But being here, living with this family, seeing how they treat each other, makes me yearn for this kind of life. Yearn for something I know deep down will never be mine. I lost that when my dad died, and even before, when he was alive, things weren’t that great. They fought a lot. Mom was drinking even back then, and Dad gave up trying to help her.
She didn’t want help. She still doesn’t.
I stay in bed all morning, drifting in and out of sleep, when there’s a rapid knocking on my door and it’s pushed open to reveal Fable Callahan standing there with a giant smile on her pretty face. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, and I swear she could pass for someone my age. I don’t know how old she is, but I’ve seen stuff on the internet and back in the day, Fable was hot AF. She’s still pretty hot. A total MILF if I’m being real, but I can’t think like that because this is Autumn’s mom and she’s the girl I care about.
Fucked that up, though. Yet again. So that’s done.
“Are you going to hide out in here all day or what?” Fable asks way too cheerfully.
“I don’t feel so good.” I run a hand through my hair and tug the comforter up so it covers me to my chin. The careful way Fable’s watching me makes me feel exposed. “Didn’t sleep good last night.”
“Oh really.” Fable raises a brow, her gaze sweeping the room before it settles on the floor. “I think you dropped your phone.”
“You can leave it there,” I start, but too late, the phone is in Fable’s hands and the screen lights up when she touches it.
Revealing the long list of texts from Rylie.
“Looks like someone is desperate to talk to you.” Fable hands me my phone and I take it from her, tucking it under the comforter where I don’t have to see it.
“She’s no one.”
“Girlfriend?”
Hell no. “I don’t have one.”
“Not even Autumn?”
I meet her gaze, her expression dangerously neutral. I wonder if she’s trying to trap me. That’s all my mom ever does. Drops hints and tries to play nice, and when I open up or tell her something, bam! She comes at me, yelling and screaming and carrying on. Calling me a piece of shit like my dad.
Sucks.
“Not even Autumn,” I tell her truthfully. “She’s mad at me.”
Damn. Didn’t mean to be that truthful.
“Oh? What did you do?” Fable doesn’t even bother asking if Autumn did something to me. I guess that’s only natural, that she’s defending her daughter.
Or she knows that all of us guys are stupid and we mess things up all the time.
“Something dumb.” No way am I going to admit what happened. I’d get myself, Autumn and Jake in trouble.
“You don’t want to tell me?”
“Not really.” I swallow hard, embarrassment hitting me hard. And shame. I’m ashamed of my actions last night. How I talked to Autumn, what I did. She was right. I shouldn’t have gone into Jake’s room uninvited and stolen his condoms. It sounds stupid because it is, but I bet I could’ve asked him, hey buddy, got any condoms I can use? And he would’ve given me some, no hesitation.
But I didn’t. No way I can give them back either.
“No problem.” She grabs the back of the chair that sits in front of the desk and flips it around, plopping her butt right in it. “What else is going on?”
“I don’t know.” I sit up a little, scratching the back of my neck. “I’m going to school tomorrow.”
“Drew told me. Are you ready?” Her gaze drops to where my discarded backpack sits. “You’ve worked on your homework? I’m sure you’re behind.”
“I’ll work on it this afternoon.” Lies. I won’t work on shit. How can I concentrate when nothing’s going right in my life?
“Don’t let yourself get behind, Ash. That’s the worst thing I ever did. I barely graduated high school. I was too busy working a full-time job and trying to take care of my little brother,” she says.
At least I don’t have a little brother or sister to worry about, though that would mean I wasn’t in this alone, which might be kind of nice. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t. “Where were your parents?”
“The truth? I don’t really know who my dad was. Some loser who knocked up my mother and then abandoned her when she told him she was pregnant. Not that I can blame him.” She laughs a little, but there’s no humor there. “By the time I was your age, my mom was too busy drinking or off with one of her many boyfriends for days on end. No calls, no hey, I’m over here, so we’d at least know she was alive. She never worried about me and Owen.”
Owen. That’s right. Her brother is Owen Maguire, another retired NFL football player. This family is full of legends. Jake is one lucky fucker. He keeps it up and his dad will help get him a spot on a professional team. At least get him a chance. And that’s all we need, the opportunity to show we’ve got potential. Without that chance, you’re just another talented football player with no one looking at you.
That’s me. That’ll always be me.
“My mom was an absolute nightmare, but I didn’t let her or her actions define me. I realized when I was around fifteen I had to take care of my brother and myself, or else I was going to end up just like her. And my brother would most likely end up in jail because of the kids he was hanging around with. I could already see it, and he was only ten, eleven.” She shakes her head. “It was hard, you know? Reminding myself that I was better than that. That I could get away from it if I worked hard enough. Most of the time, that sounded like a pipe dream. When you’re surrounded by drunks and losers all the time, you start to think that’s your destiny. You’ll never amount to anything else,” Fable explains.
I nod, understanding her perfectly.
“Sometimes I’d find myself tempted to go down that path. Not even sometimes.” She laughs. “More like all the time. It felt like no one paid attention to me. Teachers didn’t care. Girls didn’t like me, and when boys started to notice me, I chased after them. Did you know I was considered a total slut in high school?”
My eyes nearly bug out of my head at her confession, but she doesn’t even notice. She’s too caught up in her story.
“The rumor followed me after I graduated too. I grew up in a small college town, and when I was nineteen and working at a bar downtown, the rumor around campus was that I had sex with every player on the football team,” she explains, like she’s discussing the weather.
What the hell? I really don’t understand why she’s telling me this. This isn’t something you share with a kid you barely know. “Was it—was the rumor true?”
She throws her head back and laughs, like I just cracked the funniest joke. “No,” she says once she sobers up. “I’m going to be real with you right now. I’ve never really confessed this to anyone before. Yes, I messed around with a few of the guys, but not all of them. Not that anyone cared to know the truth. Then one of those football players, one I didn’t mess around with, came to me with an offer I couldn’t refuse. You want to know what his name was?”