Page 59 of Trusting You

16

Locke

Three more weeks won’t give me enough time to sleep with Carter Jameson.

I’ll make sure of it.

It’s four in the morning, and I’m lying awake in bed, too aware of Carter in the next room. As far as I know, Lily sleeps through the night. If the baby stirs at all and Carter comforts her, I don’t know, because I’ve never had to get up and check.

That will all change when Carter leaves. She’ll have to tell me what Lily’s habits are at night.

Because Carter is leaving. It’s official now.

I should be glad. Instead, I roll over and spear my shoulder into the mattress, punching at my pillow that’s gone too flat. Then my knee starts up, pissed I’ve moved it again.

I think about the pills I’ve hidden away in an empty bottle of antifreeze underneath the sink, way in the back, behind the plumbing.

Ben, Asher, Easton think I’m clean, and I am. To a point. Six months ago, I couldn’t see straight, happy to be buzzed within a cocoon spun from Oxy threads. No future, no decisions, only the simple act of popping pills and drifting away. And that felt pretty fucking good.

It took a long time, I know—I think I know—for the guys to get me out of that hole.

Depression is no joke, especially coupled with the discovery that pills can make tough days foggier, forgettable.

Right now, this now, everything is too clear. My actions too culpable. I shouldn’t have gone after Carter today and been such an ass, but that didn’t stop the need-monster inside from doing it anyway. The need to make people around me feel as shitty as I do. The craving to bring them down to my level so I can maintain a miserable existence.

I hid it well this past week, when Carter moved in when Lily became my new reality. But as real-life resettles its broken, rotting crow’s wings around me, I’m reminded that nothing stays perfect.

Not people, not actions, not dreams.

Do I have the strength to carry on like this for my daughter? Sure I do. I can maintain a level head. But when night comes, when those black feathers begin to fall, it’s tempting to remember who I really am. Who I’ve become.

Carter has the annoying habit of making me want to explain myself. Like at dinner tonight, when she was sulking at the table, I wanted to lower my head and explain that my dissing her paintings had nothing to do with her talent. It had to do with her future, and it was simple: she had one. A passion she pursues, a dream alive and rampant in her head.

I don’t know what that’s like anymore.

Every time I open my laptop, I blindly scroll through the classifieds in a futile attempt to figure out what my next steps should be, now that there’s a child relying on my life skills. Lily. I can’t live off my rookie contract forever, no matter how frugal I’ve become. The two-bedroom apartment I leased in TriBeCa, new construction, luxury building? Gone. The BMW 550? Gone. Spending two-a-days on the field, fire licking at my calves as I flew—not ran—by the yard? Bye-bye.

Pride?

Still motherfucking there.

I glance at the wall separating me from Carter again. She can never know how far I’ve fallen from grace. Why she can’t, I’m still figuring that out. I remember her from UF, how she, among many other faceless, nameless girls, scoped me out. She caught my attention because of her innocent seduction, and I knew if I took her then, I’d break her. Carter walked in during that party, she landed on me, and her eyes went wow. There he is. The football king, the perfect guy.

These past few days, I’ve seen that wow go to irritated, annoyed, sometimes bemused. And today, I saw it go to pity.

Fuck, I wish I smoked. I’d light up right now, staring at that wall through vaporous clouds and would probably look a helluva lot sexier than the one almost huddled in an agonized fetal position as my leg throbs.

That college man is long gone, and Carter knows it. I think I hate that realization the most.

To consider Lily might one day look at me like that….no. Fuck, no.

The pills are singing a siren song.

I turned my face into the pillow, alternately punching and roaring into it.

Two things could get rid of this tightness in my chest, the crushing angst. The Oxy I’ve hidden or having Carter’s naked body underneath me, mine to control, to stroke into ecstasy. I’d lose focus on anything else. Watch her eyes go half-lidded, see those crimson lips—were they still innocent?—parting, for my tongue, for my cock, then lowering, driving into her, clenching my hands on those milky soft thighs….

“God. Damn it!” I roar into the pillow.

---