#Bae (The Hashtag Series Book 8) Read online

  The memory that is clearest to me about the morning our happily-ever-after gave way to a budding nightmare was when the buzzing sound between my ears faded away and I was left sitting in a hospital bed.

  And then there were two…

  Pickle was gone before we even got to meet her.

  Turns out Daddy might have been big enough for the both of them… but Mommy?

  Mommy was the weak one.

  Three months later…

  Romeo

  Kicking ass. Taking names.

  Just another day in football. And in my normal, everyday life.

  I was beginning my third season as a professional football player with the Maryland Knights, and it still felt like it was my first. Except, you know, I wasn’t nursing an arm injury and I was the starter.

  Oh yeah, and I had a Super Bowl ring.

  I guess what I meant was I still felt the same rush when I put on the uniform. The same excitement pumped through me when I jogged out onto a freshly mowed and prepped field for the first snap of the game.

  I knew my teammates now. I wasn’t green to the NFL or as a football player. But my love for the game was still as pigmented as a fresh-off-the-printer dollar bill.

  I hoped I always stayed that way. Passionate. Motivated. Hungry.

  When I left for training camp over the summer, I had serious doubts. I wasn’t feeling it. I still loved the game, but my motivation was lacking. Sometimes passion was diluted by life; other situations took precedence. I found myself packing my shit for camp and wondering if I would mentally be there this season. It worried me. It was the kind of worry I hadn’t felt since my broken arm. As unenthusiastic as I was to play, the thought of not playing was equally disquieting.

  Turns out playing ball, even just the preseason training and games, was just what I needed.

  It was an outlet, a place to channel all the shit that caused me to feel so diluted. Being on the field reminded me of the things I loved most about this sport. When I was on the field, I could let go of everything else. The single-minded focus I always played with was a welcome reprieve.

  So maybe I didn’t “let go” of everything else.

  That’s where the kicking ass and taking names came into play. I brought it out on the green with me. I used it. I channeled it all into the game, into my arm, my throws, and the momentum with which I launched myself down the field.

  I was really good at throwing a touchdown. I didn’t often run the ball. I was bulkier than most quarterbacks; my muscle mass sometimes slowed me down.

  Not this season.

  This season, I was already making a name for myself as not only a QB who threw missiles into the end zone, but as one who bulldozed his way down the field with the ball tucked in close.

  Good times.

  There was a new aggression in the way I played. A fierceness that maybe wasn’t there before. The coach said I was coming into my own. Experience was starting to show in the way I played. I didn’t argue.

  But he was wrong.

  There was more to our kicking ass. More to the antagonistic way I performed.

  I’d been simmering. Holding off a rolling boil until I finally let it rise.

  The morning Rim stepped into my line of vision with her perfect, round belly on display and nothing but despair in her warm, brown eyes, my life was irrevocably altered.

  Sometimes, the imagery was still all too vivid. I wondered if it would ever become less so. But here I was three months later, surrounded by the sounds of slamming locker doors, loud teammates, and the scent of sweaty balls permeating the space.

  Secret confession of the locker room: Yes, sweaty balls had an odor. It wasn’t a good one.

  I still felt the high of our win tonight. Sweat still slicked my skin, and turf lingered beneath my fingernails.

  It didn’t matter.

  The memories still seemed to haunt me at a moment’s notice.

  Rimmel with blood trailing down her inner thighs. The way her arms wrapped around her middle like a shield. How pain clouded her eyes and how fragile she felt cradled in my arms as I rushed her out of the house and into the car.

  She told me once those first few hours were hazy, as if she’d been experiencing them through a veil. I never said it out loud, but sometimes I envied that.

  My front-row seat guaranteed a really good view.

  I never wanted to see something like that ever again. The fear that wracked my body that night was unmatched. So severe I was certain it altered me in ways I’d feel forever. Kind of how a scar marred skin that had been smooth before. My limbs shook with terror that night, my throat was tight, and breathing was no longer such a thoughtless task. It wasn’t just fear for my daughter… but for my wife.

  Sometimes I thought back to the night Braeden rushed Ivy to the ER. The night we all found out she was pregnant with Nova. I recalled how he looked standing alone in front of the viewing area of all the newborn babies.

  The shadows beneath his eyes and the way my own chest constricted as we all stood around helpless, waiting to find out if there was or was not a baby.

  I understood all too well how he felt that night, and as terrible as it had been…

  What Rim and I suffered was so much worse.

  You know, I was a pretty charming guy. A lot of people said I could talk a chipmunk out of the last of his nuts in the middle of a blizzard.

  No one actually said that. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  Anyway, I said all kinds of delightful shit to Rimmel over the years we’d been together. It was one of the millions of reasons she loved me (another was my, and I quote, “big ego”). I was entertaining and funny.

  I wasn’t a guy with a lot of regrets. Life was too short, and honestly, I was too fucking happy to care about anything that might have passed me by. However. I did regret this one thing I said once.

  I’d like to place an order for one of these in blue.

  The first time I held my niece, I’d said it. A jest, but not really. The idea of a tiny bundle made up of entirely me and Rim became tangible in that moment. The notion of becoming a parent, a father, bloomed somewhere deep inside me

  I didn’t know it at the time how one statement could weigh so much.

  After that, it seemed like a clock I never knew existed started ticking. The press went into “Bump Watch” (FYI: a bump watch is entirely fucking stupid. A baby is not a bump. Just like a man bun is not a hairstyle. It’s stupid.). People started asking when we were going to have a baby of our own. It seemed like almost daily, people would toss out the question.

  I learned quickly a question like that could never be casual. A question like that held just as much weight as my off-hand “charming” statement that day in the hospital.

  Not long after Nova came home, Rim and I started trying for a baby, even though we said out loud we wanted more time for just us. No one needed to know, just like no one needed to know we’d snuck off and married in secret before our wedding. Some things were just for us. Some things were so special they remained unspoken and sacred.

  Then one unexpected day, I found my girl crying in the bathroom because she couldn’t give me the bundle in blue I so charmingly ordered.

  Fuuuckkk.

  I hadn’t been too worried about the months we’d been trying and hadn’t been successful. I didn’t know every month that passed and she didn’t get pregnant was like a silent knife to her heart. Hell, the trying was enough fun for me.

  For Rim, it had been more. It turned into something she couldn’t achieve. At least not in the timeframe she thought she should.

  I hadn’t realized how much pressure she’d put on herself until I found her that day, sniffling. Her eyes were red-rimmed, glasses slightly askew. Her hair was a mess, and she was sitting on the bathroom floor with tissues bunched in her hand. My name stretched across her back as she sat bundled in my Alpha U hoodie. It was still her favorite thing to wear.

  She was mortified I’d found her that way.


  It was a different time and circumstance, but that image of her brought me back. Back to the time she was sitting in the center of the animal shelter with a one-eyed cat in her lap.

  I fell hard that day for Rim.

  I fell for her all over again in the bathroom.

  I sat down, scooped her up, and made her tell me. She thought she was somehow failing me. As if she ever could.

  We had a talk right there on the bathroom floor about what I expected of her as a wife. It went a little something like this:

  “Breathe. All I expect is for you to breathe.”

  It was a good talk. It got me a blow job and a smile on her beautiful face.

  Not too much longer after that, I found her crying in the bathroom again. Seriously, a quick thought that our bathroom might be fucking cursed did cross my mind. Until I saw the smile beneath her tears. Between us, her arm was outstretched; in her palm, she offered me a stick. I really, really wanted to crack a joke about not wanting to touch something she peed on.

  But I refrained. Her eyes were too sparkling for that.

  She was pregnant. My baby was having my baby.

  Life was good. Better than good.

  The idea of our daughter folded seamlessly into our life. So many moments. So many moments we had to get used to the idea, to want her… to love her.

  Then she was ripped away.

  I’ve never seen pain like that in my wife’s eyes. I still remember carrying her out of the hospital (like I’d let her ride in a wheelchair when my arms worked just fine.). She’d looked at me and said, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

  No. No, it wasn’t.

  But it was.

  And here I was. Here we were.

  In those first few weeks, I poured everything of myself into Rimmel and making sure we got through this. All of my anger, sadness, and frustration was restrained because it wouldn’t help her and it wouldn’t erase that void deep in her eyes.

  In fact, I worried if she ever saw it, it would only make what she suffered worse.

  The prep for the new season started, and an outlet presented itself. I unleashed it all on the field. During practice, at pre-games. Hell, any chance I got really. It helped. I still had Rimmel, my family, and I knew we’d have another child someday.

  “We’re the bomb dot com,” B said, slamming his hand into the closed locker beside my open one. “We’re taking the Bowl again this year.”

  I grinned. “Hells yeah.”

  “That was some nice throwing out there tonight,” he said, leaning against the locker with his bare arms folded over his chest.

  “Yeah? Well, you lived up to your name out there, too, Hulk.”

  Braeden flexed, lifted his biceps, and kissed them. “Sprinkles. Does the body good.”

  “Dude. Never say that again.”

  “Haters gonna hate,” he retorted.

  “Posers gonna pose,” I mocked.

  Braeden scowled. “You’re an asshole. I’m hitting the showers.”

  I laughed. “I’d join you, but I wouldn’t want to make you feel inferior.”

  Braeden stopped and turned back. The ends of the white towel wrapped around his waist slapped against his legs. “I’ll whip it out right here, Rome. You know I will. We’ll have a dick-measuring contest right the fuck now.”

  Several guys around us started cackling. “Keep it in your pants, Hulk!”

  “Unleash the Kraken!” someone else hollered.

  Braeden gave everyone the finger. I grinned and pulled off the rest of my uniform and wrapped a towel around my waist. Just as I was closing the locker door, my cell went off.

  I reached for it, glancing at the screen. It was a text from Trent.

  I pulled it up and stared down at the pic he’d sent through. Around the phone, my hand tightened, and all the muscles in my neck bunched. It didn’t matter how hard I went out on the field tonight, this was all it took to make me ready to smash heads again.

  I sucked in a deep breath and expelled it.

  “What is it?” B asked from right beside me. His voice was low, all sense of teasing gone.

  I held the phone out so he could see the screenshot of the newest article unleashed by the stalkerazzi.

  Stalkerazzi = the press who wouldn’t stop printing stories about me and my wife.

  I actually really preferred to call them fucking photogs, but Rim didn’t appreciate my “foul” language. I didn’t appreciate the way they’d been torturing my wife. Still, I tried to tone it down when I was around my girl because it was the right thing to do.

  B snorted. “What is this, your tenth divorce in the last three months?”

  “Look at the fucking sub-headline,” I ground out.

  Braeden grabbed the phone and angled it more toward him and leaned around my shoulder. A low growl vibrated the air around us. “How is she?” he asked quietly, shoving the phone away from his eyes.

  I pulled it back and texted Trent. Rim seen it?

  His reply was instant. Unfortunately.

  How is she?

  A little quiet but fine.

  They hovering? I typed back quickly, suddenly feeling like flying home tomorrow just wasn’t soon enough.

  Nope, he replied.

  I found that surprising, but I didn’t bother saying so. Thank fuck for Trent. Over my shoulder, B was reading the exchange. I let him. Less to reiterate later.

  You home now? I typed out.

  Yep. I’ll hang for a while. I told her I needed cookies.

  I felt my lips curl up. Rim couldn’t resist a hungry family member. Even if she didn’t feel like being “babysat,” as she called it, the second Trent declared hunger, she’d make sure he was fed. Everyone called me the alpha of our family, but I considered her the head of us all. After the wedding, Rimmel really settled in. That ring might just be jewelry on her finger, but those vows, the papers we signed, it gave her something.

  Security. A permanent family she’d never had. A promise we would never go away. The completion of the compound and having us all behind the gates together only made it stronger. Rim was the one who looked after everyone, who enforced pancake Sunday and proved loyalty and family was far stronger than blood.

  She was our glue.

  She was my glue.

  It’s the mother in her. The thought sent a pang of pain and regret through me, but I forced it away.

  Braeden snorted. “Bastard always gets the cookies.” Then he made a sound and muttered, “She better not feed him my sprinkles.”

  Thanks, bro. I’ll call her when I get to the hotel, I typed out, then shoved the phone in the locker so I could go shower off in a hurry. I wanted to get back to the room so I could call Rim, hear her voice.

  I missed her. It had been two weeks since I’d seen her last, and it was two weeks too long. If I was already missing her this much, this fast, it was going to be a hella long season of traveling.

  Braeden was staring at me as I moved past. I kept going. He fell into step beside me as we headed toward the shower stalls.

  “I’m getting really fucking tired of the press.” My tone was short and gruff. Actually, I was already tired of the press. I was done the first time they printed something that hurt Rimmel.

  B slapped me on the shoulder. “Dude, just say the word. I’ve got a bin full of fireworks and paintballs I’m just waiting to unleash on those gossip suckers.”

  I made a rude sound.

  He was a little too silent. I glanced over at him.

  He was staring back, straight faced.

  My eyebrows shot up. “You serious?”

  “All right, they’re in the garage. Under lock and key.”

  It sounded like something we’d have done in high school, and then my mother would have lectured us afterward. We were grown-ass men now. With responsibilities. We didn’t do that kind of thing. It was beneath us.

  They keep torturing your wife.

  The thought was like a drop kick to my nads. “Don’t
get rid of your stash just yet,” I told him.

  His eyes flickered with surprise. “It’s not going anywhere.”

  Good, because I had a bad feeling the stalkerazzi weren’t either.

  Rimmel

  Her name was Evie.

  The meaning of her name was life.

  It seemed appropriate somehow to give our daughter the name of something she wouldn’t have. Evie never took her first breath. I never saw her eyes that surely matched her daddy’s. I never got to hold her…

  But she was a life.

  My life.

  Our life.

  A life that never would be.

  After I lost her, so much was unbearable, most of all the way people referred to her, the way they would whisper in hushed tones when they thought I couldn’t hear.

  She lost it.

  That baby would have been gorgeous.

  It. That baby. Would have.

  No.

  Evie. Ours. Is.

  It didn’t matter that we’d never get to hold her. I felt the crushing weight of her absence; I felt the hollowed-out core in my body where she used to grow. Empty. Lifeless.

  How did I reconcile what was with what would never be? How did I let people know even though she technically never lived, she still existed and would never cease? I’d known loss. I’d known death.

  This was so much worse.

  Life goes on. That’s what people said anyway. And in a sense, they were all right. Life did go on. Minutes passed, hours ticked by, and days dragged. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months.

  The pain of losing her didn’t dull. I learned to live with the stinging reminders every single day so they weren’t as sharp as before.

  Even though the pain dulled, the memory didn’t. The blur of that day was still agonizingly vivid. It didn’t even matter I was checked out for most of it, because even the emotions of events I suppressed haunted me.

  Something else took over where the sharpest pain resided. Desperation. Almost total-consuming thought.

  Wondering.

  What if? Why? When? Again?

  What if I’d never lost her? What if she was a bundle in my arms right now?

  Why did this happen to us? Why was I being punished? Why was the press so brutally indifferent, so calculating and cold about my pain? When would it not hurt so much? When would I get pregnant again? Could I? Why wasn’t I already? If I did… would I have a miscarriage again?