Reaching First (15 page)

“You should have trusted me,” he said.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “Not after… Not when other guys…”

He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to think of her with any other man, even if he knew for a fact that he’d had more of her than anyone else in the world.

I thought we had something special.
He almost said it. The words were right there, on the tip of his tongue. But they sounded like something out of a movie, like something someone else should say, someone who was noble and strong and brave. At least someone who could read his goddamn lines from a goddamn script. Tyler wasn’t going to read anything, ever.

“I trusted you,” he said instead. And then he repeated, “You should have trusted me.” He turned on his heel and let himself out the front door. Every step to his truck felt like walking on knives.

Emily looked at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. Her wet hair was wrapped in a towel, and she’d tucked a bath sheet around her chest. Her nose was still sprinkled with the lightest freckles imaginable; her eyes were still green, her blond hair still framed her face with curls.

Nothing was different. But everything had changed.

Oh, she was a little sore. More than anything, her thighs ached where she’d clenched her muscles tight. Her lip was raw where she’d bitten it. But no one, looking at her, would know what she’d done. No one would think anything had happened.
 

Except Tyler.

Her decision not to tell him had been a lie. She’d taken away his choice. And now he wasn’t answering his phone.

She’d left him three voice mail messages. Each was exactly the same:
Tyler, I’m sorry. Call me so we can talk about this. I want to make things right.

But that was the thing: she couldn’t do anything to make it right. All those stories she’d grown up with, all the weight she’d placed on her virginity, day after month after year. Once it was gone, it was gone. She would never regret that she’d chosen Tyler to be the one. But she’d never forgive herself for the way she’d used him.

The phone rang, and she sprinted into the bedroom, grabbing the receiver before she could check Caller ID. “Tyler?”

“Not exactly.”
 

“Anna!”

“What’s going on, Em?”
 

A jumble of emotion churned through her belly at the accusation in her best friend’s voice. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a story making its way around all the sports blogs, about you and Tyler. There are pictures of you two in a parking lot, and he looks pretty damned possessive. Lots of people are commenting, saying he shouldn’t be doing his community service with Minerva House.”

Pictures? How the hell were there
pictures
?

But even as she completed the sickening thought, she could see Caden and his buddies crowding the doorway at Callie’s Café. One of the guys must have had a cell phone. Must have gotten whatever electronic revenge he could…

“Emily?” Anna pressed.

“I—” But she didn’t know where to start. Not even with her best friend. Not even with the woman who was supposed to be the most sympathetic, the most supportive person in the world. “It’s complicated,” she said.

“It seems pretty straightforward to me.” Anna sounded like she was chewing on a lemon peel. “God! Here’s a new link. Even the
News & Observer
is getting in on the game. Listen to this: ‘The witness, whose name is being withheld for fear of physical reprisal, offered multiple corroborating reports that Brock was seen with Holt at a Raleigh-area restaurant as recently as yesterday.’ Physical reprisal? What the hell?”

“Caden,” Emily moaned.

“Who the hell is Caden?”

“Someone with an axe to grind. He saw Tyler and me eating lunch yesterday, and things got a little out of hand. Tyler thought he was threatening me. Words were exchanged.”

“
Please
tell me it was only words! Tyler’s walking a tightrope, Emily! One false step and he’s done here!”

As if Emily didn’t know that. She tried to swallow her acidic panic. “We left before it got any worse.”
 

“I think you missed your target, Em. This is pretty much the worst possible.”

No, it wasn’t
. But she wasn’t going to say that to Anna. Instead, she offered up, “I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Anna’s voice was sharp.

“Tell you what?”

“I
saw
the way you looked at him at the game the other night. I should have added things up then.”

There wasn’t anything to add
then
.
Emily asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“I have a call in to the team’s lawyers. I don’t know what they’ll need, to prove Tyler’s sentence isn’t a sham. Maybe an affidavit. Or they might want to bring this in front of the judge who’s managing Tyler’s case. Maybe they’ll put you on the witness stand.”

Emily swallowed hard. The last thing she wanted was to stand in front of Raleigh, God, and everyone and testify about her relationship with Tyler Brock. But she said, “I’ll do it. Whatever you need.”

Anna’s exasperated sigh echoed down the phone line. “God, Emily, if you had to add Tyler to your list of conquests, couldn’t you have given me a warning?”

List of conquests. If Anna only knew.
And the worst thing was, Emily could never tell her the whole truth. She was too ashamed of what she’d done.
 

She hung up the phone and placed another call to Tyler. Left another message. And then there was nothing left to do, but wait to hear what the lawyers had to say.

* * *

“I’m sure you understand,” Anna said, the very next day.

Emily sat across the desk from her best friend, feeling like a child called into the principal’s office. She cleared her throat and braved the wrath of the Rockets’ putative owner, keeping her voice low and steady. “You’re overreacting.”

“If anything, Emily, I’m
under
reacting. My general manager wants to sue you for intentional interference with Tyler’s contract! I’m not just telling you to stay away from Tyler for the good of the team. I’m trying to protect you!”

“You sound like Aunt Minnie, forbidding me to go on a date!”

“Aunt Minnie was a lot smarter than you gave her credit for.” Anna sighed and finally met her eyes. “Emily, you’ve got to help me out here. I can’t risk you and Tyler being caught together. I’ve
seen
what reporters do to ballplayers in this town. They were relentless with DJ Thomas and his fiancé. They’ll watch you day and night until they get the story they want. So I’m begging you: Don’t talk to him. Don’t see him. Please. Promise me.”

Every fiber of her being screamed not to make that promise. But a good number of those fibers were seriously compromised—they had been from the first moment she’d laid eyes on Tyler Brock.
 

Anna said, “I’m not talking about forever. Just until this blows over. Until the court decides what to do about his sentence.”

Emily stared at her hands miserably. This was precisely the time she most needed to talk to Tyler. She had to apologize for trapping him. She had to see if there was any hint of a shadow of a chance they could clear the slate. Start over again, without any lies between them.

But she’d known Anna a lot longer than she’d known Tyler. And the team had millions of dollars hanging in the balance, on Tyler’s contract, on whether he’d be able to play or if he’d be sent to prison. And Tyler wasn’t returning her phone calls anyway.

“Okay,” she said. “I won’t see him. For now.”

* * *

Promises were easier to make than to keep.

Emily hadn’t realized how much she’d come to rely on Tyler. She expected him to be around the house, helping Will put the finishing touches on the renovation. She expected to talk to him after his games, to hear the elation in his voice after a win, to comfort him when the team lost. She expected to hear the slow way he said her name, dragging the vowels through honey.

But a promise was a promise.
 

Even when the court refused to issue a decision. Even when the team hit a losing streak of seven games. Even when Emily lay awake, night after night, remembering the throbbing heat of his body, the way she’d felt herself awaken, the way she longed to make love with him, even one more time. They could do things right. Make things fair. They could be together without lies or artifice.

But she’d told Anna she wouldn’t see him. And the consequences of breaking that promise were too much to bear. So she watched the Rockets play every night. She tracked their road trips like a travel agent. She saw them go from Cleveland to Arizona to Texas.
 

Texas—where Tyler had played the beginning of his career. Texas—where Tyler had gotten into the bar fight that had started this entire mess. Texas—where he’d lived a lie, where he surely needed to talk to a friend, to someone who would accept him for everything he was.

But she didn’t call. She only waited for the rules to change.

* * *

Tyler stood on the porch, staring at the doorbell he’d just rung. “Hey, Mama,” he said when the door was finally open.

“Tyler!” She folded him into a hug that smelled like baby powder and cinnamon sugar, same as always. “I knew you were playing here tomorrow, but I didn’t think I’d hear from you till then!”

“We have a travel day today. The team’ll get in tonight, but I came out early.”

“Your brothers will be so happy to see you! Come in, come in!” She chivvied him into the kitchen. “Let me just call them now, maybe Billy and Tom can get over here for lunch.”

He caught her hands before she could grab the telephone from its hook on the kitchen wall. “Sit down, Mama. I want to talk to you.”

She looked surprised. And for just a heartbeat, afraid. But she let him lead her over to the kitchen table. “What’s wrong, son? Is this about that story I read in the paper? You and that girl, the one you were working for, the one you were…dating?”

“We weren’t dating,” he said, fighting a cold wash of embarrassment. “Not the way they made it look, anyway, when they took those pictures.”

His mother just stared at him—trusting him, believing him, because that was her job. That was what she’d always done.

“Mama, her name’s Emily. And I told her something. Something important. Something I’ve never said to anyone else, even though I should have told you years ago.”

Her lips quivered into a smile and she reached out to pat his hand. “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. I’ve always known you love me. Even if you never said it out loud.”

But Tyler hadn’t told Emily he loved her. He’d
thought
it. Realized it just as his world came crashing down around him. He shook his head. “That’s not it.” He took a deep breath and looked directly into his mother’s eyes. “I told Emily I can’t read.”

“Of course you don’t read! You don’t have time for it. Always traveling from one park to another, getting ready for the next game. You’d have to be a superhero to have time—”

“No, Mama,” he cut her off. “I didn’t say ‘I
don’t
read.’ I can’t.”

She sat back in her chair, deflating like he’d stuck a pin in the balloon of her happiness. “Why do you have to bring that up again? You know how upset I was when your fourth grade teacher started telling those lies. I don’t know what I would have done if your daddy hadn’t stepped in. If he and your coach hadn’t set that school straight.”

Tyler shook his head. “I couldn’t read then. And I can’t read now. And it’s not because I’m lazy or stupid or stubborn, like Daddy always said. There’s something wrong with me. Something mixed up in my head. My brain doesn’t put the letters together the right way, doesn’t connect things up the way it’s supposed to.”

He watched her start to protest, start to tell him that there was nothing wrong with him at all, that he’d always been perfect in her eyes. But she caught herself. Swallowed hard. And then she asked, “Is that what you told your Emily?”

His Emily
. Yeah. Like Emily Holt was ever going to be his again.

“Actually, she’s sort of the one who told me, at least the stuff about my brain. She says there’s a doctor I can see. Someone at the University there in Raleigh. He might have new ways to teach me. Different machines that can make my brain work better.”

His mother looked scared. “And you believe her? She’s not just trying to use you? To find her way into your bank account?”

Tyler shook his head. “She’s not like that.”

Somehow, his mother heard the words he didn’t say. She leaned forward and put her hand against his cheek. “What is she like, then?”

And before he’d planned on sharing, he found himself telling his mother about Emily Holt. About all the things that were wonderful. About how she’d helped him. How she’d hurt him, too.
 

Well, not
exactly
how she’d hurt him. His mother would be mortified if he shared those details. But he explained how he’d trusted Emily with his greatest secret, but she’d been afraid to tell him hers. He finished with, “And now it’s all messed up. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know what to do. And the worst thing is, I can’t figure out why she did it. Why she didn’t just tell me the truth.”

Those were probably the most words he’d ever said to his mother at one time. He sat back in his chair, embarrassed, but also relieved. Until his mother laughed. “Oh, son,” she said. “It’s different for women. We talk to each other. We share so much. But every single one of us has something that’s too terrible—too frightening, or embarrassing, or sad—to share with anyone.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“No, it isn’t. It isn’t easy to talk about our worst secrets. You, of all people should know that.”

She was right. He should. He felt ashamed.
 

His mother took mercy on him. “Your Emily’s secret may have felt like it was about you, but it wasn’t. It was about her. About who she is. Who she wants to be. She never meant to hurt you.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I do, Tyler. Because I’m a woman, too.”

For the first time in his life, he realized that the woman sitting in front of him wasn’t just his mother, wasn’t just a wife, wasn’t just Mrs. Brock, the keystone in the family arch he’d known forever. He sat there, trying to imagine what secrets his mother must have. In about a heartbeat, he decided he never wanted to know.