Chapter 29 Briar
Briar
“To the best team in the league!” Sabine shouts, holding up a beer.
The guys around him lift their drinks in response. “Blizzard!”
O’Neal’s is awash in a sea of blue, but that’s just the fans. The players are mostly wearing the athletic gear they planned to wear home after the game. No one expected this party. No one expected anything that happened tonight.
Least of all, Dominic. Which is one more reason why I’ve fallen so completely for him. He moves through his days, creating community by showing how much he cares for people. He thinks I add sunshine here, there, and everywhere, but he opens his heart and changes lives. He’s certainly changed mine.
I take a sip of my pina colada, smiling around the straw as I look across the bar.
I wish Penny were here to see how this all played out, but she decided it was in her best interest to skip the third period and head back to the hotel before security found her.
We stayed in touch via texts, though, so she knows exactly how hard the Blizzard played for those last twenty minutes to make some headway against the Hawks’ lead from the first two periods.
Her last text came with a picture showing that she’s safely at the hotel, tucked into a fluffy nest of pillows and blankets, in her pj’s.
“Is this seat taken?”
“Oh, uh . . . no?” I tell Vanessa. “Please, sit down.”
She sits beside me, adjusting her short dress and hooking her stilettos on the barstool’s lower rung. One lift of her hand has the bartender rushing over, and with a smile, she orders a white wine. Less than fifteen seconds later, he’s setting the glass in front of her with a wink.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he murmurs, looking directly at her cleavage.
“Will do,” she purrs. When the bartender disappears, she rolls her eyes and sighs. “God, is a wine without the visual assault too much to ask?”
“What?” I ask, thinking I must’ve misheard her. She wasn’t flirting—that’d be the bartender doing that—but she’s not exactly demure with her curled hair, smoky eyes and glossy lips, and pushed-up décolletage.
She takes a sip of her wine and laughs. “I’m a married woman, remember?
” she teases. “And even if I wasn’t, bartenders who graduated high school in the last decade are not exactly my type.
” She tilts her head, leaning toward me as she raises her hand.
“Daddy issues, party of one.” She arches a brow. “Or maybe two.”
“Ah, I guess you heard what happened?”
“Want to talk about it?”
With her? My dad’s wife? Absolutely not. She’s going to be on his side, no matter what. I’m sure whatever version Dad told her was filled with inaccuracies that make him out to be a misunderstood hero, not the villain in my origin story.
“No thanks,” I say, stirring my pina colada instead.
“Can we pretend that we’re friends for a minute then?” Vanessa counters, undeterred. “I want to tell you a story about my husband, and maybe you can forget that he’s your dad while I do?”
I’m intrigued. And maybe I want to hear Dad’s version, just to see how different it is from mine. “I can’t make any promises, but . . .” I hold up a finger, take a long swallow of my drink, and finish, “I’ll try.”
She smiles, and for the first time, I think I see behind her facade to the real Vanessa. Or maybe the pina colada has a bit too much rum?
“When I met Robbie, I was in a bad place mentally. I was taking care of my sister, working three jobs, and trying to make ends meet. It was hard, and then I met this nice guy. He came into the café where I waitressed for coffee every morning and we’d talk.
” She shrugs like it was nothing, but it must’ve been something because this story ends with a giant rock of a diamond on her left hand.
“He didn’t treat me like I was beneath him, even though he had his life together and I was barely beginning to figure mine out.
He even helped me. My sister got into a rehab because Robbie pulled some strings.
She’s doing great now, been clean for three years,” she says proudly.
“And I took a few online classes to learn how to day trade. Robbie spotted me the funds at first, giving me one hundred dollars to play the stock market and later, one thousand dollars to manage. Now, I make more before ten a.m. most days than I made in a month back then.”
I stare at her, gobsmacked. I had no idea. Of course, I also never asked. I thought she was Dad’s arm candy, nothing more, and there was no reason to delve any deeper because I figured she’d be gone soon enough anyway. That’s Dad’s MO.
Seeing my shock, she winks with a bright grin. “I’m more than just a pretty face.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know—” I say, but she waves a hand dismissively.
“Not the point of the story,” she tells me.
“Point is, Robbie was kind to me . . . is kind to me. Because he loves me, and I love him, which means I know that under his tough guy exterior, his heart has been broken for a long time. Broken because of the daughter he left behind.” She looks at me pointedly.
It’s not that I don’t believe her, but . . . I don’t believe her. “He could’ve called me, could’ve said something, could’ve done a hundred things to repair our relationship.”
“You’re right,” she agrees with a nod. “But for all his good traits, he’s also a stupid old man, who’s ashamed of the ways he messed up and didn’t know how to fix things without making them worse.
” She rolls her eyes. “Believe me, we talked about it at least a million times, but he thought trying to be a part of your life now would inevitably come with some painful trips down memory lane, and the one thing he didn’t want to do was further hurt you to ease his own guilt. ”
“He hurt me every time he didn’t call. Every time he wasn’t there when I needed him. Whether that was fifteen years ago or fifteen days ago.”
Behind us, a loud cheer goes up and we glance back to see what’s happening.
The guys have Tomville hoisted in the air, Kipson under one leg and Dom under the other, holding him up.
It sounds like they’re congratulating him on his league debut and mostly successful second period.
Or at least I think that’s what the “you didn’t suck too bad” chant is about.
The team is doing well. The thread of brotherhood is nearly visible through them as they revel in . . . well, not a game well played, but at least a period, which, given the roller coaster of tonight, seems worthy of celebration.
Vanessa takes a drink of her wine before asking, “Do you know why he drives the ‘no distractions’ thing so hard?”
I have my guesses, none of them complimentary.
Seeing my curt answers to the question written in my expression, she says, “It’s because he doesn’t want any of the guys on his team to hurt their wives or kids the way he hurt you. It’s to prevent another you from happening.”
I snort out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re making him sound noble, but the reality is, he created an entire legacy of assholes who treat women like they’re two degrees above a Kleenex and bottle of lotion,” I say bluntly.
“Definitely an unforeseen and unintended side effect,” she grants, “but ultimately, it was effective. Players’ divorce rate in the league is nearly three-quarters.
The Blizzard has had none, until Kipson.
And Robbie wasn’t going to let Kipson ruin his life over it.
He takes responsibility for his guys seriously, so he fought hard to get Lee here to save him. ”
“Which also had some unforeseen side effects,” I tease, using her words with a much different meaning as I suck on my straw, thinking about things from Dad’s side, something I’ve never done.
She laughs and for a moment, it feels like we actually are two friends gossiping about our boyfriends. It’s kinda nice.
“When you called Robbie about the zoo thing? He called me as soon as you hung up. I thought he was going to come through the phone when he was telling me about it. He was so excited that you’d reached out.
” I eye her doubtfully, but she nods insistently.
“Did you know we had other plans that day? We canceled them because nothing was keeping him away from you and that fundraiser.” She smiles brightly.
“And he warned me that whatever the highest bid was, he was bidding over it so that you would get naming rights for your favorite monkey.”
“Gibbon,” I correct automatically.
Vanessa shrugs it off. “How is Hadiah?”
“She’s good. Really good. Standing with support and starting to nibble on solid foods,” I answer, but my mind is spinning. “Dad . . .”
“I’m not saying he’s perfect. Far from it,” she admits. “But if you have the heart to give him another chance, he won’t waste it this time.”
I believe her. After what Dad said earlier today, acknowledging that he’s been shitty in the past and apologizing for his choices, and now learning that maybe there were things that I hadn’t known, I believe her.
“I think I can do that,” I offer with a smile. “Maybe we could go to dinner . . . all four of us?”
Her eyes light up. “Really? We would love that.”
With a smile, I tell her, “I think we would too.”
A bit later, I’m coming back from the bathroom when I’m cornered again. But this time, it’s not by Vanessa. It’s by Anderson.
“You’re a stupid bitch, you know that?” he slurs, pointing at me with the neck of his beer bottle. I can see that he’s peeled the label off, bit by bit. He must’ve been doing that instead of celebrating with the rest of the team.
Once upon a time, being called names like that made me shrink and hide, but with repetition, they lose their impact.
The person using them makes a difference too.
Where I might still wince if Tyler said that, past experience telling me to be fearful of the potentially worse thing that might be coming, with Anderson, I don’t react at all.
I simply try to walk past him. “Excuse me.”