Not My Match (The Game Changers, #2)(14)

“About what?” If he thinks I need to rehash this episode, he’s deluded.

His eyes rise and pierce mine. “Men were looking for him. We need to find out why.”

“He’s just a drunk.” He’s an alcoholic. But I hate to say those words out loud.

“How much money are you giving him a month, Dev? Besides paying all his bills?”

“None of your business.” Dad has a job, but I do give him money. He’s my dad, and I have plenty of it. It’s the same with Selena. They are all I have.

“Just as I thought. Too much,” he murmurs, along with a look that seems to peer into my soul. He steps away toward the corner where a black car has pulled up. “Hate to miss the party at Aiden’s, but I’ve got a girl to see tonight. Call me. If you need me, superstar, I’m all yours.” He blows me a kiss.

I smirk, letting some of that tension ease. “Be safe, asshole. Thanks for the unpaid help,” I call as he opens the door and gets in.

He drives off, and I swing around to get inside my car.

Of course, just as I crank it, Dad opens his eyes and hurls.

After scrambling around in my glove box for napkins to get him as cleaned up as I can, I drive the twenty minutes to the east side of Nashville to a small subdivision with cookie-cutter ranch-style houses and modest-sized front yards. I picked it out for him before he moved here a few years ago, when I did. I got him the job at the car dealership a block away.

I help him inside, wrangling him into the dark house and fumbling for the light switch in the entry, one that doesn’t come on. Cursing, I half carry him to his bedroom, sending up a fuck yeah when the light comes on in there. At least the electricity is still on. I help him get his clothes off down to his boxers, lay him down on his side, and set a trash can nearby in case he gets sick again, and before I pull up the covers, he’s back asleep, snoring.

After washing my hands and face in his bathroom, I check on him. My eyes catch on the photo on his nightstand—a pic of me and Mom and him when I was ten. Even with her smile, her face is distant, as if she’s thinking of anything but the husband and kid pressed against her.

Couldn’t make her happy. Dad’s voice grates in my head. Got her pregnant.

The day she stormed out of our trailer, kicking beer cans out of her way, a shabby duffel bag clutched in her arms, pops into my mind. She drove away with another man, and I chased her down the driveway, begging. I’ll be back, she promised, a pinched expression on her face. She wasn’t there when I got sick with mono the following month. She wasn’t there for my thirteenth birthday. Or Christmas. She erased me from her memory, as if I’d never existed, then left us to pick up the pieces.

Dad shoved women in my life, a revolving door of girlfriends, and I looked to them for love, craved it. They won my kid heart, only to follow in Mom’s footsteps. Bye, Devon. Be a good boy, and take care of your father. Bonnie, Marilyn, Jessie—they never stuck around. In retrospect, most of them were barfly floozies, but hell, I just wanted someone to stay.

Still, he keeps that damn pic. I snatch it up, hands clenching around the frame. Part of me wants to rip it apart and remove her from our lives forever.

Where are you? I bought your beer, asshole, pops up on my phone.

Sorry. Unexpected errand, I reply to Aiden.

And you told ME not to be late. What’s your ETA?

Leaving the frame and my dad in the bedroom, I head back to the kitchen, halting at the mess. Empty beer bottles, takeout containers, and dirty dishes litter the table and countertops. I close my eyes, wishing it would magically disappear. Of course it doesn’t. Shit. I plop down at the table and fire off a text: Something came up. See you tomorrow.

He sends a flurry of pissed-off messages. I ignore them. Dad comes first.





Chapter 4

GISELLE

With a kiss to my cheek, Topher lets me out at the curb, and I pad over to the stoop of the brownstone, an old three-story building with a spacious apartment on each level. With lots of charm and close to Vanderbilt, it comes with the perfect landlady.

Dressed in her orange-and-purple muumuu, Myrtle stands on the sidewalk, her Yorkie, Pookie, sniffing at the one tree we have. Sixty and the closest thing I have to a bestie, she plucks a joint out from behind her ear and lights it. Mostly it’s for her horrid migraines, but she gets it illegally, and it worries me. Pink lipstick outlines her lips as she takes a deep drag. A former model forty years ago in New York, she married a middling movie producer, eventually divorced him, and moved to Nashville to pursue a country music career that never panned out. Now she owns the building and writes poetry, some of it published.

With a grimace at my bare feet, she says, “Prince Charming?”

I plop down on the third step. “Charlie was an alligator-wearing weasel.”

“Ah. The emu?”

“We didn’t get that far, and I was afraid to ask. I need some wine with a side of Ragnar Lothbrok. You up for a Vikings binge session?”

She takes a toke. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“How’s your head?”

“Better now. How did the advisor meeting go?”

Dread inches up my spine as I tell her about my meeting at Vandy. “He isn’t going to recommend me for CERN, he isn’t happy with my teaching methods, and my work last semester was not impressive.” I sigh as the words fall out. He’s not wrong about last semester.