Happily Ever All-Star: A Secret Baby Romance - Sosie Frost Page 0,363

say, but it’s fine. I just had to do a uh…photo shoot.”

“Where are you?”

She sighed. “Atwood.”

“You’re in…you’re across the country?”

“Just for today.”

I paced the field. “We’re playing Atwood next week.”

“Yeah. There’s a…photography gig I’m doing. For the team.”

“You’re a horrible liar.”

“I know it sounds strange, but I’ll explain it all later.”

“I got some time. Why don’t you try explaining it now?”

“Lachlan, I promise. It’s nothing. It’s a little photography job I picked up. I’ll do it this afternoon, and then I’ll fly right home…”

I’d stopped listening.

The phone nearly tumbled out of my hand.

The brunette waved at me from the chain-link fence that separated the practice facility from where our fans watched the practices. But training camp was closed to the public until two in the afternoon.

I had no doubt Victoria sweet-talked security into letting her in.

“Elle.” I interrupted her. “I’ll call you back.”

I hung up before she answered.

This was not my day.

Victoria waited for me with a little curl of her fingers. She hadn’t changed.

She was just as soul-suckingly beautiful as she was in high school. I saw past the raven hair and moon-pale skin now. Her spell had broken when she’d called from the hospital to tell me about the baby she nearly miscarried.

Tried to miscarry.

But Victoria tested me again. The plunging neckline of her shirt pushed her tits up, revealing too much pale, creamy skin. She leaned against the fence, popping her bubble gum. Her sunglasses pushed into her thick, black hair.

“Hey there, sexy.” Victoria glanced me over with sinfully dark eyes. Fortunately, Sebastian had inherited my greens. “You look good in black and gold. I could eat you up.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I saw you on TV.” She smiled. “You looked so damn handsome in all the pads and sweat and grass stains. Reminded me of the old days, you know?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“I had to come see you,” she said.

“No. You didn’t.”

“Are you still mad at me?” She pouted. I remembered that look. It had once been cute, until the day she puffed her bottom lip out and tried to steal my attention from my hungry son. “Can’t we just talk? It’s been so long.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Lachlan, we have a history together.”

“It’s over.”

“We have a son.”

She was lucky a fence separated us. “No, you don’t.”

I meant for the truth to hurt. She didn’t react.

“You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. I don’t have my baby now…but I’d like to. Can I see him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

She didn’t deserve a reason. “Because five years ago you terminated your rights. You don’t get to see him. Go home. Stop calling my mother. Stop calling me.”

“People change, Lachlan.”

“You abandoned him.”

“Yes, I did.” Victoria shrugged. “But I was young and scared. I lost him, and I lost you.”

“You’re not getting either back.”

She dropped the smiles and pouts and cute little scrunches of her nose. Her eyes narrowed, and every muscle in her face hardened. There was the Victoria I remembered—not Barbie plastic, only barbed wire.

“I will be a part of his life.” Her voice burned with contempt. “I think you should respect that.”

“He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know anything about what’s happened.”

“And don’t you think he deserves to know?”

“He’s only five years old!”

“He’s my son.”

Not even close. “Legally, he’s my mother’s son now.”

“Biologically—”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Then I’m getting a lawyer.”

I’d rip the damn fence apart. “That’s bullshit. You don’t want your son. You want custody. Child-support. You’re thinking in dollar signs, not his best interests.”

“I can’t believe you’d think something so low of me.”

“I can’t believe you’d think I’m that stupid.”

Victoria sighed. “You’ve changed, Lachlan.”

“Yeah. I hope I have. We’re done here.”

I didn’t let her speak. I stormed to the practice facility with an adrenaline rush that only twisted my head and ached in my muscles. It burned like acid and exhausted me as I ran my drills in the afternoon.

Not even a bottle of ice-cold water spilled over my head could clear that consuming, piercing, blinding rage.

Practice was shit. My play was shit. The coaches called me shit.

This wasn’t happening.

In three fucking months, I had gone from an absolute legend—a fucking gridiron god with every goddamned reporter, coach, and player eating out of my hand to…

I stalked into the locker room after the horrific practice. The TVs turned on, blasting Sports Nation.

My face greeted me.

And so did the headline.

Will The Rivets Cut Lachlan Reed?

Ainsley Ruport spear-headed the charge of course. The fucking asshole had no idea the shit that I was going through, the pressure on