“The fuck you think you were doing out there, Bradley?” he asks. He doesn’t wait for my reply as he continues laying into me. “You’re acting like a child. Did you even consider what could happen if you got behind that wheel?”
No, I didn’t. I can’t say that, obviously. I’m already in pretty big trouble here, though he’s right. It could’ve been worse.Muchworse.
“Minimum three games for a DUI from the league, not to mention the legal ramifications for reckless endangerment paired with a DUI. Stupid, Dex. Just plain fucking stupid.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have—”
“You’re goddamn right you shouldn’t have,” he interrupts. “You’ve got a game to play this weekend in New York, and weneed you. I thought you were settling down. Thought you were pulling your shit together. You have a kid now, and you’re still acting like this? I’m disappointed, Dex. I thought you were better than this.”
He thought wrong.
I haven’t grown. I haven’t changed. I’ve pawned my kid off on Ainsley, and the second things got tough, I reverted back to exactly who I was. Who I am. Who I’ll always be.
Silence spans across the car before I finally ask, “Where are you taking me?”
“Back to my place,” he mutters. “You canquietlysleep it off there and be at practice in the morning. On fucking time, or you’ll get stadium stairs. And if you wake my kids after I let you into my home, stadium stairs. You know what? Fuck it. You’re getting stadium stairs tomorrow either way, but you’ll get an extra set if you wake up my kids.”
Stadium stairs are the literal worst punishment. They’re exactly what they sound like they are. I have to run up the stairs of one section and down the stairs of another, making my way around the entire lower bowl of our stadium.
Football stadiums are huge. It’s a lot of fucking stairs. And it’s not at our practice facility, which means I have to go do it on my own time.
And I’m going to be doing it hungover. I’m definitely not as sober as I thought I was, which is why I pass out as soon as Lincoln shows me his guest room.
CHAPTER 45: Dex Bradley
Picture-Perfect Family
Light peeks through a crack in the blinds and angles across my eyes in the morning, and I squint as I try to open them.
I feel like I got hit by a fucking truck. Pain slices through my head when I try to lift it.
Fuck.
I’m not in my twenties anymore.
My twenties.
Ainsley is. She’s in herearlytwenties.
Why is she always right there at the center of my thoughts? Front and center.
I force myself up, and it takes me a second to remember where I am.
Oh, right.
Lincoln’s house.
Because he stopped me from doing something stupid last night.
He saved me a hell of a lot of trouble—a headache twenty times the size of the one I’m dealing with now.
I take a shower in the bathroom connected to my guest room, and I head downstairs, where I find Lincoln and his family eating breakfast.
They’re this picture-perfect family, one you see on TV or in the movies. The wife is dressed and ready for her workday in her heels as she brings glasses of orange juice to the table for her three kids, including an eleven-year-old boy, a three-year-old girl, and a baby boy close to Jack’s age. The husband is laughing with the eleven-year-old, and when the wife leans across the table to place a glass down, I catch the husband checking out her ass. She bends down to kiss his lips, and a surge of jealousy rises through me.
We were just starting out, but I had that. For a mere moment in time, I had that.
And now it’s gone.
