Page 66 of The Right Player
“This is not the way you welcome your own family into your home,” Mom chastised as soon as the sliding glass door was shut behind us. “It is also very rude to leave your guest inside that way.”
“Oh, he can’t help it. He’s shook we just found him about to get it on with his girlfriend,” Oliana said, singing the last word.
Dad gave her a look of warning, which shut her up and made Pania smile.
I grabbed the back of my neck, looking inside to make sure Belle was busying herself and couldn’t hear us before I turned to all of them. “I’m sorry. I really am happy to see you, but a heads up would have been nice.”
“That would have ruined the surprise!” Mom argued.
I sighed. “I know, I know. Uh… I just…”
“Didn’t expect to have to introduce us to Miss Monroe in there?” Dad finished for me, arching his thick, dark brow.
I cringed.
“You don’t have to hide her from us,” Pania said. “I promise not to tell her about how you peed the bed until you were ten.”
Oliana snickered.
“It’s not that,” I said, looking inside again before my shameful gaze found them. “It’s just… things are kind of complicated.”
My dad nodded in a sad understanding. “She has you friend-zoned, doesn’t she?”
“What? No,” I said quickly, narrowing my eyes at my giggling sisters. “Very clearly not friend-zoned, if you didn’t catch our little entrance there.”
“So, why haven’t we heard about her, then?” Mah asked.
I looked up to the sky, like there was a god who could help me now. When I looked back at my family, I knew the only way to get this over with was to rip it off like a Band-Aid.
“Okay, don’t freak out, and please don’t make a commotion… but… Belle doesn’t know I’m in the NFL.” I swallowed. “She doesn’t know I play at all.”
“What?”
“Why not?”
“What in the world?”
“Why wouldn’t you tell her?”
“How couldn’t she know?”
“Keiki kane,” Dad’s voice boomed the loudest, and we all silenced, looking at him in unison. The man was a teddy bear, but when he stood tall like that with his brows furrowed and lips flat, he made me and my siblings quake. “What’s going on?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense. Trust me,” I added, murmuring to myself more than them. “If anything, I wish I could go back and change everything about the decision I made not to tell her. But, when I came here, it felt like a new chapter, like I was starting over in a way. And when I met Belle, she had no idea who I was. She’s not a sports girl, couldn’t care less about football, and because of that, I got to tell her who I was. I got to decide what she knew about me, what made me who I was.”
“But football is your first true love,” Mom said, her eyes sad as they flicked inside before finding me again. “If she won’t understand that, then she’s not the right woman for you.”
“That’s not it at all,” I said, shaking my head as I tried to figure out how to explain. “What Dad said earlier was a joke, but we all know it was true for the first half of my life. Every girl I wanted saw me only as a friend. Then, I go to college, give my everything to football, and suddenly, I’m a pro ball player and all these girls want me. But they didn’t actually want me.”
Pania sighed, her eyes softening with understanding. “They wanted your money.”
I swallowed, grimly nodding. Pania had been there for me when everything went south with Zariah and Lucia. If anyone understood, it was her.
“Or my connections, or what they thought I’d be someday, the places they thought I could get them,” I added. “In whatever way you spin it, they didn’t care about who I was.”
“And does she?” Dad asked.
I glanced inside, chuckling when I saw Belle fidgeting with her hair and swiping the mascara from under her eyes in the reflection of the microwave.
“More than I deserve.”
“Where does she think you’ve been the past few weeks?” Oliana asked.
I cringed. “At a real estate conference. That’s what she thinks I do for a living.”
Mom clucked her tongue, and when I looked at her, she looked more disappointed in me than she ever had been. “You can’t hide who you are forever.”
“I’m not,” I said hurriedly. “At first, I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t playing some game. I thought maybe she did know who I was and was just trying to get in with me, with my money. But it didn’t take long for me to see that wasn’t true.”
“But you still didn’t tell her the truth,” Oliana challenged.
“Again, it’s complicated. She’s got scars of her own.” I shook my head, because everything that came out of my lips made me feel more and more like a coward. “I just didn’t want to lose her before I had her to begin with… I wanted to earn her trust.”
