He squeezed her with a groan. “How do you do that?” he asked, kissing the side of her head.
He had to be mindful that she was so tiny in his arms he might break her but damn. It wasn’t just her words; it was the way she looked at him and said them so firmly and with such earnestness that made all the unease dissipate.
“Do what?” she asked with a giggle against his neck.
“Make everything better just like that?”
She pulled back and lifted that sweet little brow. “I didn’t realize there was something wrong.”
“There wasn’t,” he said quickly then changed his mind. “Actually there is.” The concern was immediate on her face, so he leaned over and kissed her softly. “Not with you but I need to make up for last night.”
“Will you stop—?”
“No, I’m serious, Ella. That was some bullshit on my part. Tonight I wanna explain to you about the photos, but I want to do something special in the coming days.” He frowned about having to tell her the next part. “I leave next week.”
The disappointment in her eyes was instant and exactly how he felt. They were just getting started and already he’d be gone for days. “I start the hard-core training next week up in Big Bear, but I’ve already told Noah I want most of the training done here. I won’t be gone too long.” He squeezed her again. “So in the next couple of days I’d like to take you somewhere. Anywhere your heart desires. Sky’s the limit.”
Her eyes went wide. “But I work and I still have some classes going on.”
“You can’t take a day or two off?”
She looked away, chewing her bottom lip. “Maybe a day, but I’d hate to leave more than that now that my dad is still recovering from his head injury.”
“Okay, I’ll take a day.”
He’d take whatever she’d give him. His mind was already working fast. That left the further more exotic places out, but if they left early enough, they could still do say Aspen for the day. Maybe wine country or an entire day out on yacht, giving her the royal treatment. He could bring a masseuse and gourmet chef and crew on board and—
“Disneyland,” she suddenly said with a big smile.
“What?”
“I’ve never been.”
That was more surprising than her suggesting Disneyland in the first place. “You’ve never been to Disneyland?”
She shook her head. “Nope. It just wasn’t doable growing up. While it wasn’t a huge letdown since most of my friends had never been either, I’ve still always wanted to go. I can admit it now, but when I was a lot younger, I was so jealous of the two sisters who still live up the street from me. One year they went as soon as school let out and then wore their pink Disney ear hats the rest of the summer. Every day,” she said with a playful little glare, “they rode their bikes up and down in front of my house, wearing those hats with the little veil flying behind them. I hated them.” She laughed. “Oh but . . .” The smile disappeared instantly and that disappointed look showed up on her face again. The one he already knew was a look he was going to do everything in his power to never have to see. “Never mind.”
“What?” he asked confused.
“How can you take me? You’ll get mobbed.”
Well, she wasn’t going without him. And he sure as hell was making sure she got one of those damn hats. Yeah, he’d had something a bit more romantic and private in mind, but if this is what she wanted . . . “I’ll figure it out. What day works best for you? I leave Sunday, so it’ll have to be before then.”
“Is Friday too soon? It’s my last day off this week, but I could switch—”
“Friday works,” he said quickly. “That’ll give me tomorrow to figure this out.”
She smiled big again, and that was a look he’d never get tired of seeing. He squeezed her again, kissing her softly, but then he remembered. They’d soon be back to the subject that ended last night so abruptly. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but he’d have to tell her sooner or later. He may as well get this over with now.
“You hungry?”
“Yes!” she said so quickly he laughed.
“Okay. Because we need to talk. Let’s grab something to eat first. Would you rather talk at a restaurant or take the food back somewhere more private?”
“Private,” she said again quickly.
He really loved her giddy mood, especially since just last night he thought she might not be speaking to him today. “Your place?”
The twinkle in her eyes waned almost immediately, but she recovered as he’d only ever seen Ella do, so quickly and better than anyone else. “My dad’s there. I’d rather not.”
Felix stared at her for a moment, confused by the sudden switch in moods, but she smiled again, lacing her fingers through his, and squeezed his hand. “That’s fine then; my place it is.” That reminded him of something. “Even better. I have food waiting for me at home.”
She gave him that adorable confused look, another expression he’d never get tired of. “During training, I usually have my meals prepared for me especially on days like today when I know I’ll be gone all day. I got a call on my way here. There’s a fresh meal waiting for me at home, and my mom always makes enough to last me for a few days. You’ll like it, I promise.”
“Your mom prepares your training meals?”
Felix laughed, knowing what she was thinking. “It’s not the fatty Mexican food you’re thinking of. I used to pay someone else to prepare the meals for me. Still do when I’m on the road, but when my mom got wind of how much I was paying, she flipped. So she insisted I give her a list and she’d prepare my food when I was in town. She does a pretty good job.”
“Now I’m curious,” Ella said.
They were off and running. A part of Felix felt excited that he’d have her alone at his place again, and this time he wouldn’t blow it. But then another part of him was even more anxious about the amount of heavy shit he’d be laying on her tonight.
~~~
“This is training food?” Ella asked, looking down mildly amused at the plates Felix placed on the counter.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”
“That’s a lot.” She laughed as he continued to pile more pasta onto his plate.
“But it’s skinless chicken breast.”
“Four of them on one plate.” She laughed again, pointing at his plate. “And they’re huge. Are these from chickens on steroids?”
“All right,” he said, feigning annoyance but secretly enjoying her good nature. “It’s all protein. I need it to keep the energy up. The training is only gonna get more brutal now. And in case you didn’t notice, there’s a lot of me to keep energized.”
“Oh, I noticed,” she said, chewing her bottom lip.
He kissed her, laughing at her tinged cheeks. They brought their plates out to the patio table where Felix had outdoor heaters on. It was a little chilly out, but next to the heaters you might even work up a sweat.
“So the photos,” he said, getting right to it.
He’d poured her a glass of wine to go with her meal, and she sipped it now, staring at him intently.
“You might’ve heard about the stories revolving around the scandal with Gio and Bianca and all.” She nodded but didn’t comment, and her expression was unreadable, so he went on. “Shelley was someone I’d been with a few times right around the time I started seeing Bianca. I didn’t know that things would progress between Bianca and me the way they did. By the time I realized I was seriously falling for Bianca and for the first time ever looking forward to being in love—being in a real relationship—Shelley informed me she was pregnant. I panicked.”
He waited for a reaction, but there was none. Instead, she twirled her pasta with her fork, took a mouthful of it, and wiped her mouth with her napkin then waited. Clearly, she wasn’t going to interrupt until he told her everything. So he continued. “My former publicist, Andy . . .” He cleared his throat because this was the part he was most ashamed of. “He
was a swindler, which in this business can be a good thing, but he went beyond just sweet talking and making killer sales pitches to get endorsement deals. He immediately thought Shelley was just trying to extort money out of me, that she wouldn’t even be having the baby if it weren’t mine. He was able to find some dirt about her family, bad shit that could ruin her dad, who was a well-known pastor in his town. Andy told me to ask her nicely not to have the kid and, if she refused, to tell her about the dirt we had on her dad and threaten to go public with it.”
Finally, there was a reaction. She lifted what he always thought was a cute little brow as she took another sip of her wine. Only now it scared him to death. He knew what she was thinking, the same thing everybody else was when Shelley did the interview and ousted him about the threat. That he was a repulsive, selfish pig.
“I never threatened her with that.”
“I know,” Ella finally spoke up. “I read her interview where she recanted her story.”
It almost made him want to smile that Ella actually sounded and looked annoyed with Shelley, but there was so much more to it, and he was determined to be honest. No matter what. He’d learned his lesson already, and he’d be damned if he fucked this up, not with the way he was already feeling for Ella. This was so much deeper than anything he’d ever felt for Bianca—for anyone.
“I never threatened to blackmail her. That much is true. I did bring up her not going through with the pregnancy, and she was actually considering it. But I was desperate,” he said, his tone forewarning. “The tabloids had gotten wind about Shelley and that I might’ve cheated on Bianca but nothing more. At that point, Shelley still hadn’t decided if she was keeping the baby or not, but with all the other stories flying, I did finally confess to Bianca about having seen Shelley even after I’d begun to see Bianca. She was already beyond pissed about just that. I knew if I clarified by ‘seen’ I meant ‘I’d slept with her and she was pregnant’ we’d be done.”
Ella seemed to be taking the story in stride as if she knew all this already, but he had to tell her everything. Things he knew even the press hadn’t gotten wind of. “I may not have threatened her, but I was a total asshole to her. I wanted her to hate me, to think I was so despicable she wouldn’t dream of having a child with me. I was so afraid of losing Bianca I was a fucking prick to Shelley.” Those last words seethed through his teeth. “So when Andy had someone call her anonymously and threaten to blackmail her, she went to the tabloids and sold her story.”
Felix let out a sharp breath. He hadn’t touched his dinner yet, and he was slowly losing his appetite, having to revisit this part of his life. Again Ella waited quietly for him to continue.
“This was right around the time everything went down with Gio and Bianca. When all that happened, I was certain Bianca cheating on me was karma for all the bad I’d done, for the way I’d treated Shelley, and for the way I’d lived my life up until I met Bianca. So I apologized to Shelley. I explained about not knowing she’d been threatened and that I’d be there for the baby if she decided to keep it. I never asked her to recant her story. I figured it didn’t matter. Everyone thought I was an asshole including me. But she recanted on her own. And she’d already decided she was keeping the baby.
“The only thing I asked of her was that she please keep as low a profile as possible and not give interviews. She was more than happy to oblige. She disappeared for her entire pregnancy back to her parent’s ranch in a small town in Nebraska. I visited her often. But I’d fly out to an airport hours away under an alias and drive there. I went to most of her doctor appointments and listened to the baby’s heartbeat.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if it was the fact that she was having my baby and each time I heard that heartbeat or felt him kicking I’d get that much more excited. Maybe it was just that she turned out to be a sweet girl after all, but my feelings for her grew with each visit. Each time I left to visit her I wasn’t just excited about the baby anymore. I was excited about spending time with her too. When it got close to her due date, I checked us into a hotel near the hospital under fake names.”
Felix sat up a little straighter, remembering this part with conviction. The only time in his life when privacy suddenly meant everything, he’d gone from not giving a shit what the public knew about him to suddenly wanting complete anonymity. At least when it came to his child.
Ella wasn’t eating anymore either. She appeared to be hanging on his every word. For a moment, Felix thought maybe he should’ve waited until after they’d eaten, but he was already this far into it, so he continued.
“Everything was covered up. We’d agreed early on our baby would not be subjected to the media circus and tabloids in any way. Especially all the stuff surrounding Shelley’s pregnancy when the word first got out. I’d spend every penny I had to make sure of that. No one outside my family and closest friends would even know his name, and if I could keep the fact that I’d even had a child a secret until he was old enough to decide whether he wanted anyone to know, then I would. That baby—my son—suddenly meant everything, and I’d stop at nothing to protect him. I loved him so much before he was even born.”
He stopped to swallow hard. He had to. Ella glanced nervously at the sliding door that opened up to the room from which the mantel was visible. He knew she must have been wondering about the baby. Obviously, Felix didn’t have a kid, so she already knew things hadn’t gone as planned. His heart was already feeling that familiar ache it had for so long. The one he’d only managed to drown out with drugs and alcohol. The brutal hand he often felt squeezing his throat was there again. This was why he hadn’t wanted to tell her sooner, not because he didn’t want her to know, but because he didn’t think he could tell her without falling apart, and he’d been right.
Standing up suddenly, he saw her flinch. “I need a second,” he managed to whisper, picking up his untouched plate. “Just a second.”
He rushed inside, feeling the agonizing fist at his throat continue to squeeze tighter with every breath and prayed she wouldn’t come after him. Not until he could get his shit together.
Chapter 16
Ella
Minutes passed or it could’ve been seconds. Ella wasn’t sure. Time could’ve stood still for all she knew, but she sat there with her heart at her throat, afraid to move. She’d seen grown men cry before. Her father and her brother had both done so when her mother died and then during the whole Sonia thing. But somehow this felt worse. It wasn’t just the pain of losing someone. She heard something else in Felix’s voice and saw it in his eyes. He was feeling something beyond just the obvious pain of losing his son. There was something deeper.
She let a few more minutes pass before she stood up, picking up her plate and half-empty glass of wine. The steps she took into his house and toward the kitchen were slow and cautious. He’d asked for time, and she’d given it to him, but she also knew when she was needed. And right now he needed her.
They were barely audible, but she heard them: his footsteps. He was pacing slowly. She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath before turning the corner into the kitchen. He stopped when he saw her. His pained eyes were still red and moist, and his hands were at his head. He ran his fingers through his hair roughly but said nothing.
Ella ambled slowly to the sink and set the plate and glass down then turned and took the few steps to him, wrapping her arms around him. Felix immediately hugged her tightly. She felt his body shake softly against hers.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, kissing the side of his face. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
After a few moments, he pulled away and took a deep breath. “I wanna tell you about him.” He slipped his hand in hers, and she followed him out into the room with the pool table—the room with the photos.
“We named him Jordan,” he said, picking up the photo of the baby in the incubator from the mantel, and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. The tattoo on his shoulder suddenly made sense, and Ella fel
t guilty for being relieved over something like that at a moment like this. “Her entire pregnancy had been normal. I was there when he was born. Everything went fine. He was a perfect baby.” He stared at the photo for a while, lost in thought, and then he continued. “My mom and sister flew out the morning I called to tell them Shelley was in labor and in the hospital. Noah and Abel and the girls flew out later that day.” He smiled suddenly. It was a bittersweet smile, and he even let out a small laugh. “It was the happiest day of my life. They’d taken him away a few minutes after he was born, but they said it was just for routine testing. Then later the doctor came in and told us there was something wrong with his heart but they weren’t sure yet what it was.”
He told her how Abel and Noah had to leave the next day and how Hector had been on a chess tournament so he’d been the only one who hadn’t been there to meet Jordan when he was alive. No one thought it was that serious because the baby looked so normal and healthy. He wasn’t even attached to a bunch of tubes or anything yet. His mom and sister even left without much concern because his grandpa was having surgery in California the next day, but they promised they’d be back. The next day they’d had to hook baby Jordan to all the tubes and keep him in the incubator. That’s when things began to get scary.
“That’s when Gio arrived,” Felix continued. Ella squeezed Felix’s hand as he continued to stare at the photo, but she could see he was no longer looking at it. He was staring through it. “Things between Gio and me weren’t exactly one hundred percent yet, so the fact that he flew all the way out there just to meet my son meant a lot. At that point, the doctors had explained Jordan’s heart hadn’t fully developed on the left side. But they made it sound as though surgery could fix that. We even got to hold him a few times, and thank God Shelley thought to take pictures, because as much as hearing that my infant son was gonna have to have heart surgery scared the shit out of me, I never imagined . . .”