Page 44 of The Wedding Deal
He was so damn impossible. And sexy. Andholy shit I’m in trouble. She turned back around and rattled off her last few thoughts.
He reached over her and flipped the board to the other side, where he’d written a long list of names. “And your top pick for GM?”
She hesitated before pointing at the second name from the top. “He was in the middle of transforming the last team he worked for, but the owner, who’s made nothing but stupid decisions, fired him before his plans could come to fruition. It’s sad because they’ll probably benefit from what he did anyway, but then they’ll go downhill again.”
Lance made a noncommittalhmm. His fingers wrapped around her shoulders, and she tried to stifle her earlier thoughts about his hands. “Now, tell me what upset you so early in the morning. Why were you so bothered that you came in here and did weeks’ worth of analysis in a matter of an hour?”
“Thirty minutes,” she said, and his fingers dug in a bit deeper.
“Spill.”
Chapter Fifteen
Subconsciously, part of the reason she’d shown up at Lance’s room so early might be because she’d wanted to talk to someone. Needed to, really. But she still wasn’t sure it was a good idea. It was so personal and possibly TMI when it came to subjects that were okay to talk about with your boss.
But tidbits about her dad had spilled out here and there already. Shannon wasn’t a good option—she’d point out that she was enabling him again, or maybe tell her that she’d warned her not to get her hopes up that he’d change, and Charlotte didn’t want to hear what boiled down to “I told you so.”
“My dad called this morning.”
Lance didn’t push. He simply waited, those long fingers still curled around her shoulders.
“He’s in rehab.” There it was. The secret she’d kept buried deep. There was a difference between telling people he was a gambler and admitting he was lost to the addiction that’d cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, his reputation, and any chance at ever coaching again.
She slowly turned to face Lance, the desire to watch his response stronger than her instinct to hide the way it ripped her apart inside.
“Gambling?” he asked, and she nodded.
“In my attempt to win his affection, I accidentally enabled him enough to turn him from a frequent gambler to one who lost everything.” If she hadn’t been wrong about that game, the other dominos wouldn’t have fallen, not so fast and not so hard.
“That’s bullshit. You’re not responsible for any of that.”
“I don’t know. Yes, he makes his own decisions, and I think he would’ve continued to gamble no matter what, but once he saw what I could do with stats and numbers… That’s when his gambling took on a new life, one that scared me, but I didn’t stop.” A tight band formed around her chest. She’d never confessed this much to anyone. “We were finally spending time together, and it was nice. I also justified it by telling myself that when I wasn’t with him, he lost more often. But maybe losing more frequently would’ve forced him to slow down.”
“I doubt it. There aren’t hundreds of casinos out there because people slow down once they get a taste for doubling and tripling their money. Those are the stories everyone tells, of course. How they paid for their entire trip with their winnings.”
She’d heard that one from Dad and from several of his friends. “We had a good run.
But I’m sure you know better than anyone that all the facts and figures in the world don’t account for everything.”
“You mentioned the illusion of the perfect game before,” he said, reminding her that she had. To apply to love. At leastthatwas metaphorical.
“Well, his luck ran out during the worst possible time. I could blame the refs and the fact that there were a lot of injuries and that it was the first game the quarterback performed so poorly, but it doesn’t matter why.” She reached up and twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “He got into trouble with some people who were determined to get their money back, and he ended up losing everything.”
Lance continued to watch her face, not talking, not judging—from what she could tell. She debated telling him about how, in order to pay them, her dad bet against his own team and then made moves to ensure they lost, but his lawyer had settled a lot of lawsuits in the name of reasonable doubt. It also seemed unfair to bring up Dad’s past mistakes when he claimed he was working hard to overcome them.
Maybe he is. Maybe I’m just paranoid and jaded.
She stuck to the recent development, about how he’d come to her to ask for help. After a long, emotionally exhausting talk, she’d convinced him to go into a facility, something she was also paying for. “This morning he calls and tells me that between the treatments and the new medication he’s on to help with his impulse control, he’s all better. He wants to leave early and get a job because he says he’s ready to start his new life, and he can’t stop worrying about how he can do that if he doesn’t even have a job.”
“And you have your doubts he’s better?”
“It makes me feel bad to say it, but I highly doubt it. Years of addiction that spiraled out of control, and he claims a month is enough to cure him? When I dropped him off, they suggested two to three. Why not finish just to be sure? It was also expensive enough that I want to demand I get my money’s worth.” She rubbed at the twinge in her chest, not that it helped. “That probably makes me a bad person, too.”
Lance placed his hand on the side of her neck and gently tipped up her chin with his thumb. “The fact that you’re paying for it in the first place proves you’re not a bad person.”
“The question is, am I just an enabler? Or am I truly helping?”
“I think this is one of those instances that intent matters.”
