Now, Kayla throws her hands into the air in defeat, having had enough of me.
“Oh…no. No. Sorry, I don’t want anything.” I wave her off.
On the court, Los Angeles calls a timeout and the players jog over to the side. Ben is right in front of me, but we’re divided by the five rows of people between us. Still, it doesn’t feel like much at all. It’s closer than we’ve been in years.
A trainer passes him a towel and he wipes his face, leaning in to listen to his coach.
I’m oblivious to the fact that the jumbotron has turned its attention toward the crowd, hopping from fan to fan as they go wild seeing themselves on screen.
“Oh my god! Hold on! We can’t get food yet. This is my chance!” Julia screams, leaping to her feet and dragging Ryan with her. Kayla joins in too, and then she grabs my hand. I’ve been such a horrible friend tonight that I don’t feel like I can deny them this too.
I stand and wave my hands gently while they all dance around, enjoying themselves and letting loose. I’m actually shocked when their endeavors pay off and we suddenly appear on screen.
“GUYS!” Julia screams. “That’s us!”
Ben, the team, everything is forgotten in that moment as we all go crazy, shouting and dancing and making a spectacle of ourselves. Even I’m excited to see myself up there, blown up and huge. I’m laughing alongside Kayla, who’s thrown her arms around me, and together, we jump up and down. Then the jumbotron swoops to another section of the crowd and we all turn to each other in disbelief.
“We’re celebrities now!”
“Can you believe we made it on there?!”
“Why didn’t I think to get a picture?! No one will believe us!”
It takes us a second to catch our breaths and calm down from the experience. As they leave to get food, I take my seat and turn back to the court. The guys are back in play now, but when I look down at the row of players resting on the bench on the side of the court, I find Anthony staring back at me, brows furrowed in confusion. When our eyes lock, he rears back, and I suspect he finally realizes I’m the person he suspects me to be. A ghost back from the dead. I don’t know what I expect him to do—scowl, frown, flip me off, but he does none of those things. Instead, he unveils a huge megawatt smile. Fans notice and turn back, looking at me.
I smile and give him a small wave before he shakes his head, almost in disbelief, and turns back to the game.
Fortunately, my friends aren’t there to notice.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ben
I’m walking out of the Staples Center toward my car, escorted by security on both sides. My attention is down on my phone as I check to see if Caleb’s nanny, Donna, messaged me at all during the game. She’s in her mid-sixties and flat-out hates technology. When I first hired her last year, I bought her the newest iPhone and walked her through how to use it. For a few months, she knew nothing beyond how to answer a phone call. Now, she can call and text, and recently, she’s learned how to send photos too. It’s her crowning achievement.
Tonight, she snapped a shot of Caleb tucked in bed, and I zoom in on it, trying to see as much of him as I can. Donna’s hands aren’t steady and the photo is a little blurry, but I can see that he has one arm wrapped around his Lightning McQueen stuffy and his thumb stuck in his mouth. His face is so relaxed and sweet while he’s asleep. It’s such a juxtaposition to the kind of kid he is when he’s awake. A wrecking ball. A cyclone. A boy on a mission to destroy the world. I smile thinking about it.
“Bro! Ben! WAIT UP!”
I glance back to see Anthony all-out sprinting to catch up to me. His security guards are barely able to keep up with him, and I can tell they’re annoyed by having to try.
I pause and turn back, irritated. I’m ready to be home. I want to check in on Caleb and get some sleep. We play again the day after tomorrow, and I’m tired just thinking about it.
“What do you want, man?”
He hunches over and grabs his knees. “Damn, I’ve been trying to catch up with you since the game ended. I lost track of you when you were doing postgame press. I just fucking ran from the locker room.”
“You in that bad of shape?”
He shoots fire with his gaze. “You’re kidding, right? How many damn points did I put up on the board tonight? Huh?”
I grin. “Well, here I am. What do you want?”
He stands up and his entire expression changes; his eyes go soft and his smile falls. “Raelynn was at the game tonight.”
For one second, hope lives inside me—before it’s snuffed out by a cold dose of reality.
I roll my eyes and turn around to keep walking.
“I’m telling you, it was her!”
“Right.”
He runs to catch up to me again. “Dude. Why don’t you believe me? She was there in the stands!”
I give up fighting him, exhausted from the game. “Okay, she was there.”
“Why don’t you sound excited? She’s in California!”
I do a poor job of masking my annoyance when I answer him. “What do you want me to do about it?”
For one, I don’t really believe him. He thinks he saw Raelynn, but there’s no way she was here.
No way.
I’ve had a hell of a time in the last year and a half. It’s been one thing after another—a constant fire burning in every direction. Half the time, I can barely sleep with all the things running through my mind. It’s not as if I’ve been able to properly put Raelynn in my past. I left Texas and flew straight to Tokyo for the Olympic Games, and while I was still there, playing in the tournament, Shelby went into labor three weeks early. Mike called me in Tokyo, and I’ll never forget that moment, where I was, what I was doing. I was back in my apartment at the athletes’ village with the name and number for a private investigator pulled up on my phone. It was a shitty thing to consider, hunting down Raelynn’s information like that. I would have never gone through with it; I’d already decided against it, but still, I vacillated between thinking it was only a little wrong and convincing myself it was outright criminal.
When Mike called, I already had my phone in my hand, finger poised over the number for the private investigator. I answered in a daze, barely comprehending what he was telling me. Words leapt out at me like “preterm labor”, “NICU”, “premature lungs”, “on oxygen”.
Here was this pivotal moment in my life, the exact instant in which I went from caring solely for myself to desperately loving another human beyond comprehension. I barely knew about this baby boy. It shouldn’t have wrecked my world that his life was in peril, and yet, it did. I was a mess from what had transpired with Raelynn, and I was already not in a sound state of mind. I barely recall how I stayed in Tokyo the last few days of the tournament. I packed my things after I got off the phone with Mike, called Coach Dalton, and told him I was getting the first flight back to the States. I remember Anthony finding me at the elevator bank, yanking me back, trying to get me to look him in the eyes as he convinced me my baby boy would be alright. He’d talked to Mike on the phone too. Caleb was stable, for now. It wasn’t as dire as it seemed.