Page 1 of Forever Player

PROLOGUE

Willow

“Jacob, turn the car around,” I demand of my brother as he heads down the freeway.

“We aren’t turning back now,” my brother insists, his eyes intent on the road. We are heading into Nashville from our small rural town, Sugar Meadow, to watch the Nashville Tigers play the New York Rangers tonight, but that isn’t the real reason we are going to the game.

“My chest is tight. I can’t breathe,” I warn my brother. I’ve had these panic attacks ever since I found out I was pregnant.

“Slow breaths. You know what to do. Just focus on the breaths. We can’t turn back now. You want answers,” Jacob reenforces.

“He didn’t want her, Jacob. You saw the text message,” I remind my brother because my panic is controlling me now. I used to think I had my life together, but all that changed with two pink stripes on a pregnancy test.

I tried calling Brett numerous times when I found out I was pregnant, but the phone went to voicemail. That’s when I changed course and started sending him urgent text messages. I wasn’t being specific, I just said we needed to talk. He would reply we have nothing to talk about. Then one night I got so frustrated and angry I wrote in big shouty capsI’M PREGNANT. To which he responded with,Go bark up someone else’s tree.

His words ripped my heart out, but I wasn’t surprised. Brett told me who he was from the first night we met. Our one-night stand was about mutual pleasure, and boy, did he make me feel good. I was just left with a parting gift.

My mind pulls me back to the night we met at Focus, a lounge-style club back in New York City. I had met up with my besties Patty, Amelia, Eden, Rose, and Ellie. It had been a regular night for us until a bunch of players from the Rangers team crashed our night. Little did I know, my friend Patty was crushing hard on Evan, one of the players, and he came to see her. I couldn’t take my eyes off Brett from the moment he pulled up to our table. I had sworn off men by that point because Daddy had died the month before and I was feeling confused, I was in pain. My parents had the most dysfunctional marriage. Mom cursed my dad all the time, wishing he would just die and grant her freedom because for some reason they stayed together, even though they weren’t in love. My brothers and I reasoned they stayed together because they didn’t have money and dividing the farm into two was impossible. Besides, the farm was in Daddy’s family for generations. He wasn’t walking away and neither was Mom.

“Willow?” Jacob saves me from drowning in the past.

“I’m okay,” I assure my brother. “This little meeting is probably not going to go very well, but why would Brett inquire about me? There must be an explanation or some sort of miscommunication,” I tell my brother, who isn’t overly happy about driving me to a game to confront my baby daddy.

When my bestie, Skylar, called me Christmas Eve to tell me how Brett had been inquiring about my absence in the city, things didn’t add up. My friends didn’t know he was the baby daddy. All they knew was I left town because of the pregnancy. My friends all asked me numerous times who the baby daddy was, and I decided to conceal Brett’s identity because I felt stupid for getting into my situation. I was also beating myself up for having a one-night stand with a guy who wasn’t going to own up to the consequences of our actions. When my friend, Patty, asked if Brett was the father, I lied and said no because Skylar’s husband was Brett’s teammate and so was Patty’s boyfriend. All my friends are so connected to guys on Brett’s team that I didn’t want to get everyone involved in my one-night stand that left a lasting impression.

“Miscommunication, my ass,” Jacob hisses. “Even if he had been drunk or whatever when he first saw your message, he would’ve at some point sobered up and realized he needed to own up. The asshole doesn’t deserve Maylee.”

My brother has become very protective of his niece, but my good friends, Ellie and Skylar, stayed in close touch since I left New York. They gave me regular updates on what was going on in the city, which included talk of Brett and how his single sister and her son moved in with him because they had nowhere to go. My friends might have thought I had a crush on Brett and they weren’t wrong. I wasn’t the type to sleep around or have one-night stands, but the night I met Brett I was feeling down and he made me feel good. I never revealed to my friends who I had slept with, but there was speculation. They kept asking me if it was my boss, Silas, from the gym I worked at. Silas is a good-looking man and a big flirt. He would flirt with me in front of Eden when she came to work out, but I was never interested in him in that way so I didn’t take his flirtations seriously.

“I agreed to drive you to the game tonight because Maylee deserves better. I just don’t know how someone can misunderstand the words I’m pregnant,” Jacob growls. He pretty much thinks Maylee hung the moon and he would do anything for her. I replay the whole situation in my mind. About three weeks after I was with Brett, I found out I was pregnant. I had sent Brett the message about my pregnancy and how I was back home on the farm in Tennessee. When he told me I couldgo bark up someone else’s tree, I was so infuriated and hormonal I took my phone to Jacob, showed him the message, and broke down in his arms. Jacob’s response had been to take my cell and smash it to the ground. Problem is, my brother doesn’t do anything half-assed and he’s mega strong, which caused my phone to break into tiny pieces. After my breakdown, I knew I had to pick myself up and be strong. I made a promise to myself I would not think of Brett for the rest of my pregnancy, and that is exactly what I did. I spent my days helping out on the farm as much as I could. When my belly grew, I stopped with the physical labor, but I still went into town twice a week to the market with Lev, another one of my brothers, and helped him sell the cheese my family made. My life had become a far cry from the life I had envisioned, but I walked away from my life in the city where I worked in a gym as a physical therapist. I quit and came home. I don’t regret my decision because at least here in Sugar Meadow I didn’t have the worry of how I was going to pay my bills since my family didn’t ask me for money.

“Do you have a plan? Like, how are we confronting Noble?” Jacob asks, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel.

“I figure we go to the locker room after the game. I show him the picture of Maylee and tell him I wanted him to see how perfect she is. We wait for his reaction and take it from there. I know there is a chance he’ll write us off, but if I don’t try to reach out, Maylee will feel abandoned, and I don’t want that for my baby girl.” My relationship with my own father had been strained. Daddy felt like I was a carbon copy of Mom and everything about her irritated him. Mom and I look alike and we share a love of healthy eating and keeping fit, but that is where our similarities end.

“Yeah,” Jacob sighs, and his voice sounds choked. “Noble is going to be blindsided.”

“He doesn’t deserve anything else,” I confirm.

My cell rings. “Hello.”

“Willow, we just landed,” Ellie says, sounding panicked. “It took forever to de-ice the plane in New York.”

“Shit, you’ll never make it to the arena on time,” I say, biting my lip nervously because I could use all the support. I confessed to my friends that Brett was the baby daddy two days ago. They were in shock but also supportive. I told them how Brett rejected me and told me to buzz off and they just couldn’t believe it, which further solidified that something was amiss with the whole situation. It’s why Ellie and Eden decided to hop a plane the last minute.

Brett has really proven to my friends back in New York that he is more than the forever player we thought he was since they became friends with Brett’s sister, Maddie. She has raved about what a great brother he is for helping her when she came home pregnant from college at age twenty. The new information gave me hope that maybe Brett would have a change of heart where Maylee was concerned because how could he be so good with his nephew and not care for his own child? After growing up with parents who were very self-absorbed, I vowed to be a good mom, and to me that means ensuring my daughter knows she has two parents who love her. Problem is, I can’t control Brett’s actions.

“You got this, Willow,” Ellie encourages. “Brett isn’t the type of guy to shy away from responsibility.”

“That’s why I’m going to the game. I’ll find him and set things straight. I’ll keep you guys posted,” I assure my friend.

“We love you,” Ellie and Eden say simultaneously.

“You’re strong. You got this,” Eden cheers. Then she adds, “Damn, woman, Brett Noble is hot. You really couldn’t have chosen a better baby daddy.”

I want to remind her I didn’t plan on getting knocked up that night, but I’d rather keep those details to a minimum with my brother sitting beside me.

“I’m a shaking mess,” I confess instead. “But no matter what, I’ll confront Brett and make him hear me out.”

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