Chapter 17
Blaise
“Can you please tell us what’s going on with you and Tilly?”
I roll my eyes as I slam my locker shut before anyone — particularly Merrick — can see inside.
I’ve done my best to hide it, but all the way in the back, on the top shelf, in the darkest spot and usually behind random locker detritus, is a photo of Donovan and me.
It’s the one Tilly sent me, the one she took of him sleeping on my chest.
All my baby photos are the professional ones, perfectly staged with me in odd little costumes like I’m actually a pumpkin or a convincing bowl of fruit.
There’s nothing casual. Nothing with either of my parents.
Not even the hospital ones. So I’ve taken a selfie with Donovan every single day since Tilly took that one on the couch.
I have a folder for them, a separate one from all my other photos of him.
I want to put together a slideshow sometime of all the selfies. I can watch him grow.
I can watch myself grow, too. I don’t want to say I never wanted to be a dad, but I always imagined it would be a far-off thing, post-NFL, assuming I didn’t end up being one of the super old guys.
I’d have to settle down with someone if I were still playing in my mid-30s so I wouldn’t be one of the super old and pathetic guys, and even then, I’d only want kids if I was sure she’d be able to do everything if it turned out I was as bad as parenting as my parents were.
It makes no sense how I ended up here. This is the most chaotic time in my life, with so much riding on how I do the next couple of months while they hammer out my next contract and with .
. . whatever this shit is between me and Tilly.
We can’t keep going on like this forever.
I can’t believe this shit is still going on in fact.
The only thing I’ve got going for me is Tilly must think I’m the biggest idiot in the planet for fathering a kid who isn’t mine who’s actually totally mine.
Yeah, I got the paternity test back from Doc Keltner. He didn’t even question it when I asked him.
“Just digging on the kid,” I say to Merrick because I can’t brag about the test results yet.
He scrutinizes me with heavily furrowed brows. “You banging her?”
“You banging Cora?” I throw back at him to get him off me.
“Yeah, when she’s pissed enough at me to make it worth it. I think she’s starting to get soft on me, though, so . . .” He gestures with his hand that he’s about over her, pairing it with a click of the cheek.
I don’t like that, but that’s how Merrick’s always been.
I guess we all have things we do that other people don’t like.
And Cora’s never seemed to want anything more than Merrick’s dick, so it works out.
She’s a celebrity in her own right; she won some reality fashion competition years ago and now has stuff in a bunch of fancy places and regularly flies around the world for TV spots and fashion shows.
So it’s not like anyone’s worried she’s trying to nab him to wring money out of him.
“Well, you moving in with her permanently?” Merrick asks, flipping the bird to Wes Foster because the guy just made a crack about letting Merrick break Cora so he can swoop in and save her.
No one’s going to break Cora. That woman’s solid steel.
Tilly’s not. She’s sensitive and easily broken. In the quiet moments with her, I think I’d be her life raft if I just held her. The problem is I have no idea who the hell she really is, and I don’t think her friends do either.
There’s no secret bank account, not even a savings account, according to Andy’s private investigator.
There’s a checking account skating so dangerously close to overdrafting that he asked me to make sure she’s applied for food stamps.
He couldn’t find her name on any deeds floating around.
She has an older sister with a husband and two kids in Ohio.
The records show that their dad lives with her.
The mother lives in Seattle, and he’s fairly sure Tilly doesn’t even know that.
There’s nothing that shows where the money could have gone.
Andy keeps asking if I’m sure she’s the one blackmailing, and as much as never once has she dropped the ruse that she’s just an innocent woman who has no idea who the father of her child is, nothing else makes sense.
But she burns grilled cheese and seems to think that’s the right way to cook them.
She worked for, like, an hour a day on one of the projects she has lined up at her work station and then pulled an all-nighter when the deadline hit.
She sings horribly off-key in the shower.
She putters around in her apartment with a boob hanging out half the time, just forgetting to tuck it away when she’s done pumping or feeding the baby.
She does it so often I’ve forgotten to even be excited in that passive way every guy is when he sees a boob, even if it’s in the middle of not-sexy stuff.
The more often she does it, the more I give in and say, “Tilly, your tit,” and the less often she tries to be embarrassed about it.
I guess this is what married life is probably like.
And now that it’s been two months, I’ve spent so much time with her it’s almost impossible to maintain my hatred for her.
There’s that niggling in the back of my mind every time I remember I don’t have a car and I don’t have the money to get us a bigger bed — seriously, I finally built Donovan’s crib just to free up a little space — reminding me that it’s her fault, but everything’s gotten so comfortable I don’t want to figure it out anymore.
I just want my son.
“What business is it of yours?” I bristle at Merrick’s inquiry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t need him calling me out.
“Dude, you’ve got a room at my place that’s just been sitting there. We’re getting a new crew coming in right now. Like, right now. I just need to know if I should be offering any of them your spot.”
I have my own place now. I have a family now. I have a kid and a girl who’s a fucking scammer who’s clearly conning me out of all my money, but at least when I wake up in the middle of the night, her body is pressed against mine.
Seriously, every night. Now that I’ve put the crib together and tricked Donovan into sleeping in it by fitting his entire car seat in it for a couple days, there’s nothing dividing us.
I want to say our bodies are naturally warring against each other to take up what fresh real estate we can, but my dick has a different opinion on the matter.
But then, I always knew how well our bodies meshed together.
“Nah, man, I’ll be back,” I tell Merrick.
Because shit’s going to get ugly. We’re going to have a massive legal battle at the very least. She blackmailed me; that’s a felony with potential jail time.
And I don’t make real money until the season starts back up, so if I don’t have a place to go back to, it’s gonna be fucked up trying to find a place.
But fuck, I don’t want to go back to that. No offense to him. The house was great for the most part, but yeah. That’s not me.
I don’t want to go back, but as I drag my feet getting ready to go home, assured by the video baby monitor that Tilly’s home with the baby and hasn’t absconded with him in the middle of the day, I realize I don’t want to go there either.
I’m antsy. I need a night to myself. So it feels like fate when my phone flashes with a notification informing me that the sex club I met Denny at out in Camden is having a pop-up masquerade tonight.
“Hey, Briggs?” I call to Merrick as he heads to the door. “Can I get a lift home?”
“Home . . . like, Tilly’s?”
“Nah. You’re right, it’s crazy how long it’s been since I’ve slept in my own bed.”
But Merrick’s not dumb. Book smart. Clever.
Observant. Manipulative. Possibly evil. He gives me a once-over, snorts, and says, “You’re not sleeping in your bed tonight, either.
But we got a new Indian place across from Joss’s place.
We’ll grab a bite to eat, and you can hang out until you head off for whatever stupid shit you’re planning. ”
Yup he’s on to me. Stupid shit incoming.
Or not.
I don’t know, I took the time to actually run my clothes through the dryer with a dryer sheet to freshen them up, scrubbed every inch of my body to squeaky clean so I was ready for anything — because this is a place where everything happens and while I was in that shower, I was thinking I wanted everything — used my $5,000 aftershave so I smelled like a million bucks, and even fucked around with my twists to get a sort of wild Mohawk look out of them.
And the club is great. These places they do the pop-ups in, they’re always funky repurposed spaces.
This is an old theater where there’s an occasional burlesque performance on the books, but that’s the most aboveboard thing that happens here.
I’m pretty sure raves happened here back in the day.
I’ve heard they’ve gotten away with some crazy invite-only concerts, too, but mostly?
Sex.
No place is untouched. I’ve been here a few times, and I’m just as likely to find people fucking over the candy counter at concessions as on the stage.
The bathroom doors all have glory holes.
I heard extra safety rails had to be installed on the catwalks because it was impossible to keep people from fucking thirty feet above the stage.
And all the curtains, all the carpets, all the seats are red velvet, which means I stay far, far away from the upholstery.
There’s only so much Lysol can do against literal sin.