Dirty Player: A Rough Riders Novel (5 page)

Each word he spoke over the phone was a punch to my gut. I didn’t trust that Patrick still wanted me. He didn’t want to lose. He didn’t want to look like a fool. He wasn’t the guy women walked away from.

He was a McDonnelly. Ginger-haired and Irish to the deepest parts of his marrow, his family owned more than half of Des Moines. They still owned thousands of acres of land and businesses. No one said no to them.

I was still finding it hard to do so.

I sighed. “I’m scheduling a moving truck. I only want my stuff. Can you please let me know when’s a good time for them to come and pick it up?”

“Come home and discuss this with me, Shannon. I want to see you. I want you to hear me out. I swear to you, this will never happen again. Priscilla’s been moved to a different department, and I don’t even see her anymore. Please.”

His voice had softened, gone gravelly and determined, coaxing me against my judgment to listen, to give in like I always did. Her name on his lips was a bucket of cold water on the temptation.

I tapped a pencil to paper and gritted my teeth together. “No. And I don’t have time for this. I have things to do, and if you won’t be cooperative I’ll figure it out on my own.”

“Shannon—”

“Goodbye, Patrick.”

I hung up the phone at the same time a growl sounded from behind me.

I was in what would soon be my office at Stamped. I’d scrubbed the place from top to bottom over the last week, including the cute and full-of-character upstairs apartment. Every day it settled in a little bit more that this place was mine.

All mine.

Once I got my stuff, anyway. Fortunately, I’d had the smarts to bring all my jewelry-making tools and equipment with me.

Everything was scattered about on two folding tables I’d picked up as soon as I’d cleaned the downstairs office.

With the Arts Festival opening next week, I’d been desperate to start creating. I wanted the store ready to go by then, but there were a million things I still had left to do scribbled on a ripped piece of notebook paper…somewhere in my office.

Amazing how I could make such a huge mess when I had so little.

“What did the loser want now?”

I turned to Beaux to see his arms across his chest, shoulder leaning against the door to my office. He was freshly showered, telling me he’d come straight from his late workout.

I groaned and tossed the pen to the tabletop. “Same old crap. Apologies, refusing to let me go.”

I hated that there was a small part of me that was glad. Because if he didn’t want to let me go, maybe everything we’d shared, everything I thought I’d once loved hadn’t been a lie.

A month had given me a lot of perspective. Melissa and Beaux’s persistent cataloging his faults and the things they’d always hated about him had given me greater insights into things I hadn’t seen, or had refused to admit earlier.

I was angry and hurt, but beneath it there was still the love I’d thought I had for him for years, simmering. I couldn’t dig deep enough to scrape it out.

“When are you moving your stuff out here?”

“Whenever Patrick tells me when I can get the movers into the apartment. He wants to see me first, though.”

“Fuck that, Shannon. Melissa has a key. She can meet movers any time of the day. Stop fucking bending to his will.”

“I know.” I scrubbed my hands down my face and wrapped them around the back of my neck, popping my knuckles. “I know that. I was hoping—”

“You were hoping he’d be a decent human being for once.”

Ugh. I hated my baby brother. Such a pain in the ass. His words were still truthful.

“Yeah.” A breath fell from my puffed out cheeks. “I guess I was.” I spun in my chair, my design tables between us. “How was practice? Ready for the upcoming game?”

He pushed off the doorway and walked to the tables, his fingers brushing against bracelets I’d pounded and shaped earlier.

“Won’t play much the first couple games. Can’t have their new stars getting injured before the season really begins.”

He seemed to avoid meeting my gaze. I didn’t often see him uncertain or worried, unless it came to me and my life. This was football.

His dream. His goal since he was five.

“How was practice?”

“Powell’s still being an asshole. Jesus, he’s not letting me get away with shit. Every play he’s on my ass, screaming in my face.”

The name alone sent a spark of awareness to places it shouldn’t have—deep in my belly, the apex of my thighs.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah? Is he right?”

Beaux huffed and looked at a spot on the far wall. “I’m good. I know that. I’m good enough to be a starter, but every damn time I make a mistake—or when I don’t, for that matter—he’s right there, telling me what to do different. I’m not Mason, and I don’t want to be. They got rid of him for a reason, but he and Powell were friends. I don’t know if it’s something he has against me, against my playing, or because I took his friend’s spot.” He looked at me then, a gleam in his eye. “Or if he just really wants to fuck my sister and is pissed I’ve cock-blocked him.”

He choked over the word. I wanted to laugh at his grossed-out expression, but I couldn’t. That heat in my belly unfurled into something larger.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Really?”

I squeezed my eyes closed immediately. How desperate would I have to be for that to happen? He was worse than Patrick. Just as big of a player but didn’t feel the need to hide it.

“While this whole discussion is making me want to puke up my protein shake—”

“That’s probably just the protein.” I pulled a face. Those things smelled gross and tasted nastier. Add the kale, chia seeds, and spinach and it was shit in a cup.

“Shut up.” He smirked and went back to looking at my jewelry. “You know he was married once, right?”

My head spun while I tried to figure out who he meant before he continued speaking.

“High school sweetheart. Gossip in the locker room is he loved the shit out of her. She used him as a meal ticket and once he made it big, she left him and took over half of everything he owned.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Not sure.” He shrugged and pulled back from a necklace charm before sliding his hand into the pocket of his jeans. “Beneath all the bullshit, all the asshole behavior, and all the crap that’s said about him in the papers, I guess I don’t think he’s that bad of a guy.”

It was as close to permission as I was going to get from Beaux. Not that it meant anything. I wasn’t going to be the next woman on Oliver’s arm on a photo spread of NFL player’s wives and girlfriends webpage, only to be replaced the following week.

“He’s been named captain of the team for a reason, you know. Is he right about you and your playing?”

For an athlete, Beaux was pretty humble. More than most. He was usually pretty open to criticism and always took feedback, evaluated it to see if it was true. Hell, he scanned his Instagram feed, reading comments from guys who couldn’t pick a decent fantasy football team, to see if their Monday quarterbacking had merit.

That he’d be so angry about Powell’s input told me it wasn’t the criticism getting to him.

“Yeah.” He looked up at me and grinned. It was lopsided and made a dimple pop in his cheek. “He might be.”

“Then you need to work harder.”

“And you need to get out of this office. Come to Kolby’s house with me tonight. He’s throwing a pool party.”

“Beaux—”

“Just a small gathering. Nothing big, I swear—not with our game in a couple days.”

My cheeks heated as I asked, “Will Oliver be there?”

“Fucking hell,” he moaned and dragged a hand through his hair. “Probably.”

“I probably shouldn’t.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I’m going.”

He grinned. “I figured you would.”

Chapter FOUR

OLIVER

The small crowd gathered on Kolby’s outdoor patio made my skin itch.

Over a dozen kids jumped and splashed in the pool. Long Styrofoam noodles, plastic wings, and inflatables tossed all over the place made the simple act of walking a minefield.

I was trying to relax. It wasn’t easy. Every year, the men on my team became younger and faster. They were tougher. They fought harder, partied louder, threw away their millions as soon as it hit their pockets.

For some, it filled them with a greater drive to succeed, to be the next big name known and shouted in small-town basements and garages all over the country for three months a year. For others, it became one big unending party…until the party came to a crashing halt.

I still hadn’t figured out our new quarterback. Beaux Hale had talent. That couldn’t be argued. But the man owned a fucking a RV that he drove around the country during the off season, partying wherever he parked it. He was determined on the field, a fucking clown off it. It was hard to take him seriously, and as his captain, it was fucking with our teamwork on the field.

I pushed him hard because his arrival meant we finally had a chance at the fucking coveted ring. Eight years in the league and I’d come close twice during my first two years. For the last six, it’d been a crapshoot.

Realistically I had two, maybe three decent years left in me. At thirty, I was becoming an old man. The pain in my knees, the hits to my ribs, the sore muscles…all of it took longer to recover from. I fucking ached everywhere already and the season hadn’t really begun. 

I wanted to walk away with that damn golden ring so badly I could taste the metal in my mouth, between my teeth.

It was all so fucking close with the team we had this year. Hale was being touted as the guy who could take us there.

I was an asshole because I doubted he had it in him, but I hoped like hell he did.

Unfortunately, I kept thinking about the way his sister’s ass had felt in my hands last week on the dance floor. The fact that she’d doused my lust with her threats and then Beaux had made it clear at practice he’d follow through with them had made me a bigger asshole than normal.

Kolby, on the other hand, was the first rookie I’d ever met who seemed to have his eyes focused on the only two things that mattered: his daughter and his career. At his party, he was in the pool with her, holding on to her stomach while she flapped and kicked, making more of a splash than getting anywhere.

But he was patient, focused on only her and the other little kids around.

It forced a weight to my chest. One I hated thinking about so much that I refused to do so—but when I saw moments like that, I couldn’t help it.

I’d lost every fucking thing I ever wanted and it was all Serena’s fault. Not that I gave a shit about the money I was still forced to send her. Spousal support, my ass. She’d walked away two years into our marriage, and six years later I was still paying for her to go do whatever the fuck she wanted.

Our phone calls were once a year, her calling me, me letting it go to voicemail. The taste of regret and disgust were heavy on my tongue every time I heard her voice wondering when her annual payment was going to be deposited.

I figured the next conversation we had would go drastically different.

An elbow bumped mine and a cold beer was placed in my hand. “Take this and drink it. You look like you want to kill someone.”

I glanced at Danny Rudolph. He was only a year younger than me and had been traded to Raleigh the same year I had been—the year after everything in my life went tits up. He hadn’t known me before, when I had my shit together, but he’d been there since my downfall.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” I said and realized where my glare had been.

On her.

Shannon Hale. She ignited something inside me that went beyond the thought of an hour or two between the sheets before I kicked her out of my bed, like I did with most women since Serena. It had been different from the moment I saw Shannon.

Something dark and twisted, something that told me I’d be able to do whatever I wanted to her and she’d only scream for more.

Thinking she was draping herself all over Hale to get her hand into his back pocket had pissed me off more than it should have.

The way her gaze had gone a bit hazy when she’d looked at me that first time had made me jealous of the young kid.

“You go after her and you’re looking for trouble. Word is Hale’s her only family. You fuck with her and he’s going to go apeshit on your old ass.”

I had heard that. Their mom died a few years ago. They came from nothing. Word was Shannon was more of a mom to him than his own had ever been. Not to mention they had different fathers, neither of them around. Beaux didn’t hold shit back. He wasn’t ashamed of where he came from. 

Plus, Rudolph was right. Guy could probably take me, too, unfortunately. I might have doubted his ability, but he still had an arm of steel, built for throwing. He could be the best in the league if he didn’t always fucking hesitate that half-second in the pocket.