Juked (27 page)

I clear my throat again. “I guess you want an explanation from me.”

“It would be nice, but I think I’d rather know why you’re here first.”

“I miss my best friend. Look, I owe you an explanation and you’ll have that, I promise. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking over the last few weeks.”

She cocks her head. “Really? I didn’t realize there was that much downtime between lap dances.”

I wince. “I deserve that. I figured you saw those pictures.”

“I saw a lot of pictures, Daniel. It’s been great fun having half my clientele ask how I’m holding up since my boyfriend started cheating on me.”

I rub my hair in frustration. “Fuck, Quincy. I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about that. If I had known, I would have—I don’t know—put out a press release or something. I don’t know.”

She laughs humorlessly. “And said what, Daniel? That you can’t cheat on someone you were never in a relationship with in the first place?” She drops her knees and crosses her legs. “I never asked for our relationship to be defined. Never. The only thing I asked is if you got bored or wanted to move on, you would tell me. But you didn’t. Not only did I have to find out you were done with me by seeing pictures on the internet, but I didn’t even have an explanation when people asked me about it. You didn’t even respect me enough to give me any answers.”

I drop my head. She’s right. I brought her into the public eye and then left her there to fend for herself when I got scared. I feel like the world’s biggest douche. But she’s not done.

“You sit here and say you miss your best friend, but I don’t need a best friend who treats me that way, Daniel. So if you’re here for forgiveness, fine. You have it. You can go now.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” I interrupt. I’m not leaving. I’m not backing down. I’m not running away again.

“Then why are you here.” It’s not even a question. More of a challenge.

“I miss you. I miss Chance. I want to explain so you can decide for yourself if it’s worth giving me a second chance.”

She stares, and I won’t be the first to break eye contact. I want her to know I mean everything I’m saying. Her eyes finally close in resignation. “So explain.”

I scoot closer to her. I don’t feel like I can touch her yet, but I don’t want to waste anymore time. My skin practically itches from my desire to be near her. “You need to know something first. None of those pictures showed the truth.” She scoffs. “I’m serious, Quincy. The lady at the hotel was a stranger. We checked out at the same time, that’s all. The pictures of me coming out of the strip club…. I sat at the bar nursing a beer. I didn’t even sit at the table with the guys. Ask Christian. Once they all got blitzed, I took them home.”

She looks me in the eye. I know she’s waiting for me to tell her the truth. “You can’t convince me you haven’t been with another woman in the last several weeks. I know how it goes when you’re on the road, Daniel.” I try to interrupt but she puts up a hand to stop me. “You are notorious for your one-night stands and you have a huge libido. I know that first-hand. Your nuts would have exploded by now.”

I finally get a word in. “I promise you, Quincy, I wasn’t with anyone. I will give you Christian’s number right now. Hell, I’ll give you Tiffany’s number. She sees and hears everything and has no loyalty to me at all. She’ll tell you.”

She crinkles her nose. “Having Tiffany’s number isn’t helping your case.”

“She’s a producer at a local TV station. Every once in a while I have to call her about getting some press if there’s something the coach wants covered on a weekend when the PR department isn’t in.” She averts her eyes. “Look, I admit I watched some terrible porn and spanked the monkey one too many times.” That earns me a small smile. “But I didn’t disappear because I was bored with you. I vanished because I was afraid.”

I let that sink in for a minute plus I needed a break. It’s hard for me to admit all of this to myself. Admitting it to someone else is even harder. “Quincy, please look at me. My entire life, everyone told me I was just like my dad. I used to take pride in that. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to get married and have a family, to treat them the way he treated us. I don’t know why he decided to have an affair and why that woman became more important than the rest of us. One day, the man I admired, someone a lot like me, well, it turned out he was a fake.” I move to sit on the coffee table in front of her. She shifts so she’s facing me, and I put my hands on her knees. When she doesn’t pull away, I assume I’m getting through to her. “I was technically an adult, but something about it messed me up. I swore I would never, ever be like him and from then on, relationships were out of the question.”

“Then why did you get involved with me?”

It’s a valid question. One I have been asking myself constantly. “It was surprisingly easy to get involved with you, and I wasn’t expecting it. One day I had this new friend. The next, I had a friend with benefits. That made it easy. Until that day.”

She looks down at her hands, so I grip them and hold on tight, forcing her to keep looking at me. “When Chance called me… thought I was….” I stop. I can’t even say it out loud. It had been the most wonderful and terrifying moment of my life. “When he called me dada, I had never felt so afraid. I kept looking at his sweet face, and all I could think was how someday I’d be the one to take that smile away. Because I’m just like my dad, a man in a relationship with his mother but not really in a relationship. A man who is a role model to this boy but not really a father figure. A fake.”

“So you reverted to your default mode.”

I scowl. “You’ve been talking to my sister.”

“Not recently, but yeah, she gave me her theory.”

“She’s given a lot of people her theory recently. She put Lalo in his place.”

She snorts a laugh. “I kind of wish I could have seen that.”

“It wasn’t pretty, but he’s a lot easier to deal with now. I’m hoping I’m easier to deal with, too.”

Quincy pulls her hands out of mine and sits back. I straighten but don’t move off the table. “What do you want from me, Daniel?” Her eyes are glossy with tears and her voice is quiet. Almost a whisper. “What do you want from us?”

“I want my best friend back,” I say, my eyes getting watery. “It feels like I can’t breathe when we’re not talking everyday and seeing each other all the time. I don’t want to feel that way anymore.” I move forward and rub up and down her thighs. “I want to call you my girlfriend, and I want you to call me your boyfriend. I want to call and text you every day. I want to take you home to family dinners and get you a permanent pass for seats in the team box. I want to celebrate birthdays and holidays with you. I want to support you in your endeavors and be here for you when you need to lean on me.”

“And Chance?” she asks with a sniff. “We’re a package deal.”

I smile at the thought of him. “He’s more complicated. I don’t want to confuse him, and I’m so, so afraid of him getting hurt, but I want to be there for him as long as you and I are together. I won’t pretend to be his father, because that’s not fair to him, but I want to help make sure you get him the presents he asks for on his birthday. I want to babysit when you need time away. I wanna sit next to you while we cheer him on at his first soccer game.” She giggles, and it’s the best sound I’ve heard in weeks. “I want to be the best male role model I can be for as long as you keep me around. I want to be his friend Daniel.”

She smiles.

“What does that smile mean?” I ask hopefully. “Is that a ‘yes, I’ll be your girlfriend’ smile?”

“Not quite yet.”

I frown. “Continue.”

“Daniel, things are way more stressful around here now. There’s a lot that’s happened and quite frankly, I’m pissed off you left me to deal with it on my own.” I don’t understand what she’s talking about, but I don’t feel like I’m in a position to interrupt yet. “I don’t have time to play games with you; you or anyone else. If you’re in, you need to be all in. I can forgive someone for being a jackass and running away once, but I won’t put up with bad patterns that never change.”

I bite back a grin. What she doesn’t realize is how painful the weeks without her were. I already learned my lesson the hard way. I won’t make that same mistake twice.

“The pattern has changed,” I say. “I didn’t see it before, but now that Blanca has pointed it out, I can do something about it. I’ll have to keep it in the forefront of my mind when life throws a curveball at me. Sometimes you may have to call me on it, but now that I know it’s there, I can fix it.”

Quincy takes a breath. Ironically, I feel like I’m holding mine.

“I really missed you, you know?” I say.

She reaches up and caresses my cheek. I close my eyes and relish the feel of her touching me again. “I really missed you, too.”

I slide to my knees and hug her around the waist. I probably look like a total pussy in front of her, but I don’t care. I can breathe again. She’s giving me another chance.

We stay like this for a few minutes, me hugging her, her running her fingers through my hair. I’m so content, if I wasn’t hyped up from the emotions, I might fall asleep right here.

“Daniel?

“Hm?”

“My legs are going numb.”

I chuckle and start to pull away from her, then quickly change my mind and go in for a kiss. She doesn’t resist, and soon we’re full-on making out, her lying on the couch, me on top of her.

She feels so good under me. I’ve missed her smell and her feel and her touch so much. She runs her hands up and down my back, and I want to come unglued, but I’m not going to be that guy. I won’t try to have sex with her tonight. I know she’s forgiven me, but I have to rebuild the trust between us. We’ll get back the intimacy, but for now, I’d rather feed her.

“You’ve lost too much weight, babe.” I pull back but keep rubbing up and down her arms and waist, over the curve of her hip. “Wanna order a pizza? I’m afraid you’re going to waste away.”

She shakes her head. “I tried eating earlier but my nerves are crazy right now. Eating makes me feel like I’m going to throw up.”

I furrow my brow in concern, remembering what she’d said a few minutes ago. “What’s got you so nervous?”

“Oh shit. I forgot you didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

She sighs. “Chance’s father showed up. He’s suing me for custody.”

I’m stunned silent. She shimmies her way out from under me. “I thought no one knew who his father was.”

“Apparently he knew the whole time and only recently decided to track me down after reading that article in the paper.”

“Shit,” I say and rub a hand down my face. “Are you sure he’s the father? I mean, has he had a paternity test yet?”

“The results came back last week,” she says. “He’s the father. Tomorrow the judge decides who gets custody.”

I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t have anything to say so I close it again and lean back. All this time I’ve been off soul-searching and Quincy has been here alone, worrying over whether or not a judge will see her as a fit parent. It underscores how self-absorbed I’ve been over the last few weeks. In this moment, I truly make myself sick. “Do you have an attorney? Do we need to call mine? It’s last-minute but he might be able to do something.”

“I have an attorney.”

“Is he any good? Does he think you can win? Because seriously, Quincy, if you need someone better….”

“Daniel, stop.” She puts her hand on my arm. How dare this guy come in and try to take Chance from Quincy? How dare he back them into a corner? “Daniel.” I must look wild-eyed. “We’ve done everything we can. We have to wait and see what the judge says.”

“How can you be so calm about this? Because I do not feel calm.”

“I’m not. My stomach is in knots all the time. I cry regularly. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I get the shakes whenever I think about losing my boy.” She licks her bottom lip and blows her bangs out of her face. “I feel like I’m not all here, ya know? Like I’m going through the motions while the rest of me is trying to come up with an easy solution.”

“God, Quincy. If I had known…. I feel like such a douchebag.”

She smirks. “You kind of were a douchebag.”

I pull her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles. “I’m so sorry, baby. Truly. What can I do to help? Can I go with you tomorrow? I don’t want you to go alone.”

“Geni offered to go with me.”

“Tell her to stay home.”

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

I kiss her knuckles again. Now that I’ve started kissing her again, I don’t want to stop. “We got knocked out of the play-offs last week, so it’s just end-of-year stuff. This is way more important.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’d really like you to go with me. I’m afraid I’ll be too nervous to drive.”

“Done.” I slouch and pat my leg. “Why don’t you turn on
Outlander
and lay down here with me. I haven’t been keeping up with that giant sexy beast of a Highlander lately. I need to catch up, and you need to get your mind off everything else.”

She grabs the remote, flipping the TV on as she lies down. We stay like that for a couple of hours. Eventually she falls asleep.

I carry her to the bedroom and lay her down in bed. Maybe I’m being presumptuous when I climb in next to her, but I meant what I said. I spent over a month without her. I won’t do it again. I need her, and she needs me. Now more than ever.