6. Noah
Noah
Sitting at the table, I attempted to pay attention to the four teammates I was hoping would help make the new transitions easier.
Evan was the youngest player on the team, while Xaden Newton was the oldest at forty-two.
Xaden was also the captain, and I was aware he had been one of the few people to attempt to keep the morale up during the previous coach’s dictatorship.
Evan and Xaden were the primary reasons for this luncheon, while the other two players were present more to avoid anyone crying that I was playing favorites.
Rumor was, Xaden was considering retirement, but he was hoping for another shot at a championship before he made anything final.
He already had three, all from previous teams, during his twenty-year career.
I was hoping to give him that chance before he hung it up.
What I really wanted to accomplish, though, was to convince Xaden to mentor Evan. The younger player had what it took to become captain. Bonus points if Xaden could steer Evan away from the one person who could potentially ruin his career, if not his entire life, Caprice Knight.
After watching Evan with the young woman the previous night, I had no doubts that if he didn’t distance himself from her, he was risking both.
While the others scanned the menu, my gaze kept drifting over to the table full of dark-haired women with the same blue-gray eyes. Seeing Bliss hadn’t surprised me. I’d chosen this particular restaurant on this specific day and time for a reason, and that reason was her.
It wasn’t that I’d been stalking my gorgeous ex. I simply made it my business to know her day-to-day schedule. Down to the minute. That was not stalking. It was studying to ensure I had all the information needed to make the best plays in order to win her back.
Seeing her with a baby in her arms, though, that threw me. That tiny little infant, dressed in a pink dress, with her thick, dark hair in two itty-bitty pigtails, and those blue-gray eyes so like her aunt’s, was a gut punch. That kid could have been Bliss’s.
She could have been ours if I hadn’t fucked it all up.
When Bliss walked by my table, I felt my heart lift into my throat as I got a better look at the baby in her arms. Bliss’s attention was trained on her niece, talking softly to her, causing the infant to giggle and coo.
“Bliss?” Xaden called her name. She turned her head and gave him a smile as he stood.
Stepping forward, he bent his six-eleven body down to hug her against his side without disturbing the baby. “Xaden, hey! How are you?”
He kissed her cheek, causing her to smile. Jealousy burned through me. That smile belonged to me. She shouldn’t bestow it on anyone else, least of all another man.
“Better now that I got to see you, pretty girl.” The nickname caused something similar to melancholy to cross her face, her eyes softening as her smile brightened. “Shaya was just talking about you the other night. I’ve been meaning to call. How about dinner one night soon? Just the three of us.”
From my notes on my players’ families, I knew Shaya was Xaden’s daughter.
Neither of them had been at the party the night before.
Shaya was about to start UCLA in the fall, and Xaden wasn’t known for partying much.
He’d much rather spend all his free time with his daughter.
He was a single father, having raised Shaya completely on his own, and she appeared to be his entire world outside of basketball.
“I would love that,” Bliss said with a smile that got brighter. “Any night works for me. Just text me when and where. Or have Shaya. I’ve missed her the last few weeks.”
“My parents took her to Paris as a graduation present. I missed her like crazy the entire time she was gone. Thankfully, she’s staying home and not living on campus when school starts. I don’t think I could handle it if she did.”
Evan got slowly to his feet, stepping up beside his cousin. His aquamarine eyes skimmed from her to Xaden then back to the baby. “Bliss, you hang out with my captain?”
“Oh, that’s right. Bliss is your cousin or something.
I keep forgetting.” Xaden shifted, putting his hand on her shoulder.
A hand that I was suddenly envisioning breaking, one metacarpal at a time.
“Bliss and I are on a few of the same charities. We’ve been friends for a few years now. She even mentors my Shaya.”
“Really?” He gave her a searching look. “You never mentioned it.”
“I wasn’t aware I had to give you a list of my friends.” The baby began to complain, and Bliss readjusted her. Soothing her, she bounced her a few times playfully before rubbing her back. “Sorry, this little one needs a quick change. Great seeing you, Xaden.”
He bent to brush a kiss against her cheek. “I’ll call you soon, pretty girl.”
She gave him a smile and a wave, turned a scowl on Evan, and then kept walking toward the bathrooms, completely ignoring me.
While my players returned to their seats, Xaden asked Evan if he’d met his daughter yet. I didn’t hear most of their conversation, my jealousy over watching Xaden touching my angel so all-consuming, it caused a tunnel effect to my hearing and vision.
I sat there, already mentally counting, telling myself I wouldn’t move until I reached one hundred. My control lasted up to number fifteen before I pushed back from the table. Without a word to the other men, I followed Bliss.
The door to the family bathroom was still closing when I reached it. Without hesitating, I grabbed it and stepped inside. It held a small sofa for nursing mothers, a changing table, and two separate toilet stalls.
Bliss had placed a cloth down and was securing her niece on the table. Her head turned as I stepped into the bathroom, a small smile forming in greeting until she realized it was me.
“Is this going to be a thing now?” she bit out, turning her attention to the squirming baby. With practiced ease, she began shifting clothes out of the way, then undoing the dirty diaper.
I watched every move she made, a lump filling my throat at how amazing she was with the tiny human.
“Just ignore the giant buffoon, Truly. Apparently, he’s stalking Auntie Bliss.” Bliss spoke to the baby in a soft voice, playfully tickling her tummy. “Don’t worry, though, precious. The only danger he presents is to himself. If he overuses his brain, it will most likely explode.”
Truly kicked her legs, her hands swatting around at nothing as she cooed.
It wasn’t until a fresh diaper was in place that I found my voice. “Are you fucking Xaden Newton?”
That was not what I’d planned on asking. For a full ten seconds, I didn’t regret it. And then she slowly lifted her head, those blue-gray eyes narrowed in that way that told me I’d messed up.
I definitely should have asked the original question, which was if she’d enjoyed her coffee that morning.
“Not that it’s any of your business, Kavanaugh, but I have a strict personal rule of not hooking up with athletes. Xaden is a friend, but I’m actually closer to his daughter than to him.”
“You let your friends kiss you and call you pretty girl?” That image was burned into my brain.
She rolled her eyes at me. “He’s a very affectionate person, and he has no problem with openly showing it in public.
As for the pretty girl thing…” She readjusted Truly’s clothes and picked her up.
“My grandfather used to call my sisters and me that. When Xaden found out about the old nickname, he started using it to make me smile.”
Jealousy wasn’t something new for me when it came to Bliss. It was just more intense now. After years of growing without her to soothe it, calm my possessiveness, my jealousy had become colossal.
Scraping my fingers through my hair, I fought for the correct things to say to fix this. To heal what I’d broken, in both of us.
“I’ve missed you so damn much, mele?im. Every day, every minute of the last seven years has been hell on earth without you.”
Her eyes closed, pain flickering over her face. “You don’t get to say that to me. Not now, not after all this time. And not after the horrible things you said to me before you walked away.”
“Bliss, canim, I regret it.”
Lashes lifting, she blinked back tears. My knees went weak at the sight of her unmasked pain.
“Which part? Keeping me like a dirty secret you were ashamed of? Or maybe telling me I was trying to baby-trap you so you would have no choice but to take our relationship public? Or was it that you left the next day without a single explanation and I didn’t know you’d taken a new job in another state—on the other side of the freaking country?
I had to find out from an ESPN clip on social media. ”
As I looked at the baby in her arms, how naturally she held that little bundle of pink with the dark pigtails and those pretty eyes, the knot in my throat only tightened.
I’d done that, accused her of wanting to baby-trap me.
Even though she’d taken her birth control religiously.
I was the one who’d been careless, more than once.
It was me who’d ached to fill her up and watch her belly grow with our baby. And then I’d get that much more scared.
Because all my life, I’d had plans, and being with her, loving Bliss, had put everything at risk.
But the years I’d spent without her, building my career, creating my own legacy within the world of basketball, hadn’t been worth it.
I would have traded every victory, every trophy, every award, every NCAA ring that sat in a glass case.
Each of those achievements had only left me feeling empty without Bliss there to share it with.
“All of it,” I choked out. “Everything I said and did that made you feel used or dirty or not enough. I regret it, askim.”
“But not enough that you ever tried to apologize. Not once have you reached out. You didn’t care then, because even at a different school, you were too scared of losing your career to risk being associated with me. And the only reason you’re here now is because of your new job.”
“I took this job for you, Bliss. There were so many offers I could have taken. Boston. Texas. New York. Miami. But I chose LA to be closer to you. That’s the only reason I’m here, bebe?im.”