Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 14 TESSA

We shower together, and he caresses every single inch of my body.

I’ve never felt so loved, so cherished, so important to anybody before. I think back to my last experience where Cam basically made me feel like a used piece of trash after the first time we had sex.

We all know how that ended up. I shake him out of my head. He deserves no real estate here, particularly not in this state of bliss where I find myself.

After we get dressed, we head down to the restaurant in the hotel for breakfast.

And that’s when a little corner of our blissful night breaks off into reality.

I hear his name whispered as the hostess takes us back to our table. I see the not-so-stealthy aim of smartphones as they try to catch a covert image of the celebrity walking through the restaurant. The heat of his hand where it lies on the small of my back as he presses us toward our table feels like fire.

My brain is riddled with all the things people will see.

I’m not sure if his divorce is public yet, so people probably don’t know he’s no longer married.

His hand is on a pregnant woman in a hotel near his hometown early in the morning.

We both have wet hair.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here.

“Are you Tristan Higgins?” a young boy with enough nerve asks him. He’s maybe seven or eight, and my chest tightens as I think about our boy. He’d be around the same age. He’d have already lost his two front teeth, and big ones that look too big for his mouth would already be growing in—just like this boy.

What if this is him?

What if he’s our boy?

Will I ever stop looking at boys around the right age and wondering if it’s him?

I glance at his parents, and he looks just like his dad. It’s probably not our boy…but still.

Tristan nods and smiles at the boy.

“Can I get a picture with you?” the boy asks.

“Of course,” Tristan tells him, and his hand leaves my back so he can kneel down beside the boy.

I feel a rush of cold air without him beside me.

He talks to the boy and his parents a minute, and then he stands and we head toward our table. We’re near the window at a regular sort of table. There are no tall booth walls to give us privacy, and I see the same not-so-covert smartphone angles already poised in our direction.

I hide behind a menu. “Is it always like this?” I ask softly. He’s across the table from me—too far, but also far enough that the focus will be on him and not so much on his breakfast companion.

He sighs. “Yeah, pretty much. I guess I sort of forgot it might be new to you. My ex-wife preferred the spotlight, so I guess I just got used to going out and it not being a big deal.”

“I, uh…I don’t want people knowing who I am.” I say the words softly so nobody overhears.

He clears his throat, and then he pushes down on the top of the menu I’m hiding behind so his eyes can meet mine. “Why not?”

“I just don’t like the idea of people digging around.” I glance down at my stomach then give him a meaningful look. “And, well…you know.” It’s not just the baby, though.

It’s my entire history that I don’t want people finding out about.

He nods his understanding. “I get it. We can talk more later, but I think I have a solution.”

I hardly believe he has a solution to the issues he knows nothing about, but I nod and offer a small smile before my gaze returns back to the menu.

* * *

“Don’t do this,” he says quietly once we’re back in the privacy of our hotel room.

“Don’t do what?” I ask.

He sighs and walks over toward the window. “I feel you withdrawing, Tess. I know my life is in the spotlight, and that can be weird or strange or difficult. But that doesn’t give you a ticket out. Not after what we shared last night and this morning.”

“I don’t want a ticket out,” I admit. “But I also like my privacy.”

“Then we tell people the baby is mine,” he says, and clearly that’s his solution. “People won’t dig to find out the truth if there’s nothing to find. My divorce is final now so it doesn’t matter. And I haven’t spoken with my lawyer, but last we talked, he was going to send the paperwork over to Dr. Foster to have him sign off on his rights.”

“So let me get this straight. Your solution to my issue with people finding out who fathered my child is lying about this baby’s paternity and making it appear to the general public that I’m a homewrecker?”

“No!” he says, shaking his head. “That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying I make a statement about how my marriage has been over for nearly two years. I doubt anyone would expect that I was living as a monk that whole time.”

“But, according to you, you were.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, I know. I was. I slipped up with Savannah a few times, but I never cheated on her.”

“You’re a better man than most,” I say.

“Fuck lot of good it’s gotten me,” he mutters.

“People were snapping photos of us the entire time.”

“I know.” He blows out a frustrated breath. “I should’ve warned you that might happen.”

“So what do we do when the headlines about the mystery woman start to appear?” I ask.

“If you don’t want to say I’m that baby’s father, then we tell them the truth.”

“That we fucked twice last night and once this morning?” My brows dip.

“First of all, that was way more than a fuck, Tessa,” he says thickly. “And second, that’s not at all what I meant. We tell them we’re old friends and we decided to catch up over breakfast.”

“Fine.” I start packing up my overnight bag. “Tell them that. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

“What are you doing?” he asks.

I shrug. “Don’t we need to check out soon?”

He nods, and he looks sad about it. I feel sad about it, too.

I walk over to where he stands near the window, and I touch his shoulder. “Excluding breakfast, this has been the best date of my life. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to leave, but we have to get back to reality. The festival is three days away, and I have a long list of things to do.”

He pulls me into his arms, and it feels safe and warm here. I rest my head on his chest.

“I don’t want to leave, either, but let’s get out of here. Let’s tackle that to do list together, and then we can slip back into our own version of reality.”

I smile, but it feels a little half-hearted. It’s not like we can just bang in my childhood bedroom with my mother asleep down the hall—or in his house, for that matter, because of the same reasons. I don’t know what the future holds for us, but living in my mom’s house doesn’t feel like a good long-term plan.

Maybe it’s time to start planning what comes next.