Keeping Seven Read online

  “I saw them kissing at the house in Bar Harbor. And according to him, that probably isn’t the only time it’s happened.”

  “Have you spoken to either of them about it?”

  “My dad. There isn’t anything to say on it, they just need to fucking quit it.”

  “What does this mean? Do they still love each other?”

  Julian grunted. “I’m starting to wonder if he ever loved her. Rebecca doesn’t know about this, and I want to keep it that way. I’ll speak to my mom when I’m ready. Blowing up on her won’t rewrite what’s been done, and my fuse is too short for hearing anything other than it was a one-off and she realizes how fucking huge her lapse in judgement was.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner, and you’ve carried it around with you all this time.”

  “I’m not big on unnecessary discussions,” he said, his attention dwindling to the cell phone he’d freed from his pocket. He tapped the screen with his thumb, the phone cradled in his long fingers. A frown touched his lips.

  “What is it?” I asked, the skin at the back of my neck prickling.

  “Phil Trist just dropped me a text.” My blank stare prompted Julian to elaborate some more. “Cornerback. Big buy with dreads.”

  “Oh. Phil. Right, yeah. I know him.” What lies. I didn’t know him.

  “He wants your phone number.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Mine?”

  Julian’s expression was troubled as he glanced at me, his eyes dipping right back to his cell. “Right? That’s what I was thinking. It’s for his wife, though. She’s arranging a night out and she’s asking if you’ll to go with them.”

  “Who’s his wife?”

  “You were talking to her in the family lounge. She left a lasting impression on you, then?”

  I smiled, Julian’s answering grin dripping in smugness. “Should I go?”

  “Do you want to go?”

  Did I? I had no answer for that. Well, I did, but isolating myself from the women who were destined to become a staple in my future meant no wasn’t a word I should be throwing around lightly.

  “I guess I’m going out. What are they like? The wives and girlfriends, I mean.”

  Julian’s flat look told me everything I already knew. “Just don’t judge them too soon and you’ll… survive.”

  So the best I could hope for was survival. Brilliant.

  Standing at the bathroom sink, I fastened the back of my diamond earring. Not real diamonds. I’d bought these babies from a costume jewelry and weave store in Downtown LA, next to The Alley. I’d hemmed and hawed over the fake, sparkling hoop earrings, but I loved them, and no one other than me had to know they hadn’t exactly broken the bank at ten dollars a pair. And my skin hadn’t turned green. Yet.

  Julian strolled up to the open doorway, dropping one muscled shoulder against the doorjamb. He wore a pair of black sweater-style shorts, everywhere else bare, tan skin. The man was ripped, lean, and obscenely handsome.

  I smiled at him through the illuminated mirror, lowering my hands from my ear to run my fingers through the left side of my hair. I’d sat with rollers in for an undesirable amount of time this afternoon, and my hair now hung in loose, luscious waves, curtesy of Rebecca and her never-ending patience with me.

  “Is that new?” Julian dipped his chin at my outfit. The tailored black cargo pants sat high on my waist, cinched with a black belt. The V-cut cream bralette had been Rebecca’s idea, the clear strappy heels mine. Even though I had valid and serious doubts in the beginning, I was becoming used to the bra, accepting that it was a top, just in the tiniest form.

  “No. The pants and shoes are mine, but the bra belongs to Rebecca.”

  “Color me shocked.” Julian gave me a droll look, then shifted his gaze to my bare stomach. “This is a girls’ night, right? My teammates turning up to fish isn’t going to be a problem for me?”

  “I’m not interested in any of your teammates.”

  “Are you wearing your ring?”

  I couldn’t hold back my laughter as I faced Julian and held out my hand, palm to the quartz floor tiles, and wiggled my fingers to show him my ring was where it had been every day since he’d given it to me. “You’re acting crazy.”

  “Because you make me crazy. I won’t survive you going back to LA, you know. Figure that one out.”

  “It won’t be for long. I’m sure you’ll manage. You’re very resilient like that.”

  He gave me a doubtful look. “Resilient, maybe. Happy? Hell no.”

  “Can you survive tonight at least? Diana and the other girls are waiting for me.” I gritted my teeth in heightened suspense. You know, the bad kind.

  “I’ve got no choice. I’m heading over to Joseph’s with Dog after you leave. He’s painting his living room when he finishes work, and I said I’d give him a hand.” Julian pushed off the doorjamb and set about ruining the rose matte lipstick I’d just carefully applied.

  “Will Cecilia be feeding you?” I asked around one of his kisses, sliding my hands over his outrageous biceps. Our one-time Uber driver, Joseph, and his wife, Cecelia, had implemented themselves as Julian’s surrogate family while he was living in Miami, and I added visiting them to my mental list of things I had to be before going home.

  Julian smiled against my mouth, one hand roaming up my stomach to cup my breast, rolling my nipple between his thumb and finger over the top of my bralette. “Even if I’m not hungry.”

  Two hours later, on the guest list at a swanky bar in Miami Beach, my night had turned out better than I’d worried myself into believing it was going to be. Some of the wives were stubbornly showing me the cold shoulder—for reasons only they knew—but the rest of the girlfriends were open and friendly. Mostly, they were loud, wild, and unfiltered.

  I’d found myself neck-deep in more than one explicit conversation. I’d never had any reason to complain when it came to my sex life with Julian. If anything, I always got the feeling he held back when it came to me, and if I was to let my inhibitions go like one or two of the red-blooded women here tonight, I’d experience a more powerful, domineering side to Julian. One I often told myself he didn’t still hold back from me. More sexually experienced than me, it came as no shock that I was the puritan in our relationship. He’d been with multiple women before we’d met, and I wouldn’t ever be able to catch up to his numbers. I could be more adventurous with him, though, like Layla, the girlfriend of Kyler Blake, suggested I should.

  “I’m telling you, girl. No underwear during a game is key. Drop him a hint as he’s leaving the night before, or you know, send him a sneaky, under-skirt selfie. A little something to power him on the field and remind him what’s good at home. Take it from me, a gal who knows, he’ll expect you to get used to coming second to football season, so you’d be clever to find ways to scrape your way back into first place position. Our men love football, but they need sex. There are plenty of jersey chasers and groupies out there ready to give it up at first glance, so you gotta be dirtier, sexier, and more adventurous. Know what I’m saying?”

  I never voiced it, but Julian hadn’t once put me behind football and expected me to stay there. Our altercations had primarily centered around him not seeing me enough. When it came to us, Julian was the greedy one. I had considered that we were too fresh into the NFL, and that demanding lifestyle hadn’t fully claimed us in its clutches yet. I was no ditz, though. I knew football stood proudly at top-tier in Julian’s life. I was just lucky enough he’d carved plenty of space for me beside it.

  My chest heated just from thinking about him. I only had three more nights here, and I would have considered this a perfectly good waste of one of them if I hadn’t settled in so smoothly with most of these women.

  A tall blonde—Verity?— new wife to one of the defensive tackles who’s name I wasn’t even going to try and remember, leaned into the woman next to her. The artful smile curving her full mouth drew my attention over there. The music in the bar wasn’
t pounding, the Spanish guitar instrumentals serving as subtle background climate. I watched her lips move and say in a normal tone, “Our quarterback’s proving popular this season.”

  The woman sitting next to her flicked her gaze upward, her green eyes landing on me. At least she had the decency to look sheepish.

  The blonde—let’s just say her name was Verity—readjusted her slight angled position, her calculating expression paving into a hopeless presentation of innocence. “No offense, obviously.”

  Obviously. “Why should I be offended?”

  Laughter sputtered from Verity’s nose, her jewel-encased hand lifting to cover her mouth in pantomime coyness. “Foot in mouth again.”

  “Just say whatever it is you’re dying to say and save us all the sixty seconds.” My body hummed in anger, that anger extending to everyone else at the table who had suddenly clammed up to ogle this spectacle that my instinct had warned me was coming.

  “Verity.” Diana Trist’s smoky voice held a cord of authority all eyes around our table gravitated toward, shrinking inches under it. “Don’t start. This isn’t the time or place. You have something to say to Angel, say it in private.”

  Aggravation mounted, my hands beginning to shake under the long table covered in designer purses, fruity cocktails, and expensive, vintage wines.

  “It’s not Vee’s fault,” a third voice joined in. By that point, names were a luxury I’d ran out of patience for. She flicked her long, brunette hair over one shoulder, revealing tiered earrings dripping in diamonds. She pulled a cell phone from her Yves Saint Laurent purse, scrolling over the screen with her acrylic talons. Slid the phone across the table, the neutral expression she wore non-indicative of whose side she was on, or if there even were sides.

  I picked up the phone from between two dinner candles, overflowing with raw energy, my sinuses stinging off it. I hit PLAY and watched in private mortification as Julian sat on a canopied daybed on a beach resort, two beautiful, curvy women only just held together by strained strings of overstretched material. I didn’t care what they wore, or how little. What made me feel like a dumbass was how one of them felt so liberated as to put her hands on Julian. His slow reflexes helped nothing, and I screamed at him in my head to get off the bed and sit somewhere less incriminating.

  The lesser hysterical side of me understood completely that he’d been out with his very famous teammates—which he rarely did—and women would always be a side order to those events. The insecure, regular girl from Cali felt largely threatened. I trusted Julian as much as you could trust anyone, but I resented the circus that came with giving up that trust. I’d done well to keep out of it as long as I had. The ticking timer on my self-exclusion would have run down eventually, but I wasn’t ready for this personal attack so soon. The new ring on my finger made it even more humiliating. Like I had more to prove to people I’d known less than a handful of hours.

  I handed the phone back to its meddling owner. Verity tucked her chin to her chest with only a quarter of the snide smile she’d worn five minutes ago.

  The video wasn’t brought up again. Not to my face, anyway. The girlfriends and most of the wives towed me through the night with an expertise that advanced with the lifestyle. This hierarchy was designed for the brave and the bold. I couldn’t see myself making friends based upon requirements. I had nothing against polite and cordial, but drama induced nights like this… well, I could do without them. Period.

  I stuck around for another hour to enjoy time with the girls I actually did like. Verity didn’t get another look from me, and I pretended not to notice when her shoulder dipped and her head turned, poised to whisper so rudely about someone at the table. Lowering to her level was an immature move, but I was Googling the shit out of her and her husband when I got back to Los Angeles, so I would be armed for my return. Julian probably wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t have to socialize with these pariahs.

  Julian was still up when I unlocked the door to his condo and dragged my tired, slightly tipsy ass inside. From the sectional, legs stretched out in front of him to the floor, feet crossed at the ankles, he raised an eyebrow as if to ask, that bad?

  I rolled my eyes in answer. Yes. It was that fucking bad.

  Apparently practicing social distancing, Angel sat on the far side of the sectional, space between us for seven or eight more adults to fit. Dropping back against the leather cushions, she closed her eyes and expelled a bone-deep sigh that sounded like she’d cleared out her lungs in the flourished process.

  “Didn’t go well, then?” I picked up the remote and turned off NFL Network. Abandoning me, Dog got up, turned around with his ass in my face, and padded over the sectional to lie across Angel instead. His elongated body looked too big on Angel’s compact one.

  “It was going fine, until…” She opened her eyes and looked at me. Even in the dim glow from the wall lamps I could tell something had happened.

  “Until what?” I probed impatiently.

  “Let’s just say we were one cackle away from a malevolent potion brewing.”

  I gave Angel a look that demanded she expand on that metaphor.

  “They’re bitches, Julian. That many wealthy, entitled, and in one case—spoiled—women shouldn’t be hanging out together. It felt more like we’d entered into a competitive battle than actually trying to enjoy ourselves. It was just so… varsity.”

  That couldn’t be good, and if I was setting up shop with the Dolphins for as long as my signed contract indicated I would, I was going to need more effort on Angel’s part.

  “You went there already decided you didn’t like them. How did you think the night would turn out when you aren’t giving anyone a chance?”

  Those big, honey-brown eyes rounded in patent revulsion. “I was sticking up for you!”

  “I can look after myself.”

  “Emphasis on yourself.”

  My eyebrows hiked up as I tucked my hands into my pockets. “Whoa… what was that?”

  “You aren’t sticking up for me. Tell that woman’s husband to keep your name out of her filler-injected mouth when she isn’t educated on the subject she’s preaching.”

  “I don’t get involved in that—”

  Angel’s exasperation bloomed.

  “No. You just expect me to dirty my hands on your behalf.”

  “I play football, Angel. That’s how I get paid. Football’s how I provide you with a good life. Are you really complaining about putting your prejudices on the back burner to branch out and be friendly with the people who are going to take you in as their family? I can’t be around all the time when you’re living here.”

  “My family’s fucked up enough, thank you. And do you hear yourself or did you get hit in your thick skull during your last game? They are laughing at us!”

  Thick skull? If I wasn’t as pissed as balls, the tingle under my skin would manifest into a shit-eating grin. I was pissed, though.

  “So fucking handle it. I’m busting my ass to win a championship. This isn’t my drama. You need to deal with it and figure out a way to coexist if you planned on having any kind of life in Miami.”

  Disbelief shot from Angel’s eyes like razors. I got the feeling she’d bludgeon me with those knife points if she could. “Not that you’ve asked, but you’re the cause of one of the most degrading nights of my life.” She smothered on extra layers of exaggeration. “I was ever so kindly shown how you prefer to spend your time when you’re letting loose with the guys. Oh, but better not forget the girls. They played a starring guest role in tonight’s humiliation encore.”

  “What girls?” I sat up, hunching over my knees to get fully invested in this dumpster fire.

  Angel narrowed her eyes, tossing me another filthy look. In the space of just a few minutes, she’d become a pro at it.

  “Don’t insult me, Julian. Thing 1 and Thing 2 hanging all over you like bacteria. Even if I don’t have anything to worry about and you’re calling wrong place wrong time, couldn’t y
ou have set them straight so every douchebag in America doesn’t think you’re dicking around?”

  I had to hand it to her. I was fucking impressed. And weirdly turned on. Angel hadn’t given me this much lip in all the time I’d known her, and believe me, I’d done worse than what I was being accused of now. And speaking of accusations, I’d done fuck-all wrong.

  “There’s nothing to really see in this video is there?” I wasn’t titfaced at Nikki Beach. I’d drank water, remembered everything, and the mental run-throughs were PG13.

  “If you class other women’s hands on your skin as nothing.”

  “She was just there, Angel. I don’t know her name, who she is. I took her hands off me.”

  “You could have acted more urgently. You’re asking me to fit into this whirlwind rotation of your spotlighted lifestyle but don’t make it easy for me whatever you do. Jeez. Is this how it is? You out with all types of women, unwilling to set the record straight?”

  “You knew I was out. The reason I don’t sit in here every fucking night is so I can forget for a couple hours how much I fucking miss you. And while we’re on the subject, explain Beau Kessler to me. He’s just as fucking famous as I am, and you’re seen all over LA with him. Is that how it is with him? He’s macking on my girl and I just sit back like some fucking dashboard clown? Head bobbing with a Joker grin like there’s not a fucking braincell in my head while he weasels what’s mine?”

  Angel gave a dismissive snort. “You know we’re friends. I’ve never hidden that from you.”

  “A friend who wanted between your legs the first time he set eyes on you.”

  “What’s it matter, anyway? I’m haul-assing to the other side of the world for you. You won’t have to worry about me and him. He’s just overspill I’m funneling out so I can uproot and pussyfoot around you and your goddamn season!”

  Dog’s screechy bark jolted Angel and me both. He growled a low threat, ears ramrod straight. His riled response was all the warning needed.