The Wall of Winnipeg and Me (21 page)

“You and me. Team Graves-Mazur. We signed a contract together. Sort of.” I smiled.

That bearded chin dipped to his neck, and I could see his mouth twitching. “All right. I’ll take one for the team.”

I
t was
five minutes before we were supposed to be leaving for the airport, and Aiden wasn’t home yet.

He hadn’t answered the three times I’d called, and there was no way for him to know about the ten other times I’d picked up the phone but talked myself out of dialing. Where the hell was he?

I’d been ready all morning. I’d even made him lunch so he could eat it on the way to the airport since I’d known he’d be hungry after watching game footage for a few hours before the players were dismissed for the week.

But he wasn’t home.
He wasn’t home.
And we needed to leave.

I was pacing. My bag was already by the front door, and if I didn’t leave in five minutes, I would more than likely not make the flight.

The abrupt ringing of my phone from its spot in my back pocket immediately snapped me out of my freak out. Sure enough,
Miranda P.
appeared on the screen and a bad premonition pinched my gut.

“Hello?”

“Vanessa.” There was a noise in the background that sounded like someone laughing. “I’m not going to make it.”

Disappointment like I hadn’t known in forever—if I let myself think about it, I would realize the last time had been back when he’d let Trevor talk about me—squeezed the base of my skull. I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to ask him why he’d waited so long to call or why he hadn’t at least texted me if he’d known he wasn’t going to make it, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Chest tight, head suddenly hurting, I asked, “Are you okay?” even as anger fisted my fingers.

“Yes” was his curt, distracted response.

“Okay.” I swallowed hard and clenched my eyes closed.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Yeah, that didn’t help as much as it should have. “I’m leaving the house then. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

“Leslie is coming into town.”

That’s fine
swam along my tongue, but I bit it back. It wasn’t fine. I was pissed off at him for wasting my time and making plans for him to go along with me. I was mad at myself for expecting—for getting a little, tiny bit excited—about him coming with me. I’d never taken anyone with me to El Paso before.

That only made me angrier. “I understand. I need to get my stuff in the car. I’ll see you in a few days.”

He might have said bye, but he might have not. I didn’t know because I hung up on his ass.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

What the hell had I been thinking? I knew the only person I should blame was myself. Why had I even bothered inviting him? I should have kept my mouth shut and not said anything. I’d made him food and wasted hours of my life stressing about having to explain to him my family situation.

God, I was so, so stupid.

What had made me think he would actually cut into his bye week to go somewhere with me when the last two bye weeks he’d stayed at home to train?

I was an idiot.

I ran up the stairs to my bedroom and yanked my checkbook out of my desk drawer. I wrote out a check for the cost of my plane ticket and the entire amount for the SUV rental I’d booked with him in mind. My soul wept a little—it was ten jobs worth of money—but I signed the damn check and eyed the Hello Kitty image printed on the background with a little grumble of my own. In less than a minute, I was down in the kitchen, slapping the stupid check on the counter and flipping it off while imagining it was Aiden’s face before walking away.

I threw my bag into the backseat of my Explorer a little more forcefully than I needed to and took off, hoping to catch my flight.

“
I
thought
you were bringing a friend
,”
my mom noted almost immediately after ushering me through the door.

I blew out a breath and rolled my shoulders, pasting a tight smile on my face. I took in the tall, slim, and nearly blonde woman who I used to think was so beautiful when I was a little kid and in her far and few between moments of being wonderful. Especially then. I’d loved the hell out of her before I knew better, and that thought made my heart ache for kid-Vanessa who hadn’t known any better for a while.

It was easy to forget someone so perfect looking had once been a functioning alcoholic. Then again, that’s why she’d gone so long without anyone noticing she had a problem. Luckily, she was fine now, which was why I’d come so far for her birthday.

On the flight over, I’d mentally prepared myself for this situation and what was the best way to handle it. We already had one idiot in the family thanks to Susie. We didn’t need another one. So I was going to play dumb and downplay it.

“He had something come up at the last minute,” I explained vaguely, looking around the house I’d only been in a handful of times before. It was nice. Really nice. Her husband of the last five years was a divorce attorney she’d met at AA. He seemed like a nice enough guy and my little brother had spoken very highly of him.

“That’s too bad,” my mom said. I could sense her looking me over. “You don’t want to bring your bag inside?”

I made sure to meet her eyes before I answered. I didn’t want to feel ashamed for not wanting to stay with her, and I wouldn’t let myself be. If she really put her mind to it, she’d remember how shitty things went when I stayed with her. “I checked in to my hotel already.”

The truth was, I’d checked into my hotel the day before. Afterwards, I’d gone to see my foster parents and had dinner there. I talked to my foster dad pretty often—in my case once every few weeks was often—and told them I’d married Aiden. My foster dad had looked at me from across the table where I’d eaten dinner seven days a week for four years of my life and asked in a serious voice, “You couldn’t have married someone who plays for Houston?”

I’d forgotten how much he hated the Three Hundreds.

This morning I’d had breakfast with my foster mom. But I didn’t tell my mom about any of those things. Anytime I brought up my foster parents, this glazed look came over her eye that I wasn’t fond of.

“Oh.” It was the sharp inhale before her smile that told me she understood enough. “In that case, I’m glad you’re here early.”

I smiled back at her, a small one, a half-assed one. “Do you need help with anything for the party?”

“We almost have everything together already…” she trailed off, her features turning unnecessarily bright. Forced.

This sudden feeling of dread put me on alert. “Who helped?”

She named her husband. Slipping her arm over my shoulder, she pulled me into her side, kissing my forehead—I fought that tiny urge to pull away from her—and I knew.
I fucking knew what she was going to say.
“And Susie and Ricky.”

My entire body went rigid. I swear, even my knee started aching in recognition. My heart went double-time.

“Vanessa,” my mom said my name like it was made of eggshells. “They’ve been staying with us. I didn’t want to tell you because I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

I wouldn’t have. She had that right.

“She’s your sister,” Mom said, giving me a shake that wasn’t distracting me from the fact I was going to have to count to a thousand so I wouldn’t lose it. “She’s your sister,” she repeated.

Susie was a lot of things, and a fucking bitch was at the top of the list. Anxiety and a not insignificant amount of anger flooded my veins. How could she do this?

“Vanessa,
please
.”

Why would she try to ambush me like this? First it was Aiden. Now it was my own mom ambushing me with Susie and her asshole.

“Be nice. For me,” she insisted.

I was going to end up at the liquor store before the day was over. I could already feel it.

The urge to be mean gripped my tongue. I wanted to ask her about the hundreds of times she hadn’t done something for me. I really did. On my best days, I was convinced I’d forgiven her for the days at a time she never came home. For making me resort to having to steal money from her purse to buy groceries because she’d forgotten
again
how there wasn’t anything to eat at home. For leaving me alone and forcing me to deal with three angry, mean older sisters who couldn’t have cared any less about my little brother and me.

But I couldn’t get myself to go there. Regardless of how many years she’d been sober, I knew now that my mom hung by a thread. She had a problem and she was dealing with it, even if it was twenty years too late to take back her mistakes.

All I could do was grunt; I couldn’t promise her anything. I really couldn’t, no matter how badly I wanted to tell her this could be the first time since we were kids that Susie and I wouldn’t end up wanting to kill each other within minutes of being face-to-face. Good grief, that was sad. It seemed liked we hadn’t ever gotten along, and by that, I meant my slightly older sister—only by a year and a half—had singled me out and hated my guts for as long as I could remember.

I’d taken a lot of shit from her for those first few years. She’d bullied the hell out of me. It had started off with her pinching me whenever our mom wasn’t around, which was always, then progressed to name calling, evolved to stealing the few things I had and then ended with physical confrontations. She’d been an asshole
forever
.

Then one day, when I was probably fourteen, I decided I was done taking her shit. Unfortunately, she kicked my ass and I’d ended up in the emergency room with a broken arm after she’d pushed me down the stairs. It was that broken arm that had led Child Protective Services to our house because our mom hadn’t shown up to the hospital after she’d had people try to contact her. The five of us got split up after that night, and it was only at one other point, four years later that I lived with my mom or sisters again. That hadn’t ended well at all.

It was a painful, miserable history I’d given up on a long time ago.

I had accepted that there was something wrong with all of my sisters but mainly Susie. As I got older, I realized that chances were high my mom had drank while she’d been pregnant with them. They were all small, unlike my little brother and me, and had learning and behavioral problems. While I accepted now that they couldn’t help most of the things that were wrong with them, it didn’t help ease my resentment much.

For the sake of my relationship with my mom, we avoided bringing Susie up and she only briefly mentioned my other two sisters once a year.

Until shit like this.

I seriously couldn’t believe Susie and Ricky were staying there, and that no one had warned me. Diana was going to lose it when I told her.

“Vanessa, please. I’m so happy you’re here. I’ve missed you. You never come visit enough,” my mom laid the guilt-trip road down for me thick.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

There was nothing in this world I couldn’t do, I reminded myself. Everything in my life had worked out. I had more than I’d ever imagined. The past didn’t matter anymore.

With a deep breath, I forced out an “Okay,” gritting my teeth the entire time.

“Yes
?”
she asked, beaming with hope.

I nodded, urging my muscles to stop locking up. I knew what I was going to say was an asshole comment. I realized I was being immature, but I really couldn’t find it in my soul to care. “Yeah. I’ll play nice as long as she does.”

The sigh she let out?

Yeah, she knew. She knew Susie didn’t know how to be nice.

“
I
can’t believe it
.”

“Believe it,” I snarled as I tried to shake off my anger for about the millionth time in the last day.

Diana scoffed as she moved around me, a stained plastic bowl in one hand, a brush in the other. Her brown eyes temporarily shifted from the section of my head she’d already put color on, to meet my gaze before she blew a raspberry. “You know I don’t want to talk about your family, but when I think they can’t get any shittier, they do.” Liar. She didn’t mind going over the finer defects of four-sixths of my family. How many times had we sat in her room and acted out the hundreds of things we’d do and say to my sisters in retaliation for whatever they’d put me through? A hundred? Not that we’d ever gone through with any of it. They were older than us, and you didn’t mess with crazy.

“The worst part was after Ricky grabbed my arm, no one said anything. They all wanted to act like nothing had happened.”

“Jesus, V,” my best friend muttered. “I told you not to go.”

She had, and I’d been stubborn and didn’t listen. “I know.”

Her hand touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Not as sorry as I was.

I made it three hours at my mom’s before everything went to hell. Three hours before I stormed out of her house, pissed out of my mind. I was honestly surprised that I had managed to spend the night at my hotel before heading to the airport first thing in the morning to catch a flight back to Dallas on standby. The anger hadn’t abated as much as I’d hoped on a good night’s sleep, and the flight back hadn’t helped much either.

As soon as I landed, I’d texted one of the only people in the world who was loyal to me, and then headed over to Diana’s so I could tell her everything and get it off my chest. Did it help? Not much, but it was something. So I told her everything that had happened as she dyed my hair some surprise color I told her she could choose. It was one of the benefits of being your own boss.

“Wait, so you didn’t tell me what happened with Aiden,” she finally noted.

Good grief. There I went getting pissed off all over again. At least that was one issue I’d managed to set aside for a while since the day before, but all of a sudden it was another fresh wound to add to my already existing one. “He called and cancelled on me at the last minute.”

She winced. Her “ooh” just barely audible.

“Yeah,” I mumbled as her boob passed about an inch from my face. “His old coach was coming into town or something, and he was busy watching game film or something with the team when he called, but it doesn’t matter. It was a stupid idea to invite him anyway.”

“I’m sure he had a good reason to cancel,” Di tried to assure me.

There was only one reason, and it was the most important one to him. I didn’t need the details to know what the exact wording would be. “Yeah. I’m sure he did.” I let out a shaky breath. “I’m just in a shitty mood. Sorry.”

“
No
, I can’t believe it,” the smart-ass gasped.

I reached forward and tried to pinch her through the apron she’d put on, but she danced out of the way with a big grin on her face. “Leave me alone.”

She stuck her tongue out. “Put your potato head down for a second, would you?”

I mocked her as I did what she asked. Diana took a step toward me, her belly inches away. She must have reached forward because her shirt went up an inch, exposing a sliver of skin.

I frowned.

Reaching from under the hem of the cape she’d put on me, I pulled her shirt up even higher, exposing a row of small bruises shaped like a smaller version of the ones on my forearm.

“What are you doing?” She took a step away.

I looked up at her, at her face, her neck, her arms, and saw nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

“What?” Her tone was a lot less harsh the second time, but I knew, I knew from the way she rubbed her pant leg that something was going on. That was her nervous tic.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I had to count to ten again before I could manage to not lose it. “What happened?” I asked her as coolly and calmly as possible even though I was already on my way to becoming even angrier than I’d been when I first showed up.

Diana tried to brush it off a little too quickly. “Nothing. Why?” She had the nerve to look down and pull up her shirt in the same way I had. She even frowned as she touched the bruises I’d bet my first born she knew damn well about.

“Where did those come from?”

She didn’t look up as she answered. “I remember hitting my hip.”

“You hit your hip?” She was lying. She was damn well lying out of her ass.

“On the counter.”

“On the counter?” I asked slowly. This felt like a terrible dream.

My best friend—my best friend of my entire life—lied again. “Yeah,” she insisted.

“Di—” I wasn’t going to lose it. I wasn’t going to lose it front of her.

“Let me finish putting this on your hair,” she cut me off.

“Diana—”

“Tip your head down one more time, Vanny.”

“
Di.”
I grabbed the hand she had extended toward me. Her brown eyes shot to mine, her expression startled. “Did Jeremy do that?”

“No!”

A knot formed in my throat, growing bigger and bigger by the second. “Diana Fernanda Casillas.” Yeah, I went with her whole name. My hand shook. “Did Jeremy do that?”

This fucking liar supreme met my gaze evenly, and if it weren’t for her palm hitting her pant leg again, I would have believed she was telling me the truth, that this person I loved, who I would do anything for, and who I felt would do anything for me, wouldn’t lie to me.

I wasn’t even about to focus on the fact that I’d kept things to myself in the past. That I hadn’t told her I’d married Aiden. That she didn’t know about my student debts. None of that configured into my thoughts in that instant.

“No, Van. He loves me. I hit my hip.”

That knot in my throat swelled and I could feel my eyes well up as her gaze met mine unflinchingly. That was the problem. Diana was just like me. Once she was in too deep, she wasn’t about to dig herself out of the hole she was in. She wasn’t about to back down and tell me the truth.

“I’m fine, Van. I swear.”

She swore. The tingling in my nose got worse. “Di,” I kind of croaked out.

The smile that took over her mouth hurt me. “I hit my hip, stupid. I promise.”

I didn’t think Diana would ever know how bad she was hurting me. I’d like to think the lies I’d told her had been to protect her, so she wouldn’t worry about me being in disastrous debt, and I hadn’t told her Aiden and I eloped because she had a big mouth and she’d tell everyone. I knew she’d grudgingly understand that after she was done being mad for not being the first person I told. She didn’t know how to keep a secret; we all knew it.

But this…

I didn’t have it in me to keep my mouth shut even though I knew there was no way in hell she was going to backtrack and admit the truth. Tightening my hold on her, I tried to ignore the severe beating of my heart and made sure her eyes met mine. “Di—”

She was lying. She was being a massive liar as she said, “It’s just a bruise, Van.”

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t.

I
t was
the conservative sedan parked in the driveway when I got home that told me we had a visitor. Leslie.

Oh Leslie.

The one person in the world who I actually liked, but every once in a while, specifically this weekend and every June 15
^th
, made me just a teensy bit jealous. Leslie was the only person in the world who I could honestly say Aiden cared about, and I guess I was just a greedy, selfish asshole. I couldn’t even get a ‘happy birthday’ on my special day, while Aiden didn’t just remember Leslie’s birthday, but he cared enough to get me to send him a present.

Was I seriously complaining about Aiden caring about someone who wasn’t me?

I was in a bad mood—a worse mood than I’d been in when I’d first gotten back to Dallas five hours ago. Hell, I’d been in a bad mood since I left for El Paso. All I wanted to do was get home, stew in my anger, and maybe watch a movie to get my mind off all the things that were bothering me. My mom, Susie, her husband Ricky, Diana, her boyfriend, and Aiden. I wanted to be alone.

Parking on the street, I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, ignoring the pain radiating from my wrist, and trudged up the driveway, then the path.

I counted to ten over and over again as I unlocked the door and slipped inside as quietly as possible.

“Vanessa?”

I was halfway up the stairs with my suitcase gripped in hand when Aiden’s voice reached me from the foot of them. Slowly lowering my bag to the step I was on, I ground down on my molars and glanced over my shoulder at the man who had stood me up, standing there in between the living room and the foyer in his sweat pants and a tank so loose I could see the ripped sides of some of the sexiest muscles in the universe.

Did I love sexy lateral muscles? Of course. I had ovaries.

But I also had a brain, a heart, and some pride, and huge, brawny arms on someone who left me hanging weren’t going to make me forget a single thing.

Things might have gone worse if he’d been there
, I tried to remind myself as I tugged at the sleeve of the hoodie I’d put on before leaving Diana’s, drawing it further down my arm. But the other half of my brain wanted to believe that maybe the weekend would have gone differently if Aiden had been there.

Then again, maybe I just wanted to blame someone other than myself for not listening to my instincts when they told me to do something, and then I did otherwise.

“Yes?” I asked, sensing my cheeks go tight.

The big guy was examining me, something about the way he was pursing his lips said he was hesitating. “Leslie’s here.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a white head of hair peeked out from the living room. Nearly as tall as Aiden and way more fit than any man who should have been considered elderly could be, Leslie Prescott flashed those perfect white veneers at me. “Hello, Vanessa.”

A sharp pain thudded right between my eyebrows unexpectedly. I set my suitcase down in place and smiled at the man I’d met in the past. We’d spent months together in Colorado on two separate occasions, and he’d visited Aiden the rest of the times. I liked him; I really did like him, but I was in a shitty mood, and it wasn’t fair to take it out on him.

“Hi, Leslie,” I pretty much muttered as I jogged down the steps and held out my hand.

He shook it, flashing me an open, easy smile. “Congratulations,” he said, shaking my hand. “I heard the big news.” Leslie’s other hand came forth to clasp mine between both of his, his smile growing bigger by the second. If he thought it was strange that I didn’t give Aiden a hug or a kiss when I got home, it wasn’t evident on his features. “I’m a bit hurt I wasn’t invited, but I understand.”

“Oh, thanks.” I gave him a tired smile, pointedly ignoring the big body standing in my peripheral vision, watching on.

“I couldn’t be happier for you two. I was disappointed you were out of town this weekend, but I’m sure we’ll have more time to see each other in the future. ”

I forced myself to keep my smile on my face. Aiden and I had nearly five years left together, I was positive I’d see Leslie again at some point. “I’m sure we will.”

Leslie beamed. “We finished watching some footage, so I’ll get out of your hair to give you both some alone time tonight, eh?”

The tender, amused look that came over Aiden’s face more than slightly irritated me. “Eh.”
Aye
.

Then the fact that his Canadian had snuck up on him—when it only came up in the times he was really comfortable—made my little-girl immaturity that much worse.

“I’ll let you two to it. I have some work I need to catch up on.” I focused on Leslie as I talked.

The older man nodded. “Sure, sure. I understand. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a pit stop before I go.” He smiled again, easing the tension in me just slightly.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, and I was being an asshole. “You’ll be by tomorrow?”

“Eh. My flight leaves the day after. I have to get back home.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then. Drive safe.”

Leslie agreed and then made his way toward the half bath around the corner. That was my cue to get the heck out of there. Grabbing my bag with my good hand, I managed to make it halfway up the staircase before I heard, “You all right?”

I didn’t bother stopping. I kept going up. “I’m fine.”

“Vanessa.” His voice was low, careful. “Look at me.”

One hundred and eighty percent ready to be in my room, I stopped and turned around, raising my eyebrows at the figure standing at the bottom of the staircase with one palm on the handrail.

He had that dark gaze narrowed on me. “When you say you’re fine, I know you’re not.”

“Hmm,” was the only thing I could manage to get out without saying something really bitchy. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t a big deal he hadn’t gone with me; I’d told myself that at least a dozen times over the weekend. I also told myself I understood that he’d stayed to see someone he cared about, but it didn’t help, and it didn’t work.

My damn pride couldn’t handle being stood up and let down by not just him but by everyone this weekend.

“That’s what I thought,” Aiden stated as he tipped his chin up at me almost defiantly.

I squeezed my fingers around the handrail, envisioning it was his neck I was wringing. “Yeah, I guess so,” I admitted with a sniff. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going to bed.”

I barely managed to turn around when Aiden’s raspy low voice spoke up. “I don’t care if you don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about it,” he said in that authoritative, demanding voice that scratched at my nerves. It wasn’t a loud voice by any measure, but it didn’t need to be.

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head as he continued his bullshit explanation, “Leslie called, said he was in San Antonio and asked if he could drop by for a few days. Coach wanted to go through some more footage before I left, and I lost track of time.” And he kept going. “I figured you of all people would understand. I don’t get what the big deal is.”