Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
I looked in his eyes. He was sincere. “Yes. He was just flirting. Told me he didn’t mind sharing. That sharing with you would be just like the old college days.”
I expected Brody to be angry. I also expected him to keep to his word not to cause a scene. Shit, was I wrong.
In a matter of seconds, all hell broke loose. Brody slammed Colin up against a locker. Reporters were yelling, players hurdled benches to get to the two men, and coaches were ripping bodies out of their way to get to their star players.
Brody threw a punch, someone grabbed Colin and jerked him to the right, and Brody landed a fist into a locker so hard, the metal was dented by a massive fist print. Both men attempted to get at each other, but there were so many people holding them back, no actual blows were exchanged.
When the two of them were separated, Coach Ryan blew a loud whistle and yelled for everyone except the team to vacate the locker room. Reporters were wrangled like cattle to the exit.
“What the hell is between those two?” Nick asked me when we were out in the hall.
I had no idea, but I was about to find out.
It was after midnight when the hotel room door creaked open. When Brody hadn’t come back after a few hours, I’d assumed he wasn’t staying in my room tonight. And that was just fine with me. After the way he’d reacted, I had no desire to be around him.
Obviously, the two men had history. But he wasn’t the only one who would suffer the consequences from today. Behaving the way he did validated to men like Mr. CUM that women didn’t belong in the locker room. Not to mention that I really didn’t need any more attention on my personal life. My job was to report stories, not be the story. Yet, as I tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, I wondered if he was okay.
The room was pitch dark. I considered pretending to be asleep. Morning would likely bring more clarity. Not much good usually came from getting upset at midnight.
Brody didn’t turn on any lights. He made his way to the other side of the room, and I heard him unzip his pants and toss them on the chair in the corner. He didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom until the door was closed. A few minutes later, the bed dipped, and he slipped in beside me. My eyes were shut, but I could feel him looking at me.
“Her name was Willow.” His voice was barely a whisper, and there was a sadness to it that made me forget I was pissed at him in an instant.
Even though the room was virtually dark, I could see his eyes. They were filled with an anguish that caused a physical ache in my pounding chest. I cupped his cheek, and he closed his eyes for a few moments. When he reopened them, he continued. “I was thirteen when she moved in next door to me. She and her mother moved in with her grandmother. She was beautiful. And wild. I wasn’t a saint, that was sure as shit, but Willow . . . she just had a streak in her.”
He paused for a long time. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the right words. It was obvious that wherever this story would lead, it wasn’t going to end well. So I waited until he was ready.
“Her mother was a drug addict. She didn’t stick around very long. She’d disappear for months at a time, and every once in a while she’d reappear long enough to rob her mother blind and screw up Willow all over again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We did normal, wild teenager things, like pool hopping in the community pool, taking the train to jump off the rocks into the Harlem River where the waterway meets Spuyten Duyvil Creek, or stealing a bottle from her grandmother’s liquor cabinet and riding the subways while passing it back and forth in a brown paper bag. Teenage shit. But Willow was always pushing for more. It seemed to get worse every time her mother would reappear. We lived in apartment buildings next to each other in Brooklyn. They were close together, but not attached. There was maybe three, three-and-a-half feet between our flat rooftops. When her mother would reappear, Willow would come to my apartment, jumping from roof to roof. She’d straddle the jump, not thinking twice about the thirty-foot drop to concrete below her. She’d go from being wild to dangerous.”
There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach listening to him talk about Willow. For so many reasons. I’d met Drew around the same age as he’d met Willow. I knew how my story ended, and now I knew his wasn’t going to be pretty either.