Crown's Chance at Love (48 page)

“Reese… It’s been almost four years. He would want…”

“NO! Don’t think I don’t know WHO you are seeing. You going off and whoring around is one thing, but fucking the brother of the man who killed him! You are sick!” I swallow hard breathing deep, trying not to let her get to me, but I can’t let her talk badly about Mike.

“Mike had nothing to do with…”

“YES HE DID! In the reports it stated that man was driving to see HIM! Thats why he was out driving! And now…. NOW you’re screwing him, bringing him around the children!  You might as well have been driving the car that killed my son!” she shrieks and I close my eyes.

She sounds so angry. I really should just hung up but I love and respect her. She’s my children’s grandmother, she’s the woman who had raised my husband to be the wonderful man I loved the short time we had had together.

“Reese… calm down…” I try to say, trying to hold on to some patience.

“NO! I won’t and if you think you are going to have that man there around my grandbabies you have something else coming at you Sabrina! Keep seeing him, and Rhett and I will file for custody of those kids! There is no way you are in your right mind seeing him! A judge will see what a  completely incompetent whore you are!” she snarls. Yelling and insulting me is one thing, but making threats suing my kids is something completely different, something I will never have.

“Don’t threaten me Reese!” my voice got louder as the blood in my veins started to boil. Who does she think she is?

“Its not a threat sweetheart, it’s a promise! If I hear the kids are anywhere near that man, I will file for custody so fast your head will be spinning! Don’t think I don’t know things about you!”

“There is nothing you could know!” I yell back defending myself.

“Really? What about Nick living there for MONTHS right after my son died? How completely disfunctional you were!” I squeeze my eyes shut trying to breathe and stay calm.

“That was almost four years ago Reese…”

“Nick spending the night whenever he felt like? You think I don’t know what was going on? We aren’t stupid Sabrina! Sean hadn’t even been in the ground for a month, yet a new man was living there!” She screams and I clench my free hand into a fist.

“You have no clue what you are saying. I think you need to…” I start to say but she cuts me off.

“Him helping you move down there, helping you find a new place to live. You think I didn’t know that there was something going on with him that whole time?” she sputters out and I can feel my anger starting.

“Nothing was going on with Nick.”

“Really? I don’t think a judge would see it that way,” she snarls and I close my eyes.

“You wouldn’t have a leg to stand on Reese,” I say calmly as I look up at the ceiling.

“Really? Keep seeing him, and you will see how much dirt I have!” she screams and hangs up on me. My breathing is heavy and I open my eyes and my heart freezes. Mike looks almost pale.

“Mike…”

“Shit,” he says and this time I don’t look down. I look straight at him. He is staring towards the huge flat screen on the wall in front of us.

“She doesn’t know what she is saying…” I start to say but he puts his hand up and shakes his head.

“You need to get an attorney,” he says seriously and I frown.

“Mike, honey. She has nothing on me.”

“After you found out about Sean dying, you said you were a mess. How bad?” he asks not looking at me and I frown.

Things had been bad, but I had kept it together as much as I could. I had gone to a grief therapist  and Nick had been there to help me put the pieces together. It wasn’t like I had ever done drugs or popped pills, yet the way Mike looked at me right now, would make anyone think otherwise.

“That has NOTHING to do with how things are right NOW! I have everything under control now…” Feeling frustrated and attacked. That is all in the past. I had had every right to feel crushed by what had happened. I had lost my husband, my best friend, the man I had made a family with.

“Shit this is all my fault baby…” he says. He isn’t listening to me, rubbing his face with his hands, his hands running through his hair, staying up on top of his head.

“Mike…” I start to say but he just shakes his head as he stands up and goes to the bathroom, shutting it behind him. Sure enough I hear the click of him locking me out.

How had such a beautiful morning gone to complete shit?

***

Mike

I lean my arms against the vanity in my bathroom and look down trying to breathe.

Shit!

I want to scream and hit something, but I can’t. Not if Sabrina is here. It would scare her and she had enough to deal with as it was. Because of me. I close my eyes thinking about the night before, shit the whole two months before, everything had been so perfect. So fucking perfect. So perfect I had let myself believe I deserved all of this.

Now Sean’s mom is threatening her. All because of me. Shit! What does she have on Sabrina? A soft knock hits the door and I breathe deeply and open the door.

She’s in my dress shirt from last night, her hair is up on top of her head and even with the worried look on her face, she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Come here.” Her hand extends to me.

I want to grab it. I want to pull her in close and make all the bad things disappear for her and selfishly for me too; but I can’t. I caused all this. So instead of touching her, the way that everything in me is yelling at me to do, I just shake my head.

“I’m going to shower. If you want, use this one and I’ll use the one in the guest room,” I say coldly walking past her, not turning to see her or the pain in her eyes I just caused.

“Hey,” she says placing her tiny warm hand on my bare back and I stop, but don’t look at her.

“There is nothing she could do to take the kids away. You don’t have to worry about this. I’ll call my attorneys just in case to give them a heads up, but…”

“We should get the kids, it’s getting late,” I say, standing straighter my back completely stiff as I cut her off.

I can’t be the reason she could ever risk losing her kids. I love her, and them… I can feel her fingertips leave my skin and hear her sigh.

“Okay,” she says, and when I turn she is already heading to the bathroom, her shoulders slightly slumped, leaving me feeling like an ass.

***

The day passed in a blur. So many thoughts ran through my mind, but it always came to the same conclusion.

I have to walk away.

There was no way I could risk her losing the kids. She had already lost Sean because of me.

The kids are all in bed and she just got off the phone with Nick. It seems Reese had spoke to him as well. I watch her walk into the living room rubbing her eyes and then her eyes hit mine. She is so fucking beautiful. No matter how many times I laid my eyes on her, she always left me speechless. How the hell am I going to do this? Walking away from her is going to be hell, they are all I ever wanted and I had almost had them.

“Thanks for reading to Chris,” she says standing at the door frame to her back patio. She’s been giving me space all day. I know it’s not her to do it, but she knows I need it and I am such a fucking bastard for letting her. Shit I am a bastard for what I am going to do.

“No problem. I always learn something new about football when I read to him,” I say standing up, stretching my back, trying to seem unaffected and cold. Her eyes never leave me, not that I am staring right back at her. I can’t see them, but I can feel them like the sun on a July morning. A sun that I was about to make set.

Sabrina

“You can’t worry about Reese, sweetheart,” I say but he doesn’t look at me.

“I’m not,” he mumbles out.

“I’m not worried about it, Nick isn’t either. He’s just pissed about her calling so early to chew him out,” I say trying to make light of the situation, trying to get him to crack a smile or steal a glance towards me, but I get nothing.

All he does is nod as if he’s listening to me, but I know better.

He’s deep in his mind, completely worried and stressed out. I had given him his space all day, letting him use the kids as a buffer between us, and now I am thinking it had been a mistake. I should have talked it out with him earlier. He’s deep in his mind and thoughts, building walls up to keep me out.

Sean’s words repeat in my mind about how pride doesn’t belong with love, and I say what I know isn’t the right moment to tell him, but he needs to know how I feel. He needs to know how deep my commitment is to this thing that we have going.

“I love you Mike,” I say softly as I stare at him

I wasn’t expecting him to say he loved me back, but I wasn’t expecting him to stay quiet either. He runs his fingers through his hair, looking towards the kids playground. The night is nice. Perfect weather, a cool breeze. Looking at him, his tortured gaze breaks my heart. I know he’s stressed out about the threats Reese had made. All day after taking a shower he hadn’t wanted to talk to me, hadn’t wanted me around him, but he hadn’t left. He had been here all day. He’d even helped me with the kids as I talked to Nick and my attorneys, so I took that as a good sign.

“Mike. Did you hear what I said?” I ask him, looking at him but he never looks my way, so I push again.

“I love you Mike. We can….” I start to say but he starts to shake his head.

“I’m not any good for you.” He sounds so broken as he gives into his misconstrued idea of who he thinks he is. I want to shake him for even saying it. I just look at him sitting on my couch, his elbows on his knees, his eyes anywhere but on me.

“I think I should be the one to make that decision,” I say, thinking that all this is about is him needing to be reassured that what Sean’s mom thinks doesn’t matter to me. If he only knew how his own mother felt, this would be horrible.

“You don’t get it. It’s not working,” he says looking away from me. His eyes look towards the gate that heads to the driveway, and my heart beat starts to pick up. A small breeze kicks in and I shiver.

“What are you saying?” I say as a smidge of panic starts to gravitate towards my heart.

“It’s done.” His voice is ice cold and serious, and I frown.

“Wait what?” I ask confused. He couldn’t mean us, could he? After everything we’d been through.

“You and I, it’s done,” he says, his eyes meeting mine for the first time today and they’re completely guarded and cold.

“Just like that?” I ask calmly.

“Yeah,” his voice is calm but his eyes are angry. My stomach clenches in fear.

Why would he push so hard to get so far into my heart, only to rip himself out? Did it still have to do with his feelings of guilt and responsibility of Sean’s death? I thought we had moved past this. Especially after last night and before Reese’s call, I had thought this was going a whole other direction.

“Why?” I ask, standing straighter. If he was going to walk away, I wanted to know his reasons.

“Lots of reasons,” he says his gaze not fully on me.

“Tell me some,” I push even as my mind screams at me not to. I see him squirm a little bit, but then he looks at me.

“Because I’m still in love with Holly, it’s always been her for me,” he says, not really looking at me.

I stand still, remembering how they are together, and I know he is lying. Sure he probably did love her. She is his best friend the way that Nick’s mine. But he isn’t “in” love with her.

“You’re lying,” I whisper, shaking my head. “You’re trying to push me away.”

“Yeah I am,” he says as he really looks into my eyes for the first time since I had gotten off the phone with Sean’s mom this morning.

But unlike this morning where his eyes had been full of unspoken promises and filled with hope for the future, his pale blue eyes are cold and unyielding now, and my heart suddenly starts to hurt.

***

Mike

“Yeah I am. I’m pushing you away because I’m not any good for you Sabrina, I don’t love you. Things with you and I are way too complicated to have a future. It’s too messy.  This whole thing has gotten out of hand.” I look at her wide eyes turn sad as she processes what I am saying. But I’m not about to stop there because I’m a true asshole.