RUNNING GAME (A SECOND CHANCE SPORTS ROMANCE) (46 page)

“
Y
ou’re Angel’s grandfather
?” I asked, thoroughly surprised. “She never said anything like that to me.”

Old Greg muttered under his breath as he popped off the cap and handed me a beer. With a deft maneuver, he effortlessly burst off the top to his own against the bar table.

“Ever since the accident, that’s one of those scraps of information she can’t seem to hold onto,” he grumbled. “Probably for the better.”

“She told me that she trusted you,” I commented.

For a moment, it looked like he might smile.

We sat in silence as Old Greg took a long drink. Over his shoulder, I saw something pinned up on the wall – a sheet of paper, heavily crumpled, and filled with the scratchings of a marker. It looked like a hasty note that had been squashed into a ball, then unfolded on second thoughts.

He followed my gaze.

“She left me a piss-poor excuse of a letter. I didn’t believe it at first, but when she wasn’t back the next morning, I knew it was true.”

“Why the next morning?”

His old chest sighed. “She’s walked out of here half a dozen times, but she
always
comes back.”

Old Greg glared at me for a moment.

“It’s hard to have your granddaughter almost taken from you. To watch her lay there, lifelessly in some hospital bed, barely clinging to life. You think there’s nothing worse in the world. Nothing besides
death
, at any rate… But then I got her back. She’s healthy as ever, getting better every day. Problem is, somehow, I’ve still lost her. She’ll never remember the times we’ve had together.”

He swigged from his beer, still glowering at me.

“And I’m a coward. I couldn’t tell her.”

“You didn’t tell Angel you’re her grandfather? What the hell is wrong with you?” I said.

“Some things are better left forgotten. That girl, she’s been through hell. Don’t want to go dredging up bad memories. That accident was a blessing in disguise. She was safe here, and now you’ve gone and lost her.”

“I’ll find her.”

“If I had keeled over these last few days you’d be fucked, and you know it,” he growled, pointing towards me with his beer hand. “Only reason you’re here is because you have
no idea
where else to turn.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, “and I know I’ve fucked up. I don’t know
how
, but I’ll figure it out, and I’ll keep it from happening again. But I’ll fight through hell and never stop searching until I find her.”

“And why the fuck is that?”

“Because I
love
her.”

Old Greg laughed heartily. It was a sarcastic, holier-than-thou laugh, and it gradually contorted into a horrendous coughing fit.

I jumped up to help, but he waved me away and drowned it out with the beer.

“You think you love her. What a fucking joke. You’re even more hopeless than I thought, dick-bag.”

“You don’t know me,” I reminded him tersely.

“Oh, I know you,” Old Greg chuckled, his breath rattling in his chest. “I know your type. You think you’re the hero in some bullshit romance, right? Just gonna swoop in and save the distressed damsel?
Please
.”

The old geezer was starting to seriously test my patience.

“If you’re not going to help, then just say so,” I demanded, crossing my arms. “But if you
are
, then we need to cut the shit
now.
”

He stood up, walking over to me.

“You saved her before, I recall. Bunch of drunken, horny bikers wanted to rape her. Tell me, fuckface, why haven’t you brought that up yet? Why not twist my arm with that? You
know
it would work, and you’re just wasting time…”

I stared this angry, sly bastard straight in his fiery, ancient eyes.

“Because if you
are
her grandfather, then you’ll never forget that. And I’m not going to resort to some cheap trick to convince you.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Look me in the eyes,” I told him, “and tell me to my face that I wouldn’t tear the world apart for her. Go on.”

Old Greg searched deep into my gaze.

The silence of the room was deafening.

Finally, his shoulders sagged.

“Who the fuck
are
you?”

“I’m Trent Masters. Of
Trent Masters and–
”

“I’ll tell you who you are,” he cut me off indignantly. “You’re a cocky scrap of shit. You’re a fucking arrogant piece of work who thinks you can walk into a broken girl’s life and just save her. As if it’s that fucking simple.
This is my granddaughter.
I’m not talking about some street urchin – this is my flesh and blood, and
you
…you’re used to getting your way. You don’t accept ‘no’
.
You
can’t
accept ‘no.’ You’re just some misguided force of nature who sweeps people up and leaves them broken in the dark, only this girl… She’s already broken.”

“That’s not who I am at all,” I told him confidently.

“Oh yeah? How many?”

“How many
what.
”

Old Gregg smiled evilly. “Don’t play stupid with me. I can smell the filth on you, boy. Before you met my granddaughter, how many girls did you chew up and spit out? How many girls did you leave when you were finished with them, cast aside in your wake?”

For the first time since coming to terms with my world and my place in it, my unshakeable core was suddenly rattled. It was only a second, but it happened.

And the motherfucker
saw
it.

“Yes…yes, I thought so,” he answered. “You thought you could just come to this place, drag her back down into the muck with you, and set her up for even more pain? You think I didn’t pin you for a sorry sack of shit from the start?”

“It’s not like that, old man,” I tried to argue.

“Sure it is.”

“It’s
not!
” I threw my beer with all my force, shattering it against the wall.

Old Greg didn’t flinch.

“Name one,” he finally spoke.

“Excuse me?”

“Didn’t stutter, boy. If you ever gave a shit about any of the girls who came before her, why don’t you name one. Name
one
of your conquests. And don’t make up a name – I’ll know if you’re lying to me.”

I sat there, seething with anger.

Holy fuck.

He’s right.

Old Greg’s face slowly, surely contorted into a wide grin. “You can’t. You can’t name
one fucking girl
that you’ve coerced into that viper pit of a bed, can you?”

No. He can’t be right.

“You fuck and forget. My granddaughter wasn’t the first. There have been
so many
. And you think
she’s
the one with a goddamn memory problem?”

A parade of faces flew through my head.

Featureless husks.

I couldn’t remember their details.

Dozens of them.

No… It was more than that.

Old Greg stood up from his chair, confident in his complete victory over me. He coughed for a second, and then slid his beer – nothing but dregs now – over to me.

“This is what you are, punk. You’re the filth at the bottom of the bottle. You take what you
believe
belongs to you, and you distort it. You make it
lesser.
I can see it plain as day across your face.
That
is your legacy. You think I want my granddaughter to remember a sack of shit like you? You don’t even know
her
name.”

“Her name is Angel.”

“Oh yeah?” Old Greg toothily snarled. “Angel
Who?
”

I stared deep into the next table over. I knew her name… It was Angel… Angel……….
Fuck
.

He’s right,
I repeated to myself.

This is who I am.

I’m going to hurt her no matter what I do.

Old Greg brushed up the shattered beer, dropping it into the garbage. He poured himself a glass of water, gulping it down thirstily before finally turning back to me.

“215 Wilde Grove Drive. Beaten up old house, green, tucked away behind the trees. Dirt driveway. If you pass the tree with the old tire swing, you’ve gone too far.”

I looked at him incoherently.

“She ain’t here, which means she’s there. It’s the only other place she knows.”

“Why are you…why are you helping me?”

Old Greg leered close to me, his rotting breath invading my nostrils.

“Because I’m a dying old man, you sack of shit. Because sometimes – just
sometimes
– people change. You’ve already gone down swinging for her sake, so I think you have the capacity for that. If you do…then you’re my best chance at keeping that girl happy and safe.”

I stood up from the table, coming to terms with the insights that this arrogant geezer had given me.

I hated them.

I hated
him.

But as much as I hated to admit it, the old decrepit fucker in this ramshackle little bar was
right
.

“But that ain’t the whole reason.”

I turned to him, catching his cold and calculating eyes.

“
If
she’s there…Angel is in danger.”

I
’m not
sure how long my stepfather had been abusing me. The time prior to the accident was a complete blur, and probably always would be. When I first saw Roger in my hospital room afterwards, I didn’t know who he was…

…But I knew that I was very afraid.

I was high on morphine the first night he came to my bedside, my mind firmly half in and half out of this world. It would be weeks before I could talk, and months before I’d take my first walk across the hospital room. Maybe he thought I was damaged forever… Maybe he thought I wouldn’t remember, or that I didn’t realize what was happening to me. The sick fuck thought he could get away with it.

The bastard did what evil men always do.

He took advantage.

Thank god that I was in a moderately monitored hospital room. Nurses were in and out, keeping a lazy eye on me but never around enough to rattle his confidence. Still, I knew that if I’d gone into outpatient care at home, he probably would have been far more dangerous.

But that still didn’t stop him from doing what he could get away with. He
saw
me. He sometimes took
pictures
of me. He
touched
me, splintering my fragile, drugged mind into shattered, dirty pieces.

My memories didn’t ever really come back, and I know it’s because of
him.
My bastard stepfather descended upon me while my brain was trying to put everything back together. If I hadn’t been so focused on forgetting what he was doing to me, maybe I would have pulled my former life back... but while the memories were gone, so too were most of the nights that he came to visit me, his mind sick with desire.

He didn’t leave marks. No tell-tale hickies pocked my skin, and no scratches or obvious signs of abuse were left for the right nurse to discover.

I kept quiet. I was too weak. When I started to show signs of life, he made one thing very clear. If I told anyone about our
relationship
, he’d kill me.

The safety of the hospital couldn’t last forever. Roger made it crystal clear how much my medical bills cost this family, and how I was going to repay the debt…

However, I got a lucky break.

At the time, Roger worked as a roundabout on a freighter. The life was rough, paid very well, and took him away for small stretches: three weeks on, one week off. It just so happened that my first night back coincided with an off-season shift too lucrative for him to pass up, and so he couldn’t bring his sexual tension with me to its inevitable conclusion.

Mom kept me on my anxiety medication. She told me that I babbled “nonsense” about abuse while I was under, but I couldn’t blame her for not taking me seriously. After all, people say crazy stuff under medication… even if sometimes it’s dangerously true.

From the beginning, I started fighting the effects the drugs had on me. In brief moments of clarity, I knew that the clock was ticking, and I’d have no strength to fight him when he finally came back for me. By the time his last week was almost over, my strength was enough that I could concentrate… and I knew what I had to do.

While Mom was gone, driving hours away to the docks to pick him back up, I sprang into action. I’d packed my breakaway bag, snuck into her room and stole away my identification and my prescription refill – just in case.

I abandoned that place in the dead of night. With my anxiety temporarily out of the picture, thanks to the drugs, I could pull back some of my former memories. There was a place, in the back of my head, somewhere safe and secure… a place called Riverton. Somehow, I knew that there was refuge there, and from that I could figure the rest out along the way.

I hitchhiked towards it, eventually coming across Old Greg. He seemed startled to see such a young girl on the road in the night, but something in the old man endeared him to me. While he treated me to late dinner at a diner, I broke down in tears, leaving out most of the details.

I didn’t tell him I had been sexually abused.

But I told him that I had been in an accident, that I couldn’t remember much of who I was, and that my family was dangerous. That I would
die
before I let myself go back there.

He took pity on me, putting me up in his bar…

Old Greg would be so angry if he knew I came back here, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of looking him in the eye after the way I’d left. He was so kind to me… Kinder than I ever deserved. Maybe I’d head out there in a few weeks once I’d settled in. He deserved an apology.

“You going to eat, or just sit there thinking?”

Mom had brought me a bowl of chips and some ranch dressing. I hadn’t so much as touched it since I’d come to the table.

“Go ahead and eat up,” Mom smiled. “After you’re done, go pretty yourself up, company’s coming.”

That pit came back into my stomach. I’d been worried about that all afternoon… it had been a festering feeling, eating away inside me.

But I knew better than to cross Mom.

She had taken me back in.

She had given me a roof, and food.

Well
… I looked down at the plate.
Some food.

“Hurry up in there,” mom shouted.

“Okay, Mom,” I answered, forcing a cheerful smile across my face.

“Thanks a ton, Hon,” she answered.

After that, I was left in the quiet.

The crunching of the chips shattered the silence with every crispy bite. Agonizing, piercing chomps controlled my attention, ringing out in the quiet like a rhythmic, mounting growl of danger.

When I was done, I set the dish in the sink and found Mom. She was sitting in a recliner, watching some old silent film on the living room TV.

“Over there,” she motioned with a wrist.

I followed her gesture and lifted a package off of an end table. It wasn’t particularly large or heavy, but it seemed ominous to me.

“Bring that over here.”

I did as I was told.

Mom raised her saggy arm, muted the television, and turned to face me.

“Open it up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s not to understand? I got you a present.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

So I nodded, pulling the tape off the box and opening it up. Turning it over, a small orange bottle fell into my hand.

“See there? Momma’s gonna take care of you doll. I got you your medicine.”

I turned the bottle over, eyeing the little pink pills inside. I hadn’t seen these things in years.

“I know how anxious you get… The depression. All those panic attacks? You’ve been so high strung since you came back, dear.”

“I don’t like the way these things make me feel, mom. They make me a zombie.”

“I don’t want any back talk. We have company tonight and you’re going to be on your best behavior. You take two of those or you can get out,” she said, pointing toward the door.