Chapter 53 Asher Nash

A Few Hurdles

It’s late when I finally leave the Complex, and I call her from my car before I back out of my space.

“Hey,” she answers softly.

I don’t realize how nervous I am until the words come trembling out of my mouth. “Can I come over?”

I have no idea what she knows or doesn’t know, and I certainly don’t want to go home and face my dad right now after he’s the one who fucked me over. I don’t particularly want to go to Coach Dixon’s house, either, but I do need to talk to Des.

“Yes. I’ll text you the address.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m pulling into her driveway.

She’s standing at the door waiting for me, and she’s all I can see.

She’s perfect, and she’s mine.

But there are a few hurdles we’ll have to jump over if I’m going to be able to keep calling her that.

Like the hurdle pulling into the driveway behind me honking his horn.

Apparently I’m in his way.

I sigh as I back out of the driveway and park along the street, and he races past me and into his garage.

“You told him?” she hisses at me as I approach the front door. He walks in through some other entrance, and I hear him yelling her name.

“Desiree Joy!”

“I didn’t intend to. He pieced it together.”

“How?”

He appears behind her. “Asher Nash? You’re kidding me, right?”

I spot the guilt in her eyes before she spins around to talk to him. “Well, now that we’re all here, I guess it’s a good as time as any to tell you that Asher’s the father.” Her voice is bright—too bright. Fake. She sets her hand on her stomach, and I stand beside her totally awkwardly as her parents stare at me.

Her dad knows me, obviously, but I haven’t really spoken with her mom. I’m not sure we’ve actually formally ever met.

“Hi,” I say stupidly. “I’m Asher.” I reach out a hand to shake hers, and to be totally transparent, I’m glad I’m wearing a Vegas Aces sweatshirt and not a silk shirt covered in T-rexes.

“I know who you are,” she says, and she pushes my hand out of the way and pulls me into a hug. “And you can call me Sue. Or Grandma, since that’ll be my next title.”

It feels good here in this hug. It’s warm. Welcoming.

But as I pull back, I spot her father glaring at me, and the warmth evaporates right out of the air.

“What are you doing here?” he barks.

“Daddy, leave him alone,” Desiree says, crossing her arms.

I reach over and squeeze her shoulder gently. “Thank you for defending me, but he’s angry, and I don’t blame him.”

“You’re goddamn right I’m angry,” he hisses. “At both of you. I told you no football players, and you’re doing…doing…” His eyes flash down to her stomach as he fumbles for the right words. “Doing who knows what with a player on my own team!”

“Bill, calm down,” Sue says as Des leans into me a little.

“Asher and I need to talk, so if you’ll excuse us,” Desiree says, and she reaches for my hand and starts to walk toward a staircase.

“Oh, I don’t think so. If you two want to talk, you’re not going up to your bedroom. I can see what happened the last time you two did that.” He nods toward her stomach meaningfully, and I think I might actually throw up.

“Dad!” Desiree yells at the same time her mom yells, “Bill!”

Des glances at her mom, and she purses her lips before she turns toward her dad. “Dad, I’m twenty-five years old. I’m an adult, and I know you tend to forget that and still see me as a five-year-old, but I’m not. I’m having a baby of my own, and I love you to pieces, but I will not stand here and be treated like a child.”

He presses his lips together as he glares at the two of us.

“It’s okay, you two,” Sue says to us. “I know you need to talk, and I’m sure you’d like some privacy. Go ahead. I’ll make sure Bill stays down here.”

Desiree exhales roughly, mutters a quick thanks to her mom, and pulls me along with her. I’m not quite sure where to look because I don’t really want to make eye contact with Coach Dixon right now, so I keep my eyes trained in front of me as Desiree climbs the stairs—a mistake I realize too late since it probably looks like I’m checking out her ass.

It doesn’t matter. Coach already hates me, and I’ve already betrayed his trust. He assumes we’re heading upstairs to bang when all I want to do is explain how he found out in the first place.

I follow her down a hallway and into her bedroom, and I glance around. It’s her bedroom at her parents’ house, so it’s not really her room, and I wonder how much of the décor in here was her design and how much of it was her mom.

As I take stock of what’s in here, it doesn’t feel like Desiree. It’s all white and cold, where she’s warm and inviting. Her place in San Diego had more blues and browns, now that I think about it.

She settles onto her bed and leans back on her pillows, and I turn and face her.

“You wanted to talk, so talk,” she says.

“Are you mad?” I ask.

She lifts a shoulder. “Do I have a reason to be?”

I sigh. “No. I was heading into the locker room for practice, and my dad was standing outside the door. I guess he’d been talking with Lincoln.” I shrug. “Anyway, I told him to leave, and he asked me about the secret woman I knocked up that’s three months along. Your dad walked around the corner and overheard the question, pieced two and two together, and told me to get in his office.”

Her brows knit together. “The guy can’t find his fucking car keys, but he pieces that together?” she mutters.

“Apparently so. He was understandably furious, and he yelled at me a bit, made me feel like a worthless piece of shit, and then gave me extra drills at practice to really hit that point home.”

She pats the bed beside her, and I walk over and sit. She sets her hand over mine and rubs back and forth. “I’m so sorry he did that. I’ll talk to him.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think it’ll help, Des. He’s not mad we kept it from him. He’s mad it’s me .”

“I thought you two were getting close, though. Why would he be so angry?”

I frown as I look down at the ground. “For the very reason I feared from the get-go. He gave me a chance. He said he’s new and it’s a clean slate for him, that the sins of my past didn’t matter. When it came to the locker room, anyway. I guess when it comes to his daughter, he’s going to hold all of that against me.”

“He can’t hold it against you forever,” she points out.

“Can’t he? Or will he do whatever he can to drive me out of here so I can’t be close to you?” I’m being vulnerable as I speak my greatest fears to her.

She blows out a breath as she considers that. “Then we don’t let him.”

“But how do we stop him?”

She doesn’t have an answer for that. Instead, she sighs as she sets her hand on her stomach, and I set my hand over hers. I lean down as I pull her hand out of the way, and I push her shirt up and lean over to press a kiss to her stomach. I turn my face so my ear is up against her, and I listen for our baby in there.

It’s not the first time I’ve realized we’re having a baby, but it’s the first time I’ve done this. “Hey, there. You in there?”

Desiree chuckles.

“I’m your dad.” As the words fall from my lips, an unfamiliar heat presses behind my eyes, and this strange wave seems to pulse through my chest.

It feels like I’m finally figuring out who the fuck I am.

It feels like my entire life, I’ve worked my ass off to find my place. First it was in my own goddamn family as I tried so hard to be as incredible as my three older brothers, and then it was on every team I’ve ever been a part of as I was looked at as the youngest of the Nash brothers, and then it was here at the Aces as I tried to overcome the reputation that I made for myself before I ever even got to complete a whole season. It was through the ridiculous fashion choices I made as I tried to assert my own identity. It was in sleeping with a variety of women as I tried to fill some void that they never would’ve been able to fill.

They couldn’t. None of them had that ability. How could they when it belongs solely to the woman beside me now?

How could it when it feels like the reason I was put on this earth was to find Desiree and have children with her?

I thought commitment wasn’t for me. I thought kids weren’t for me. I thought my entire life had to be football, and there was nothing else for me.

How very wrong I was.

Because this right here?

This is everything. This is where I was always meant to be, and I won’t always be perfect, but I will work my ass off to be the best man I can be to Desiree and the best father I can be to our child—or maybe even our children if we’re lucky enough to have more.

I think I finally found my place. The back of my throat is clogged with emotion, so I don’t say those words to Desiree.

I will. Someday. Or at least, that’s my plan.

First, we have to overcome the hurdle labeled with her father’s name.