Players to Lovers (4 Book Collection) Read online

  “The point,” he continues, “is that you had a version of me in your head—which you just admitted to—that I was going to have to fight like hell against to prove to you I deserved Lily.”

  “Can you blame me? I had to give a child up that I love more than myself because the law wouldn’t let me keep her. Because Paige wanted you to have her. A piece of paper, Locke.” I trip over my words. “That’s all it took to take Lily away from me. So, big surprise, I hated you on sight. And you had to fight against that judgment every step of the way. But it was working. You were so close to—”

  “A single piece of paper was all it took to keep me away from my daughter indefinitely.”

  I quiet. He’s talking about the birth certificate, and Paige refusing to name the father. Since Locke wasn’t on it, he had no immediate claim. He had to establish paternity, then be approved for parental rights, before he could even meet her.

  “You continue to believe I have no idea what you’re going through,” Locke says. “When Paige fucked us both over.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” I seethe out.

  “Why not? You see her as this angel when in reality, she wrote out her decision days before dying. And she hurt you.”

  “She did what she thought was write. Paige chose you—”

  “Paige chose me instead of you.”

  My teeth clamp painfully together for a few painful seconds, then say, “Paige didn’t have a father. She didn’t want to give Lily the same fate.”

  “Admit she hurt you, Carter,” Locke says.

  Unbidden tears well up. “She did! Okay? She fucking hurt me. For some reason, she trusted you over me. There.” I continue, after a choking gasp of emotion, “Does that make you feel better?”

  “Months, right?” Locke barrels on. “Paige had months to contact me. To lessen the blow to you.”

  I shake my head. “We were going through a lot over such a short period of time. A newborn. Cancer. Medical bills.”

  “That’s her fault, Carter. Not yours, not mine.”

  I’m half out of my chair. “Maybe it’s because she thought she’d live, Locke. Maybe that’s why Paige didn’t want to deliver a hammering blow until she absolutely had to. Did you ever think about that? That maybe she was trying to spare me?”

  That shuts him up.

  I continue, “You have no idea! None, on what she—we—went through. You think there was time?”

  “There shoulda been.”

  I nearly screech. “Stop talking about this like you have any idea what went on during the last months of her life!”

  “Then don’t minimize my six months of sobriety because you found a full bottle of pain killers.”

  I choke on a scoff. “That’s your argument? You’re maligning Paige because you don’t think I understand your personal demons?”

  He crosses his arms, annoyingly relaxed while I’m practically melting with contained rage.

  “I think it’s very on point,” he says. “We both think we know a lot about the other when we don’t know the half of it.”

  This time, I scoff perfectly. “When that girl fell out of bed with you? You were still half drunk. The fact you’re calling yourself sober—”

  “That’s…look, I’m not an alcoholic.”

  “Isn’t an addict still an addict, by any other name?”

  “No. You do not get to do this.”

  “What? Call you out?”

  He whips out a pointed finger, then balls his hand into a fist while his lips turn white. “You don’t get to sit here and put all my hard work, everything I went through, into a few seconds of worthless sarcasm. You have every right to be mad at me right now because I didn’t tell you about this stupid test I made for myself. That’s on me. But you do not have the right to strip all I’ve worked for, the night sweats and the shaking and the agony of being straight-up sober after undergoing two more knee operations, away from me.” He takes a breath, and I remind myself to blink in front of his brimming fury. “I did it all for that little girl at your feet. Somewhat for myself, but my dreams, my hopes, my life, is now for that child. And I will keep fighting to keep her; don’t you dare doubt that.”

  His last words, their visceral tone, rock me.

  “In the grand scheme of things,” he says, still furious, “you’re not anything I have to deal with.”

  I can’t help the flutter of hurt in my heart, and I look away before Locke catches on.

  He adds, “And yeah, I felt it was worth proving to you anyway. Not just to redeem my ego, either. Because you mean a lot to Lily, and even more to Lily’s mother. You, Carter, were not deserving of how the law treated you. The way you hated, the way you despised, was all for one reason.” He glances down at Lily who’s distracted by banging the whisk against the table leg. “And out of respect for her, I wasn’t about to treat you the same as them.”

  My mouth twists.

  “So excuse me for thinking that adding a pill addiction to your first impression of me wasn’t the best choice in trying to win you over.”

  “You’ve been hiding pills, Locke,” I manage to say. “That act takes everything we’re talking about to a whole new level.”

  “See for yourself—count them. Look at the quantity listed on the bottle, then count them out. They’re all there.”

  I shake my head. “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Fine.” He stands, swiping the pill bottle, opening it, then dumping them in the sink. He turns on the tap. “Consider them gone.”

  I watch his actions with sadness. “How do I know there’s not more?”

  He leans against the sink, his forehead nearly touching the cabinets above. I can practically see the fury draining off him in waves. “Trust.”

  Now it was my turn to guffaw. “After all this, you think I can trust you?”

  “You did last night, and what I showed you was true.” He clears his throat, as if uncomfortable he’s admitting as much, and turns. “How I’m feeling about Lily is true. How I’m feeling…about you…is true.”

  “Locke,” I groan and bury my face in my hands, elbows on the table. His voice alone has created visions of us on the floor last night, how I bared myself to him even though my clothes stayed on. How every worry, each piece of grief, the weight of pressure, all spiraled outside my body before centering their energy at my core, until there was nothing but pleasure. My mind was coated with it. My shoulders were eased by it.

  It was a mistake. It’s all a mistake.

  I stare at the empty pill bottle. It’s evidence he won’t ever let me know him the way I allowed him to know me last night.

  “I’m not trying to appeal to your weakness,” he says. “So, let me prove it. Come to meetings with me, search this place up and down, talk to my buddies. Do everything you need to do to become comfortable with me again. Just…please…” His expression wrenches before he schools it. “Don’t take Lily away. Not until you do everything in your power to prove she’s not safe.”

  I’m torn. I’m ripping apart in a way I didn’t think would ever happen again, not after Paige. The conflict, the terror and worry, all come to the forefront as I look into Locke's eyes and want to believe him.

  I still see the Locke of last week and how prioritized he is with Lily. The eagerness to learn so he could raise her well and the determination to become a better man. A few nights, I assumed he was out banging women, letting loose his frustrations with mindless, nameless sex before coming home again revitalized and ready to take on a burgeoning toddler.

  Instead, he was going to NA meetings and teaching himself the meaning of a better life. I can’t ignore that, as much as I want to with this jerk—I can’t disregard his patience, his love, his commitment to growing the hell up.

  CPS looked him up and down. Social workers have been in and out of his apartment ever since I let him know he had a daughter. I have to believe I was right to track him down, to give Lily a father.

  I got it wrong once, assu
ming Locke was out being his old self with his buddies. I could be…

  I keep his stare, but I ball my hands into fists. “You have three weeks to prove me wrong.”

  Locke’s shoulders sag as he releases a long-held breath.

  “Three weeks,” I repeat. “If you so much as swallow a Tylenol, I’m taking her and never coming back.”

  “Deal,” he answers without hesitation. “I swear, I haven’t taken any—”

  I hold my palm up. “I’m here to observe. That’s all. I don’t need any more excuses.”

  His eyelids lower like he’s coming to a brutal realization. “Carter…”

  “That’s all I’m going to be to you,” I say as I stand. “No more…nothing like what happened last night is going to happen again.”

  I can’t look at him while I say it. I’m staring at the floor, at Lily, readying to turn, when he does the most unexpected thing.

  Locke pulls me into his arms. I’m slack, my arms dangling, but he holds me tight.

  I don’t return the hold, but I can’t fight him off, either. God help me, I don’t want to.

  Lily’s delighted by the action and pulls herself up on my pant legs and then smacks Locke’s bare calf. He grunts when she latches on to a few leg hairs, but he doesn’t loosen his hold.

  “Thank you,” he says, and his heart’s beating so hard, it’s ramming into my temple.

  “I don’t expect you to bare your soul to me, Locke,” I whisper into the fabric of his shirt. My breath is hot against my cheek. “But please, no more secrets.”

  “No,” he says, resting his chin on the top of my head. Lily’s babbling in the background during this disarming family moment. “No more secrets.”

  22

  Locke

  Those goddamn pills.

  They were nearly my downfall, stripping away the few things I had left. Namely, my daughter.

  And I haven’t even fucking taken any.

  That much is true, and I was honest with Carter when she asked. I haven’t swallowed any oxys—not half, not one—since my buddies’ “intervention” six months before. Why I keep them is a different story and one I completely fail at explaining to Carter.

  They’re a reminder of my strength, that tiny orange bottle. The ability to look at it, entirely full with mind-numbing, beckoning white tablets, and know that I won’t snort them despite them asking me to.

  A fail-safe, if you will, when times get tough and close to impossible. It’s a private conflict, though—one I won’t tell Ben, Ash, or Easton about, the closest people I have to family. Fuck if I’ll ever tell my sister. But sometimes, at my weakest moments, usually in the dead of night when not even cars outside are honking at intersections, I creep out of my bedroom, step into my kitchen, and fish for that antifreeze bottle. I pull those babies out and look at them. Hard. And tell myself that whatever I’m currently going through, nothing compares to the crash of a year ago when I lost everything. They’re a reminder never to go back to drugs as a solution. Now that my body’s broken, I only have my brain, and fucking up both is a waste of whatever life I have left.

  Don’t get me wrong—it took me a long while to accept that whatever new future awaited me was worth it.

  Actually, I’m not at that point yet. Any future not involving football doesn’t seem worth anything, except for…You guessed it.

  Lily.

  She’s changed it all.

  What I didn’t consider was how much the woman that came with Lily would spin me sideways, too.

  I want to explain all this to Carter in a better way, but she won’t let me. The last time I looked at the bottle, I must’ve fallen asleep while it was still in my hand. Or the pain finally crashed into my brain enough to knock me out. Either way, the bottle fell out of my grip and rolled to the floor. By the time I woke up, their location was long forgotten because Lily demanded full attention.

  Carter has to know all of this. She has to understand I’m not the guy she thinks I am.

  But these last few days, I’m finding it difficult not to blabber out sentences whenever I run into her. Which is a lot, since we live together. I’m also having an insanely hard time deleting what happened that one night when she was spread out before me. All of her, bending to my will, arcing into my tongue, making sounds and moans I want to cause again.

  Sometimes, I catch her coming out of the bathroom, damp and in a towel, and I want to lick every droplet of water off her shoulders until I can suck on her lips. Other moments, she’s cooking dinner, whatever she’s making—and she’s a damn good cook—sizzling and crackling in the pan, much like my chest does whenever I’m near her.

  Now that Carter’s keeping me at a distance, all I want to do is get closer. Fuck, I want her to like me again, and hell if I know what to do with that. I don’t usually care what women think of me. I enjoy them, they enjoy me, and we go our separate ways. But Carter is regarding me in this weird, detached way that’s making me crazy. Like she’s emotionless, but I know that’s not true. I’ve seen her fired up. I’ve caused more than a few of those sparks, and this numb-ass Carter is not the woman I’ve come to look forward to seeing every day.

  I want her back.

  I want the three of us back to the way we were, and that has me speeding in the opposite direction at the same time I want to make a U-turn and see what happens.

  No woman is supposed to do this to me. Especially after I lost my status, my career, my fucking golden ticket. Carter shouldn’t want anything to do with me. She has every right. It’s what I deserve because I have nothing to offer in return.

  I’m so close to accepting this and going through the rigors with Carter until she leaves for good, except the past week keeps haunting me. The special moments between us two, most involving Lily, but some not. Watching movies together when Lily is asleep, having quiet conversations while she naps, holding Carter close when she’s upset, witnessing Carter’s excitement when she showcases her paintings at the coffee shop. I got to see all that. Me. Carter let me in on her happiness, and her happy moments come few and far between these days. And I got to share in the rarity of them.

  Damn it. It’s going to make this all the more difficult to say good-bye. The inevitable farewell is coming up quickly, so maybe it’s best to revert to friendly strangers. It’s definitely better for my asshole heart that keeps kicking up its beat whenever she enters my apartment.

  You’re no good for her.

  Nope. I’m not.

  “Aaaaaaahkeeeee!”

  Lily’s nose is touching mine when I lift her up for another bench press. I’m lying on the floor, the questionable smell of my rug reaching my nostrils, doing physical therapy exercises I’ve neglected. Carter’s off surveying her paintings, leaving Lily and me to our own devices.

  Which, of course, means bench pressing.

  I figure Lily weighs a solid twenty-one pounds. Why not use her as a weight while I get this over with so we can both have some fun?

  “Bah!” I say as I bring her down again. She erupts with laughter, squealing and wriggling in my hands where I’ve hooked her under her arms.

  “Dada!”

  I raise her up for another press—

  Hold up.

  My head lifts off the floor. “What’d you say?”

  Lily blinks at me from her frozen height.

  “Did you say dada?”

  “Dada!”

  I’m agape. Yep, I’m using the word agape. I’m staring at my daughter like I’ve never seen her before, her dangling toes scraping against my chest as my mouth drops open and my ribs expand, filling with, filling with—

  “Hey, I’m home.”

  I didn’t hear the jangle of keys against the lock, didn’t register much, really, since hearing two glorious syllables. I’m still flat-assed against the floor, but I tilt my head to see Carter’s upside-down face, bland, as has been her usual standard in greeting me these days.

  But her eyes skim down my body before landing on Lily, still
swaying in mid-air. “What’s going on?”

  “Exercise class,” I say as I pull into a sit-up smoothly, Lily now resting against my thighs. “Say it again.”

  “Say what?” Carter asks.

  “No, I mean Lily. C’mon honey, tell Carter what you just told me a few seconds go.” I’m so gleeful I’m pretty sure my cheeks are resembling Santa Clause right now. “Dada. C’mon, say it with me. Da-da.”

  Lily throws up her hands. “Dada!”

  “See?” I crank my neck so I can see Carter. “Did you hear that?”

  Carter’s hovering near the door, casual in a leather jacket and jeans, but her lips are trembling like she’s holding back a smile.

  “You know you heard it,” I say, beaming.

  Carter cracks. “Holy shit.”

  I fake a stern look. “Language.”

  “Holy moly!” Carter amends, clapping her hands. She gets down on her knees, grabbing Lily’s hands. “You said dada!”

  “Dadadadadada!” she replies.

  “I’m determined to believe she means me with those consonants,” I say.

  Carter glances at me quickly, as if to inquire, You know what consonants are? And I instantly want to erase any doubts she has about my smarts by tonguing brand new consonants against her plush lips, but I resist, preferring this moment instead.

  Especially when she pulls me into a hug. “Locke, this is amazing. Lily’s first word!”

  I recover from the shock of her touch quick enough, swinging my free arm around her waist. “Celebrate with me tonight,” I murmur into her hair.

  I might as well have dropped a bomb between us. Carter scoots away. “Locke, don’t ruin…”

  “I don’t mean a date,” I say and quell any disappointment. “The guys and I were going to hang tonight, listen to Easton go back to his roots. I think you should come.”

  Carter pulls at her lower lip, and I swallow the explicit growl that wants to unfurl out of my throat.

  “It’s probably not a good idea,” she says. “Besides, someone needs to watch Lily.”

  “Astor’ll do it,” I say automatically, knowing that she will. She’s been blowing up my phone wanting to see more of Lily, and I’ve been resisting blowing her up for dogging me out to Carter before I had a chance to do it. But, this is a good reason to see my sister again. “And you haven’t been out since that night”—we explosively almost had sex—“you went out with Astor. And I think you should see some Brooklyn nightlife while you’re here.”