Here & Now (18 page)

Standing on my tiptoes I scan the bar looking for the only other person that can help me and after a few scans of every corner of the room, I find him. Kayden. Pulling my hand out of Ryder’s which causes him to look down before throwing me a confused look, I point over to where I can easily make out Kayden dancing with Belle and he just nods.

Apparently keeping an eye on me doesn’t extend to my other friends.

Slipping through the crowd as Ryder goes back to the people around him, I move as quickly as I can until I’m standing directly in front of Kayden, his expression instantly going from happy to see me, to concern once he realizes Dillon isn’t with me.

“He saw his mom. He said he’s just gonna talk to her but—”

“But his version of talking is different than ours.” He responds and I just nod. “Where is he?”

Pointing out across the room where I can now see Dillon grabbing onto his mom’s arm and turning her toward him, Kayden moves first, grabbing my hand and Belle’s and pulling us with him as he makes his way over. Staying behind him, I pray nothing happens in the few minutes it’s going to take for us to get to him.

“Yo, Dill.” Kayden calls out the minute he’s in view and Dillon turns just as Kayden steps forward, blocking me and Belle in behind him, keeping us hidden, but still leaving us enough of a view to be able to catch what’s going on.

“Not now, Kay.”

“Listen to your friend, Dillon. What I’m doing here, it’s none of your concern.”

Rebecca’s words are as blurry as her eyes. Whatever she’s doing here, she’s doing it while high on something judging from the misshapen way her lips move, and the bad feeling I had about Dillon dealing with her just gets worse. He doesn’t need to be dealing with this right now.

She’s not a parent. She’s a child.

“Give it to me, Mom.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh no? So I didn’t just watch you buy something off that asshole?”

I hate how tense he is, the hurt in his eyes that’s mixed with anger the second he turns his attention to the guy Rebecca is with. People are moving around us, their eyes on Dillon and what he’s saying and my heart falls into my stomach the second I see Ryder moving closer, noticing me behind Kayden before focusing all of his attention on what’s going on with his friend.

“Dill, this isn’t the place.” Kayden says, moving even closer and attempting to pull him away from the confrontation that’s brewing.

“This is the best place to have this conversation, K.” Dillon snaps and Kayden tenses. “She could easily end this right now if she just gave me what the fucker just sold her.”

“Who you calling a fucker, little boy?”

Considering Dillon is almost the exact same size as the guy moving toward him, there’s something about what he said that I find funny and I laugh, which the minute the sound falls out, turns all attention to me and again, I can feel Kayden’s body tensing.

“Caddy…” Dillon says, turning and moving toward me. “What the hell?”

As soon as his back is turned, his focus on me, the guy moves into him, shoving his own body into Dillon’s until he’s being pushed back awkwardly, stumbling before catching himself and turning away from me completely.

Shoving Kayden’s arm away the minute he steps forward to try and get between the both of them, Dillon pushes forward until he’s got his arms around the guy, gripping him tightly in what looks like a headlock, the muscles in his arm pushing through his shirt as he tightens the hold. After a few seconds of subduing the guy, he shoves him backward into the bar and that’s when all hell breaks loose.

Rebecca attempts to come to the dealer’s aid and Dillon shoves her off, throwing her a look that must scare her because she backs away completely, but not before screaming something I can’t quite make out at him and turning her attention to me.

“You see what you caused, you little slut?”

“Mrs. Murphy, back off.” Belle calls out as Kayden moves forward again in an attempt to subdue my boyfriend and again failing as Dillon pushes him backwards until he barely catches himself before knocking me over completely.

I see Ryder move through the people now standing around watching and watch as he grabs onto Dillon and starts shouting.

“D, your fucking leg man! Think about your fucking leg!”

When Kayden moves back in, both guys grabbing onto Dillon and yanking him back, seeing his face still completely enraged, my expression softens. I saw what Ryder called out and it makes me wonder just what he’s getting at, but right now isn’t the time to be asking. Right now, we need to get Dillon out of here before a bad situation becomes even worse.

“Get that filthy little whore out of my sight!” Rebecca screams as the guys get him away and start walking him toward me. Dillon, hearing what she said just as easily as I read her lips, completely freezes before yanking his arms out and away from the guys and stalking back over to stand directly in front of her.

Looking around I can see the bouncers making their way toward us, their expressions stony and focused solely on breaking up the fight I knew Dillon was gonna start, and I pull at Kayden’s sleeve to get his attention.

When he turns, I motion with my hand to the guys and he nods his understanding. Turning his attention back to Dillon, he stalks forward and grabs him again, moving in close enough that I can see he’s saying something but not able to make out exactly what until Dillon glares at Rebecca and says his piece before heading for the door.

“The only whore I see here is you, Mom. Don’t you ever fucking talk about her like that again or your dealer’s face won’t be the only thing I’m punching a hole through.”

Dillon

Of course that’s the way everything went down.

It couldn’t have been an easy conversation where I ask her what she’s doing, she tells me and we move on from it.

No. She had to go and attack Cadence, not once, but twice and just make me wanna hit her even more then I already did when I caught what was happening on the fucking dance floor.

I’m pissed as hell that Ryder couldn’t keep his eyes on Cadence for more than two damn seconds and I’m even more pissed that again, Caddy had to go and put herself in the middle, but it pales in comparison to the hatred I have for myself for being so fucking stupid.

Of course Rebecca isn’t going to make things easy and my history with Cadence and fighting should have told me that she wasn’t gonna take being told to stay put like a damn dog any better. All of this shit could have been avoided if I just knew how to turn off the fact that I care.

I don’t want to care about any of this. Not my mom, not anything, but fuck, that guy being that close, giving her god knows what and knowing how bad off she already is, I saw red. I didn’t see things properly and now I’m being thrown out on my ass, along with Ryder, Kayden, Belle, Cadence and Amelia, and I’ve got nothing to show for it but a seething anger that’s hard as hell to control.

I’ve never wanted to pound the shit out of someone or something so bad in my life.

Cadence has been looking anywhere but at me since we got thrown outside and that’s pissing me off too. I know she heard Ryder the same way I did, which means I know the reason she won’t even so much as look at me, but if I want to calm the hell down, I need her to do it. One look from her is all it will take for me to be set right. History has proven that. Cadence can make the worst situation better and right now it doesn’t get much worse.

So much for this not fighting anymore bullshit.

“Man, I had no idea she was gonna go and get that guy involved.”

Kayden.
Ryder doesn’t know much about my best friend. He knows that I went to school in Toronto with a buddy of mine, but as far as names go, I didn’t bother sharing that with him. Getting Kayden involved though, it’s something I’m glad she did.

I might hate having Caddy anywhere near the way I am when I lose all sense of control like I just did, but there’s no denying that if she didn’t do it, things would end up a lot worse off than they do.

“It’s fine. She did the right thing.”

“She’s protective, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

Cadence when it comes to me is a lot more than just protective and if I wasn’t so charged up right now, I might be able to make Ryder understand it, but as it is, I’m still so on edge and in desperate need for her to look at me that I can’t be fucked bothering.

“Why didn’t you tell her about your knee?”

“What?”

“You saw the way she looked same as me. When I spoke about you being injured, she looked like I stabbed her.”

There’s no excuse I can give. Sarah was aware of it and even though I sort of expected her to tell Cadence everything, it’s pretty damn obvious she didn’t and I’m gonna be paying for it. Keeping it from her, believing that it wasn’t that big of a deal and not wanting her to worry about it, it’s gonna bite me hard in the ass.

I fucked up more than just with my mom tonight.

“Didn’t want her to worry.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like I ruined that.”

“It’s cool. I did this and I’ll deal with it.”

Motioning over to my girlfriend, he gets the hint and zips his lips while I walk away from him, making my legs move as quickly as possible until I’m standing beside her, my hand resting on her shoulder.

“Are you gonna talk to me?” I ask the second she acknowledges my existence and the knot in my stomach twists up more when I see the sadness in her eyes, right along with the tear stains on her cheeks.

The reason she couldn’t look at me is now completely on display.

“How bad is your leg?” she asks and instead of keeping up with the stupidity I’ve been doing when people talk to me about it, I tell her the truth.

“It’s pretty bad, but not sure how bad yet.”

“How long?”

“How long what, baby?”

“How long have you been keeping it a secret?”

I really don’t want to answer this. I can’t admit to her that I’ve been hiding it since she noticed it that day on the field. That was weeks ago and it won’t take her very long to connect the dots. She’s going to be pissed or even more hurt.

But if I wanna fix this mess, it starts by telling her the truth and living with the consequences.

“A month, maybe.”

Her body tenses just the way I expect and it guts me. Normally, I don’t give a flying fuck who I lie to as long as it gets me by, but with Caddy that doesn’t apply. She’s different, she’s always been different and everything I’ve been working toward since I met her, I’m dangerously close now to completely blowing to shit.

I need to do some serious damage control here.

“Why did you hide it?”

“Honestly, I did it at first because it wasn’t really bothering me. It would set off in practice and linger a little longer than normal, but I wasn’t worried. The last couple of weeks though, I hid it because I can’t get pulled from the game. We need to win it and I need to be there to make sure it happens.”

“And possibly hurt yourself more in the process?”

“That won’t happen.”

“You don’t know that!”

Ignoring the fact that she’s calling out louder than I want her to, I grab onto her arm and pull her into me. I know it’s not an answer and I’ve still got to have a discussion with her about it, but right now if I don’t hold her, surround myself with the feel of her, I’m gonna go out of my fucking mind.

She has no idea how much I need her and how much I absolutely hate that right now we’re even having this discussion at all.

Lying, keeping things a secret and pretending they don’t exist, they’re all traits of a first class asshole, which is the exact opposite of what I’ve been trying to be for months.

“I swear to you, nothing is going to happen to me. I won’t let it.” I promise her the minute I step back and we’re facing each other again. “The shit we went through last year couldn’t take me from you and this won’t either.”

“If you mean what you’re saying, then do something about it.”

“Like what?”

“Get it checked out. Have someone trained in this kind of thing look at it.”

“I will, but not until after the game Saturday.”

I know it’s a long shot and she’s probably gonna fight me tooth and nail about it now that she knows, but I have to get her to trust in me one more time. I will do whatever she wants me to after this game is over, but I’ve gotta see this through. I can’t let the team down even if she’s right and the smarter thing would be to get it looked at.

“Please, Caddy. I know you’re pissed and hurt that I kept this from you and I understand why. I should have told you when it got really bad, but besides the reasons I already told you, I didn’t want to worry you. With everything you’re already dealing with, this is the last thing you need to be putting your focus on.”

“I can handle what’s going on with me. I’ve been doing it just fine since the surgery. What I can’t handle is something happening to you.”

There it is again, the tears in her eyes that are slowly running down, landing on her cheeks and sliding until they’re dropping off the end of her face. I’m hurting her. Standing here thinking about this is hurting her.