This entire plan is crazy, but it could work.
Checking my email, I load a message from a prospective client and formulate a quick response letting them know I’m booked out six months. And when I’m finished, I type Fabian’s name into a search engine—just to look at his face once more. Not that I need any help in that department given the fact that it was the only thing I could see every time I closed my eyes last night.
This entire thing is surreal.
And almost too good to be true.
But we’re doing it.
For four weeks, we’ll be one happy little casual family.
Chapter 10
Fabian
* * *
“Are you insane?” Coach screams into the phone. “You met some chick while you were in Chicago and now I have to spend the next four weeks living in a hotel while you get your fucking rocks off? No. I’m not signing off on this.”
It was easier to tell him I’d met “some chick” than to let him in on the truth. Not that I don’t trust him, but the fewer people who know about this, the better. Not to mention my ex-fiancée just so happens to be his beloved daughter and our break-up predominantly hinged on the fact that I don’t want a family.
He wouldn’t understand, and the truth would only serve to infuriate him even more.
And if any of this got back to my ex, she’d love nothing more than to make life a living hell for me any way possible. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is the best way I know to describe Tatum Cartwright.
“You don’t have a choice,” I remind him. He’s under contract, and while he’s technically the one who put me on the map, the man works for me now. He’s on my payroll. He goes where I go. Same with Taylor, who’ll probably shed an ocean’s worth of alligator tears when I break the news. God forbid she spends time away from her LA-trash boyfriend, some twenty-four year old douche with bleached hair and neck tattoos who thinks he’s going to be the next Machine Gun Kelly. “Anyway, I just got home so I’m going to need you to start calling around for a practice court we can rent for a month out there.”
Coach blows a hard breath into the receiver. “You’re really something, Fabian. You know that, right? You’ve done a lot of stupid shit, but this takes the cake.”
“I’m bored with Malibu,” I lie, sort of. You’d have to be a psychopath to get bored of the mild weather, palm trees, beautiful people, and ocean breezes. “A change of scenery might be good for me. You too.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever you have to tell yourself,” he sighs before hanging up. He’ll get over it. He always does.
I hoist my suitcase onto the foot of my bed and FaceTime with Taylor to break the news—keeping details as vague as possible. And then I task her with arranging accommodations for Coach before informing her she’ll remain behind, assisting me remotely for the next four weeks.
She nods, offering a wide smile that hardly contains her excitement, and tells me she’s on it.
Less time in my shadow means more time with her cringey boyfriend, but I get it.
I was young, dumb, and in love once, too.
I unpack my things, collapse on my bed, and stare at the ceiling above. The house is quiet, and should be for the rest of the day. Which normally is a good thing, but today I’m not in the mood to be left alone with my thoughts—which have been all over the place the last twenty-four hours or so.
I wasn’t expecting my child’s mother to be so easy on the eyes, but it isn’t her beauty that keeps me up at night. It’s her refreshing honesty. Her lack of desperately trying to impress me by being something she isn’t. It’s her down-to-earth nature, inherent and genuine. And her unconditional love for the child we created together.
Climbing off the bed, I hit the shower to wash the plane smell off of me. Ordinarily I’d have taken my private jet to Chicago, but I’d loaned it out to a local college team as part of a charity arrangement this week.
Eyes closed, I turn my back to the steaming water, letting it trickle down my body in teasing rivulets as I imagine Rossi’s hands palming my sides as she tongues her way down. Taking my throbbing cock in my hands, I bite my lip and go to fucking town.
This is wrong—and I know it.
Rossi made it abundantly clear she wants things to be casual and cordial between us.
But something primal and animalistic stirs inside of me when I think about the fact that she carried my child inside of her.
It’s sexy as fuck … and I don’t know why.