“What did you do?” My voice is soft in the quiet room.
He clears his throat. “Jack stepped in. He, uh, took the test for me.”
“Oh my God, Luke,” I gasp. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“Very. It’s considered fraud. But he did it to protect me. He confessed to my parents when my test showed up clean, and that’s when I was pushed aside as the family outcast. The fact that I let my brother put himself at risk when he was a rising star was unacceptable to them.”
“Does Kaylee know?”
“No,” he says quietly. “My parents. Jack. Me. Savannah. And now you. That’s it.”
“I don’t get it,” I say stupidly. “Why did she do it?”
“My guess is so that she’d have something over me. Insurance, if you will. She’s a master manipulator, and looking back now, I know she only married me for money. She divorced me knowing she’d get more out of me with the evidence she held.”
“Why are you telling me?” I ask, truly curious as to what his answer might be.
“Because you’ve shown me what a real marriage looks like.” He’s quiet a beat. “You’ve been there for me in ways nobody else has ever before in my entire life.”
“So why did you marry her if you didn’t trust her?”
“She’d been pushing for a ring, though I’m not totally sure she cared if it was from me or my brother. I think she gave me those drugs so I’d be dependent on her, regardless of whether she knew what she was giving me.” He lowers his voice. “I did love her even though I didn’t fully trust her, but I looked to my parents for the example. They didn’t trust each other, either. I was young and dumb, and I thought I needed to marry her to keep her loyal.”
“And you divorced her...” I prod.
“When I could no longer take being manipulated by her.” He doesn’t mask the hostility in his tone. “I did what my father never could when it came to my mother. Savannah just wanted money and the last name of an NFL star to seal her career as a sports reporter. To make it look like she had the inside track, which she did. For years. She had total inside access first to my brother and then to me. She got to see the inner workings of three different teams. She got to see inside the heads of two players in different positions, including one who was traded while they were together. And she made out with plenty of cash.”
“What would happen if the truth came out now?” I ask.
“The league would open an investigation, I suppose,” he says. “There could be fines or suspensions or even worse.”
“How would a suspension work with you being injured?” I ask.
“I don’t really know. It would depend how the news came out. If it was public, the punishment would be harsher. If it’s within the organization, it would probably just be swept away like everything else.”
“What’s the suspension for something like that?” I ask.
“First time offense for substituting a specimen would be two weeks for Jack. For attempting to substitute a specimen and having evidence of the drugs, which Savannah has, it’d be six weeks for me. But those are penalties for guys currently doping, not who did something eight years ago. I don’t even know if there’s a statute of limitations on something like that.”
“Did it happen in Nevada?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
I grab my phone and look it up. “The statute of limitations for fraud in this state is four years.” I click off my phone and set it back on the nightstand.
“Well at least we’re clear legally then.”
He yawns. I can’t see it in the dark, but I can hear it. “Get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow,” I say, though I’m not sure why I’m ending this conversation when he’s finally telling me everything I’ve been wanting to know.
“Okay,” he says.
“Thanks for letting me in,” I say, settling my hand back into his. “Thanks for trusting me with your secrets.”
“Thanks for being someone I can trust.” He flexes his fingers in mine, and then his breathing evens out as he falls asleep.
My mind is buzzing now, though. I can’t just go to sleep after that confession.
What if the truth comes out? Savannah knows, and she wasn’t the nicest person when I met her. She can’t be happy that Luke knocked up one woman and married another and she no longer holds his attention. She might even be worried about the money he pays her.
We need to find a way to make sure she keeps this story to herself. I know it’s been eight years, but my gut tells me she’s just waiting for the right moment.
I can’t let her kick Luke when he’s already down.
CHAPTER 7
I’m tired when I “wake up” in the morning, and I use that term loosely since in order to wake up, you’re supposed to fall asleep at some point. Dawn is just starting to light up the room.
Between Luke moving and shifting all night as he tried to find a comfortable sleeping position and my mind reeling at his midnight confessions in the dark, I couldn’t find a way to calm my thoughts enough to actually sleep.
I need a plan.
I need pre-damage control.
But I also need to let Luke’s loyal fanbase know that he’s okay. I haven’t posted anything yet. I’ve been waiting for him to be in the right mood to give me a statement, and that hasn’t happened just yet.
I’m still shocked he confessed his little story last night, to be honest. Maybe it’s the painkillers or maybe it’s the fact that I didn’t run just because he’s hurt.
I turn over and find that Luke’s awake, too. He’s staring blankly up at the ceiling.
“Did you get any rest?” I ask.
“No.” He doesn’t move his gaze from the ceiling, and I can’t help but look up there, too. I don’t see anything. “You?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“Sleep upstairs tonight,” he says. “You shouldn’t miss out on sleep because of me, and I can call you if I need anything.”
“You can,” I say. “But you won’t.”
He shifts a little then winces.
“How’s it feeling?” I ask, sitting up and nodding toward his knee.
“Like hell.”
“I’m sorry. Want me to get you some pain meds?”
He blows out a breath. “I’m trying to do this without them given what happened last time. But not taking them will make me crabby.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Who, you?”
He lets off a soft chuckle.
“You’ve been crabby since the morning after I met you. Maybe even that night.”
His brows dip. “I was not crabby the night we met,” he says crossly.
“You whipped out a stack of condoms that were enough to nearly scare me away and you complained about how your buddies had been ribbing you all night about it having been too long since you had sex. You were totally crabby.”
“Whatever,” he mutters.
I giggle. “See? Crabby. Let me make you breakfast. Or give you some morning sex?”
It’s his turn to narrow his eyes at me. “You know I can’t have sex.”