Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 14 TRISTAN

My eyes edge down to her left hand.

The man beside her clutches it in his when it should be my hand sliding into hers.

I was late.

I missed the entire visitation, and I slipped into the back of the church during the first song. It’s better this way, anyway. It’s always a circus when I come back home. Everyone wants to know everything about my life in the NFL, but that’s not why I’m here today.

I’m here to support a family who still means a lot to me…to a woman who still means a lot to me. Truth be told, she still means everything to me, and it took all of one second looking at the back of her head from the back of this church to realize how stupid I’ve been.

I should have fought for her. I should have tried harder. I didn’t know what to do or how to get in touch with her as time marched forward, but hindsight tells me that was just an excuse.

As my parents reminded me, I had college to attend. I had a future to think about.

I had big dreams ahead of me, and while she’d always been the star of many of those dreams, there were other things I’d planned to achieve on my own that didn’t involve her.

And now her fingers are linked through someone else’s. Another man sits beside her at her father’s funeral.

She moved on. I wasn’t just late to the funeral. I’m also too late .

By all accounts, I’ve moved on, too.

Except I haven’t. Not even a little.

My mom stands to my right. She squeezes my hand. My dad stands to my left. He’s staring blankly ahead, probably keeping his feelings about today buried deep like he does about everything. He’s the kind of guy who can make everyone feel like they’re his best friend, but I often wonder who his best friend is. Was it Bill? He’s not the type to share his feelings, but he manages to elicit them from everyone around him.

Still, I’ve been careful not to overshare details about my personal life with them. They’re my parents, and I’m as honest with them as I can be, but it’s all within the set filter of knowing who lives next door to them.

I beat myself up for a long time after she left. Was it something I said? Something I did? Some way I made her feel? Eventually I had to move on, new abandonment issues firmly in place as I found myself unable to grow close to anybody for fear that they’d leave, too.

And so when my mom told me on one of our weekly phone calls that Janet mentioned Tessa was dating some guy in the city, that he was going to propose to her, I saw it as my sign to move on. I was hurting, and I was vulnerable, and fucking Savannah swooped in. She eats vulnerability for breakfast, and she preyed on me.

Another example of how fucking stupid I am.

Live and learn, and then fix it.

My eyes are still trained on the hand holding Tessa’s sixteen rows in front of me.

I don’t think I can fix that . It’s not my problem to fix anymore, anyway.

It’s fine. I slipped in late, I’ll slip out early, and nobody ever has to know I was here.

Except Kristen Jacobs, the chick who was always after me starting in middle school, is in the next pew over, and I can feel her gaze on me.

Shannon Saunders is behind me.

Lauren Matthews is a couple pews ahead of me.

Wendy Jennings. Kayla Price. Nicole Tucker. Jamie Fitch. Tiffany Gable. Jennifer Blakely.

And it isn’t just the females who were in our class here supporting Tessa. All the guys from the team are here. They loved her, too—not as much as I did, but she was friends with everybody back then.

Until the day she disappeared.

I can’t help but wonder if some of them are here today because they’re curious about her . As far as I know, she hasn’t been back. She doesn’t keep in touch with anybody from this town. And now she’s here holding hands with some guy I don’t know.

My chest feels heavy, like my heart is breaking all over again. Like I had hope in my heart until this very moment.

The song ends and the congregation sits. A few different people speak to the man Bill was, but I don’t hear any of it because I’m lost in thought about the past as I stare at the back of her head.

I glance at my watch. The preacher has been droning on and on for the last thirty-six minutes, and I have a plane to catch in just under five hours with a nearly three-hour drive in between. I can’t miss my flight, and that doesn’t account for potential traffic or issues getting to the airport.

But I can’t leave without her knowing I was here. Without looking into her eyes. Without…something.

I don’t know what.

She must sense someone is staring at her because she turns to the side and glances a few rows back—not far enough to make eye contact with me, though.

Eventually the service ends, and the first row leaves first behind the casket. Her eyes are down as she exits her pew, and she glances up, offering small waves to familiar faces. My chest tightens as I stare at her.

God damn, she’s beautiful.

She looks like she did back then, only a little older. A little more jaded. A little more…I don’t know. Womanly? It sounds so stupid, but she was a seventeen-year-old girl the last time I saw her. This woman here…she’s different than the girl I knew.

And I have the sudden overwhelming urge to get to know who she is…to fall in love with her.

Except she’s here with someone else. You don’t just take a random date to your father’s funeral.

And suddenly she’s upon my row, and she’s too far away but she’s close enough that I can smell the familiar jasmine scent she always wore—the same scent I’d pick up at Bath and Body Works at the mall for every holiday, an addictively fresh scent with a little bit of sweet fruitiness. Maybe it’s my imagination. A sense of comfort washes over me like a wave as I take it in, and it’s like I’m taking something from her that’s far more meaningful than just her smell. She must feel it, too, because her head turns in my direction and her eyes lift to mine.

Shock is clear as day in hers, but the shock shifts swiftly to something else. Warmth, maybe. Our shared history passes between us in that single beat, and all the love I felt for her when I was eighteen and ready to take on the world with her still courses through my blood.

Hope lights a fire within me.

It’s more than a shared history. It’s two halves of the same soul reconnecting for the first time since they were ripped apart, and something tells me it would all still be there for us if we could just have a second to figure it out.

She snags her toe on the ground as our eyes connect for nothing more than a split second, and she trips a little, breaking our eye contact. The man who held her hand at the beginning of the service quickly grabs onto her elbow to steady her, and my heart cracks as the trance between us breaks and the hope is snuffed out as quickly as it came.

She moves toward the back of the church to the narthex, where she’ll stand in a line with her mother and her aunt and all of Bill’s closest relatives to greet the many people who attended the service. Then they’ll move over toward the cemetery for the burial.

The second row files out next, and then the third. They’re going in order from the front of the church to the back, and the line jams up once the third row starts making their exit as the churchgoers greet and mingle with Bill’s family.

It’s going to be a long, long time before my row gets to exit, and today…I just don’t have the time. Not after the service took longer than I expected it to.

I need to see her.

I need to talk to her.

But I can’t.

I lean over toward my mother. “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”

Her brows knit together as she starts digging through her purse. “I think so.” She hands me a receipt, and I glance down at it.

“Why do you keep receipts for items you bought with cash?” I ask.

She laughs. “What if I need to return something?”

“Are you going to return a pack of gum or vitamin E tablets? What are you taking vitamin E for?”

Her cheeks turn pink. “Hot flashes.”

“Oh Jesus. Sorry for asking.”

Her eyes widen as she glances at me and then at the front of the church where the cross hangs. “Watch your mouth, Tristan Matthew!” she hisses at me.

My dad elbows me in the ribs. “Did your mother just middle name you?”

At least they’re hilariously distracting at this rather frantic time.