Living With Regret (28 page)

“I’m glad to hear that, baby. Now go back and mingle so we can get the fuck out of here and away from these rich, snobby assholes.”

I pull out of her then she slides down the wall until her feet reach the floor. After she fixes her dress, she starts to walk away. She stops a few steps from me and looks over her shoulder. “I’ve never mingled without panties on before,” she whispers with a smirk on her face.

Before I have the chance to offer them back, she’s gone. I just claimed her, marked her as mine in every way a man can, and still I’m going half-berserk at the idea of her walking around those assholes smelling like sex and without any panties on.

God, I need to get a ring on that woman’s finger, but she’s not ready. I know that much. In the meantime, I guess I’ll reap the rewards of my own irrational thoughts.

Christmas and New Year’s came and went, and Chase spent every moment of the holidays with me. The two of us made the trip together to my parents’ house. We stopped a few times on the drive down at places I knew he’d love.

We invited his mother to come and stay with us, but she’s hell bent on the idea of establishing a life that doesn’t have her depending on her son or soon to be ex-husband.

I somehow convinced Chase we shouldn’t exchange gifts. Even though it’s been three months since I first saw him again, we spent most of that time apart, and I knew what would happen if we bought each other presents. It would be something impersonal like a gift card or something over the top like a piece of jewelry. When we do start exchanging gifts, I want them to be gifts from the heart. Items only a person that really knows you would think to buy, and as much as I care and probably love Chase, we’re not to that point yet.

Chase and I are doing what we do best on a Friday night. We’re staying in and watching a movie. Ten minutes into the movie, my intercom buzzes. Chase, who’s practically moved in with me, climbs out from behind me on the couch and walks over to answer it without even questioning if he should.

“Yes?”

“Oh, Mr. Adams, you’re the person I was looking for. You told me if I thought you were home and not answering at your apartment to try Ms. Taylor’s.” Chase turns and smiles at me. He seems quite proud of himself that he’s informed Don of his usual whereabouts. “You have a visitor here, a Mr. Jake Girard. He’d like approval to come up.”

“Oh. Sure, send him up.” Chase’s brows bunch and he sighs, acting displeased that his friend is here.

“Would you also tell Ms. Taylor that Ms. Davis is on her way up as well?”

“Certainly. Thanks, Don,” he replies in a flat tone.

I stand up and walk over to him, keeping my eyes glued to his. “I take it you didn’t know that Jake was in town?” I ask as I wrap my arms around his waist.

His jaw ticks. “No. We didn’t make the playoffs so he’s officially done for the year, but I would have expected him to call before coming all the way here.”

I look around. “Where’s your cell phone? Maybe he tried calling you.”

Chase nervously laughs. “Fuck, I don’t know. Ma rarely calls and when I’m with you I usually don’t pay any attention to where I’ve left it.”

I walk to the door and open it so Jake will know which apartment we’re in. When I turn around, I run straight into Chase’s chest. His arms wrap around me as he nuzzles his face into my neck. “You mean the world to me, you know that right?”

Everything in me stills. I thought his friend was here to visit him, but something’s not right. Before I have the chance to say anything, Lacey and Caleb step off the elevator and start marching down the hall towards our apartments.

Lacey walks up to Chase, acting like she’s ready to kill him. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch!” she hollers, pointing her finger at his chest.

“Whoa, what’s going on, Lace?” I’m definitely missing something.

Before Lacey can get another word out, Caleb speaks up. “Chill the fuck out, Lace. If you get arrested, I’m not bailing your ass out, especially for assault charges.”

As Lacey starts ranting about killing Chase—and the many places she’ll dump his body—the elevator opens again with Jake’s arrival. He walks down the hallway with a smile on his face that fades away when Lacey turns to me.

“Did the asshole tell you that she’s pregnant?” My heart drops to my stomach because Lacey is still pointing at Chase. My eyes thin to slits.
Chase got someone pregnant?
“Whore Barbie made a very public announcement earlier today that she’s expecting this jackass’s kid.”

I immediately step away from Chase as his eyes are searching mine for something. “I don’t understand . . .” I whisper.

“He fucked her and now she’s knocked up. Unfortunately, there’s nothing else to understand,” Lacey snaps back.

“Seriously? What’s wrong with you? Lacey, you need to learn a little tact when you’re dealing with someone else’s emotions,” Caleb tells Lacey, who turns her glare towards him.

I shake my head. “Oh my God.” I walk back into my apartment, not caring if anyone follows me. I reach the back of the couch, the same place we were laying peacefully just moments ago, when Jake speaks up.

“Looks like I arrived just in time for the party,” he adds in his normal, arrogant voice.

“Yeah, blockhead, you arrived just in time to take your jerk of a friend home with you,” Lacey tells him.

I sit down and place my head in my hands, trying like hell not to cry. “Chase, dude, when was the last time you tapped that nitwit Carrie?”

Oh, shit. I’m going to be sick if I have to sit here and listen to this. “And you said I didn’t have any tact? What about this asshole?”

At the moment, I agree with Lacey.

“I only asked because I know for a fact that Carrie has been fucking just about any guy with a few zeros in his checking account, and unless Chase here fucked her after he woke up, after you came and went, then the kid she’s having—if she’s even pregnant—isn’t his.”

Before I can even process everything he just said, Chase jumps to his feet in excitement. “Yesssss!” he says, punching the air.

“Hold the fuck up, how does that prove he’s not the father? He’s admitted to having sex with her,” Lacey says while narrowing her eyes at Chase.

My hands are trembling in fear; fear that the life I started to picture isn’t going to happen—again. “Because Carrie is dumber than a box of rocks. She told the tabloid that bought her story that she is eight weeks pregnant. Chase’s concussion was almost fifteen weeks ago, so unless he had sex with her after his memory went haywire, then due to her own words, it’s not his kid.” Jake crosses his arms over his chest and waits for Chase to say something.

My eyes find Chase’s, looking for him to tell me again there’s no way this could be his kid. “I didn’t. I swear. I’m sure there was a time in my life when I had sex with her, but I don’t even remember it,” he tells me as his eyes closely watch my every move.

“Jordan, his head is messed up. Without a DNA test, you can’t be positive.” I look at Lacey then back to Chase, who’s getting pissed.

“I had a hard time remembering shit that happened
before
I hit my head not afterwards. I know for a fact I didn’t fuck Carrie after I woke up in that goddamn hospital!” he growls at Lacey.

Caleb tugs on Lacey’s arm and thankfully she relents on whatever she planned to say next.

“You have to believe me, Jordan. I know when you walked out of my door she had herself attached to my arm, but that is the one and only time I remember being in the same room with her. She came over to my house several times after you left, but I refused to even let her step foot in my house.” He pauses and I can hear the desperation in his voice.

“The two months we were apart, I spent it either alone, with Ma, or with my doctors, and the entire time I was obsessing over losing you. I wanted to be with you, to be good enough to be a part of your world, but I also knew I had fucked up twice. I couldn’t come back to you until I had my shit together, but not a second of that time did I spend with Carrie or any other female other than my mother.”

He’s waiting for me to respond. I know Chase is panicked and desperate enough to do anything to keep me, but I don’t believe he’d lie—not about this.

I take a calming breath. “You knew something was wrong earlier. Why? Why didn’t you come to me with this if you knew?” My voice cracks and I sniffle, still holding in my tears.

Chase drops to his knees in front of me and takes my face in his hands. “Remember when I purchased a new phone?” I nod. “That was because Carrie kept calling and texting my old one. I never gave her my new number but somehow she got it and shortly before Christmas, Carrie started calling and texting me nonstop, telling me she needed to see me. I never responded to a single one and eventually I blocked her number, but then she started calling me from her friend’s phone, but I ignored them, too. I knew in my gut the second Don said Jake was here it had something to do with Carrie’s calls. We’ve been in a great place for a while now. I didn’t want to ruin it. That’s the same reason I didn’t get a new number. You would’ve ask me why and I promised I wouldn’t lie, remember?”

I remember. Of course I remember. “But why would Carrie say that ...?”

Jake speaks up before Chase has a chance. “Happens all the time. Carrie either doesn’t know who the father is or Chase here makes more money than the other fool. After all, he hasn’t publically announced his retirement yet so she could be looking long-term. Keep in mind, Carrie may not even be pregnant. Women sleep with professional players all the time hoping to get something other than just sex out of it.” Jake shrugs. “Personally, I never dipped my stick in Carrie because she had
money hungry bitch
written all over her,” he adds.

Everyone was watching Jake until Lacey pipes up. “Are you fucking serious? Tact? I don’t have any tact but this asshole does? I need to seriously reevaluate my friends.”

Chase’s eyes come back to me, looking for me to tell him everything is okay. “I love you.” I rush out.

I told Chase I loved him when we were teenagers, I told him again when we were living in a magic bubble in Honolulu, but this is the first time I’ve said these words to him since he arrived to New York.

“Thank fuck. God, I love you, too. I never stopped and I never will.”

Chase wraps me up tight, breathing me in at my neck while everyone else in the room slowly leaves.

“I’ll spend the rest of my life being the man you deserve. I promise.”

That’s all I needed to hear. My heart has belonged to this man since I was only sixteen years old. I tried my hardest during the ten years we were apart to find what we have with someone else and I never came close. Now I’m starting to understand that’s because he’s the only person my heart will ever want.

Jake Girard became a good friend the day we started playing ball together, but he became my best friend when he got on a plane and flew across the country to ensure Carrie didn’t ruin my relationship with Jordan.

I’m sure long before Carrie has her baby, I would have done the math and figured out for myself that I couldn’t have been the father. But who knows the damage that could have caused in the meantime.

Seeing as our team didn’t make the playoffs, Jake’s season is officially over and yesterday I announced my retirement as an NFL player. I also publically spoke about my pending job here in New York. With everything going on, Jake has decided to stay and spend a few days with me.

Announcing my retirement at the age of twenty-nine has proven to be harder than I originally thought. There are only two things keeping me sane at the moment: Jordan and my new job. Outside of being an actual coach, this is the second best job a retired player could have. As a communications rep, I’m the middleman working to ensure both the players and the commissioners are satisfied. Seeing how the other side works, I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever coach someday. In my file it shows
pre-existing memory complications.

Looking at that on paper was hard. I had a unique form of retrograde amnesia that was a direct result of the blow to my head, and it’s unlikely that it will ever happen again. On paper, however, I look like a liability, which sucks and will more than likely keep me from my dream of coaching.