Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 16 TESSA

I was seconds away from telling him I’m pregnant when that damn bird risked his life so I could keep my secret a little longer.

I know I can trust him, and yet I still find myself hesitant to tell him.

Maybe because he lives a life in the spotlight now, and I really shouldn’t be in the spotlight. I can’t afford someone digging into my past and finding out Cam Foster is this baby’s daddy. Who knows what that might do to Paul and Lakeshore…and I’m not willing to risk that.

Or maybe it’s because he’s married and I’m afraid letting him in on this pregnancy will only lead to my confession about the first. I want to tell him. I want to confess everything.

He deserves the truth.

And at the same time, I’m racked with fear and indecision. What good would telling him now do? I can’t think of a single thing. All I keep circling back to is that I’d be bringing on pain and grieving. I’d be opening wounds seven years old, and there’s nothing we can do about it now anyway. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, and I don’t want to put that pain on him. He doesn’t deserve it.

Neither did I, but it was a burden I bore for the two of us so he didn’t have to.

He pulls into the parking lot of a day spa, and I glance over at him with my brows raised.

“I figured if you’re falling asleep at nine-thirty, I’m overworking you, so I decided we could both use a day off,” he says.

My eyes light up at his thoughtfulness. “So what are we here for?” I ask, nodding toward the building in front of me.

“I booked us each a massage. I have a few things I can take care of while we’re here in town, and you’re welcome to come with me or you can stay here and take advantage of whichever services you’d like.”

I reach over and squeeze his arm even though nerves plow into me. “That was really sweet of you, Tristan. Thank you.”

He nods, and we exit the truck and head inside. “Higgins,” he tells the lady at the desk, and she nods. “Have a seat and our massage therapists will be with you shortly.”

A few minutes later, two women appear in the doorway. “Tristan and Tessa?” one of them says, and we follow them back to a room with two massage tables in it. “Get undressed and slide under the blanket, one of you on each table, face down,” she says.

I look over at Tristan in horror. “You got us a couple’s massage?” I am not getting naked in front of him. Hell, I won’t even take my sweatshirt off in front of him even though the heat is pumping and it’s sweltering in here. Because the moment I take off my sweatshirt is the moment he knows I haven’t been telling the whole truth.

He shakes his head as his brows draw together. “No! I swear. We’re not… there , not yet anyway, and I just booked a couple of massages.”

The two therapists look back and forth between each other. “I can check to see if there are other rooms available.”

The two of them leave, and Tristan scrubs a hand along his jaw. “I’m so, so sorry,” he says. “I swear I wasn’t trying to imply anything. I’ll just leave and you can take the massage.”

I start to laugh. “It sounds like an honest mistake. But you should see your face right now.”

He chuckles. “I feel bad.”

“Don’t. It’s really not a big deal. Nothing we haven’t seen before, right?”

He raises a brow. “I bet it’s even sexier now than it was back then.”

It’s not as tight as it was back then. It’s not as elastic as it was back then, and my boobs aren’t as perky as they once were…but I do all right for myself, I guess, barring this current pregnancy.

My cheeks burn at his words. I don’t know what to say, but luckily, I don’t have to say anything. The door opens and one of the therapists motions to me. “I can take you in the room down the hall.”

“Enjoy your singles massage,” Tristan calls after me on my way out, and I giggle as I follow the therapist to another room.

Once we’re in a new room, I glance at my massage therapist. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but I do know massages are different if you’re pregnant. “Can I, um, talk to you for a second?” I ask.

She nods and shuts the door.

“I’m pregnant, but I’m not telling people yet.”

“Then you’ll want Mandi, our prenatal specialist. She’s booked with a client right now, but we can get you on the schedule in the next week or so.”

I shake my head. “That won’t do. Can you just…I don’t know. Do my neck and shoulders in that chair in the corner and we’ll call it good?”

Her brows dip. “Uh, sure. I still need you to take your sweatshirt off. I’ll have better access if you take off your shirt and bra, too.”

“Okay. And can you please not tell anyone?” I ask as I take off my sweatshirt. She spots the bump under the t-shirt I’m wearing beneath my sweatshirt.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she promises, probably wondering why…and how…I’m hiding this, but it’s not her concern.

She gives me my massage, working my neck and back and up into my head, and honestly this is the most relaxed I’ve been in months. Years, even.

I meet Tristan in the front lobby an hour later. “How was it?” he asks.

“Magical,” I say.

“Want to stay for any other services?” he asks.

“I’ll just come with you if that’s okay.”

He nods. “I’m getting hungry. You?”

“Sure,” I say, and he pays for our non-couples massage and we head a few doors down to a barbecue restaurant.

He orders chicken, and normally that would be my preference as well…but in the last few weeks I’ve started to develop a pretty strong poultry aversion. It’s like just looking at chicken makes me think of beaks and claws and the mere thought of it makes me nauseated.

Instead, I order a cheeseburger and a salad, and he studies me for a beat after our server leaves to put in our order.

“What?” I ask, a little subconscious about the way he’s staring at me. I pat my hair down in case I have some strays or something.

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I guess I just…I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

My brows dip together. He doesn’t. Not really—not any more than I know who he is now. “Why?” I ask, wondering what’s prompting it.

“Cheeseburger instead of chicken? And at the massage place…in the past, I feel like we both would’ve just laughed it off and gone along with it, but instead you went to a totally separate room.”

“You’re married,” I remind him, trying to brush off whatever it is he’s getting at.

“I already told you the truth about that,” he says.

I blow out a breath, doing my best to divert the attention from myself. “You said she’s awful…but you really didn’t tell me why you married her in the first place if she’s so evil.”

He glances down at the table before his eyes move back up to mine. “You never used to do that, either.”

“What?” I ask, confused.

“Redirect the conversation. Distract me. You used to answer questions. You used to be straightforward. Now it seems like you’re hiding something.”

I hold a hand up to my chest. “Where are these accusations coming from?”

He shakes his head with a little disgust, but I can’t tell if that disgust is aimed at me, himself, or his wife. “My wife …she’s an investigative journalist. She mentioned your name to me a couple months ago. I never told her about you. You were the tragic part of my past I didn’t talk to anybody about, but she came in claiming to know something about you. I told her I didn’t want to know, that if you had secrets, it was your prerogative to tell me. I never asked her. But I’m asking you now, Tessa. What are you keeping from me?”

I feel a little lightheaded at his words.

His wife has been digging into my life?

Why?

What does she know?

And the fact that he told her he didn’t want to know…my heart races as my chest swells with so much love for this man.

I stare down at the table, not sure what to say. I feel like I need to tell him something here, but I don’t even know where to start.

“I, uh…”

I’m pregnant.

I was the other woman in an affair.

It’s my second pregnancy.

I had your baby.

I gave it away.

I still love you.

I want to be with you.

Our server comes over with our drinks—a Sprite for me, just water for him—and rolls with butter, and I hope the interruption will serve as a distraction. It doesn’t.

He continues to wait for me to share whatever gossip his wife thinks she found on me.

I don’t start at the beginning, and I don’t give away the ending, either. Instead, I give away the one piece I feel most comfortable parting with right now.

“The reason I left my job…it’s complicated, but I was in a relationship with a doctor who worked at the practice. I found out after we’d been together for months that he’s married. Then he won a prestigious award that recognizes, among other things, his family values. I couldn’t keep working with a man like that.”

His brows dip. “You were the other woman?” he asks. “And you didn’t know?”

I shake my head. “I had no idea.”

“Jesus, Tessa. That’s…that’s horrible.”

“I know,” I murmur, taking a sip of my Sprite.

“But why did you have to leave? He was the one who was horrible, not you.” He grabs a roll from the basket and starts shredding it on his plate.

I grab a roll, too, just to have something to keep my hands busy while I talk. “Because when he won the award, he was given grant money, and the practice where I worked will benefit from that money. If the secret got out, maybe he’d be stripped of the award, I don’t know. My boss there, Paul…he was like a father to me, and I couldn’t do that to him.”

“So you sacrificed your job for that asshole?”

I lift a shoulder. No, I sacrificed my job to protect my unborn child, but I feel like I’ve made enough confessions today. “Now you go. Why’d you marry Savannah?”

He sighs as he glances behind me, and out the window, and down at the table…anywhere but directly at me.

And then, finally, his eyes lift to mine. His are clouded with regret. “I was a rookie, and it felt like everybody wanted something from me. Constantly. Tickets or money or the game ball or a signed jersey or a photograph. It felt like I gave away a little piece of myself with every item I handed over.”

He shakes his head, shredding the bread into even smaller pieces. “Then I met Savannah. She told me what she could do for me. She was a reporter who could do a piece on me and make me a household name. She could connect me with the right people. She loved helping athletes. It was in her blood. She came by with a different narrative than every other person in my life, and even though her ex-husband warned me, I took it with a grain of salt. There are two people in a marriage, right? I thought he was jaded by whatever he went through with her, so I didn’t listen when I should have.”

He averts his eyes to the window before studying the bread he continues to tear into smaller and smaller pieces until mostly just crumbs remain. “It was just after Christmas, and my mom had spoken with your mom. You were dating some guy in the city…you were maybe going to marry him. You’d moved on with your life, and I was stuck on the past. So when Savannah first brought up the idea of marriage, I thought…you know, why the fuck not? The one girl I always thought was the one I was going to marry had moved on, so I should, too. I wanted to break with the past, to break with who I was, to surprise the fuck out of everyone, myself included. I wanted those headlines she promised.”

My chest aches at his words. I was dating Ryan at the time he’s referring to—the guy I met at a bar and was with for a few months before I broke it off because he wasn’t Tristan …the same reason every good relationship in my life has eventually come to an end.

He clears his throat before his eyes return to mine, like now that he’s done talking about me to me, he can look at me again. “Turns out she was just like everyone else. She made promises, but she manipulated and twisted to deliver on them. You want headlines? How about this fucking hot trash article about how we’re saving our marriage with a pregnancy?”

He lowers his voice and leans forward. “I haven’t slept with my wife in over two years. If she’s pregnant, it ain’t mine.”

Jeez. What kind of marriage is that? What kind of life is that?

And I’m punishing him because he’s married. I’m not letting him in because he’s married.

He’s married legally, I guess, but there might be shades of gray attached to that I hadn’t considered before.

He sighs as he looks out the window. “So that’s the long version of why I married her. I wish I never had, but I was vulnerable, young, and stupid, which is a lethal combination she preyed on. And now she’s holding on until we find out if the Aces are taking my fifth-year option. They’ll have to issue a new contract worth a hell of a lot more money, and she’s waited this long. She can wait another couple months to try to take me for half what I’ll be guaranteed.”

“That’s awful, Tristan,” I say, reaching across the table to take his hands in mine. “She doesn’t deserve a cent of what you make.”

He presses his lips together and nods. “I know. We had a quickie Vegas wedding and our prenup was written on a napkin. Nothing about it will hold up in court. She tracks my location, digs into my history, and in general does everything she can to make my life miserable.”

“Surely some judge would take pity on you, right? They can’t make you stay married to someone you hate,” I point out.

“That’s the thing, though. Nobody is making me stay married to her except, well, her . Just when we’re getting close, she comes up with something new—some blackmail or something from my past, some detail she can use against me, and I’m forced to back down.”

“What would happen if you just…didn’t?” I ask.

His eyes move to mine. “Didn’t back down?”

I nod, and he averts his eyes to the table again. “Then I face the consequences.” He shrugs. “She’ll take me for half my money if not more, and I’ll have punishments handed down from the league because she will definitely use whatever she can against me.”

“Is that worse than staying married to someone you hate?”

He presses his lips together, and when his eyes lift to mine, they’re clearly torn with indecision. “Fix your mistakes, right? I’ve been taught that since I was a kid. And I’m trying, believe me , I’m trying, but at what price? If I go to the commissioner with the shit she has on me, I’ll have to sit four games at a minimum. Maybe pay a fine. Which…whatever, I don’t care, but the hit to my reputation?” He shakes his head. “Guys don’t come back from that, Tess. It follows them for the rest of their career, and every single play I make will have people saying it’s because I cheated.”

“But it’s not true,” I argue.

“You know that. I know that. But the rest of the world? They don’t know.” He blows out a heavy breath, like just making these confessions is weighing him down. “And so I’m stuck.”

And with those words, a new mission is born.

I’m going to find a way to help free Tristan Higgins from his wife.