RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (19 page)

“
Two months. I still have your bag.”

I hesitate. I stifle a laugh and I don’t even know why. I look away and then back to him my eyes wet with tears. I don’t know how to do this. It’s part of the reason that it’s taken me so long to come and find him. I just don’t know how to begin, but I do anyway.

“
My dad died”, I say.

“
Fuck.”

That ridiculous little laugh again, just to mask the pain.

“
In fact, he died twice.”

“
That’s impossible.”

“
I know, right? Once wasn’t good enough for him, that’s typical
Dad
.”

I pause to wipe the tears away from my eyes with the heel of my hand, but it doesn’t stop them from coming anyway. “So, you know, there was that. How are you anyway? You look good. I saw the game.”

“
Lucy.”

I nod. “I know.”

I pause to compose myself, and a smile breaks out across my face, the only thing that’s keeping me from falling apart completely, even though my lips are still trembling.

Alex sighs, this can’t be easy for him. “I don’t know what to say. It’s so good to see you.”

“
Can we get a drink, you know, go somewhere?”

A beat between us in the space of time.

“
Sure.”

“
Alex?”

“
Yes?”

“
Can you hug me, please?”

There is a slap of sound as his bag hits the ground and even before the echo has faded, I’m wrapped up in the safety of his arms.

***

Life has a way of shitting on you sometimes, just to remind you who’s really in control. One moment you’re having the time of your life, and the next you’re fighting against everything, just to get to hospital in time to watch your father die. He wasn’t even fifty. I know that’s more than some, and more than Alex got with his own twin brother, but it was nowhere near enough for me.

He was healthy too. Right up until he decided to park his brand new bike under a lorry, at seventy-five miles an hour.

“
You should have come to me, I would have helped”, Alex says.

“
I didn’t know what to say.”

“
And you do now?”

I shake my head. “I just knew I wanted to see you.”

It’s been two months for everyone else, a mish-mash of eternity and nothing for me. How time can pass so quickly sometimes and so slowly at others is a mystery I don’t think I’ll ever be able to comprehend. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing. I mean, I know roughly what’s happened around me, but what I’ve been doing is another thing entirely.

I’ve never experienced death so close to me before. Both of my grandfathers died before I was old enough to truly understand what it was like to lose them, the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to grief, what followed me around for two weeks after the death of my childhood bunny rabbit.

Losing Dad is a whole different ball game.

There was nothing they could do to save him. Like I said, technically he died twice. Once in the hospital room, I passed out watching, and then again as they tried to operate on him to get his heart beating in something more akin to a stable rhythm. In Mom’s words,
he was fucked from the moment they scraped his stupid ass of the ground.

She’s as bad as I am. We all are. My sister, my older brother, my two nephews, one of whom who is old enough to understand the concept of
never coming back.

We cremated him and then buried the ashes in a small plot in the grounds of a church he never visited once in his life, and the ground still hasn’t hardened sufficiently to put in the headstone, nor have I to fully accept it.

I can’t even begin to describe how I feel because numb goes nowhere near close to the reality of having a hole now where something so strong used to burn. Imagine the sky without the sun in it, just a dark void of nothing you know will never look back and you might get close to an approximation of what I’m carrying around with me. Now I know how Alex feels. Now I know how everyone feels who loses anyone close to them.

Tears fall into my drink and make stupid sploshing sounds that make me giggle and then cry even harder. This isn’t fair on Alex but I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I knew I had to see him, even though I had no idea what I was going to say.

“
You missed the storm”, he says.

I compose myself. “Thank you, by the way. I never said, and I’m sorry.”

“
What for?”

“
Leaving. Not calling. Not being able to, and then being so scared I’d left it too long, I didn’t know what to say. For not writing the article.”

I level my eyes at his. I feel guilty about that. I feel guilty I let him down when he needed me.

“
There’s still time”, he says with a wry smile.

“
It doesn’t look like you need it.”

“
Maybe not. But, you know, I’ve got you to thank for that.”

“
How so?”

“
Without you, I might have already retired.”

There’s that twinkle again, those gemstones I’d forgotten were so beautiful and I’d missed so much.

“
I’m glad you didn’t”, I say. “Today was pure class.”

“
I’m glad you made sure I didn’t.”

I think I’m going red, but at least I’ve stopped crying.

“
About that-.”

“
You know, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you”, he says.

“
What, with all these new sponsorship deals, models hanging around you, social events, I find that very difficult to believe. I’ve seen the billboard posters.”

Alex looks a little sheepish. “Nothing’s been enhanced.”

“
I-. You know-. When-.” Again I can’t find my voice.

“
It’s really good to see you, Lucy. I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

“
Come on, that’s not like the Alex Vann Haden I know.”

“
What can I say? I’m a new man.”

“
It’s really good to see you too, I wasn’t sure how you would feel. I thought you might not want to see me at all. I did kind of leave all of a sudden.”

“
You had a good enough excuse.”

“
Yeah.”

“
I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m here if you need to talk.”

“
I do, and I will, but right now I think I just feel like forgetting all the bad shit for a while and kind of picking up where we left off.”

My eyes meet his again and he smiles a smile at me that fills me with the same kind of heat that came to me so intensely on the island.

“
Are you going to ask me a heap of questions?” he asks.

“
I might not be able to resist it, I am a reporter after all.”

“
You’ll have your notepad this time as well.”

“
Oh, you’ll allow that will you?”

“
I’m sure we can break a few rules.”

“
You know I’ve been dreaming about-.”
I can almost hear thunder overhead, as my lips are gathered up and pressed against his before I even have a chance to finish the sentence. Plump, juicy, soft, wet and warm, with a taste that takes me immediately back to a boat floating in the undulating waters of the Caribbean sea, a storm swirling around us to decide our fate.

“
-Kissing you.” I say, when he finally lets me go, my lips numb and my body tingling.

“
Well, I’m glad that wasn’t inappropriate then.”

Alex Vann Haden. The man that can have any girl he wants, waiting for me to come back to him.

“
I hope that’s not as inappropriate as you get now”, I say.

“
Oh, I can assure you, I’m still a bad boy at heart.”

“
You’ve done a good job of fooling everyone.”

“
Not many people know the real me.”

I smile. Just being here with him is making me feel a million times better.

“
I’m sad”, I say.

“
I know you are, and I know I can’t fix it, but I’m going to do everything I can to help.”

I can’t help but ask. “Why?”

“
When I first saw you, I thought I’d never seen anyone as beautiful in my life, and then when I got to know you, from a distance, of course, because I was dumbass-too-stupid-for-his-own-good-worried-about-what-people-would-think Alex instead of this cool, calm and confident person you see in front of you-.”

“
Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of self-awareness.”

“
Exactly. So, anyway. I fell in love with you. I didn’t realize it at the time, not until you came to my island and I knew that I’d made a mistake that first time around, because this time you were even more beautiful.”

I narrow my eyes but it’s in good humor. “Did you invite me to the island to fuck me?”

“
No, not at all. I invited you to write about me. I had no idea what would happen between us, or even what kind of person you had turned out to be. Fucking was a bonus. Anything more than that, I don’t know, I like you.”

I can’t help but smile.

“
Kiss me again”, I say.

“
You missed me, huh?”

“
Just kiss me, you idiot.”

He does - a mash of hot tongues and unspoken desires too overwhelming to keep in - and instantly I’m transported to heaven.

I pull away, just in case I’m permanently not able to.

“
So what now?” he asks.

“
I don’t know.” I genuinely don’t. I didn’t have a plan beyond knowing I needed to see him. Now that I know he’s been thinking about me as much as I have about him, it opens up a whole world of possibility I hadn’t even allowed myself to consider, for fear of falling even further into the black hole that I’ve lost myself in.

“
You want to see where this goes?” he asks.

“
You are so direct.”

“
I like to know.”

“
Women like to know. Men usually hesitate for months, trying to get the best of both worlds. What’s up with you?”

“
I told you, I’m not like other men.”

“
I want to go slow. I’m not even sure if I’m good for you right now. I’m broken remember. Totally fucking smashed into a million pieces.”

My dad’s inert body comes back to me in memory and it triggers another bout of crying. “You see, I’m all over the place. Smiling one minute crying the next. Kissing in between.”

“
We’ll work through it”, he says.

“
You’re that sure?”

“
I’m that sure.”

“
What if you end up resenting me? I mean, it’s hardly balanced is it?”

“
I’m not exactly the most balanced person in the world either, nobody is. Maybe we can balance each other out.”

“
I don’t know, I don’t want to burden you.”

Alex takes me softly by the chin. “Look at me”, he says.

I hold his eyes, mine going soft with tears.

“
What do you see?”

“
Alex Vann Haden.”

“
What else?”

The word is off my lips before my brain has even had a chance to process it “Lover.”

Alex beams a smile at me that nearly breaks his face in half. I can see every single one of his perfect teeth, and count half the taste buds on his tongue as well.

“
You know what I see?” he says.

I shake my head.

“
Me, you and a house full of kids.”

“
Wow.”

“
I know, right?”

“
I said slow”, I say.

“
I know, it was quite a way into the future.”

“
You really see that?”

“
As clear as day.”

“
After the storms have passed?”

“
We’ll get there, Lucy, I promise.”

“
You were right, you know?”

“
About what?”

“
About me changing my mind about you?”