Chapter 7
Nolan
“Get out!” she snapped, pushing her chair back from her desk, but if it was to try to run or so she could attack me, I couldn’t tell. She was hard to read.
I leaned against the door. Even though it was locked, that didn’t mean her thugs in suits wouldn’t kick it down if she called for them. Swallowing roughly, I didn’t waste another second. It was now or never, and I couldn’t let my emotions get in the way of attempting to make things right with us.
“When I got off the phone with you that Sunday, it was because my mom had just stepped off the elevator at her apartment building. She was bleeding, there were bruises all over her, and she was sobbing to the point that it was a wonder I could understand her.”
Zariah’s hand paused over the phone on her desk, but she didn’t move it away as she lifted her gaze back to me. Taking that as my cue to continue, I told her the rest. How my father had abused Ma for so long, but that she’d stayed and all the reasons I suspected for why she’d done so. Me. Her fears of being alone, of not being able to make it on her own because of the mental abuse Pop had inflicted on her.
Zariah heard it all, finally, for the first time since I’d gotten back from that week of away games. All about Ma going to my trainer’s house and how she’d basically moved in with him after that. How I’d wanted to go after Pop that night, but they’d talked me out of it, so I’d gone back to the dorms to pack and confront Billy. But the coward had anticipated my anger and had run away. Had even changed schools after that, even though he would have had to sit out the season at the other college.
Then I explained that it wasn’t until I was on the flight to Nashville that I realized I didn’t have my phone. Camera footage in the halls outside the rooms had shown Billy sneaking in during the night after I must have fallen asleep and then leaving soon after. That must have been when he’d stolen my phone.
Between practice, the tight away game schedules, and basically no one liking me enough to lend me their phone so I could call her and let her know I was without mine, I’d had no way of contacting her at the time. Which meant I’d had no way of knowing what she’d gone through with my father until I’d gotten back.
Through it all, Zariah’s hand remained hovering over her desk phone, but her eyes watched me. The expressions that I couldn’t hide from her—the worry I always felt when she’d been out of my sight, the fear for my mother’s safety, the rage of coming home to discover my father had fucked up my entire life. And then the heartbreak of losing her.
My chest hadn’t stopped aching once in that entire time.
“Ma divorced Pop a few months later, and she and Frank moved back to South Carolina. He has a place down there, so I didn’t need to buy her a house, but I put some money in an account for her. She’s set for life, but Frank takes such good care of her that she rarely touches it unless it’s something special for him or me.” A smile teased at my lips, thinking of how happy she was with her new husband.
She’d been the only one who had gotten a happily-ever-after in this shitty fairy tale. My smile vanished when thoughts of Pop pushed their way back into my head. “Pop disappeared up until the draft that July. He tried to make nice and pretend nothing happened. I put his head through a wall and had security lead him out of the Boston stadium, where I was waiting with the agent I’d been lucky enough to find on short notice. I haven’t seen Pop since. He went back into hiding, and Billy was put in the minors. I tried not to think about him and how he’d helped my father hurt you, but then he showed up at practice that day, and I couldn’t hold in the rage for another second.”
Her fingers balled into a fist, and she dropped her hands into her lap. “Billy… That’s the guy you beat unconscious and needed my help. William—”
“Yeah, that’s him.” I cut her off, not wanting her to say the bastard’s name. “He gave Pop my phone. I never showed him the pictures you sent me, Red, but he must have figured I had something on there that my father could use against you to get some cash. The closer the draft got, the more impatient Pop became for the big bucks he knew I was guaranteed. Billy must have been spying on me for him, because Pop had also found out we’d decided you were going to act as my agent in the draft, which meant he would be out of the agent percentage. He is a greedy son of a bitch, so he found another way to get the cash he’d been fantasizing about.”
For the longest time, she just sat there, staring at me, neither her eyes nor her facial expression giving away so much as a hint of what she was thinking or feeling. Once upon a time, I’d been able to read her like a book. Every flick of her lashes, change in her breathing, glint in her eyes—they had all given me a hint to her state of mind. But she’d locked herself down in the years we’d been apart, and now I couldn’t detect anything.
Pushing back from her desk even farther, she stood and slowly walked around it. “Your father showed up at my apartment that evening, and the first thing that went through my mind was that something bad had happened. It was all that made sense, because we’d never officially met. My heart stopped, and I felt physically ill. In that moment, my life flashed before my eyes, because if it was so bad that this stranger had shown up to tell me about it, then that had to mean you were close to death. At least, that was what my brain immediately came up with. And if you were close to death, or already gone, then I didn’t want to live either.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, pressing her tits up. My gaze dropped to her cleavage for a moment, and I licked my lips. Fuck, I was only human, and she was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen in my life. But I quickly lifted my eyes back to her face, knowing this was probably the most important conversation I would ever have in my lifetime.
“But then he told me you were pitching a no-hitter in Nashville and showed me your phone. The phone he so cavalierly said you had given to him.” She flattened her hands on her ribs, hugging herself, and showing me the first sign of emotion. “I didn’t want to believe it, but as he flipped through your camera roll, the probability of you giving it to him only increased. Then you didn’t call. Not once. Not even from your hotel.”
“They were working on the phone system at the hotel in Nashville.”
She tilted her head ever so slightly to the side. “There were other hotels that week. Nashville wasn’t the only away game you had.”
Groaning, I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I know, but by then, I was so tired, Red. I pitched every game that week. I was on fire. The coach was talking to Frank each day, and Frank was saying how much more we could get on the contract if I kept pitching the way I was. I just figured once I got home and explained to you that I’d lost my phone, you would forgive me.”
“I can imagine what your coach said,” she murmured, memories flashing through her eyes. Like my father, my coach had thought being in a relationship would distract me too much from the game as well. He’d warned me from the first time we met that I needed to keep my focus on pitching and nothing else, not even my grades. When he’d found out I was seeing someone, he’d given me a two-hour lecture. I’d told Zariah about it, and she’d only shaken her head in amusement at the time. But looking back, he was just one more person who’d tried to come between us. “You weren’t talking to me all week, so I wasn’t in your head. All your thoughts were on the game. That was why you pitched so amazingly that week.”
“No, baby.” I stepped away from the door, needing my hands on her. To hold her, to make her understand that it wasn’t like that. But she took several steps back, putting more distance between us, and I stopped. Frustrated, I thrust my fingers into the hair at the back of my head and watched her through pained eyes.
“I was an afterthought, something you didn’t even think about again until you were home.” Her laugh was dry. “Meanwhile, I was struggling. To come up with the cash to pay off Joel. Struggling to sleep and study for my midterms. But more than anything, I was fucking struggling to keep you safe in case those pictures did leak and my parents found out that you had given them to your father to sell.”
“Zariah—”
She held up her hands to stop me. “I was so hurt, Nolan, but at the same time, all I could think about was my dad, brothers, and uncles, all ready to kill you if the tabloids got their hands on those photos. I knew things were over for us, but I still stupidly loved you and couldn’t bear to think of them torturing you before eventually taking your life.”
“I’m sorry you went through all that on your own. If I had known…”
“What?” she asked, her voice quiet, but there was no mistaking the steel in her tone. “What would you have done? Would you have left in the middle of a game and come home to help me? From experience, I know that is bullshit. You live and breathe baseball. Everything and everyone else are secondary. You proved that to me when I needed you the most, and you proved it again when you texted me out of the blue to ask for help with getting traded.”
“No, damn it,” I growled. None of this was going as I wanted it to. She wasn’t understanding anything I was trying to explain, and I was fucking it all up. “Running into trouble was just an excuse to finally contact you.”