“Ohh.” That’s definitely way more distance than I like to run with a ball, everyone else is moving a lot faster and hitting a lot harder, but I can probably get a few of those without breaking myself.
“You rush fifty yards in a game, you get an extra hundred. And if you rush a hundred yards, you get an extra two hundred. On top of everything else. You get a hundred yards, you’re easily walking home with 400k in your pocket off a single game.”
“Well, shit,” I whisper. One hundred rushing yards from a QB is practically unheard of. But fifty yards? Not so bad for the guys who like to run. Everyone likes to get a touchdown; that certainly includes me. And if I’m trying for fifty yards, those first downs are going to happen.
If I pocket 200k on a Sunday, I’m putting a down payment on a house on Monday. Donovan can have his own bedroom. I’ll have my own gym again. I can make sure there’s a space suitable for a studio for Tilly.
My brain glitches, the way it always does when I remember I shouldn’t be thinking of Tilly as a partner when I’m only co-parenting with her until I can figure out how to secure Donovan. Andy was right that I needed her for these early days, but that plan included a future exit. I keep telling Andy I’m still planning that, but the longer she goes without emailing me, the longer she just doesn’t fucking blackmail me, the easier it is to just forget the past. For Donovan.
And for me.
Fuck, Tilly feels every bit as nice in my arms these nights as she did that night last July. Better, actually, now that she has meat on her. She owes me. Big time. But I know who she is. I remember how enthusiastic she was to be the best little whore for me. She can pay me back the millions she owes me on her knees.
No one’s home, so I make myself a giant sandwich from yesterday’s haul and pass out for an hour, telling myself it’sgreat I’ve got the place all to myself. But nothing about this is home if Donovan and Tilly aren’t here.
They’re still not home when I wake up, which has me concerned, but then I peek out the window and see Tilly getting out of a rental car. I passively wonder if Cora’s been in an accident since her other friends are Jugs WAGs, and it’s easy enough for teammates to carpool if there’s a car in the shop. Cora’s single — ish; I don’t trust Merrick’s claims about being over her more than I can throw him, and he’s so much heavier than a football — but she travels enough that if her car needs to go to the shop, it makes the most sense she’d have the work done while she’s out of town, so an accident is the only explanation I can come up with for a rental.
Only, it’s not Cora who gets out of the driver’s seat. It’s a tall, dark, broody-looking white guy with plastic-perfect hair, an expensive summer jacket, and a telltale drool spot on his designer tee-shirt. He looks vaguely familiar, although I’m not sure where I know him from.
Tilly tries to get the stroller out of the trunk, but he jumps in front of her. He does the same with bag after bag of shit we don’t have space for, and then he grabs Donovan from the back seat.
He’s an asshole. I don’t know who the fuck he is, but he’s an asshole, and I don’t think he should be holding my son. Even if Donovan is in his car seat, that guy doesn’t look like he should be trusted with babies. And the way he pushed Tilly out of the way? Total dick move. She’s not some wilting princess. Now that I’ve got her seeing real doctors, she’s doing great. And the way they’re loading everything up in the stroller, I bet he’s not even offered to carry everything upstairs for her.
Fucking douche.
His arm goes around Tilly as she tucks Donovan in. Is he putting a move on her? I see the way she tenses. She doesn’t want that. Who the fuck is this guy?
When he whispers something in her ear, I hit my breaking point. This guy’s about to learn he doesn’t mess with other guys’ girls.
I sift through the kicking tees in my duffel bag, adding them to the collection on the coffee table, finally finding the football in there. Once the asshole backs off and Tilly leans over the stroller, blocking Donovan, I launch the football at the dickhead. It hits him square in the chest, knocking him off his feet and folding him back into the car. Shame it’s not the driver’s seat; he could drive right the hell off.
Tilly looks back, startled, and then her eyes go right to me. She has the audacity to glare at me like I didn’t just save her from that fucking perv. And I’m going to own up to it, proudly. The guy was assaulting the mother of my child, and I’m a good man; I protect my woman. I did the right thing.
But I’ve got that whole behavior clause thing happening in my contract, so I can’t publicly announce that I hit the guy because technically that’s assault, too. Instead, I yell, “Oops! I was aiming for the . . . tree.”
This is the rundown area of the city. There are all of two trees I can see from here. They’re the ones planted by the city along the sidewalk, and they’re barely hanging on to life. Probably if I hit one, I’d get in trouble for damaging public property, so the dickhead saved me, in a way.
“What the bug was that about?”
“Who the bell is this guy?”
“Stop being an ice hole.”
“Excuse me, ditch?I’mthe ice hole? This guy’s a bugging . . . a bugging . . . a bugging aardvark!’
“How dare you call me a—what?”
That’s my chance to snatch the stroller out of Tilly’s hand. I don’t want to fight in front of this pervert, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know ifpervertis even a word that needs to be censored. We’ve been trying not to swear in front of Donovan, not even because we’re concerned about him picking up words so much as because everyone else seems to think that’s the best thing to do, and Tilly doesn’t want to be kicked out of the WAGs babysitting phone tree because she can’t control her mouth.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she whisper-shouts at me. If we play our cards right, Donovan will be out for the next two hours. If he wakes up because she’s yelling like a crazy person, it’s gonna be a hell night.
“I’m putting my son to bed!” I hiss back. She doesn’t even flinch at that, even though I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I’ve let slip that I know exactly who she is. I guess I’ve taken ownership of Donovan in enough other ways — although I managed to intercept both his birth certificate and social security card, so she hasn’t seen Donovan Orin Washington Sinclair on paper yet — that it’s no weirder thanmy handsomest little manormy all-starormy stinky jelly belly.
My sonjust sounds better right now.
She actually jumps in front of the stroller to stop me and points back at the jerk, who’s retrieving the football from the hedge it rolled up to. “You need to apologize to Emerson.”
“That’s a stupid fucking name.”
