Rookie Mistake (19 page)

September 10th

Hyatt Regency

New Orleans, LA

I lay across the bed flipping through the channels, my phone pinned to my ear by my shoulder. It’s been there so long the side of my face is starting to sweat. “No, Mom, it’s fine. You don’t have to cook for me when you get here.”

“You probably haven’t eaten a home cooked meal in ages,” she complains.

“I did last week. I went to Fiso’s place to have dinner with his family. His wife made chicken longrice. It was good.”

“I’ll make you poke when I get there.”

“Mom, no,” I chuckle, rolling over onto my back so I can switch the phone to my other ear. “Don’t make me anything. I can’t have any surprises in my diet right now. Not before a game.”

“Your
first
game,” she corrects proudly.

“Yeah. My first game.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you alone. You know your body and you know your job. I just want to take care of you. I always will.”

“I know. And if it wasn’t game day tomorrow, I’d let you. Just come watch me play and enjoy the vacation. That’s all I want you to do for me.”

“Do you have our flight information?”

“Sloane does. She’s picking you up at the airport and bringing you to the stadium. You’re coming in too late in the day for me to do it. I have warm ups.”

“She’ll be there on time?”

“She’s always on time.” I reach for the nightstand, grabbing my tablet. “Hey, speaking of Sloane, she sent me something I wanted to ask you about.”

“What is it?” Mom asks warily. She always reacts like this when I mention Sloane. She likes her, she’s happy with how the Draft turned out, but she doesn’t like the way it went down. She doesn’t trust her, not like I do.

I swipe my hand across the screen to bring it to life. It opens immediately on the e-mail I last read. “It’s a letter she got in my fan mail. The person who wrote it says they’re family and they want me to call them to catch up.”

“What’s the name?”

“David Brandt. He says we’re cousins?”

“David Brandt,” she mutters to herself, thinking. “It doesn’t ring a bell—Oh! Oh,” she repeats, the second exclamation much more subdued than the first. “I think that’s your Aunt Candace’s stepson. She was married to a Richie Brandt for a while, he had two sons at the time, but they split years ago. They lived in Boise the last I heard. I don’t think you’ve ever even met his kids.”

“So we don’t know who this guy is?”

“No. You’re definitely not related by blood.”

“I’m gonna ignore him then. He says he wants to catch up and talk about some exciting ideas he has.”

Mom grunts. “Sounds like he wants to ask you for money.”

“That’s what Sloane said.” I close the cover on my tablet, falling back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. “She said that’s going to happen a lot. She’s filtering most of it so I don’t have to deal with it. She said you should get your phone number unlisted so people can’t find you and hassle you.”

“We’ll be fine.”

I close my eyes, prepping for the storm. “She also agrees with me that you should take my offer of buying a condo there on the island with a doorman.”

“Don’t start this again,” she warns sternly.

“I’m buying one whether you live in it or not.”

“Good for you.”

“I’d rather you stayed in it than strangers I’d have to rent it to.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Mom.”

“Trey.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.”

“Let me buy you a home.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

I take a deep breath, going in for the killing blow. “It would take a lot of stress off my mind if I knew you were safe and not getting harassed because of me.”

She’s silent for a long time, and part of me wishes I hadn’t done it. It’s not a low blow, but it’s a calculated one.

“How are you feeling?” she asks quietly. “Are you doing okay getting ready for this game?”

“I’m good. I’m calm.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. I’m not worried about work. The only thing I worry about now is you.”

She sighs heavily. “Oh, Trey… I don’t want you to worry.”

“Then let me do this. Just this one thing and I’ll stop. I’ll never ask you to take anything from me again. Not even a stick of gum.”

I wait with my breath frozen in my lungs. It’s an argument we’ve had so many times, and she’s shut me down every time. I can’t imagine why tonight would be any different.

And still somehow it is.

“Alright,” she agrees softly. “You win.”

I smile. “You’ll let me do it?”

“Yes, Trey, I’ll let you do it. But you’re buying it for yourself, not for us. We’ll live in it and take care of it and someday when you come home to Hawaii you’ll have it for yourself.” She pauses, prepping her own killing blow. “You can have it for you and your family.”

“That ‘someday’ is a long ways off,” I remind her.

“I know. You have a career to think about now. I’m not pushing.”

I chuckle. “Aren’t you?”

“Not yet. Give me a few years and it’ll be all you hear from me. For now I’m happy to see that you’re not popping up in the tabloids every two seconds with a new girl on your arm anymore.”

I sit up, running my hand over my head roughly. “Yeah. I’ve been busy. I’ve been focused.”

“Focused on the game or on a girl?”

“The game.”

“Have it your way. I need to get to bed if I’m going to wake in time for that flight to Louisiana, and you should get some sleep too.”

“I’m wide awake.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she scolds lightly. “Goodnight, baby. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“See you tomorrow. Remember to have fun!”

“I will. Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

I let her hang up, watching the phone’s screen go dark in my hand. I swipe my thumb across it twice, each time watching it light up only to let it go dark again without doing anything. I shouldn’t do anything. I should go to bed. I should hit the gym or go for a run, or one of a million other things I could do to calm the rising in my veins, but there’s only one thing that will help it. Only one person who can bring me down, because just speaking her name is what brought me up.

I bring up my text messages. Her name is at the top. It always is because she’s always the last one I message before I go to bed. She’s the first one I hit up when I wake.

I can’t sleep.

I wait only three minutes for a reply.

You should try. Busy day tomorrow.

I have tried. I can’t make it happen.

I can’t help you.

You’re the only person who can help me.

I wait five minutes this time. I’m sweating by the second.

We can’t.

I just want to sleep.

You just want to get laid.

I want to lay down next to you. I don’t have any condoms, don’t bring any with you. We won’t go there tonight.

Then where are we going?

To sleep. That’s it. I swear.

I wait seven minutes. Eight. Nine. My heart is thudding in my chest, my stomach knotting and dropping low where it aches with anxiety. No one calms me the way Sloane does, and no one winds me up like her either. She can make or break me in an instant and it’s a power I never intended to give to anyone. It’s not something I especially enjoy.

But when that soft knock comes on the door, I don’t give a damn. I jump up off the bed, swing the door open, and usher her in with an arm around her waist. I dip my face low into her neck where I can feel her hair around me, smell her scent wafting warmly from her skin, and I inhale her like she’ll save my life. I haven’t seen her in days. Weeks. It’s too long to go without her.

She takes hold of my arms, laughter on her lips, but I silence it with mine. I kiss her deeply until she melts in my arms, going soft. Going weak.

She’s in her pajamas. Short shorts, a Kodiaks hooded sweatshirt, and probably nothing underneath. It makes me desperate, and I struggle to remember my promise. I try to remember if I have a condom stashed somewhere in my bags.

As if reading my mind, she pulls back, shaking her head. “You promised,” she reminds me softly.

I drop my forehead to hers, nodding faintly. “I remember.”

“Well, remind
him
,” she tells me, looking down at my waist, “because he’s not listening.”

“He has a mind of his own and fuck, he likes you a lot.”

She wraps her arms around my neck slowly. “I like him too,” she purrs.

I grimace. “That’s not helping.”

“What will?”

I stand up straight to reach behind her. I turn off the lights. All that’s left is the glow of the TV and the ghostly shade it casts over her. I pull her with me to the bed where I sit down and pull her to stand between my legs. She releases me to lift the sweatshirt up over her head, tousling her long blond hair into a mild mess. Underneath the sweatshirt is a tank top. Orange and yellow. It has ‘Domata’ written proudly across her breasts.

It’s the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

“You’re killing me,” I accuse her gruffly, reaching for her hips. Raising my hands slowly.

She puts a stop to it with her own. “Can you handle it or should I go?”

“You probably never should have come here.”

“I think we both already knew that.”

I push past her hands. She lets me. She lets me raise my palms flat across her body until I take my name, take
her
, in their grasp and hold them firmly. I love it when her breath slides out of place. When it hiccups in her throat and her pulse begins to fly in her neck. I love it even more when my mouth finds her peaks through the thin material of the shirt and her body goes stiff in my grasp. When she straddles my leg and grinds her warmth against my thigh. When she sighs my name like a curse.

“Trey,” she whispers, her head falling back. “Fuck, Trey.”

I pull the shirt down until we’re skin to skin. Until my tongue can circle her, suckle her, and she rides my leg more aggressively. I want those shorts off. I want her naked on my leg so I can feel her getting wet and hot and wanton. I don’t have a condom but there are so many things I want to do to this woman that don’t involve my dick. They’re all about her and the way she moans, the way she gasps and grips me like a vise as her body lights up under my hands. I won’t sleep until I’ve worn her out. Until she’s lying in my arms with swollen lips and hooded eyes, her body exhausted from tremor after tremor tearing through her.

I’ll give her all of it. All of me, everything I have. Every kiss she’ll take, every touch she’ll allow. I’ll go where she lets me, where she leads me, and I won’t miss the control. I’ll let her have the lead because I trust her to get me where I need to be. To
who
I need to be, and by the end of the night I know I’ll sleep like a baby because she got me there.

But until then, I’ll love her like a devil.

***

In the morning I wake up alone. I don’t know when she left, but she leaves me with something to remember her by; the tank top with my name on it. It’s draped across the pillow she slept on and when I bring it to my nose I catch her scent on it. That rich, almost masculine smell that can’t be a perfume. Maybe it’s her soap? I have no idea, but it’s addicting.

I take one last sniff of it before laying it out on the bed again. My morning wood is painful after a night of making her moan, never letting her touch me. I made it all about her, but this morning is gonna have to be about me or I’ll lose my fucking mind on the field. I shuffle my blue balls into a hot shower where I beat off to the memory of her gasps and cries. Of her sweat on her skin, salty on my lips when I kissed her. Of her heat in my hands. On my fingers, thick like cream. I grunt her name as I finish, my sight going dark on the edges.