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But Lexi’s championship football game was tomorrow, and my gut already churned that I’d put business before her last practice—especially since the timing of this meeting was born of nothing other than Jerry Townsend’s convenience.
After joining the team midseason, Lex had really taken to it—at least, as far as enjoyment was concerned. She wasn’t the most athletic kid on the field, but she put in more than full effort and always listened when the coaches gave her guidance. She smiled in my direction on the sidelines often, but today, when she’d looked for me, I hadn’t been there.
Nausea swirled yet again in my stomach.
You’re not cut out to be this girl’s father figure, a hidden foe in my mind taunted. I’d had a good example of what a father should be, and a tiny fleck of doubt concealed permanently in the depths of my brain didn’t think I was that kind of guy.
But any kind of reflection on the taunts always ended the same: what the hell kind of guy is that anyway? I wanted Winnie, and I wanted Lex, and I wanted them both to have everything they deserved out of life. I wasn’t perfect, but other than striving to maintain those basic principles, what else was there?
Exactly. You don’t know.
Chaos erupted behind my eyelids as the two arguments clashed and warred as if perched on opposing shoulders like the devil and God himself.
“She was fine,” Winnie answered finally, blissfully silencing my thoughts with the rough hum that connected her words. They ran together like a melody rather than punching the air individually, and it made it so easy to get lost in them. I wasn’t sure if it was new, if she’d softened over time from the once intimidating woman of the Mavericks locker room, or if perspective and time had brought clarity to my awareness. “Pretty good. Well, at kicking. You know the whole actual-contact-with-the-ball-while-running-or-catching-or-throwing thing is not her strong suit.”
“Why was she working on anything else anyway? She’s the kicker.”
“Wes…” she said gently. “They’re six. It’s for fun, so they give all the kids a chance to do everything.”
“When I’m there, all Lex does is kick.”
She laughed a little then. “I think your Irritated Owl—”
I rolled my eyes at the name she’d made up for one of my expressions.
“Intimidates Coach Sanderson,” she finished.
“It should. I should rip out his throat for making Lex do the other stuff.”
She laughed, and I felt each and every low note in my dick. “She enjoyed it. She wasn’t good at it, but she enjoyed it.”
Lex’s smile flashed in my mind. It killed the hormonal walk down Fantasy Lane, but really, since I was in a car, hundreds of miles away from the woman I’d like to have help me do something with it all, it was a good thing. “I’ll practice with her,” I said immediately.
“Mmhmm,” she hummed, and the throaty sound of it had me feeling like a dirty old man again. Jesus. Filling these particular shoes was exhausting. Was this how every married father felt? Lost in the murky sea between paternity and passion?
Putting it all out of my mind, I focused on the things I could gain satisfaction from now. “And how was practice for you, Fred?”
“Better than you calling me Fred.”
She still hated when I called her Fred. I loved all of it—the nickname and the loathing.
“That good, huh?”
“I might have liked a sport with less contact better.”
I laughed then. “The kicker is pretty much as no-contact as football gets. And it’s flag. There’s no tackling.”
“There’s no tackling when the kids don’t trip and fall into one another,” she corrected.
I shook my head with a smile into the starkly empty car.
I miss blond heads and pop quizzes.
Disappointment set in when the restaurant came into view, and I knew I had to hang up soon. Silence stretched on the line between us as I steeled myself to say the words. I’d never ever felt this much regret over hanging up a fucking phone.
“I’ve got to go, Win.”
“Okay.”
“I’m pulling up to the meeting,” I added, so she’d know I wasn’t hanging up because I wanted to—like a love-sick, desperate psychopath.
I really needed to get my shit together.
“Okay, Wes,” she repeated, this time with a smile in her voice.
“I’ll be home in the morning, and I’ll call you tonight,” I went on, saying basically every goddamn thing in the universe other than the thing I should have said.
I love you. You and Lex. And I’m scared that if you guys ever realize I’m not good enough for you, I’ll turn into a goddamn awful shell of a man. Or you know…maybe something slightly less melodramatic.
“Actually, as much as I’d love that, could you just call in the morning? Maybe text when you get back to your room so I know. I’m exhausted.”
“Okay,” I agreed, thinking if she was awake when I texted, I’d call then—and hating the possibility that she might not be.
God. Maybe I should just tell her how I feel.
“Win—”
“Hold on a sec, Wes,” she said before muffling the sound slightly as she probably turned away from the phone. “Yeah, baby?” A laugh. “No. Geez. Yeah, I don’t know, honey. I’m gonna have to look that one up.”
Lex murmured something in the background, but as hard as I tried to listen, I couldn’t make it out.
“Wes?” Winnie called, turning her attention back to the phone and me.
“Yeah,” I said around a swallow.
“I’ve gotta go, okay?”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me and closed my eyes. “Yeah.”
She laughed again. “Lex, wait. Stop. Don’t do that without help.” Back to me. “I gotta go.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
“Bye!” she chirped, and before I could say another word—not that I would have, such the coward I was—she was gone.
“Wes,” Amelia Townsend, Jerry Townsend’s daughter called as I moved down the sidewalk to the waiting car outside of Bovu Restaurant.
The whole night had been a waste, hours of negotiating and bargaining only to learn Jerry didn’t intend to give me anything I wanted—no matter how much it could benefit him.
Frustrated and cold, having chosen to forgo an overcoat despite the nasty weather, I turned around with a snap.
I wanted to go back to my hotel room, sleep for some ridiculously small number of hours, and then fly the hell home so I could see Winnie and Lexi. I wasn’t in the mood to have any late-night sidewalk chats with scheming, conniving women, but something about the look in her eyes made me pause long enough to give her the chance to elucidate.
Rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms, Amelia shivered and stepped out of the doorway toward me. Her red hair blew across her face as the wind kicked up relentlessly.
“Yes?” I asked as she stopped in front of me.
“I’m sorry for the way my father was in there.”
I shrugged and turned to look longingly at my waiting car before turning back to her.
“I know what you’re proposing really is what’s best for everyone. Let me talk to him about it without you there.”
I started to shake my head, more than done with the whole thing, but she went on before I could fully execute the maneuver. “You know he’s got this thing with you. Ever since last year’s draft.”
“Every player we recruited came to us fair and square,” I snapped unfairly. None of this was her fault. Not her father, or the meeting, or the fact that I wanted desperately to be 200 miles northeast of here.
She held her hands up conciliatorily. “I know. Just let me talk to him.”
“Fine,” I offered. It’s not like it would hurt anything—our relationship really couldn’t swirl any lower around the bowl of the toilet, and after how fucking awful I’d acted just now, I felt like I owed it to Amelia.
“Where are you staying?” she asked. “I’ll come find you after I talk to him.”
Alarms started blaring all over the place, and my head shook without even consciously telling it to. “It’s late,” I said, rather than having to go into any other, uglier version of the truth.
“You’re right,” she agreed easily, and I relaxed a little. “Coffee, in the morning before your flight, then.”
“Amelia—”
“It’s just coffee, Lancaster.”
For some reason, the use of my last name put me at ease. It felt more like comradery than seduction.
“All right,” I agreed. Still, I didn’t really want her knowing where my hotel was, so I kept the meeting details vague and unrelated. “Nine. Coffee. The Starbucks on Seventeenth.”
“Perfect,” she agreed. “See you then.”
She reached out to take my hand, and I shook it.
And then I told myself she didn’t hold it a little too long before turning to head back inside, leaving nothing behind but the uneasy pit in my stomach.
“Wes, Mommy?” Lexi asked, bouncing around in the kitchen on the tiptoes of her cleats. She was all suited up for her last football game of the season, the championship, for fuck’s sake. When Wes had volunteered to find her a team, I’d wrongly assumed he didn’t mean in the NFL.
