Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 24 TESSA

I’ve looked ahead nervously to our regularly scheduled nighttime meeting all day.

I shouldn’t have run out. He kissed me, and it felt so damn good, so damn right , and I got scared.

He’s married.

My dad was married, and he kissed other women.

Cam Foster was married, and he kissed me .

I can’t get involved with a married man even if it is Tristan Higgins and even if I know he isn’t happy in his marriage. To me, it’s splitting hairs. He’s legally bound to someone else, and I can’t knowingly participate in any part of an affair no matter how badly I want to be with him…not after everything that’s happened over the last few months.

It’s that moral dilemma combined with the fact that he has no idea what he’s getting into with me. None of it is fair, and he deserves the truth before we can even entertain the idea of moving forward.

But it doesn’t seem like an idea I can entertain when he’s married to another woman.

All day, I’ve considered when to tell him, and I’ve decided I’m going to do it tonight at our meeting at the window.

It seems like the most significant place I can reveal that I’m having a baby in four months…like the best place to finally give him the truth before he falls harder for the person I am when the person I am is a lie.

He shows up right at nine fifty-seven.

My heart thunders in my chest as nerves climb up and down my spine.

This is it. I’m finally going to tell him I’m pregnant…and as for the other stuff, the stuff in our history, well…we’ll get there, or maybe it’ll just stay in the past where it belongs.

Of course he shows up on time.

It’s one of the few things I can rely on in this life…but if we’re both in Fallon Ridge and we’re both home, we’ll both be at the window at our time for a goodnight chat that usually goes late into the night.

But tonight, he doesn’t sit on his windowsill. He doesn’t get comfortable under a blanket with his legs up as he looks across the space separating our houses. Instead, he leans forward, his eyes full of regret. “I can’t stay tonight.”

My brows dip as the fear I’ve been carrying all day seems to shift into something new. “Why not?”

“I have a five-thirty flight to Vegas out of Chicago. Arrive an hour early since I’m not checking anything, plus a two-and-a-half-hour drive on top…well, that math means I need to get a few hours of shut-eye before I head out.”

“Oh,” I say, nodding, a little deflated that I won’t get to reveal my secret but also a little relieved. I want to ask why he’s going, but he isn’t offering up the details and I assume it has something to do with the Aces. “Well, safe travels.” I sound awkward.

“Thanks. I’ll be back in a couple days, and if you need anything for festival planning, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’ll be around,” he says.

I nod. “Thanks.”

“That kiss earlier…” His voice is soft and gritty. “Look, Tess. I get why you backed out of it. I just want you to know I understand.”

But you don’t! I want to tell him that, but I also don’t want to send him on a trip across the country with conflicting feelings about it.

“I didn’t want to,” I say softly. “There’s just more to it.”

He nods. “I know, and I get it. You keep telling me that, and when I get back…maybe we can sit down and finally sort through whatever it is.” He raises his brows. “Yeah?”

I nod and duck my gaze from his. “Yeah.”

“Okay. I need to go to bed. You okay?”

I nod. “You?”

My eyes edge over to him, and he nods, too.

“Hurry back,” I say softly.

He grins. “I’ll go as fast as I can with this bum leg.”

I giggle. “Rest it, Tristan. Take it easy, okay?”

He nods and we both say goodnight.

I miss him the second he closes his windows and shuts his blinds, the second I can no longer see his window when I shut mine, too.

I should’ve asked why he’s going to Vegas. Instead, my curiosity will burn for the next few days as I wait for him to get back.

I decide to pull open Instagram just in case I can get a clue on his profile why he’s heading to Vegas, but the most recent picture is one from last season and was likely posted by his publicist.

No dice there, but as I start scrolling my feed, I come across a photo posted by Stephanie Taylor…as in my half-sister.

There’s something creepily familiar about the photograph.

It’s a simple selfie of her outside the Dairy Barn, a small walk-up ice cream shop fast food joint…a place my dad and I used to frequent. A place that’s preserved in history on my dad’s Facebook page with a selfie of Dad and me circa eight or nine years ago when we were on a road trip toward Chicago. She did just travel the same route…but the huge neon sign boasting the restaurant’s name is off to her right in the photo at the exact same angle in the picture I can remember I took with my dad.

I click her profile, and I regret it almost immediately.

The first few photos are selfies of her in Fallon Ridge.

One outside the house I’m sitting in now. One by the high school, one in front of the market.

One beside Tristan’s truck.

It’s fine. It’s weird, and it’s a little creepy, but she was just here. It’s not a big deal…right?

But as I keep scrolling, it gets weirder.

Selfies of her by the Welcome to Maple Park sign posted just a few days ago. Maple Park…the town where I grew up before my dad was transferred to Fallon Ridge. She lives in Kewanee, two hours away from Maple Park, and she was just here in Iowa. I don’t know her personal schedule, and maybe there’s a valid reason she was visiting Maple Park, though it’s sort of off the grid and not really on the way to anywhere.

The little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention as goosebumps start to prickle along my arms.

There’s a photo of her outside the house I grew up in before we moved to Fallon Ridge. Our house in Maple Park. Another one of her outside the Methodist Church. A photo in front of the pumpkin farm we used to go every year to pick out the pumpkins we’d take home to carve while my mother roasted the seeds.

It’s all photographs that feel very familiar…like she was standing in the exact place I was when I took photos there, like she took a tour of the places that were meaningful to my family in the place where we lived before Fallon Ridge.

But why would she do that?

And what does it mean?