Chasing Football Dreams (Diner Girl #2)

Chapter Seventeen

I entered the house surrounded in darkness, dropping my bags at the front door when I found the outlines of Duncan’s form seated at the bottom of the stairs. Shoulders hunched over with his hands interlaced behind the base of his neck. It was wrong of me to have said those cruel words to him.

I moved cautiously over to him, not sure if he wanted to be near me.

It was selfish of me to run away like that and not let him know where I was. I felt like a childish and spoiled brat for how I reacted to Monique’s remarks. She was jealous that I was loved by the man she let slip through her fingers. Nothing about this was Duncan’s fault. He couldn’t control Monique’s feelings or tell her to bully me.

After my feelings and emotions finally agreed again, I sent him a text telling him that I was fine and that I would sleep at the dorm but he asked me to rather meet him at his house. Coach Shane had no issue dropping me off since he didn’t want me to walk after he was also included in the suspicion that someone was after me.

“Duncan,” My voice came out hoarser than planned.

His head raised, his eyebrows pinching together as if he thought he had misheard but the moment his honeycomb eyes locked with my pale blue eyes, he instantly shot to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, feeling like I didn't deserve him.

His arms snaked around my shoulders as they embraced me against his chest and held me tightly against him. “I shouldn’t have run,” I mumbled, nestling my head against his shoulder.

He shook his head. “No, baby. I should have been honest with her from the start, instead of avoiding her,”

“That’s just it,” I pulled out his arms, my hands resting on his chest. “It’s the past. It shouldn’t bother me. It’s not like I stole you from her or had you cheating on her,”

“My actions say otherwise, love,” He traced my chin with his thumb. “I could never give her a chance because you were tugging at my heart every moment, we were near each other and sorry to tell you this, but I am the bastard in this story,”

He caught my eyes and I saw the remorse in his gaze. “I should have clamped down on the thrill of lust and should have tried harder to approach you. Monique is doing all of this because I was the coward,”

“You couldn’t have known she would become this obsessed,”

He shrugged. “I don’t want you to take my guilt and make it right,”

“I also don’t want you to pay for her mistakes for the rest of your life or else we will fall apart and neither of us wants to end things when it just came together,”

“How can you still be such a saint even when the world cracked open and pulled you in, suffocating you with unfair manipulations?” He seemed engrossed in caressing my face.

I shrugged. “Maybe because I don’t want to become what they did to me,”

“Baby, why didn’t you tell me that she was bullying you?”

I smiled at him, touching his face and seeing the evidence of my doings on his cheeks. “Because you would have wanted to do something about it,”

“Damn straight. I warned her once,”

I placed my hand over his mouth to stop him from talking nonsense. “Truth be told. You made it worse when you decided to stand up for me. You made me seem weak in her eyes. She will continue to take her hatred out on me if you continue to step in for me. I can handle her and her bitchiness. Today was just a different day with everything that was going on in my life and I made the mistake of letting her get to me,”

He stared at me—eyes unblinking except for the high raised eyebrow emphasizing that he would like to get in a word. I removed my hand, sheepishly smiling at him.

“I knew something was bothering you this morning but I am trying to find out why you wouldn’t tell me,”

I shrugged. “It feels like I am whining,”

“You have the right to whine, Zoey. With everything that happened to you, you have the right to talk about it,”

I shifted my eyes away from his gaze. I felt the repercussions of keeping the truth away from him. Having my suppressed memories suddenly released into my brain made it difficult to process everything.

But you can’t keep them to yourself.

I hated that my subconscious expressed more empathy than I ever did. But it was right. For Duncan to know what was going on, I had to let him in and trust him. I can’t always keep everything from him, it would only push him away from me.

“My memories came to light,”

I caught him frowning when I raised my gaze.

“The night of the interview when I collapsed, memories flooded my mind of my childhood. The nightmares and dreams I thought were nothing seem to be memories that were suppressed,”

It seemed as if I hit the air from his lungs he just stared at me with eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. I waited for the gushing sound of air making its way back to him followed by him scolding me for not telling him.

“You know your kidnapper?” It was the first word that fell from his mouth.

I shook my head. “He kept his identity concealed with a mask but his voice is familiar. Like I know him,”

“And Coach Shane?”

I rubbed my left hand up and down my right arm wanting to wipe away the chills. “The blood tests are going to confirm whether I am nor not,"

The realization was still unbearable to comprehend. For seventeen years I was forced to believe that my parents passed away when all this time, I was taken away from my family and placed in an orphanage where I suffered the harsh part of life. Yet, I don’t seem to regret learning of the situation because if I were Zoey Martin, I would have never known about the state of living in an orphanage as personal.

“What are we going to do about this?” He asked, taking my hands in his.

“Take one step at a time,”

He nodded but I saw the frown on his face. I informed him that I decided to seek refuge at my so-called grave when Coach Shane showed up and gave him all the details of my afternoon. By now he has let me take a shower and change my close, including making sure I stayed warm not to catch a cold for this weekend’s championship game.

“He expected all this time that you could be his daughter,” Duncan noted in the darkness filled with silence.

I nuzzled closer to his side, embracing the warmth of his body. “Crazy, huh? I guess, I can see where my stubbornness and gut feelings come from,”

He chuckled. “Your self-assurance can’t be identified as stubborn just because you know what you want. I won’t lie when I admit that you were stubborn initially, but you just needed a hand to guide you to help spread your wings. You did the flying all on your own,”

“I don’t know what I am going to do when the truth comes to light,” The pressure of being his daughter is going to be overwhelming and I don’t know if I was ready for it.

He rolled on his side, caging me in his arms and pulling me against him so that my face nuzzled in the crook of his neck. “You don’t have to change just because your father is famous. You can still be you and still be his daughter,”

“How do I reconnect with my parents after seventeen years? All this time I thought they were dead only to find out that they are very much alive,”

“You take it day by day. Me and the team, we have your back, Zoey. Even Eliza is going to be at your side every step of the way,”

I rolled out of his arms and onto my back, staring up at the ceiling. “Eliza is meeting her mother tomorrow at the coffee shop and she wants me to tag along,”

“I thought her parents don’t want anything to do with her,”

I shrugged. “Her mom reached out and Eliza is suspicious of her sudden interest,”

“What do you think she wants?”

“In my opinion? Mess with Eliza’s head,”