Page 6 of Pregnancy Scandal
While the football season was finished and most football players didn’t have to worry about training for another couple of months, The Centaurs were different.
We trained just as hard as The Gladiators did. It was a victory to beat them, but even I knew that if the old-school players were still playing, we wouldn’t have had a fucking chance in hell.
Joshua Mancini retired last season, and so did Gage Montgomery. The linebacker and the quarterback who made miracles. The whole team worked like one hive mind, but those guys had their own mind that was separate from the team. I’d never seen anything like it, and while I considered myself a great quarterback, I was nothing in comparison to them. Who I liked to compare myself to was Tristan Bouchard, our talent scout. He’d played for The Rams as quarterback and was, at one point, my idol.
He also happened to have a girl for a best friend. He married her and they had kids now. Before that, they reminded me of how I was with Abby. She came to every game and all the major training sessions. Always there and never far.
I must have followed his career for the last twenty years. Nothing, not even winning the Super Bowl, could compare to five years ago when he picked me for the team at drafts.
It was the day of recognition for the chance it gave me. I knew I was good, and he gave me a chance to show just how good I could be.
Eric threw a ball at me as I turned the corner. He widened his eyes and laughed because he didn’t expect me to catch it. Eric Declan was the first linebacker for the team. I also considered him a friend.
“How come you’re so early, man?” He grinned. He looked like he’d already worked out because sweat dripped from the spikes of his black hair.
“Lunch ended quicker than I thought.” In the sense that it never happened. I wished I’d eaten before leaving the house this morning. Now I’d have to train on empty.
“Did she piss you off again?” Eric chuckled.
“Yes, how did you guess?” I rolled my eyes sarcastically.
“What happened now?”
“You don’t want to know.” I was hoping that by tomorrow, Abby would have seen sense and abandon the baby idea. I’d call her tomorrow and check. Normally, after an argument that ended with her calling me a fucking asshole, I would have checked on her tonight. But… maybe all that foolishness had to stop. This baby idea was very serious, and I wanted to give her time to think about it.
“Is it that bad?” Eric quirked a brow.
I sighed and shrugged out of my shirt. When he looked at me shirtless, he started laughing. It was because of my new tattoo.
The day we won the Super Bowl, we got wasted. Actually, it was more than that, literalHangoverstyle wasted, what my grandfather would have calledplastered. He was English and a real cockney English guy who loved his drink. Very similar to Abby’s grandfather, who was Irish, but her granddad was worse on a different level, and who I thought she got her crazy from.
I got wasted on their level of drinking and got Abby’s name tattooed right across my damn heart.
Abby Cartwright.
Could I remember getting it? No.
When the guys saw it the next day, they all ripped into me because they swore there was more than friendship between Abby and me, but I’d managed to style it out because Tristan was famous for having his player number on his chest along with the initial of his best friend’s name. It was a Z for Zoe. At least he wasn’t as dumb as me and had her whole name inked on himself.
I could paint that however I wanted, but I doubted that it would go down well with the next woman I was with and asked me who Abby Cartwright was. Abby didn’t even know about it herself.
“Bro… I wish I could advise you, but I first of all wouldn’t know what to say, and I think I would still stick to my guns in my analysis of you two.”
I shook my head at him and held up my hand. “No, Eric, please do not go down that road.”
“Maybe you should go down that road. You two are very unique. Like an old married couple. Averyold married couple.Grandparents old.You have her name tattooed on your chest, and you can’t remember getting it there. Maybe that part of you that you keep holding back no longer wants to resist. You want her bad man.” He chuckled. “It’s all coming out now, behold the tattoo.”
“Like fuck it is. I’m barely alive now.” I pulled on my jersey. “That woman would send me to an earlier grave than scheduled, or to the asylum.”
“Whatever, man.” He stood up and tossed me a bottle of water. Then he gave me a lopsided grin. “Her sister’s hot.”
I gave him a sharp stare. “Which one?”
“All of them.” He laughed. “But specifically Mia. She doesn’t venture to these parts much, does she?”
She didn’t. As far as I was concerned, Mia hated any kind of sport. He was referring to last week when Mia came to pick Abby up.
“She hates football, and athletes aren’t her type,” I told him.
