False Start: A Fake Dating Sports Romance (Red Zone Rivals)

My knee bounced like a basketball under the kitchen island of the apartment I was renting, my eyes on the phone clutched between my hands.

The last week had been a whirlwind. Whenever I wasn’t training with Braden, I was looking at houses with Madelyn. And any time she’d let me, I was there at her house with her and Sebastian, getting to know them both better, giving her a helping hand.

I didn’t know how she did it all on her own.

I hated that she’d had to for so long.

The week had been so busy, we hadn’t really talked much about what we were or what came next. Still, it seemed we were both on the same page, and for me, at least right now, that was enough.

We didn’t want to let each other go.

We spent every free moment we had together.

She was letting me in, and I was doing the same.

Part of me wished she was here with me now to face my demons. The other part of me was glad she wouldn’t see me like this.

I was going to try real fucking hard not to blow a gasket, but I couldn’t make any promises.

I debated booking a private flight out to Massachusetts to face my parents in person, but my common sense wouldn’t let me. Because the truth was that I didn’t trust myself not to hit my father square in the jaw as soon as I saw him.

And unlike him, I didn’t want to resort to violence — no matter how much he might have deserved it.

“Just fucking do it, Kyle,” I said to the empty apartment, and then I hit the green phone button next to my mother’s name.

As soon as the phone started ringing, so did my ears. My heart leapt into my throat and stayed there even after my mom’s voice sang over the line.

“Well, if it isn’t our superstar son,” she said, and though I couldn’t see her, I could hear her smile, could see it in my mind.

She used to be a place for comfort for me in a house of hell.

Now, I felt like she was an accomplice to the worst crime ever committed.

“How’s it going out there in the Pacific Northwest?” she asked.

“It’s going.” I swallowed, wondering if I should indulge her with small talk before I laid into why I actually called. But I didn’t have the stomach to even try. “Is Dad there?”

“Oh,” she said, surprised — because I never asked to speak to my father. “He is. He’s in his study.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Is everything okay?”

“No.”

Mom paused for a long while. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“I know.”

“You… know?” She sounded confused, and it made me grit my teeth together.

“About Madelyn,” I said.

The next pause was different, loaded, heavy with an emotion I couldn’t quite place. I heard Mom walking through the house, a gentle knock on the door I could see so clearly in my mind — the one that was shut firmly the last two years of my high school career — and then the muffled sound of her talking to my father with her hand over the phone.

“I love you,” she whispered, and I didn’t miss that her voice wobbled when she said it.

I knew I didn’t need to yell at Mom. She had probably beaten herself up about it since it happened.

But that didn’t buy her a free pass in my book, either.

“Hello?”

My father’s voice sent a chill racing down my spine, and for a moment, I didn’t feel like the six-foot-seven, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound football player that I was.

I felt like a child about to be socked around for fun.

“Let me ask you something,” I said, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice even. “Did you hate me as soon as you found out Mom was pregnant, or did it grow once I was born?”

Only a second passed before he scoffed, and I could imagine him taking his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation the way he used to do when I’d want to ask him something while he was working.

“Are you trying to have some sort of therapy session? Because I’m busy and don’t have time for—”

“Me? Yes, I’m well aware. But you’re going to need to make time for this.”

“I don’t need to do—”

“Shut up!”

I heaved the words, my chest rising and falling with a painful echo through my ribs.

“I have stayed quiet and listened to you all my life,” I said. “I’ve listened to you tell me I’m worthless, heard you spit your vitriol more than a hundred times. I have felt your fist against my face and never once talked back to you. Because you’re my father, and I thought that alone deserved my respect. But it doesn’t. You don’t. You never did.”

“Is that all?”

He sounded bored, and damn, if it didn’t piss me the fuck off.

I sucked in a breath, ready to scream at him, but then realized how pointless it would be. Instead, I forced a long exhale, closing my eyes until I saw Madelyn there behind my lids — calm, poised, strong.

“I thought you were just trying to raise me as a tough man,” I finally said, choosing my words carefully. “Not that I loved getting hit, but I thought I understood you.” I shook my head. “Now, I feel like I don’t know you at all. I feel like… like you’re the type of evil Pastor Root used to warn us about.”

“So many feelings,” he murmured.

I chuffed a laugh.

He was never going to care.

This confrontation… it was for no one else but me.

“I don’t expect an apology out of you,” I started.

“Good, because I don’t have one to give.”

“But,” I continued. “I need to know. I need to hear you explain.”

“Explain what?”

“How you could lie straight to my face about my own child, and then move me away from the girl carrying that child, leaving her alone and leaving me in the dark about it all.”

For once, I had shocked my father silent.

I heard the distant sound of my mom crying in the background, which told me she could hear everything. Maybe I was on speaker phone. Or maybe she knew just by the look on Dad’s face.

“How,” I repeated, and my voice cracked before I cleared my throat and forced a breath. “Only a monster could do such a thing.”

“Wrong,” he said, and to his credit, he sounded so sure of himself, like he really didn’t have anything to be sorry about. “Only a father who cared about his son’s future could have done such a thing.”

“My future,” I snorted.

“Yes, your future. Are you that daft that you don’t understand what would have happened if I would have told you?”

“I would have stayed with Madelyn,” I said immediately. “I would have been there with her every step of the way to raise my child.”

“Exactly!” He roared, and even miles away, the sound made me flinch. “You would have thrown it all away! School, football… do you think you would have had a chance at going to college if you had a toddler to care for? Do you think you would have even been able to play ball through the rest of high school?”

My nostrils flared.

He was right — but I didn’t want to say it.

“So what,” I volleyed. “So I wouldn’t have had football. I would have been okay. I would have figured it out.”

“And you would have struggled. Both of you.”

“So, you were content to just let her struggle on her own?”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic. I know she lost the baby, Kyle.”

That shocked me as much as a punch to the nose would have.

I blinked, opening my mouth and then shutting it again before I let out a harsh laugh.

“Wow. So, you kept tabs on her?”

“Of course, I did. I’m your father. And whether you think so or not, I had your best interests at heart.”

“You were a selfish, horrible father then, and you are still.”

Dad barked out his own laugh. “Ungrateful brat. You always have been.”

“And Mom?” I said, knowing now that she could hear me. “You… you played along. You loved Madelyn. How could you do that to her, to us?”

Mom wailed harder, and I heard Dad shuffle to stand.

“Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that.”

“Or what? You going to hit me? Because I hate to break it to you, Dad, but I’m big enough to fight back now.”

The garbling noise he made told me he was getting angry, that his face was turning red.

“You want to think you know what’s best for you? For you at sixteen? Well, when you’re a father, you can talk to me again.”

“I was a father!” I cried, shaking, my neck heated. “I was a father, and you stole that from me.”

The silence that dragged on between us was heavy and thick, and for a moment, I thought he might actually feel something.

I thought he might actually apologize.

Instead, he sniffed, and leveled his voice when he finally replied.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say you shouldn’t come home for Christmas.”

“I think it’s safe to say I never had a home to come back to, anyway.”

Mom cried harder in the background, and as much as my heart broke for her, I couldn’t forgive her right away, either. I couldn’t give her a free pass for playing into this, for not having the backbone to stand up to my father and stand up for what was right.

“Are you done now? Or do you want to keep going until your poor mother is on the floor with grief?”

“Don’t put this on me. This is all you, Dad. If Mom is crying, it’s because of the terrible lie you forced her to live with.” I shook my head. “It’s because of the choice she made to keep that secret. And here I thought you might actually apologize, that we could maybe work through this as a family.” I tongued the inside of my cheek. “But now I know I never had a family to begin with.”

“Someday, you’ll understand,” he said — and the bastard said it with such conviction it made me laugh.

“No, Dad. I’ll never understand how you could lie to your son’s face about his child. I’ll never understand how you could leave a teenage girl on her own. I’ll never understand how you could celebrate the loss of your own grandchild.”

“Then I guess we have nothing left to say.”

“I guess so,” I mirrored, and then I hung up the phone.

Less than an hour later, I was at Madelyn’s door.

I knocked hard four times, a gray drizzle soaking my long sleeve shirt even in July.

When Madelyn opened the door, her brows slid together, and she immediately dragged me inside and into her arms.

I crushed her to me, squeezing my eyes tight as I wrapped her up like she’d disappear if I didn’t hold on tight enough. She clung to me just as desperately, and then her lips found mine, and I sighed into her kiss, losing myself, losing the day.

Madelyn dragged her lips over every inch of my neck, my collarbone, along the line of my jaw before she was capturing my mouth again. It was as if she saw the pain before I even said a word, like she was intent on melting it all away with her touch before I could even fully express what I was feeling.

“Sebastian?” I asked.

“Asleep,” she answered against my lips.

I lifted her, holding her to me as her legs wrapped around my waist. Then, we were traveling back down the hallway to her bedroom, into her en suite bathroom, and I ran the shower hot without letting her out of my arms.

I didn’t drop her until it was time to undress, and I peeled each article of clothing off her while she tugged at mine.

“Need you,” I rasped against her mouth each time I claimed it. “Need you so fucking much.”

“I’m here,” she promised, and when we were bare, she pulled me into the shower, pinning me against the cool tile wall and kissing me hard.

I kissed her unhurriedly, exploring her with my hands and mouth as the water ran in hot rivulets over our bodies.

I never would have left you if I’d known.

I would have stayed.

I love you.

I hoped she could hear the words I couldn’t say, and by the way she climbed back into my arms and wrapped herself around me, I knew she could.

With her arms around my neck and mine around her waist, I lifted her enough to place myself where we both needed the connection.

And I filled her.

I slid inside all at once, stretching her, catching her gasp of an exhale with my mouth and holding her to me as I rooted myself deep.

Outside that shower, there were warning signs and hurdles to jump, conversations to have, a cold reality to face.

But under the water, it was just us.

It was just carnal need and unbridled pleasure. It was hands and lips and sighs and moans. It was her surrendering to me, and me kissing unspoken promises along every slick inch of her skin.

I will protect you.

I will love you.

I will never leave you again.

You are mine.