Page 56 of Curveball
Seriously?
“Seriously?” I say out loud, becausewhat?If that’s ever announced, women around the world will be crying themselves to sleep.
“I don’t want Natalie to ever have to deal with tabloid articles like the one we just saw.”
Andoh fuck, the whole concept of a fake marriage has my brain so addled I haven’t even considered how it might affect our children. Yep, my admission into the Worst Mom Ever Club has a gold seal of approval and my membership card is in the mail.
“So, let’s say we go ahead with this marriage—and it’s a really bigif—and I move into your house”—Max perks up, looking intrigued that I’m even considering his idea—“We each have a teenager to explain this to. I don’t know if I can sell Dylan on the plan and uproot him from his home.”
It’s a lie. When he hears I’m contemplating the pros and cons of a phony wedding to his baseball idol, he’ll have us packed and loaded into a U-Haul faster than an ump can call a balk.
But I’m used to handling my own life and taking care of my own problems and my own responsibilities. I didn’t choose this life—it’s not the norm to choose to be a single mom to a teenage son—but it’s what was dealt to me when the man I loved and trusted let me down. Letusdown. Until Alejandro started putting the pressure on me because of Alex getting transferred closer to his former home, everything was going fine. I am making everything work for us, and I don’t want to stop now. I can handle my life, and my problems, in my own way.
And if Dylan is mad at me for not letting his grandfather buy him a truck at his sixteenth birthday, it’ll be so much worse to tell him he could have had a sports legend for a stepdad.
Chapter 19
Max
The blaring eighties rock combined with the clank and thud of the team finishing up midday workouts echoes throughout the high-ceilinged weight room, but does the chest-heaving, sweat-inducing exertion keep my buds from spouting off between reps? It does not.
Practically every guy on the team saw that tabloid article that upended my world yesterday—that tilt that prompted me to propose to my daughter’s teacher out of the blue, for God’s sake. But nobody can layer on the shit like Gunnar and Tripp.
“So, that chick in the photo, she was following you at Tripp’s casino deal?” Gunnar asks from over me as I raise the bar off my chest to rack it and add weight.
“She wasn’t following me,” I grunt out. He’s supposed to be spotting me, but mostly he’s asking stupid questions. I still haven’t figured out what Tripp’s doing except getting in the way.
I heave myself up from my prone position on the bench, and he’s not quick enough to take a step back so I can stand—until I kick him in the shin.
“Yep, that was her,” he says as he hops back, and then comes around to help me load the plates.
Gunnar’s not even pretending to be helpful anymore, just stands there with his hands on his hips.
“I recognized her by the hair,” says Bear from the next bench over.
“Her hair?” Gunnar asks, like he can’t make the connection.
“Sure, it was pretty . . .” Barrett waves his hands all around his head as if to indicate it was . . . something, and then stops his antics when I send him a death glare. Could be the strain in my face is from the additional weight I’m sliding onto the bar, but we’ll let the rookie think what he thinks.
“She has curls. They’re nice,” I say, then clamp my mouth shut and drag a breath in through my nose before every-fucking-body realizes what I’m saying. Combined with what came out in the media yesterday, these knuckleheads would have us married off before the week is through. And apparently, that’s not on the table.
But she agreed to an engagement. A fake engagement. More like an unannounced fake engagement since the only person who’s going to hear about it is that Lopez prick. We’ll start there anyway.
“Nice to wrap your hands around,” snarks Barrett in a somewhat gasping voice, anddoesn’t he ever fucking stop?
“Save your clown town comments, Baby Bear,” Tripp growls.
“Just messing with him, old man,” Barrett says, then chortles and gets up and moves off to the treadmill.
The additional weight is locked in place, so I straddle the bench and Tripp steps closer to spot me. I lay back and grab hold of the bar, release it from the rack, and lower it to my chest. This shit with Palmer is clawing at me, and I want—maybeneed—to share some updated details about us, now that it’s just the three of us. We’re the old guys on the team, the veteran players,and even though it’s Gunnar’s first year with the Terrors, we’ve formed a pretty close bond, probably because we’ve all been around the block a few times. None of us are on the hunt for barely legal cleat chasers, and a night out clubbing usually ends by midnight.
Gunnar must finally decide to get serious about his workout because he wipes down the bench Bear just abandoned, then takes a seat and gets started on overhead triceps extensions using free weights.
“So, what’s going on with you two? You a thing now?” Tripp asks, as if he can read my mind. His eyes are narrowed and he sounds a little put out that he hasn’t heard anything new, when he keeps me pretty much in the loop about him and the girl he’s seeing.
“We’re a . . . situation,” I huff out as I continue my rep. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to increase the weight? “She was Natalie’s teacher when we had that bit of drama at her school a while back, so we didn’t exactly start off on friendly terms. But now . . . she’s, uh, nice. And Nat likes her.”
“Oh, shit. That could be complicated. And bruh, Natalie isn’t the one who wants to date her.”
