IMPACT: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (2 page)

Chapter 1

Olivia

In my mind, ten minutes late is still on time. So when I showed up at work at the stroke of nine - and not 9:10 or 9:15, like I usually did - I was inordinately pleased with myself. Candace hadn't even arrived yet.

Though she had a much better excuse for lateness than I did, being massively pregnant and all.

Of course, I had barely set my purse down when she bustled in at 9:01. The sight of her big round belly always elicited three reactions in me. Delight that my sweet, kind best friend was going to be a mother. Jealousy of the lucky kid who got to call such a great person 'Mom.'

And horror that I might someday end up in the same condition.

"Mornin' Candy Cane," I sang out, sounding, I hoped, completely normal and unaffected by the events of last night.

Candace's smile fell off her face the second she looked at me. "You didn't!" she gasped

I looked at her, completely awestruck. "How the fuck did you know?"

She set down her purse and came over to my cubicle. Her belly loomed over me menacingly. She couldn't bend down to peer at my face, so she narrowed her eyes at me instead. "Because," she declared, "You look like shit."

"Sheesh. Thanks a lot, Candy."

She stepped back. I knew she was probably horrified at how mean she sounded. But she was also pissed at me and wanted me to know it. "Well, you do," she muttered.

"I'm fine," I protested, waving my hand dismissively. I leaned back in my chair and spread my legs out, trying to get comfortable and failing miserably. I wasn't in the mood to shave this morning - since I wasn't getting fucked tonight - so I wore long slacks in spite of the lingering September heat.

Of course, I had forgotten until just now that the building switched over from AC to heat last week, nonsensically adhering to the calendar rather than the actual sticky weather outside. I was fucking roasting.

Candace was just standing there, arms folded over the top of her tummy, glaring at me. I pulled myself together and tried to look cool and collected. "I'm totally fine with ending it and he is too," I clarified, wiping away the sweat that was collecting along my hairline.  "We were just fucking. That's all.  Nothing serious."

"Bullshit," Candace said, plopping down at her desk and immediately cradling her belly in her hands. She glared down at it. "Yo! Kid! Settle down in there!" she grunted. Then she nodded. "That's right. You listen to Mama." She allowed herself a smug little Mom-smile at being obeyed and I exhaled silently, grateful to the kid for the distraction. 

But she wasn't done momming yet. Once she got her kid in line, she changed gears and looked up at me with an expression so fierce and authoritative that it had me wondering if I'd forgotten to clean my room. "These past few months, you've been happier than I've seen you in my entire life," she said vehemently. "You were
not
'just fucking'."

"Sure we were!" I laughed. "Fucking makes me happy! You know this about me, Candelabra, so I don't know why you're acting like I should be jumping up and scurrying down the aisle with him." I shook my head. "I was happy because I trained Brad to do exactly what I liked in the bedroom." I licked my lips, loving how disgusted Candace suddenly looked. "He's a very good listener," I purred. "That's one thing I can say about athletes. They sure do know how to take direction. Oh, and the stamina? Goddamn. Must be from all those
drills
they do, right? He sure could
drill
me!"

I chuckled at my own joke, but Candace just looked at me. My laughter died away on my lips. I didn't like the look she was giving me. "What?" I asked.

Candace lifted her chin. "Why do you always act so hard?"

"I'm
not
hard." For some reason, that really hurt.

"Brad liked you," she went on.

"No," I corrected, "Brad liked my
pussy
. He liked that I have no inhibitions about sex, whatsoever. He liked that I pushed his boundaries. That's what he liked. Not me." I settled back in my chair like the case was closed.

But Candace wasn't done. "Why do you tell yourself these things?"

I was getting irritated. "Maybe because I'm not going to sit there waiting on the sidelines? He's a fucking
hockey player
!"

Candace's voice was level and dangerous. "Ian is a fucking hockey player."

I felt my misstep. Candace was a romantic who believed in true love. I used to believe she was dangerously naive for thinking it existed, but she had actually found it - with a hot, bearded hockey player who made her blush with his dirty talk. I would have never thought Ian Carter would settle down with anyone, especially not with his bad reputation, but for some reason he and Candace just worked. They were the real deal and were getting married as soon as the baby came. Or maybe a little after that, when Candace could fit into wedding dresses again.

I loved them together. But I wasn't blind to the complications they had. Away games, long practices...all that time apart. Waiting for each other. Candace was still adjusting to getting stalked by the paparazzi. Not to mention the press coverage and having to share him with the fans. If you asked me, the whole thing pretty much sucked, though she seemed really happy. I was glad for her, but I wasn't about to try it out myself.

"Listen, Candy, I'm just not a monogamy type, okay? I'm not a swan. I'm a bonobo."

"What the fuck?" Candace sighed. It was a familiar sigh.

"I was doing research..."

"Of course you were." She pinched the bridge of her nose but fell silent anyway, ready to listen to me. She was good like that.

"I like to know about these things," I told her. "I'm a scientist of sluttishness. Anyway, bonobos are primates, just like we are. Only, they don't form monogamous pairings and all that crap. They fuck with abandon and they fuck a lot. Hell, they even fuck just to say hello!"

"To say hello?" Candace echoed weakly.

"Just walk right up and hop on. Because it
feels
good. They give and take with no hang-ups. In fact, scientists say that sex is the backbone of their society. Isn't that awesome?"

"You're not a monkey, Olivia."

"Bonobos are
primates
, not monkeys."

"Whatever." She waved her hands, frustrated. "Let me try this again," she said, clearing her throat. "Olivia, you're my best friend..."

"Damn straight," I interrupted. "And you're stuck with me, bitch."

Candace chuckled. "Yes. I know."

"I'm Auntie Olivia. I'm the one who will show up drunk at your baby shower bearing a completely inappropriate gift."

"Yes, you've mentioned that.…"

"And I'm the one who's going to take your little prince or princess around the back of your pretty little house and teach them how to smoke." I reached out and patted her stomach. "This little one can come to me with all the questions about sex and how the world actually works that Mama is too busy blushing to answer...."

"Sounds wonderful," Candace interrupted tiredly. "But you're talking too much and I'm trying to say something important here."

I grinned proudly. "That's what I do best."

"Brad is Ian's best friend," she went on, her voice dropping significantly.

I swallowed. "Well. Uh. Yeah."

"Yeah," Candace echoed. "You can see how this will be a little complicated."

"What's complicated about it? We're all adults. We can still hang out and not want to kill each other, right?"

"I want to kill you a daily basis," Candace interjected.

"Of course," I said. "But you and I will get over this, just like he and I did. This is our version of bros before hoes, Candy. Besties before testes."

"Ugh." She stood up. "Don't think you're off the hook here. I'm only stopping this conversation because I really have to pee. I love you Liv, but I think you made a bad call here."

I smiled up at her. "You know what I'm going to say, though, right?"

She rolled her eyes. "Don't," she sighed, and turned to leave.

"No regrets!" I shouted down the aisle at her anyway.

Several balding heads poked up from the surrounding cubicles, like gophers out of their holes. "Sorry," I giggled and turned back to my screen. I wiped my forehead again and took a sip of water from my jug. I felt pretty damn satisfied with myself in spite of Candace's lecture. She could harp on this all she wanted and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. It was done. I had made the right decision.

And even if I hadn't, I was over it already.

Chapter 2

Brad

There was always a moment - just before waking - when I felt completely safe. Suspended in that moment between dreams and wakefulness, it was easy for me to imagine that everything was okay. That I wasn't the living embodiment of Murphy's Law, and that everything that could go wrong hadn't gone completely ass-up yet.

Then I woke up all the way. And everything that could go wrong already had.

The spot in bed next to me was empty.

We had only been fucking for a few months - and unofficial fucking at that - but already I was used to thinking of it as
Olivia's spot
. Olivia's spot in my bed was empty. She'd left me last night, and what was worse was that I told her it was
'fine with me'
that she went. I told her she could go, that it
'made sense'
that we broke up, that my focus needed to be on the upcoming season and I
'couldn't give her the attention she needed, no, deserved.'

Actually, I didn't say any of these things. I didn't get a word in edgewise.

I sat there, like an asshole, nodding as she said all of these things to me. At me. Agreeing with her that
'yes, this is the right decision.'
Acting like I believed that we were making the right call.

We were.

Probably.

Maybe.

I had no fucking idea.

Whatever her reasons for leaving me, at least we left on a high note. I fucked her one last time and left us both smiling and satisfied, and then walked out the door. It was better that we broke up when we did. Before things started going wrong. Before they went south, like they inevitably did.

Before she started hating me.

I got out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. The calendar on my big, empty fridge had tomorrow circled in black Sharpie. The start of training camp. The off-season was over. Today was my last free day for a long-ass time and I wasn't spending it with Olivia. She had to work today, so we agreed that our final fuck would be on a Sunday night. All officially negotiated and signed on the dotted line and shit.

Now I was realizing that our timing completely sucked. What the hell was I going to do with myself today? Today was my last taste of freedom and while I should have spent it buried between Olivia's thighs, we'd jumped the gun, and now I had nothing to look forward to except a whole long day of blankness.

I opened the refrigerator and peered inside. There were a few odds and ends on the shelf; a container of takeout, some of that weird hummus shit Olivia liked. Maybe my grocery bill would go down now without Olivia eating me out of house and home. God, that girl could pack food away like a champ. Sometimes I would just set my fork down and watch her, a big dumb smile spreading across my face, the pleasure of watching a pretty girl devour her food with reckless abandon. Olivia devoured everything whole; food, life,
my fucking heart…

No.

I shook my head, reminding myself to put that shit aside. It wasn't love. She and I had fun together. We fucked like crazy, but that was the extent of our connection. The few conversations we had, the ones that usually happened after we'd fucked ourselves stupid, consisted mainly of arguing over where we were going to eat. Olivia was not one for post-coital pillow talk. We'd been fucking on the regular for four months, and I still didn't know her middle name. She had never met my mother, never see me play hockey…

And I wasn't even sure she cared about any of it.

That woman had a wall around her at least fifty feet high. The few times I tried to knock it down, or even find a crack in it, she deflected me with sarcastic, biting humor and such a whip-cracking condescension that I just fell silent, my words abandoning me, subdued by her lashing tongue.

No. The breakup was a good thing. I didn't miss her, just her pussy.

Oh, and the way she didn't give a single fuck about anything. That was fun too.
She
was fun.

A fun, flirty, fucking insane piece of ass.

I ate the rest of her weird hummus - it was actually pretty tasty - for breakfast and headed out of the door.

Without anything to do with all of my restless energy, I headed to the gym. Nothing like a righteous sweat to drive the thoughts from your brain. No one talked at the gym. It was a good place to escape.

It was still early in the morning and I had the place to myself. Which was good. I didn't feel like seeing any of the guys yet. I'd see plenty of them tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that for the next six months. I knew how it would go. First, we'd be thrilled to be back at it, the newness of the season, the wide-open possibilities making us giddy as hell. We'd practice all day and then go out with each other at night, unwilling to let go of the connection we were forging.

Teammates.

It was a special kind of bond that people on the outside just couldn't understand. There was closeness there that was unrivaled, almost like a brotherhood.

But that didn't mean I didn't get sick to death of them sometimes some days. Especially days like today. On days like today, even Ian would be too much.

My best friend was a swaggering asshole and totally proud of it too. He liked to give me shit and watch me clam up and turn red, too tongue-tied to fight back. He knew just how far to push me before I'd snap and deck him.

I fought with my fists. Not my mouth. The stutter I'd struggled with all through my childhood had cleared up with speech therapy, but I still always waited to talk until I was certain I actually wanted to speak. Until it was necessary and worth it. And when I did talk, I chose my words carefully; picking ones I knew wouldn't betray me.

Six miles on the treadmill flew by in a heartbeat. I immediately switched over to deadlifts, working on my explosive power. I was pushing myself hard, way too hard for the day before practice started. I was going to exhaust myself and have nothing left for tomorrow.

But I couldn't help it.

I was completely out of breath when my phone rang.

For one brief second, I thought it might be Olivia, calling me back, telling me that she fucked up, babbling on about how breaking up was actually a really stupid-ass idea, that we could totally make things work during the regular season. For just a second, I could almost hear her voice - low and powerful for a woman's - and the way she hit certain words with everything she had, smacking her consonants around like they owed her money and waving her hands for emphasis.

I smiled as I imagined what she was calling about.
Life on the road is tough,
she'd say
but we can make it work, right Brad? We're good at this, let's just keep going. It doesn't have to be over. I'll just have to wait for you.

That's where the little fantasy evaporated.

Olivia would never wait for me.

I shook my head, and answered the phone with a gruff, "What?"

The sound of the recording on the other end had me sitting up straight on the weight bench. "You have received a collect call from an inmate at Metropolitan Correctional Center. Do you accept the charges?"

I swallowed, licked my lips. "Yeah," I grunted.

The disembodied female voice chirped in my ear. "Please state your intentions clearly using the words  'Yes' or 'No.'

"Oh goddammit, yes. Yes, I accept."

There was a loud clunking, and then suddenly the line was filled with the sound of voices in the background. "Hello?" I called into the echoing din.

There was a scrabbling sound, and then the noises died away as my brother lifted the receiver to his ear. "Brad!"

Every feeling in the world suddenly invaded my chest at once. Joy at hearing my older brother's voice. Rage at, well, everything about him. Frustration with his arrogance in thinking he was above the law, and his stupidity in getting caught. And irritation that he was choosing today, of all days, to call me up out of the blue and drop his shit into my lap.

Because that was what Marcus did. His shit was my shit no matter how much I railed against it. Marc always tangled me up in the convoluted shit show that was his life and I let myself get tangled up in it because...well...because it was Marc and I missed him.

I wanted to hug him and also murder him. We were brothers. That was how these things went.

I was really happy he'd called.

"Dude! It's good to hear from you!"

Marcus laughed. "You don't have to lie," he said. "You won't hurt my feelings, believe me, I've been through worse."

"Oh stop complaining. Federal prison is a total walk in the park compared to St. John's and Sister Rosemary and you know it."

My brother whistled through his teeth. "That old bat
hated
me. I swear to god. I think she prayed the rosary every night that I'd end up dead. Or worse, an altar boy."

I chuckled. "So what's the word?"

My brother paused for a second. "I've got news, Brad."

A little alarm bell went off in my head. "Your hearing?"

"It was this morning."

I nodded, inwardly cursing myself that I'd forgotten something so important. "And?"

Marc let out a whoosh of air. "It was approved, Brad. Parole was granted. In the eyes of the state of Illinois, I've been rehabilitated."

I sank my fingers into the padding on the weight bench, not daring to hope. "So this means…?"

"This means they're letting me out. One more week, little brother. One more week in this filthy hellhole, and then I'm walking out of here a free man."

"That's incredible, Marc! Congratulation!"

"Thanks." He paused.  "And...you know I hate to ask this, Brad, but I'm kind of in a bind here."

Here we go.

"It's gonna be a second before I can find a job, especially with my rap sheet," Marc wheedled. It sounded like he was reading from a script. "Find an apartment, get my shit together, all that. And I was hoping that my little brother the hockey star, with his big apartment that sits empty half the time... "

He kept talking, but I tuned him out. I could hear his sheepish grin through the phone, and could picture it perfectly even though we hadn't been face-to-face in months. My older brother, always the charmer, always with the avalanche of flattery and bullshit. He was the Scott brother who could talk your ear off, while I had to struggle just to string a sentence together.

Marcus was the one who had everything fall into his lap and what did he do with what he'd been given? Piss it all away. All that talent. All those words, for nothing.

He grinned that grin of his and spouted his bullshit, and that old feeling of wanting to punch him just to get him to stop talking came roaring back.

But what the fuck could I say? He was my goddamned brother. "Of course Marc," I sighed, cutting into his monologue. "You don't even have to ask."

"Well, I will anyway. Can I stay at your place?"

I took a deep breath. My tongue felt like it was tying itself up in knots so I had to keep it simple. "Y-yes."

There was a scuffling sound, then my brother's muffled voice shouting at someone that he needed more time and to fuck off. I wondered if he had even heard me, but then he was back on the line, sounding rushed. "Thanks, man. See you soon."

The line went dead.