down the last of the flask, I threw it on the ground. Through my drunken high haze, I hit the stage. Praying I’d pass the fuck out and wouldn’t have to do this. It had happened before, I was a fuckin’ rock star. It came with the territory.
The blinding lights didn’t help my disposition, trying to remain upright. The quarterback had won the Super Bowl, and there I was, performing at his team’s celebration party.
In North Carolina.
I fuckin’ hated North Carolina.
Once the lights cleared and I could see in front of me, I saw her first.
Harley Jameson.
I meant, Harley Pierce.
Her frame immediately stiffened in Jackson’s hold, while everyone else in the audience lost their shit.
“Cash Motherfuckin’ McGraw,” someone screamed out from the crowd.
Jackson and Harley were sitting at the table closest to the stage.
To me.
Rushing all the memories I hid from with my bottle of Jack. It had the power to make it all go away. One memory after the other, gone in a liter of whiskey. I could outdrink anyone. It was easy. My demons weren’t just Harley and my family anymore.
She came in the form of a little girl who looked just like me.
I watched her and her mother on the news earlier that day.
They were smiling.
Laughing.
Living the life I’d always wanted for them.
With a man I no longer despised. He was everything I knew he would be, and for that, I would forever be grateful and indebted to him. Taking care of my girls.
“Jackson, can you tell us about your first kiss?”
He softly smiled at the reporter in his conference interview after he won the Vince Lombardi trophy for his team. Scoring a record-breaking eight touchdowns in a single game.
“She was my first kiss. We were each other’s actually. Harley is the only woman I’ve ever kissed.”
They tore into him, badgering him with relentless questions in the same way they did to me. Never minding their own fuckin’ business. Thinking they had a right to know whatever they wanted.
Jackson was by far more well-mannered than I was. I usually just told them to eat shit. He wasn’t like me, though, he was better. Always had been. I couldn’t have chosen a better father for my child. He adored her. It was obvious by the way he was staring at them.
They were his whole world.
It wasn’t him nor her I was held captive by. My eyes were held hostage for the little girl in pigtails, reminding me so much of her mother when she was her age.
“And your baby sister, Journey? How is she? She was last seen on her Instagram, cheerleading for her high school.”
“Yes. She’s a freshman this year. Still very much a free spirit. She plans on studying abroad for college at Barcelona University, I believe.”
It was all over for me once I’d heard Bailey speak, “My Auntie Neyney is my best fwend like momma. She teaches me howta dance, like dis.” She stood up and started shaking her butt in the same way Journey used to.
I’d blinked, and tears were falling outta my eyes. Bailey wasn’t my daughter.
She was his.
Theirs.
Despite the fact I didn’t deserve it, I’d wanted to beg for their forgiveness. I’d wanted to meet Bailey. Talk to her. Hold her. Tell her how much I loved her.
More tears slid down the sides of my face.
What did you do, Cash? What the fuck did you do?
There were so many times I’d thought about calling, sending money, just showing up on their door. Fully aware I was being selfish, and I didn’t deserve them. But it didn’t take away the desire to want to know my baby girl.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I’d done right by her by letting them go. It was the only thing I’d ever done right in my life, and I’d been paying for it ever since. No one knew what it was like to live in my shoes. Having the whole world at my fingertips, everything I’d thought I wanted, needed, couldn’t live without.
Somewhere along the line, I’d lost myself. Becoming everything I was afraid of.
The success, the money, the fame, it didn’t mean shit to me. It never did. From the moment we got signed, I thought all my dreams, what I’d worked so hard for, giving up everything...
Including my happiness as if it meant nothing to me. It would all finally make sense. Replacing the void I’d been filling with drugs and booze. It couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The hole