Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(49)
Seeing Sierra makes me happy. I care about her and don’t want her with anyone else, I won’t deny that or how selfish it makes me. But I won’t let myself give more than that. I don’t know how. I’m happy with how things are now. Anything else would be far too complicated.
I would only be digging myself into an even deeper grave in Dad’s eyes if I admitted that to him right now.
“So because I’m not married and expecting a kid, I have nothing to lose by uprooting my life to fit into your plans? Your future?” It sounds as ridiculous as it is. Yet maybe not as black and white. I have a suspicion that his want for me to join them has more to do with himself than with me and my life choices. “You can’t just expect me to come with you because you're scared.”
I meet his eyes when he slams a fist down on the top of his new kitchen table. His bottle shakes and the small porcelain jars of cream and sugar clatter from the outburst. The rage burning in his narrowed eyes has me straightening in my seat but not backing down. I hold his stare with equal intensity as I shove my tongue to my cheek.
His mouth is held in a firm line that’s only broken when he opens it to speak, his refusal to my claims at the ready. But I cut him off with a raised hand in front of me that has a rumbled, angry curse falling between us.
“If you’re not scared, then sign over the gym to me and go. It’s going to be mine someday anyways. You know that I’ll take care of it. If there’s nothing here for you to come back to then you really can start over with Lana.”
He visibly flinches. Adam’s apple bobbing with silent emotion, Dad’s eyes fall to his limp hands as they rest open on the table, drawing my attention to the calloused, wrinkled skin. Years of fighting show in the countless white scars etched on his knuckles. Each one represents a memory—a win or a loss. The thick calluses are from the years of hard, manual labour he endured with my grandfather, building houses for countless years while he worked for the money to buy his gym, Rampage.
“The gym isn’t everything, Braden.” He uses his thumb and pointer finger to smooth out his scrunched brows. “I hope that someday you’ll be able to see that.”
A knot forms in my stomach and I nearly make an excuse to leave before I’m saved by the ringing of my phone. Sliding it from the pocket of my jeans, I see a name on the screen that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I’m surprised Tyler waited this long to call me. Dad must have told him that he would be talking to me this afternoon. The shithead’s probably been waiting all day to call me and gossip.
“Need to answer that?” Dad asks as he stands up and moves to get rid of his still half-full bottle of warm piss. I know my dad well enough to tell when I’m being dismissed, so I swallow down the rest of my questions and take a steadying breath to keep myself in check.
Following his lead, I silence my phone and stand up. “No. I do have to leave though. I’m sure we’ll talk about this later, though.”
I stay in the kitchen long enough to catch his barely-there nod before heading for the front door. After slipping my sneakers on, I throw a pained goodbye in his direction and rush out of my childhood home feeling more fucking weighed down and pissed off than I have in a long time.
My muscles ache. They’re on fire, throbbing deep to the bone. A clear warning that I’ve spent far too long in front of a punching bag. But I haven’t even begun to touch on the feeling of rage that’s been swirling my insides around with a hot poker since I left my father’s house.
I still can’t believe it. Moving across the country for some ditsy Barbie Doll that he hasn’t even known for a year? I’ve been replaying our conversation in my head for hours. The gym isn’t everything, Braden. That’s bullshit. Maybe he’s happy to give it up, but I’m not. This gym—boxing at this gym—is all that I have. I gave up the only other thing in my life that has ever made me happy to help run this damn place. I threw away what could have been a professional career in hockey for this place. For him. And he’s just going to leave it all behind. Like it’s nothing but a speck on a map of his past. A blip. Vancouver is our home. I’ll be damned if I let him leave it all behind just to chase some young tail.
“You don’t think that he’s actually serious, do you?” Tyler mutters gruffly, his swift punches not faltering as they make the swinging leather bag cry out in pain. I know he’s hurt by our dad just as much, if not more, than I am. And he has every right to be.
Whereas I grew up with our dad, he wasn’t so lucky. He grew up only knowing his abusive piece of shit stepdad and crackwhore mother. The same mother who kept both Tyler and our dad in the dark for twenty-years.
It’s almost a sick joke, really. I’ve known him as a friend for five years, and only as my blood brother for two of them. His mother dropped the bomb on all of us the night she disappeared from his life. She wasted no time in hightailing it out of Vancouver after finally spilling the beans about my fathers secret love child. It was the definition of a mic drop moment.
But more than anything, it was a punch to the balls. For Dad especially. He knows that it wasn’t his fault that he missed out on so many years of Tyler’s life, but that doesn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow.
Ever since that night, Dad has been trying to make up for his absence whenever possible. Until now, I guess. Now the girl clawing on his arm is more important than his damn family—his kids.