Page 27 of Personal Foul

He chuckled. “Okay. I’ll take that. Thanks. By the way, I moved into a friend’s apartment.”

“One of your teammates?”

“No,” he replied, grimacing. He knew she was going to take this the wrong way. “A female friend.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No, not really. Just a friend. Who happens to be a girl.”

There was a heartbeat of silence.

“Okay,” she said. “Keep me posted if your friend that’s a girl turns into a girlfriend.”

He grinned, even though she couldn’t see it. “I will.”

There was a hesitated pause, and he instinctively knew what she was going to say.

“Your father called.”

Kaiden tensed, waiting for her to elaborate. He wished he could run interference to keep him from hurting her heart evenmore.

“He wanted to apologize once more. Said he missed me.”

“Fucking asshole.”

“Kaiden,” she admonished. “He’s your dad.”

“Yeah, unfortunately, but he’s still a fucking asshole. The man cheated on you, so there’s no forgiveness in me.”

“I know it’s hard to see, but he’s only human. He made a mistake—”

“You can’t believe it was only the one time! He’s a cheat and a liar, Mom. There isn’t any shade of grey here.”

“Oh, honey, I know that. But I still love him. He broke my heart, but I can’t go from loving him for thirty years to hating him in an instant. Or ever. I’m not built like that.”

“I am,” he said ruthlessly.

She sighed again, and part of him hated that he was disappointing her, but he simply couldn’t play nice with his father. Not after what he saw.

“I know it’ll take time, but don’t block yourself off from forgiveness. You won’t be able to move forward if you keep it all bottled inside.”

He couldn’t deal with that right then. His father was a topic he wanted no part discussing. “I hope to know sometime this week what the decision is about me still having a football career.”

“I know they’ll say yes. You’re one of the best tight ends in the entire league.”

It felt good knowing she still believed in him. “I hope so, because I don’t know what I’m going to do if they say no.”

“Positive thinking, my love. And if that fails, I know you’ll figure out something.”

“Sure, Mom. Listen, I’ve got to run, but I’ll call you as soon as I find out anything.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you back.”

He disconnected the call and rubbed the back of his neck. Right then he couldn’t deal, so he did the only thing he knew how to do, and that was ignore and forget. At least, hope he could forget. Kinda hard to do that when he’d walked in on his father fucking someone else.

His phone rang again and he glanced down to see the name of the public relations guy flash up.

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