“After you decked me? What the hell was that all about anyway, man?” I rubbed my jaw. “You throw a mean hook, by the way.”
“You had it coming,” he shot back. “And if I hadn’t done it, Coach might have. What the hell, Noah? What the actual fucking hell? What happened to you? You used to be . . . you know. A good guy. The best of us. The one who always did the right thing. And now you’re this total asshole, this ugly motherfucker who treats women like shit and then talks about them like—” He broke off. “Did the really decent part of you die when Angela did, Noah? Because it feels like you haven’t been the same man since she passed. And I get that losing her was a shit deal. We all get that. But you gotta move on. You gotta keep living, and you should do it in a way that would make her proud, not ashamed.”
I let my head drop. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Zeke.”
“Yeah? Then start acting like it. Beginning with Juliet.” There was an angry growl in his voice when he said her name. “You’ve been a jerk to her all along, but last night—that was the worst. You broke her heart.”
I frowned. “How do you know?”
“Because I saw her leaving. I was standing there when she got in her car and tore off.” His shoulders hunched. “She was crying. She told me that she overheard you talking about her, and that you’d said she was temporary.”
I cringed. “Yeah. She wasn’t lying. I said that to Emma.”
“You goddamn son of a bitch, I ought to knock you down again. Bad enough you said that, but then you talked about her that way in front of all the guys—in front of the team who still has to work with her—men she has to look in the eye, all the while they’re picturing her—with you—” Zeke spun, and this time he threw a punch that knocked a hole in my kitchen wall. “Fuck you, man. Fuck you to hell.”
“Whoa.” I stood up and grabbed his arm. “What the hell? This is my house. Knock it off.” I heaved a sigh. “Don’t I have enough problems right now without having to find a drywall repairman to come out and fix my wall? I barely got the housekeepers to come here as it is.”
“You’re just damn lucky it wasn’t your head instead of your wall, you fucker.” Zeke shook off my hand and paced. “I oughta fuck you up for what you did.”
“Why does it matter so much to you?” I was bewildered. “I’ve heard you say worse than I did about women. Not that it makes either of us right, but why did it piss you off so much that I talked about Juliet?”
He scowled. “I told you. It wasn’t cool to talk about her like that in front of the team. In front of Coach. It was wrong. And I—I—” He seemed to lose the capacity for speech, but his face was tomato red.
And suddenly I realized it. What kind of an idiot had I been that I’d missed it before now?
“You like her, don’t you?” I ran my hand over my face. “Damn, Zeke. You got it bad for Juliet, don’t you? That night after the tattoos . . . God, I should’ve seen it. Man, Zeke, I’m sorry. Really. I had no idea.”
“Yeah.” He barked a laugh, but there was no humor, only pain. “Not that she ever saw me. Not that she sees me as anything more than just some clown douche football player. Not good enough for her—she’s right—but I’d be a damn sight better to her than you ever have been. Doesn’t matter, though, not when she looks at you all the fucking time the way I want her to look at me.” He grasped both sides of his hair and tugged. “Do you know what I’d give to have her smile at me the way she does at you? Fucking hell. I’m a fucking idiot. A fucking lovesick idiot.”
I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what to say next—what to do. “Listen, Zeke. You’re right. I’m not good enough for her, and the thing is . . . I don’t really think we’re going to work out. I’ll break it off with her, and then you’ll have your shot.”
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” Zeke moved fast, pinning me up against the wall, right next to the hole he’d just made. “You can’t do that. She’s not like some toy that you use up and then pass on to the next player. She’s a woman, and she’s special, and—damn it, you asshole, she loves you. So you—” He released me and pointed his finger in my face. “You’re going to call her up and talk to her. You’re going to apologize. You’re going to get down on your fucking knees and beg her to understand. And then you’re going to promise to do better, and you’re going to fucking devote your life to doing better. Are we clear?”
“Zeke, man—I’m not doing her any favors if I don’t care for her. Don’t you see? It’s better for us to just see it now for what it was—a mistake. My mistake. Then she can move on—to you or not to you, I don’t care. But I can’t do right by her if I’m pretending.”
“You talked about her in front of the team. In front of Coach. You think that’s not going to get back to her father? You think those damn reporters who circle us like vultures aren’t going to hear about this? They already think the two of you are this perfect couple. Your names are in every damn gossip rag. If you break up with her now, you leave her, she’ll have to leave the team. She’ll be mortified, humiliated, and it’s all your fault.” He let out a long breath. “But you stand by her, you be the man she needs you to be, and then it’s just a guy bullshitting about his—his girl.” Zeke almost groaned the word. “Not good behavior, but better than treating her like trash you toss to the curb when you’re done with it.”
I began to see exactly what Zeke meant, and the pain of reality threatened to crush me. “Aw, fuck, Zeke. Fuck.”
“Yeah.” He got quiet now. “You see?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I see. I’ll . . .” I raked my hand through my hair. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good.” He stepped back, his eyes riveted to the floor. “And so help me God, Noah, if you ever hurt her, I’ll break you, man. I’ll take you down. We clear?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed. “Yeah, Zeke, we’re clear.”
“Good.” He kicked a pile of trash out of his way. “Get this place cleaned up. You live like a pig. Fix it.” He steeled his gaze and leveled it at me.
“Fix it all.”
15
Alison
“Well, Alison, no surprises here.” Maggie Corning, the nurse-practitioner midwife who’d been handling my gynecological care since I’d moved to Florida, tapped the tablet in her hand. The results of my recent blood test were displayed on the screen. “As you suspected—or knew—you’re pregnant, and my exam, along with the date of your last period, puts you at about eleven weeks along.” She regarded me for a moment before adding, “We can do an ultrasound to narrow that down and confirm timing if you like, or we can wait a little while longer. That’s up to you.”
I was still wearing the cotton examination gown and sitting on Maggie’s table. Her midwifery practice was as holistic and sustainable as she could make it while still maintaining standards of cleanliness, and I always appreciated that I didn’t have to sit around in a crinkly, uncomfortable paper gown when I visited her for my annual appointment. I also liked the fact that she saw herself as a partner in my health care; she always offered me options and supported whatever decision I made.
