Fair Game: A Football Romance (85 page)

The corners of his mouth curve into a small smile, and he shakes his head back and forth. He reaches behind me for my purse and thrusts it at me.

“Now go after him, and please, Holland don’t hate him. No one knows him better than I do, and I can assure you that he always thought he was doing the right thing. No matter how wrong he has been, he still loves you.”

“I’m not going after him. I’m going after Juliette.” My voice is stone cold, and the river of tears that were just falling dry up when Sebastián mentions King and love in the same breath. I’ve spent three years trying to come to terms with what King did to me. My therapist says forgiveness is important, but that I have to want it for myself, and so far, I’ve been okay with being angry and miserable. King broke the heart inside my heart. He abandoned me and took the most precious thing on earth, and for that, I will never forgive him.

The ride to the Ritz is a blur of hyperventilation and a churning stomach. I’m trying not to let my hopes get too high. King has been keeping Juliette and himself successfully hidden for years. He may have already left. He might have discovered the crack in Sebastian's loyalty. Maybe he sensed something was off during my performance tonight.

I can’t believe he’s been watching me perform all these years. How dare he spy on me? He has secretly been involved in my life—he never really lost me, and he never lost Juliette at all. While I suffered alone, he had the luxury of watching me play, knowing exactly where I was and that I was safe. It would have been so easy for him to send a picture or a letter, but he didn’t. He chose the cowardly way out. He hid in the shadows and watched me graduate and become famous. He got exactly what he wanted, just like a King.

Inside the hotel, I bypass the front desk and make a beeline to the elevators with my head down. I don’t take time to admire the luxurious lobby or the beautiful people wandering around. I’ve seen enough swanky hotels to last a lifetime. I’ve grown to hate the temporary fake sense of home they try to provide. I long for a place full of my own things. I want to step outside into my yard and hear the locusts buzzing in the trees and children laughing and playing, not car horns honking and pedestrians whistling for a cab. I want a home.

When the doors slide open and the car dings, my heart is pounding, my mouth is dry, and my stomach is flopping around like a fish out of water.

I take a deep breath and exit left down three doors to room 211. I raise my hand and knock on the expensive oak door and wait. Someone’s moving inside. Thank God they’re still here. I step to the side so he can’t see me through the peephole. That’s all I need—to get this close, only to have him lock me out.

The door swings open wide, and standing right in front of me, filling the doorway, is King, shirtless in only his suit pants. For a fraction of a second, my body betrays me and I take a shaky breath and lean forward. He is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. He hasn’t changed a bit. His hair might be a little shorter and his facial hair is cut into a goatee instead of his close-cut beard, but other than that, he’s the same perfect, sexy, chiseled man.

“Damn, Sebastián where did you go—”

The color drains from his tanned face and his eyes widen when he sees me instead of Sebastián outside his door. We stare at each other, speechless, for a long time before his shoulders slump and he drops his head back, sighing while he looks at the ceiling.

“I want to see my daughter.” I have to push the words from my lips. The longer we stand here, the angrier I get. The desire to cause him pain, any kind of pain, physical or emotional, is overwhelming. It’s a good thing that love is my driving force tonight and not revenge or retribution, because if I were armed, I’d shoot him in the heart.

He lifts his arm to block my entrance.

“Holland, she’s sleeping. We need to talk.”

“Fuck you, King. So now we need to talk? What was wrong with talking three years ago before you kidnapped my daughter and left me alone to pick up the pieces? Let me see her, now.”

“No, not when you’re like this. She’s never met you. If you wake her up like this, you’ll scare her.”

My nails are cutting into my palms inside my tightly clenched fists, and my entire body is vibrating with anger.

“And whose fucking fault is that?”

He reaches out to touch me, but I lean back and take advantage of the opening he just made by moving his arm and darting past him into the large, dimly lit suite.

“Holland,” he yells. I scan the room quickly, trying to guess which door leads to the room Juliette is sleeping in, but there’s no time. King just slammed the door, and I hear his bare feet pounding behind me.

I say a short prayer to God, asking him to point me in the right direction, and run to the second door on my left off the living room.

“Holland, stop, we have to talk first, damn it.”

I chose the right door. He wouldn’t be so frantic if I hadn’t. I know it’s wrong to let my emotions sweep me into her room late at night like this—he’s right, I’ll scare her—but I can’t help it. I’m so close, and it’s been so long.

I burst through the door, and there, in the center of a king-sized bed, is a tiny little raven-headed child, lovingly tucked under the duvet, fast asleep. The room is dark except for a stream of light coming from the en-suite bathroom. King is right behind me now. His heavy breathing blows the loose tendrils of my hair around my neck and ears, and the heat from his body reaches out to warm my back. I step forward, and he reaches out to take me by the arm. I look over my shoulder and glare at his hand and then into his eyes.

“Take your hand off of me,” I say between gritted teeth. He raises his eyebrows and inhales sharply before he releases me.

I approach the bed slowly. Part of me wants to wake her, and another part wouldn’t mind staring at her while she sleeps for the rest of the night. How do I start, what do I do?

King is right behind me again. He’s too close, but there is nowhere else for me to go but into the bed, so I sit down on the edge, several feet from Juliette.

“Does she know me? Have you even shown her my picture so she knows she has a mama?” My Texas twang naturally replaces my Yankee New York accent when I speak of her.

“Yes, every day. She has been surrounded by images of you her entire life. I made sure of it.”

She knows who I am . . . as much as I hate King, I’m grateful to him for allowing her that.

Now that I know I’m not a complete stranger to her, I can’t resist the urge to wake her up so I can look into her eyes.

“Juliette . . .” She doesn’t move. She must be a hard sleeper like King. I try again, a smidge louder.

“Juliette.” Nothing.

King’s hand is on my shoulder again. I wish he would stop touching me.

“Holland . . .”

“Why isn’t she answering me?”

“Holland . . .”

“Juliette,” I say, loud enough to wake even the deepest of sleepers, but she doesn’t move a muscle.

Her shoulder rises and falls with every easy breath, but she doesn’t stir.

King turns me in his arms and squats down until we are eye to eye.

“She can’t hear you.” He places his hands on my shoulders and shakes his head back and forth.

“What?”

“She’s deaf, she can’t hear you. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. She was born with a profound hearing deficit. She’s never been able to hear.”

“No, she was fine when she was a baby. Nobody said there was anything wrong with her hearing in the hospital, and they test for that.”

He releases my shoulders and drops his arms to his sides. His face clouds with sympathy, or maybe it’s pity. I don’t know, but I do know I want to smack the shit out of him right now. I have no choice but to believe him. I wasn’t allowed to be there for her. I didn’t even know my baby girl was deaf.

I watch my hand slap King across the face as if it had a mind of its own. His head snaps to the side, freezing thereafter the impact of my hand. His eyes are closed, and I can’t resist the urge to have another go at it. I slap him again and again until adrenaline has consumed me and I’m pounding my fists against his chest.

“I hate you, I hate you so much! I wish you were dead!” I yell while he stands there, taking every bit of abuse without defending himself, until suddenly he grabs my wrists firmly to stop me.

“Stop,” he says, turning me to face the bed, where two very big eyes watch me with horror. When King knows I’ve seen her, he lets go of me and leans over to turn on the light next to Juliette’s bed.

He crawls across the bed and sits directly in front of her and begins to sign.

She watches intently until he stops, and then her eyes are on me again. God, I want to hold her and caress her skin, smooth her tousled hair away from her face, and kiss every inch of her from head to toe. But I’ve gone and messed things up by freaking out on the only parent she’s ever known.

Chapter Thirty-Five

King

If Sebastián weren’t my father . . . well, you know. He fucking told her. I should have known. He’s been begging me to bring Juliette back every day since Holland graduated from Juilliard and won the auditions for concertmaster with the New York Philharmonic.

It wasn’t like I didn’t want her back in our lives. I did, I do, more than anything. I ache for her every single day. I tell Juliette how wonderful and beautiful and talented her mommy is, we look at pictures taken by the team of people who have kept track of her since the day I left, and we watch every one of her performances on video. Watching her play is bittersweet. I expected nothing less from her. I knew if we were out of the picture, she would blow the classical music world’s mind, and she certainly has, but the hole in my heart where she belongs grows larger every day we are apart, and the cruel irony of having a deaf child who will never hear the beauty of her mother’s gift gnaws at my conscience. I can’t help but think that maybe she was fine in the hospital, and when God saw me take her from her mother, he took her hearing away to punish me through her. I couldn’t let the past three years be for nothing by showing up right now. She’s been out of danger for eighteen months, ever since the dirty world of drug cartels learned that the Romero empire had no real heir. But her career was peaking, she was living her dream, and I didn’t want to interrupt it.

I sign to Juliette that her mommy is here to see her, but she is a little upset about something that has nothing to do with her. She signs back that Mommy is scary and that she wants me to stay with her until she’s gone. When she’s done using her hands to speak to me, she crawls into my lap on her knees and wraps her little arms around my neck, turning her face away from Holland.

I feel like the biggest shithead in the universe when I look to see how Holland is handling this. Her face is full of so much pain and longing that I have to look away too.

This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I wanted to ease them back together over the next year, introducing them in Puerto Rico where Juliette would feel comfortable. I wanted to tell Holland about our daughter’s disability. I’d hoped she would have an opportunity to learn a little sign language before meeting her so she could communicate with her right away. All of this would have been possible if Sebastián hadn’t gotten so fucking impatient.

I was going to call Holland in a few more months, but he didn’t believe me. Sebastián thought I was never going to let Holland see Juliette again. He could never see the big picture. Nobody could.

She fulfilled her half of our deal a million times over when she graduated from Juilliard in half the time allotted and became the youngest person in history to ever win the audition for concertmaster. I’ve never been more proud of anyone or anything in my life.

I’ve also kept my promise to get out of the drug dealing business. It was much easier when the word spread that Arturo Romero wasn’t my real father. Fifteen months after moving to Puerto Rico, I had millions of dollars squirreled away in offshore accounts. Suspicions were high for an entire year until the cartels relaxed and realized that I had no say in the matter. My connection was adamant: no true Romero, no supply.

When Juliette is calm, I tuck her back under the covers. I start to scoot off the bed to leave and she grabs my wrist. I sign that everything will be okay. I tell her not to worry, and that Mommy is a very loving person. She asks if her mommy will be here tomorrow when she wakes up, and I tell her I’m not sure, but probably not. Her full bottom lip slips out in a pout. I kiss her nose and leave the door open a crack in case she needs me.

Holland isn’t in the bedroom anymore, so I search the living room. Empty. I look in the bathroom and the dining area before I decide that she must have felt so out of place and unwanted that she left.

Fuck, I want to punch my father right now. I pace the length of the living room several times and decide there is nothing I can do right now. I can’t leave Juliette in the hotel room alone to try and catch her downstairs. I’m going to have to wait for Sebastián to get back to go to her apartment.

I turn off all the lights and toss toys and books into a wicker basket that we drag along with us everywhere when we travel. I check on Juliette one more time and find her sound asleep exactly how I left her—with one exception. Holland is wrapped around her little body, spooning with her face buried in her hair. It’s impossible to tell where Holland’s wild mass of waves stops and Juliette’s begins. Seeing them together makes me stumble, and I grab the doorframe for support.

I don’t know how long I stand there watching the two most beautiful people in my life take breath after breath. It’s surreal. Mother and child reunited. It’s the third most moving moment of my life. Number one was when I saw Holland dancing at Ecstasy and fell in love with her at first sight, and number two happened while watching her deliver our daughter.

When my muscles begin to ache from standing in the same spot for so long, I leave the door open a crack and pad into the living room to call Sebastián.

A sense of wellbeing radiates through the suite. Knowing that Holland and Juliette are sleeping in the next room together is so incredibly right that I’m struck with the realization that the past three years have been more off-balance than I thought. But how could that be? Holland is everything she ever wanted to be, famous, world-renowned, a Juilliard graduate. She fulfilled every dream she worked her entire life for.

Sebastián picks up after only one ring. He was waiting for the call.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

I sit on the edge of the couch with my elbows propped on my knees, caught in this tight situation with my father.

“King, I couldn’t let you do this again. My granddaughter needs her mother, and you need Holland. She’s a star. Isn’t that what you wanted? It was time to give her her life back.”

“Give her her life back? What
I
wanted? She has the life she dreamed of, Sebastián. I may have had my doubts at first, but when we found out Juliette was deaf, I knew I was doing the right thing. Holland would never have gone back to playing. She would have devoted every ounce of herself to Juliette. She wouldn’t have gone to college, and she never would have played all over the world in so many orchestras. It had to be this way.”

“All right, King. I know I’ll never make you see that what you did was wrong. The past is the past, but those two need to be together now, and in the future. You were taking too long. I couldn’t watch another birthday go by without them knowing each other.

“You don’t see what I see. She may be famous and accomplished, but she’s hollow. The music doesn’t fill her up like it used to. The only thing that can fill the void in her life is Juliette, and God willing, if she can ever forgive you, she needs you too.”

I sink back into the couch and stare out the window at the lights of the New York skyline. She will never forgive me. I sacrificed her motherhood for her career, and it wasn’t my choice to make. I knew she would never forgive me the moment I left our house in Houston and got on a plane to Puerto Rico with our baby.

“Where is she now?” he asks.

“Sleeping with Juliette.”

“She’s still there? How did it go?”

“It was rocky. She rushed in before I could tell her, and Juliette woke up scared. I thought she slipped out when I was tucking Juliette back into bed, but when I went back in, she was curled up with her.”

“And Juliette didn’t get upset?”

“I never heard a peep from the bedroom, and they were both asleep when I found them, so apparently not.”

“You got lucky, son. Things could have been so much worse.”

“She loves her, so much. I saw it in her eyes tonight, and it made me doubt myself. I messed up, I was wrong. But I’ve been telling you I was going to contact her soon. You just had to push, didn’t you?”

“Your way isn’t always the best way, King. In fact, your way has pretty much sucked for the last three years. Somebody had to show you that you were wrong. Guess it was me.”

“Well, it’s done now. There’s no going back. I don’t know what the hell is going to happen in the morning, but you’d better be here bright and early to help if I need you.”

“I’m right downstairs. Call me for anything.”

“I will.”

We hang up, and I toe off my shoes and lay down on the couch. What now? I have no idea what to expect from Holland tomorrow, or Juliette, for that matter. I get up and check on them one more time. Holland is under the covers, and Juliette is facing her now with her hand on Holland’s cheek; both are still sleeping. Tears well in my eyes for the first time in years. They are so beautifully meant to be together. I can’t believe I ever thought she was better off without her daughter. The dam of guilt that’s been building for years breaks free, flooding me with regret. I was wrong, so, so wrong. Now I have to make it right. Somehow, I have to find a way to put Holland’s life back together.