Fair Game: A Football Romance (81 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Holland

Well, at least now he knows. I wasn’t really sure until he confronted me about it, and then it was crystal. I’m living my life for King and Juliette now, not my music. People change. They grow and try new things, and becoming a mother and adding a member to your family is number fourteen on the Holmes and Rahe stress scale. I looked it up. King isn’t the only one doing research on postpartum depression, pregnancy, and babies.

I snuggle down into the bed and daydream about our little family—Juliette’s first words, her first steps, first birthday, so many firsts that I can’t possibly focus enough on Juliette with the grueling schedule at school, and then what? When I graduate, the real problems start, like traveling all over the world with the orchestra when Juliette would be starting kindergarten. No, it’s not going to happen. I’ve made the right decision, I’m sure of it.

Chapter Thirty

King

Three weeks later, things weren’t coming together with my associates, and Holland hasn’t budged on her decision to ditch the best music school in the country. Word has spread that I’m settling down. I know how they operate. We don’t have much time. Their supply is being threatened, and I’ve seen this happen before. Hector Morales was the last big supplier who tried to leave, and his entire family was slaughtered.

The thick vein of drugs I supply is the lifeline of the three main cartel leaders in Mexico. No one else in the world has my connection. My supplier refuses to trust anyone but me. Romero blood equals unequivocal trust, and I’m the last one alive to bleed it.

I have no choice. I don’t see any other way to keep her alive and allow her to fulfill her destiny of being a world-renowned violinist. My decision will break hearts and hurt the people I love most, but it will also give Holland her life back, literally and figuratively. She is destined for greatness beyond her wildest dreams, or at least she was before she met me.

I’m leaving. And I’m taking Juliette.

Chapter Thirty-One

Holland

The fluorescent lights of the grocery store seem brighter than usual today. The colors of the fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle are more vibrant. Everything in my life has intensified since Juliette’s birth—well, not
everything
. Music has become my enemy instead of the friend I’ve always known. I haven’t looked at my violin in over two months, much less played it, even though King has been up my butt about it every single day. The more he encourages me, the more I refuse to have anything to do with it. What the hell is wrong with me? When we first brought Juliette home, I had no desire to play. My focus was on her. But as the weeks went by, I found myself feeling unfulfilled, like there was a hole inside of me that only playing the violin could fill.

I’ve made my choice, though, and there’s no turning back. My life is King and Juliette, period. I may decide to go to college when she starts school. It won’t be Juilliard, but I can still get a degree in music, maybe become an orchestra teacher. Who knows? ‘Those who can’t do teach.’ Ugh, I really hate that quote. I
can
do, that’s the problem. I wish I could split myself in half and send half to Juilliard this fall, and the other half would stay here in Texas with King and Juliette.

My stupid cart has a wiggly wheel. They probably all do, but this one’s particularly annoying. Looking down, I see a wad of tape preventing it from moving smoothly, and I bend down to pick it off.

“Holland?” I look up into a mildly familiar face. I know her, but I can’t remember from where. I’m so bad at this.

“Oh . . . hi. It’s stuck,” I say, pointing at the stubborn wheel.

“Oh yeah? Hold on, I’ve got something for that.” I watch her rummage through an enormous purse until she pulls out a pair of tweezers. Who carries tweezers in their purse? This chick does, apparently. Bending down next to me, she easily plucks the tape from the wheel.

“There, ta da. All fixed.”

We stand, and she hands me my purse that inadvertently fell onto the ground when I crouched down. That’s it. She’s the lady from the Department of Transportation who helped me get my purse when I was pregnant.

“Thanks, that was driving me nuts. It’s good to see you again . . . I’m so sorry. I’m horrible with names—what was yours again?”

“Candy, and that’s okay, honey. You have a kid. They start sapping your brain cells the second they’re conceived. Did you have a boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Wanna see?” I slide my phone out of my back pocket before she answers, because doesn’t everybody want to see my gorgeous baby?

“Sure.” I shove my phone under her nose, and before she knows it, I’ve forced her to look at pictures of Juliette from birth to this morning. She is oddly quiet as I swipe through the photographs until I hear her sniffle. When I look up, she is staring at me with tears in her eyes. Uh oh, what have I done?

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

“No, no, honey, it’s fine.” She swipes a stray tear from her cheek. “You just seem like such a good mama. She’s a very lucky little girl.”

What do I say to that? I’ve been going on and on about Juliette and I don’t even know this lady. Maybe she’s lost a baby, or maybe she can’t have babies . . . crap.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I get carried away sometimes.”               I turn back to my cart and shove my phone into my back pocket.

“All new mamas get carried away—good ones, anyway. I’m just an ol’ sap. I have a son of my own. He’s my heart. I was just like you when he was a baby.”

Oh, thank God she has a child. Now I don’t feel so bad about rambling on about Juliette.

We walk along, me pushing my cart and her with a basket on her arm, selecting produce like old friends. By the time we leave, we’ve exchanged phone numbers and made plans to have lunch next week. In the parking lot, she waves goodbye and disappears into a shiny silver Audi. I climb into the back seat of my own car, where Sebastián has been waiting to drive me home. King refuses to let me drive. It’s been almost two months, and he’s still petrified that I’ll have a seizure while driving. He also thinks I need a bodyguard. He’s still working his way out of the drug world, so Sebastián is never more than a hundred feet away from me. It’s so weird. Another thing that’s weird is being away from my baby. I’ve only left her one other time, and it was to go to the dentist. I couldn’t argue my way around that one.

Today I was surprised when King encouraged me to run to the store alone, and even more surprised when I wanted to. I have to admit that there are times when I feel like nothing more than a feeding machine. I wouldn’t change a second of it for anything, though. Just like Candy’s son, Juliette is my heart. I’d do anything and sacrifice everything to make her happy. It’s an altruistic, unconditional love that I never imagined existed. It started with King and blossomed into something extraordinary with Juliette.

***

Vibes and magical ways of the universe aren’t my thing, but when we pull up to the house, something in the air feels off. I’m out of the car before Sebastián comes to a full stop, hopping out onto the moving concrete of the driveway. Striding up the front steps, I abandon the groceries in the seat next to me. Sebastián is still in the car, calling my name through my open door. The moment I’m inside, I call his name.

“King?” Nothing . . . panic grips my heart. It’s too still in here, too quiet. They could have gone out. No, he wouldn’t wake her, and I put her down for a nap right before I left. I’ve only been gone an hour. She sleeps a minimum of two hours in the morning. Something feels very wrong. God, where are they? I race up the stairs two at a time. My mind is frantic when I fling open the door to her nursery. My eyes dart to every corner of the room. Nothing, no one . . . I turn on my heel and fly down the hall to our bedroom. The double French doors stand open exactly the way I left them. I stop short and spin in a circle, finding yet another empty room.

“KING.”

Downstairs. They have to be downstairs
, I mutter to myself—in the kitchen, they have to be, they just have to . . . this is probably stupid, nothing is wrong. I’m overreacting. I’m a first time mom. It happens, right? I whip around and sprint down the hall to the stairs and take them down two at a time again. Sebastián is in the foyer with a bag of groceries in each hand, wide-eyed.

“Holland, what’s the matter?” He sets the groceries down on the floor where he is standing and follows me to the back of the house.

The patio. Yes, they’re on the patio. She woke up crying and he took her out there to console her by showing her the sky and the trees.

“Holland, what the hell is going on?”

I can’t say it out loud, not until I’m sure, not until I see for myself that they aren’t here. In the kitchen, I rip open the door to the patio and yell their names.

“Juliette. King.” They aren’t here either. God no, no, no, no . . . this isn’t happening. I walk all the way around the covered pool and check both sides of the house before I go back inside. The back of the house is an open concept design, making it all too easy to see that there is no one in the living room or formal dining room. I can say it now . . . I’ve searched everywhere.

“They’re gone . . .” I whisper. Trembling from head to toe, my heart pounding, I hold my head and squeeze my eyes shut tight.

“Gone? They must have stepped out. I’m sure they will be home soon. Calm down, Holland, everything is fine.”

It sounds logical when Sebastián says it, maybe he’s right—they went out, that’s all. Maybe there was an emergency and he didn’t want to bother me. Gotta love denial. It’s a very powerful thing. I want to believe him. God, more than anything, I want to believe him, but there’s a sixth sense or mother’s intuition at work here, and it’s telling me that he’s wrong.

The flecks of quartz in the countertop of the island blur, and I reach out to steady myself. I step back and drop my head between my extended arms and deep breathe. I feel beads of sweat breaking out across my forehead. I’m going to faint . . . shit, not now. I can’t, I have to keep looking for them.

The closet. I grasp the granite until my knuckles are white. When I’m sure my head is clear enough to walk, I straighten up and pass Sebastián, heading back to the front of the house upstairs to the nursery.

“I have to go upstairs.”

Sitting in the rocker that I rock Juliette to sleep in every night is her giant pink elephant. I swear that thing is looking at me with pity in its beady little eyes. I can’t bring myself to cross the threshold and enter her room. If the closet is empty, this will all be true, they will be gone, my life will be over.

I flinch when Sebastián places his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t even hear him come up behind me.

“Holland, come back downstairs. I’ll make some tea and we can wait for them. I’m sure he’ll be right back.”

I shrug his hand off of my shoulder and cross the room, pausing for a second before I open the door to my baby girl’s walk-in closet. I feel for the light switch and flip it on. Empty. Oh God, it’s empty. No tiny pink dresses, no perfectly folded Onesies or sleepers in the shelving unit on the far wall, no boxes of diapers or wipes. I don’t want to see empty shelves or rustling little naked hangers. I want my baby.

The walls tilt when my vision blurs. I drop to my knees and grab fists full of my hair and scream. I don’t recognize my own scream. It sounds like another woman wailing over the loss of her family, another mother imploding in agony and grief, another lover mourning the loss of her soulmate.

Sebastián’s arms circle my shoulders and he tries to comfort me. I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating. The room is too small. I need to escape.

“Why?” I ask, choking on emotion. “Why?”

***

My world turned black when I passed out that day, and one week later it’s still black. I can’t eat, I haven’t bathed, I haven’t left my bed since Sebastián and a physician deposited me here, pumped full of tranquilizers a week ago. I can smell them here on the sheets, her lavender body wash, his clean, soapy scent, even a spot of spit up on my pillow brings me comfort. I lay breathing them in and crying, rocking back and forth on my side under the comforter and moaning. I’m pitiful, and I don’t give a shit. The loss is physically painful. My heart is wrecked, my bones ache, my lips are dry from dehydration, and for the first few days, even my breasts hurt. They were engorged with useless milk that I’ll never use. In short, I’m a fucking hot mess with no end in sight.

I’ve been on a rollercoaster of hating King for disappearing with my baby and missing him so much I think my soul is frozen in time, waiting for him to return, for
them
to return. Mama has been here, Savannah too. I haven’t spoken a word. There isn’t anything to say. I’m going to lie in this bed and stare catatonically at the drawn curtains. Somebody, I think it was Savannah, tried opening them, but I just stared straight into the sun, so Mama told everyone to leave them closed for now.

I try not to listen much either. It’s amazing how easy it is to tune people’s voices out. I know they’re there and I hear them, but they sound like the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon, wha whawha wha wha wha . . . nothing in the world makes any sense. Everything is warped like the Peanuts teacher’s voice.

King left me a letter. I hate his stupid letter. Sebastián found it in Juliette’s crib after my breakdown, but he didn’t show it to me until two days ago. I’m guessing he probably figured I couldn’t get any worse, so what the hell.

Somebody’s always watching me. I’m not paranoid. It’s a fact. They’re making sure I don’t do anything stupid like kill myself. Joke’s on them, though, because I am killing myself, one day at a time, by refusing to eat or drink.

Mama thought she’d be slick, leaving the baby’s video monitor on the dresser with a stupid bouquet of flowers one day. I noticed, but I don’t give a shit. Let ‘em watch. It’s not going to be a very interesting death. I’ll lay here until I either starve to death or rot away and become one with the mattress. I’m past being hungry. I wish I could remember how long a person can go without food before they die. I think it’s the lack of water that kills you first, and if so, hey, this shouldn’t take much longer.

My mouth is so dry I couldn’t talk if I wanted to, which I don’t. I wet the bed on day two. Sebastián just rolled me back and forth, stuffing towels under me, and Mama changed my clothes. I haven’t had anything to drink for days now, so there will be no more of that.

When I opened my eyes today, there is an IV hooked up to my arm. I remember Sebastián talking to me last night when I felt a bee sting my ass. I wondered for about two seconds why there was a bee in my bedroom before instantly falling asleep. They drugged me so they could hydrate me, very sneaky.

“Don’t bother taking it out, the doctor will just knock you out and put it right back in,” my daddy says.

He’s sitting in a chair next to my bed with his arms crossed and a stony expression on his face. The curtains are open, the sun is pouring in, my sheets are clean, and so am I.

“What are you trying to do, Holland? Do you think letting yourself die is going to help find King and Juliette? I didn’t raise a selfish daughter. How dare you even consider giving up? They aren’t the only people in your life who love you, ya know.” His brows pull together in a tight scowl as he shakes his head back and forth.