“Yeah, there’s a drug dealer at…”
Instead of parking at my spot near my apartment, Nathan continued down around the building until he’d been to the part I’d never been to before. Generally, I tried to avoid anything and everything that had to do with this complex unless it was to get out of my car to go inside or get out of my house and go to my car.
I surveyed my surroundings, becoming ever so thankful the farther we went into the complex that my place was right at the front, closest to the roads, and therefore the exit, meaning I could get the fuck out as fast as possible.
He turned around and parked, backing into a spot that was next to an old, broken down Ford that looked like it hadn’t run, or moved for that matter, since 1999.
“Still can’t believe that you live here,” he grumbled, his eyes scanning the buildings in front of him with disgust. “I’m glad that you’re coming to my place.”
I felt my belly roll at his words.
Seconds passed as I tried to decide whether he really needed to know what the hell my reasoning was for living in a place like the one I was currently occupying.
It was a while later before I finally spoke, realizing that I couldn’t keep my thoughts from him if we were supposed to be married. Even if I wasn’t really sure what the rules were on the emotional side of things that enabled most married partners to share their feelings with their spouse.
“I felt bad,” I admitted. “You had all these cool things. Took your parents to do fun things. Even paid for our vacations once you started in the majors. I wanted to buy myself nice things, too. And I ended up doing the dumbest thing and accruing student loans to do it.”
He looked over at me in surprise. “No shit?”
“No shit,” I confirmed. “Sadly, you married a woman in debt up to her eyeballs. I’m slowly paying it off, but I have like twenty thousand dollars in student loans.” I paused. “They should really tell you that it’s a stupid idea to take out student loans. The loan officer at school just gave it to me. Even though I didn’t need it. And it was addictive. Having money now that you don’t have to pay back until you’re finished with college? That’s addictive to teenagers.”
He shook his head at me, and I felt like the stupidest person on the planet.
“I went on my own spending spree you know,” he said, surprising me because he’d defended my choices. “I bought my truck. A bike. My condo. Our vacations. I was buying all this shit and I didn’t even need it. It was my dad telling me to cool my jets that finally made me realize I needed to start taking better care of the money I had while I had it. That’s why I have such a hefty cushion now even though I only played the five years of my contract.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You should’ve never quit.”
I still didn’t know exactly why, to be honest.
I wished I had the courage to ask.
“You’re wanting to know why I did it,” he guessed.
I shrugged. “If you want to tell me.”
He sighed and ran his hands down over his face roughly.
“Fuckin’ Eerie.” He looked over at me then. “She was the reason that I quit.”
My brows went up. “What?”
“Well, not really all the way. In a roundabout way. She’s a big part of why,” he admitted, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “That last year I played? A couple of reporters took a big interest in me because of my back story. My dad. My biological father. Things like that. And the reporters were all, thank God he didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. What a waste. Then they found out about my fertilizing Eerie’s eggs situation when she was sick. They hounded me incessantly. And one day when I woke up, I realized that this was never what I wanted. I just wanted to play baseball. And I could go play on a pickup league with a bunch of guys on a Wednesday night and still get the same thing out of it that I was getting out of playing in the majors. So I… quit.”
I stared at him wide-eyed.
“You quit because people were butting into your business?” I blurted. “Nathan, what the fuck?”
Nathan shrugged. “You don’t know what it’s like. They were digging up stuff that even I didn’t know about my dad. Like, did you know that he and my mother were getting a divorce? I didn’t. I was always under the impression that they were happy.”
“I thought that Wolf was the one getting a divorce when that happened,” I said, my voice sounding confused.