Page 123 of Hitting the Goal Line
The woman wastes no time to gage the cuts and bruises on my face. “Next time you get arrested, your first call better be to me or I’m going to disown you.” She scolds me, her face telling me that she means it too.
I sigh. “Noted,” I say, giving the woman a nod. “Sorry, Ma. I didn’t think.”
I’m going to have to thank Sophia a million times over for letting my family know what was going on.
“No, you didn’t,” she says right before she wraps her arms around me, bringing me in for a hug. “What the hell is going on, Blake?” my mom asks when pulls away from me. “We get a text message from Sophia that you’ve been arrested and charged with battery, but then neither of you answer your phone after that. Are you going to tell us what is happening, or do I have to kick your ass to get it out of you?”
I may be twenty-two years old, almost twenty-three, and a professional athlete, but my mom still terrifies me. If the woman says she can kick my ass, she will.
I look at her before turning at everyone else who is also waiting for an explanation.
This is going to be a lot harder than calling everyone back, because now I have to see their faces.
“Let me go get Sophia, and we will explain everything.”
I didn’t thinkthat repeating the previous day’s events would be so damn draining, but it was. Now almost two hours later, and my head still hurts just thinking about it.
It actually started to hurt as soon as I started to walk upstairs to get Sophia.
When I walked into the room, I thought that was going to have to wrestle a bear or something, because Soph had been dead asleep when I went downstairs. That thought process wentout the window when I walked into the room, I found her wide awake. She must have heard my mom’s voice because she didn’t even ask who was downstairs.
She just gave me a sad smile and got out of bed. I stayed in the room with her as she changed into the clothes that she borrowed from Lennie and tried to figure out a way to cover up her bruised-up cheek.
For a good minute or so, she looked through her purse for something that would cover it up, but she came up empty.
Panic started to flow through her when she realized she didn’t have anything with her, everything she brought with her to San Francisco, still back at the hotel. I tried everything that I could to calm her down and eventually she was able to take a few normal-sized breaths.
I held her in my arms for a few minutes, letting her calm down enough to be able to handle going downstairs and answer every single question that was no doubt going to come her way.
Once she was settled, I placed a kiss against her forehead and we walked downstairs, hand in hand, something that not a single person in our family raised an eyebrow at.
As soon as she greeted everyone, we went into one of the living areas, that this huge ass house has to offer, and after a few deep breaths, Sophia started telling them everything. I only chimed in when she got to what happened yesterday morning.
The room was tense as fuck. Everyone got angry about the situation. That anger transformed into yelling, not at Sophia or at me, but at everything and then the yelling turned into tears. I had thought that Sophia had cried a lot last night, but those tears were minimal if we compared them to the ones from today.
Every single person in that living room cried with her.
Now hours later, Hunter, Isaac, Christian and I all are sitting on Hunter’s back deck, trying to figure out a game plan for my career.
Christian and Eliana arrived about thirty minutes ago after doing me the favor of picking up the SUV, and Sophia’s stuff, and bringing it all back here. When they saw who was here, they decided to stay. Eliana with the women upstairs and Christian down here with us.
“How bad is the press?” I ask, a few minutes after someone asked if I had talked to anyone.
Christian ends up answering the question. “Right now, it’s not that bad. Your mug shot is out and the fact that you beat up someone. Other than that, not a whole lot of details.” Thank fuck. “But just because there aren’t any details now, doesn’t mean that people aren’t digging and that those details won’t make it out soon.”
“Great,” I mutter out, slouching deeper into my chair.
“I’m surprised the fucker hasn’t talked,” my brother says from where he sits.
“His time to talk was yesterday. When Sophia hadn’t given her statement yet. The second she pressed charges against him, his chance to make Blake the bad guy in all of this was gone. The fucker knows that if he talks now, nobody is going to believe him. It’s his word against Sophia’s.” Hearing the way that Isaac’s voice breaks, has me hating that fucker Elijah even more.
This is the man that practically raised me, that stepped up as a father figure when Roy couldn’t, he was even there for me when I needed my brother at times. Seeing him this mad and hearing his voice break as he speaks, is something that I have never experienced and I fucking hate it. All I want to do is go to whatever hospital the fucker is as at, and finish beating the shit out of him.
If I do that, my career would really be in jeopardy. But it would be for Isaac and Sophia, so it would make up for it.
“Where will that go, though? The charges? Do they follow her to Chicago or do they stay here?” Christian asks, looking over at me for answers.
I should know the answers to his questions. Before coming to the house, we should have walked back to the police station and asked what the next steps were, but that just slipped our minds.
