Page 38 of Draft Pick

Just tell my stupid, aching heart, which made no sense because it wasn't like me and Cason had been dating. What we'd had was a one-night stand that'd gotten a little carried away, and now I had a bun in the oven.

And my oven wanted to be in bed.

How wasI supposed to leave and pretend like my whole life hadn’t just been tipped upside down? No, worse, sent spinning like a top on a greased table, crashing and breaking everything in its path.

I’d hurt Starlie — and I pulled a dick move by ghosting her like I had — but now she was hurting me in a far bigger way.

I wasn’t trying to compare who was the bigger asshole in this scenario, but I felt, c’mon, clearly, it was Starlie. The vicious sting of knowing that Starlie had planned to exclude me from my kid’s life hurt me in ways I never thought possible.

So, yeah, if anyone was keeping score — Starlie was the bigger jerk.

But even if I felt justified in thinking it, there was no joy in the moral victory. The entire thing felt like shit. The inside of my head was a mess, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. If a situation required a cool, calm head, I was the one who filled that role. But who will fill it for me when I need it most?

Ironically, the person I wanted to talk to about it was the one person who’d essentially kicked me out of her life.

A low vibration of pure panic rumbled beneath my breastbone as I lay in bed, tossing and turning, even the bed sheets seemed to aggravate my skin as I couldn’t escape the discomfort inside and outside of my body.

Starlie was pregnant with my kid.What the fuck….Sweat broke out across my hairline like I was a felon with a kilo of meth shoved up my ass, and I was about to get strip-searched.

I mean, Ilikedkids. I always thought I’d end up with one or two someday — far off in the future – not before I graduated college and sure as hell not before I managed to secure my future with a professional football career.

But in nine months — or sooner, hell, I didn’t even know how far along she was or what her due date was — a kid would be here.

My kid.

For a second, I couldn’t breathe. My chest tightened, and I feared I was going to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the youngest man to have a heart attack.

A tiny lump of something was currently growing in Starlie’s belly that would be a mish-mash of me and her.

Whoa.

I hoped he or she had Starlie’s amazing voice. I softened a little, a lump forming in my throat. And maybe Starlie’s gorgeous eyes.

Stop it, she doesn’t want you in the kid’s life.

The reality flattened any burgeoning joy before it had a chance to sprout.

Was she so angry at me that she would cut me out of my child’s life without so much as a second thought? I didn’t think Starlie was that vindictive, but she seemed to be making a solid case for the latter.

Was that who she was as a person? I hadn’t thought so, but it was hard to defend her decision when it felt incredibly selfish from my point of view.

What would my parents say? My stomach cramped. I knew how that conversation would go. My dad would be livid — he’d yell at me, call me stupid, and accuse me of thinking with my dick.

Was he right? I knew the pull-out method wasn’t foolproof, but at the moment, it’d seemed safe enough. Yeah, maybe I had been thinking with my dick — and I loathed the idea of my dad being right in this instance. My dad being able to hold this over my head for the rest of my life was equivalent to feeding my soul into a wood chipper.

And what about my parents in this whole situation? They were going to be grandparents? My mom still looked young enough to have more kids of her own, thanks to the magic of chemistry and surgical artistry. I doubted she’d embrace the idea of being called “Grams” anytime soon. My little brothers might be cool about being uncles to a nephew, but I am not sure how they’d feel about a niece.

But did I want to subject an innocent kid to the crazy bullshit I had to put up with as a child growing up in the Alexander household?

I’m not trying to say that my parents are monsters — far from it — but there was a lot of shit that went down behind closed doors that I wouldn’t want to subject another person to.

And what about Starlie? How would they treat her? My mom wouldn’t approve of Starlie, I already knew that much. Starlie, with all of her sweet curves, would never fit in my mom’s picture of what my future wife should be.

And I hated that so much.

Starlie was an amazing woman — beautiful, talented, incredibly funny – and wanted nothing to do with me.

Damn it, I needed a solution. How was I supposed to fix this situation between us? I’d royally fucked up by not being honest from the start. I never should’ve ghosted her. It was a bitch move on my part — cowardly and spineless — I’d taken the easy way out, and now I was paying for it.

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