Player Loves Curves Box Set #4-6 by Hope Ford
Carter
I walkinto the club and take my seat at the bar, mentally preparing myself to see her half naked again dancing for other men. When I see Troy, I nod my head at him and he walks over, handing me a piece of paper. I unfold it and it says, “Hanna” with what looks like a phone number.
Instantly, I see red. “Do you always give her number out?”
His jaw tightens as if I’ve insulted him. “No, she asked me to give it to you. She said she thought you might come in and wanted you to call her.”
I nod my head at him and walk out and sit down in my car.
I stare at the phone number for the longest time before I pull out my cell phone and type it in. As soon as she answers, I get straight to the point. “Why’d you give me your number?”
She starts to answer, and then I hear a little voice in the background that sounds like, “Mommy, Mommy.”
I pull it from my ear and look down at it, like I have a snake in my hand that is about to attack. Did I hear that right? Did someone call her Mommy?
Hanna’s voice is muffled as I hear her say, “Hold on one second, baby. Aunt Janice will be here in a minute.”
I sit there stunned. Aunt Janice? Hanna doesn’t have a sister. Is she married? Is Janice her husband’s sister?
My heart squeezes in my chest, and I barely resist hanging up and going back inside for a beer. But her words stop me. “Can you come over? I need to talk to you.”
Blunt is the only way I know how to be. “You don’t have a sister Janice. So I’m assuming it’s your husband’s sister and you have a child together. I’m not coming over to see your family.”
She huffs loudly in the phone and I hear background noise like she’s running around opening cabinets, closing them. “I’m not married. Look, I tried for two years to see you to talk to you to explain. I can’t keep doing this.”
I interrupt her. “YOU can’t keep doing this?”
Her voice softens instantly. “I’m not going to fight with you. I’m going to text you my address. Come if you want.”
And then she hangs up.
I sit there and stare at my phone for I don’t know how long. I know I’m going to go and when her text comes through, I put the address in my phone and realize she lives across town. I drive slowly, trying to get my racing heart to slow down.
When I pull up to the dilapidated apartments, I cringe at the trash strewn throughout the parking lot. I look at my phone and the address on the building in front of me and I’m at the right spot. I get out of my car and walk to her door and as I lift my hand to knock, the door opens.
“Hey, come on in.”
I walk in, trying to prepare myself for a little Hanna to walk out. I look around at the bare walls and the minimal furniture, but I don’t see any tiny person. “Where’s your kid?”
She flinches at my tone, but she answers me regardless. “My friend Janice is watching her. Have a seat.”
* * *
Hanna
I tryto hide my insecurities. I know he thinks this place is junk, but it’s the most I can afford. I don’t even address the questions I see in his eyes as he looks around the room. I get straight to the point. “Do you remember when we graduated?”
Just mentioning it, his eyes darken, and I realize that he’s remembering our graduation night where he took my virginity and then had me two more times through the night.
“I’m not talking about… that. Do you remember the next day?”
He just shrugs his shoulders, and I can see he’s apprehensive about where this conversation is going, so I remind him. “Your family left our graduation to go to a family birthday party in Ohio. We had the house to ourselves. You got up and started making breakfast and when we sat down to eat, you grabbed my hand.” I pause and try to gather my wits about me. “You told me that you were quitting baseball. That you were going to stay in town and work for your dad at his tool shop.”
He shrugs his shoulders, like he doesn’t understand where I’m going with this. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, I freaked out.”
“Okay…”
“No, I mean I literally freaked out. I didn’t know what to do,” I confess to him.
He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“I couldn’t let you give up baseball. You loved baseball. It was your life, and I knew that as long as we were together, you wouldn’t have left.”
He sits up straighter in the chair, his eyes going wild as he’s taking in what I just said, as if he’s trying to work a puzzle in his mind. “Hanna…”
I do my best not to cry, but emotion rolls through me and I tell him huskily, “I couldn’t let you leave baseball and then hate me for the rest of our lives. I did what I thought was best. I made it all up. I wasn’t seeing someone else. I wasn’t seeing Jared Taggert. I just didn’t want you to throw away your future for me.”
He sits back and I can tell I’ve stunned him, but there’s more, and I have to get it out. I’ve lived with the guilt and I can’t do it a second longer. He gets up and starts pacing the room, looking everywhere but at me.
“There’s more,” I tell him.
His head whips around. “More?”
I nod my head and start to say it, but my voice shakes. I clear it and try again. “Yes. We have a daughter. She’s fifteen months old.”
He falls into the chair across the room and stares at me, speechless. “A daughter?”
I get up and walk across the room and grab a picture frame before bringing it to him. I hand it to him, and he takes it from me, staring at the little girl. There’s no denying she’s his. She has his dark hair and dark eyes. She has his lips and his smile.
He stares at it for the longest time, and I let him. I move back over to the couch and watch him, waiting for the wrath because I know it’s coming, and I know I deserve it.
When he finally raises his head to look at me, I can see the hurt in his face. His eyes are red rimmed, his nostrils flared. I hurt him once and it seems I’ve hurt him again. “I’m so sorry, Carter.”
He shakes his head and I can tell he doesn’t want to hear my apologies. “Why didn’t you tell me? You had no right to keep her from me.”
“I found out I was pregnant after you had already left. But when I found out, I tried to get a hold of you. Over and over. I called you until you blocked me. Your family blocked me, your agent blocked me. I couldn’t get a hold of you to tell you.”
He gets up and starts pacing the room again. “You could have told me, you could have come to a game and told me. You could have if you really wanted to.”
I take a ragged breath because I know that what I’m about to say is only going to make it worse. But I have to tell him. “I did. I came to your first game. And when I saw how happy you were, that all your dreams were coming true, I knew I couldn’t tell you, and I left.”
He takes a deep breath. “You lied to me. You’ve kept my daughter from me.” And I can’t even deny it. I can’t even put a spin on it to make it sound better. “Yes, I did.”
He shakes his head. “Is that the reason your parents disowned you? Because you were pregnant?”
I shrug my shoulders and name off all the reasons my parents were upset with me. “Pregnant. Not married. Had to quit school.” I have no emotion in my voice because I’ve had to completely forget about my family. Otherwise it’s too depressing.
He shakes his head, like he still can’t believe it. “I want to see… Fuck. I don’t even know my daughter’s name.”
He’s stopped his pacing and stops in front of me, his accusing eyes burning a hole in me. I reach for a binder on the coffee table and hand it to him. “Her name is Maggie. Maggie Lynn Arnold.”
He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that I named her after his mother. Instead, he takes the binder from me, opening it. He flips through the pages, slowly, taking it all in. There are pictures in there from the sonogram all the way to her first birthday. When he gets to the end, he slams it shut and sets it on the coffee table. “I want to see her.”
“I know. And I’m not keeping her from you. But when you meet her, I need you calm. And we need to talk about when you’re around her.”
He arrogantly crosses his arms on his chest. “What does that mean?”
“That means no drinking, no cussing, I don’t want any of your flavor of the months around her. I mean, if you ever get serious that’s one thing, but she gets attached easily…”
“What about you?” he asks me.
“I don’t drink or cuss.”
“Men.” He grits out the word like he’s chewing nails. “Do you have men around her?”
I could tell him it’s none of his business, but I answer honestly. “No. Never.”
He looks at me like he’s weighing my words. “And the strip club? What do you think she’s going to learn by you working there?”
He doesn’t know how much that hurts me. I flinch, because I’ve worried about this since I took the job. But I didn’t have a choice. I had been let go from the office cleaning job and it took me so long to find something that I had to make money quick. “She’s not going to know.”
He shakes his head. “I want to see my daughter.”
“Think about it, Carter. You’re trembling right now. I can feel how mad you are coming off you in waves. I need you to calm down. Then you can see her.”
He starts to walk to the door. “I’ll be back. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Have her here.”
