Page 14 of Bae

It was a mantra I’d come to rely on in the months after losing Evie. The press was white hot, and after a few run-ins that left me shaken and burned, I pretty much stayed behind the walls of our compound, never so grateful we had the wall to keep them out.

Even though they were still obsessed, the media wasn’t quite as rabid, which up until tonight gave me hope they were finally moving on.

I guess I’d been fooling myself. With the start of the NFL season and Romeo back out on the field, we were still a hot topic. The media loved their headlines, and Romeo and I starred in them quite often. I didn’t go online much anymore, and I didn’t watch those gossip shows on TV. Mostly, I avoided it all. I liked it that way.

Sometimes it slipped in.

Like tonight.

My mantra worked pretty well for me most days. Right now? Not so much. It was hard to replace the thoughts of what I’d read with something else when the something else mirrored the headline.

Something I’d just read preyed on my deepest subconscious thoughts that tormented me most recently. It was like opening Pandora’s box and letting out a demon.

My greatest fear was once a pool. While I still loathed any body of water, the top spot it once occupied was now held by something else.

My inability to conceive.

What if Evie was my only chance to give Romeo a baby?

What if whatever made me lose her would also prevent me from ever getting pregnant again?

Romeo

The tension that had parked itself between my shoulder blades the second Trent texted last night finally eased when the gates to our compound came into view.

B was driving; we were in his cobalt-blue Ford F-150 Tuscany Shelby Cobra. Since we traveled so much, we alternated between whose car we left at the team’s airstrip. This was a badass truck, and it came in handy having something so big, with so much hauling capability (especially when we moved), but I missed my Hellcat and itched to get behind the wheel.

“I’ve missed this place,” B said, his words mirroring my thoughts.

I grunted in agreement as my eyes swept the area near the gate, making sure everything was as it should be.

We moved here right before Rim got pregnant. The place had taken a while to build. But the wait had been worth it. Our home—our family compound—was everything I envisioned it to be.

I’m not talking about what colors the walls were or the type of appliances in the kitchen. Not that those things didn’t matter. Well, shit, they didn’t. Not to me. But Ivy and Rim cared, so that meant they were important.

I was more concerned with safety, privacy, and the security of our family.

You might think with so many people living on the same property, it might have been hard to settle on something, but it wasn’t. It hadn’t been hard at all.

We all wanted the same things. The girls just wanted them to be prettier than the rest of us.

My father told me about some land up for sale on the edge of town, not quite as far out as the back roads where B and Ivy went to have sex in the bed of his truck or where Drew and Trent went to speed, but in that general direction.

It ended up being perfect for what we wanted. Twenty acres of grass and trees, plus some rolling hills. It probably would have made great farmland, but we weren’t farmers.

I was just a man who wanted as much privacy and security as I could get for my family. Besides the fact Braeden was like a vicious bear when anyone looked at Nova, Drew and Trent needed a place they could be without having the press up their asses.

But that wasn’t all.

Rimmel was my main priority. I wanted to know, when I was on the road for football, she would be protected. And maybe, just maybe, something whispered deep inside me that she and I were going to need a place like this.

I was kinda sorry to be right.

The entire property was surrounded by a six-foot stone wall. Not the fake-looking shit made to look like stone either. Legit stone from the earth. It was sturdy and stable. Made for a nice barrier.

It wasn’t cheap. In fact, it was fucking expensive as hell. I didn’t care. You couldn’t put a price on piece of mind.

Because the stone wall was made of natural stone, it blended in with the landscape of the property. Trees and large bushes hung over it and grew in front of it. The workers who built it bitched a lot because I wouldn’t let them cut down all the nature. It made for an interesting work environment. Whatever. They were getting paid.

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