarter than you.”
I shrug. He’s probably right about that.
“Listen, while we’re here having this…intimate moment,” he begins, and I chuckle through the pain. “What’s going on with you and my sister?”
“We’re faking a relationship for the benefit of the media so they will lay off my party boy image and I can get Calvin to crawl out of my ass.”
“Well that’s some imagery,” he says. “But not exactly what I was asking.”
I shake him off my leg and sit up. “Thanks,” I mutter, nodding toward my calf.
“Any better?”
“No. But I’ll live.” I stretch it back and forth a few times. Fuck do these cramps hurt. I have to figure out how to make this stop before the season starts. More Gatorade might be the key, but less beer is not.
“I know you’re faking, but she’s moving in with you, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that she’s my little sister and you better keep your hands off her.”
“Or what?” I challenge. I realize I’m riding a fine line here, but part of me wants to be honest with him while the other part of me knows I can’t.
He doesn’t laugh it off the way I expect him to. “Without our dad here, I feel like I need to protect her. And you, too. I don’t want anything to fuck up our dynamic on the field, and I don’t want to worry about my sister.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Jack,” I say, finally getting serious with him.
And it’s the truth. She knows what she’s getting into, and the two of us have the potential to hurt each other fiercely.
Unfortunately, he can’t protect her from whatever’s between the two of us.
It all feels inevitable, like there’s some energy at play we’re powerless to stop.
Regardless, though, it’s between her and me. Jack doesn’t factor into that equation, and neither does his relationship with either of us.
“I have a question for you, though,” I say.
His brows knit together.
I stand up to walk off the cramp, but instead it looks like I’m pacing.
And I am. I’m nervous to ask this question, but like a man might ask his girlfriend’s father…
I feel like I need to address this to the person who has put himself into that role.
“I know at first you were against this fake relationship idea, but Ellie is putting pressure on me to make it look like we’re moving toward the aisle.
It’s part of why Kaylee’s moving in this weekend instead of in a couple weeks.
What would you say about the two of us actually getting engaged? ”
He blows out a breath. “Jesus. This is Ellie’s default, isn’t it?”
I press my lips together and nod. “She said it worked for her and Luke. It got the press and Calvin off his back, and that’s really all I’m looking to do. Plus raise a bunch of money for charity.”
“Charity? The chick at Honeys?” he asks, naming a stripper we used to watch dance across the stage together.
I laugh. “No. I’m thinking more along the lines of a foundation.”
He raises his brows, clearly impressed. “And you think getting engaged will help with that?”
“It’s an untapped market for a guy like me.
I get to capitalize on shit like cigars and tuxedoes and honeymoons and jewelers.
We put a new spin on my old endorsements.
I can still have the party image with the whiskeys and the beers and of course athletic supplements and gear.
And she gets to capitalize on dresses and stylists and hair shit.
It’s win-win except for the whole, you know, I don’t want to fucking get married thing. ”
“Then why would you even consider it?” he asks.
I rub my fingers against my thumb to indicate money. “I finally figured out what I want to do when I retire.”
“We do not speak of the R word in this shed,” Jack says, and he isn’t joking.
“The calf cramp is a daily reminder that I’m not getting any younger, man. I’ve flailed my way through a successful career, but I can’t flail my way through what comes next.” Shit, that sounds familiar…like someone important said that to me not so long ago.
“But you’re not a planner. I’ve known you a long time, and shit just falls into your lap as if by magic.”
He’s right. Traditionally, that’s how my life has gone. But with Kaylee in it, I want to start looking at the future. I want to look at what comes next. I might even want to lay some plans.
And I want to figure out whether I’m capable of moving forward once this contract between us comes to an end.