CHAPTER 29 LINCOLN

It's been such a whirlwind that I've barely had two seconds to think.

But as I lay in bed alone on Friday night after the first week of OTAs, I can't help but feel a stab of guilt.

As lies build on top of lies, I'm not sure what I feel most guilty about.

I'm lying to my entire family as I find myself falling hard and fast for the enemy. I'm lying to Jolene as I know a key piece of information regarding her father's injury that has never actually been confirmed.

If she were ever to find out I knew and didn't tell her, she'd be devastated.

But she'll never find out. As far as I know, the only people who know are my father and me. He'd never tell anyone at this point, and neither will I.

Still, the thought that there will always be a secret between us is more than a little unsettling. And if I'm keeping a secret this big, I wonder if she is, too.

We haven't said the whole no secrets thing to each other. We can't. It would be hypocrisy to sit here saying we can't tell secrets when we're both living one.

Hell, we're even lying to her kid. I hate all of it, and if somehow we get past all these hurdles and find ourselves together in the end, what sort of long-term scars are we leaving on him?

It's all wrong.

Yet when she asked me yesterday if it's worth it, the answer in my head was immediate and confident.

Of course it's worth it. When I'm with her, nothing else seems to matter anymore. It's the two of us, and we deserve the sort of happiness we have when we're together.

I think back to how good I slept in that bed beside her in Ohio and how awful I've been sleeping since I returned.

It was easy to keep my father's secret when she was my enemy. As soon as we turned a corner, though, things changed.

I toss and turn all night, and when I wake, I have work to do in the morning followed by the lunch I'm already dreading.

I think about inviting them to the Gridiron since I'm at the Complex anyway, but I know what a terrible idea that would be. Still, something about knowing it's owned by Joseph Bailey makes me want to take my dad there. I want him to eat the wings and declare them the best in the west, and then I want to tell him he's eating Joe's wings as he puts coins in Joe's bank account.

I'm not stupid, though. If somehow he already knows, actually taking him there would be a real dick move.

And so I don't.

We end up meeting at a fancier place a few miles away from the Complex. It's a little too upscale for lunch, but my mother chose it and so here we are. It's storming today, a rare occurrence in the desert, and I wonder if it'll warn them off moving here.

Somehow I doubt it.

I spot them as soon as I shake the rain from my hair in the entry. They're sitting at a table near the front, naturally, so we can be seen by anyone who happens to walk into the place.

Despite the loss of the majority of their money thanks to the legal battle over Rivalry, my mother's tastes never changed.

Which is why my dad is past retirement age and still working as a scout, but that's another matter entirely. I'll be footing the bill today anyway, not that it matters.

"There he is," my mom says, and she leaps up to give me a warm hug. My father stands and offers a handshake, and then I slide into the chair beside my mom.

"How's house hunting?" I ask, crossing my fingers they came up blank and decided not to move here after all.

My mom glances at my dad and she grins, and for just a beat I wonder how she ended up with him. She's more on the bubbly and sweet side while he's more on the selfish side. "We found a place this morning," she squeals. "The first place we looked at. We still looked at two more just to be sure, but I'm sure. Aren't you, Eddie?" she presses.

"Gorgeous mountain views," he grunts without bothering to look up from his menu.

"Well, when it's not storming, anyway," my mom adds.

"Where's it located?"

"Spring Valley," she says, my heart sinking as she gives me the cross streets.

"Great," I lie. "That's not far from me."

I was hoping for a little more distance than that.

I guess that means it's time to escalate things with my fake girlfriend. It's the only way I'm going to throw the scent off what I'm really doing.

We place our orders, and then my mom asks, "So what's new with you, honey bear?"

I chuckle at the term of endearment. When there were four boys running around the house, my mom took to calling us all honey, honey bear, or sweet cheeks or else inevitably she'd say the wrong name. I may be thirty-six, but that doesn't stop her from calling me that now anyway.

"I started seeing someone." That's not a lie.

My mom's eyes light up as she sits up a little straighter, and then she leans forward and says conspiratorially, "Tell me everything."

Even my dad looks sort of interested.

"Her name's Samantha." That is a lie. "She's got black hair, blue eyes, and she's a single mom and a nurse." All of that's true of the woman named Samantha.

"A single mom?" my mom repeats, ignoring the rest of the stuff I said.

"She's doing an incredible job raising her seven-year-old son virtually on her own since her son only goes to his dad's place every other weekend." That could be either Sam or Jolene.

"Have you met the kid?" my dad asks.

I nod. "He did a camp with one of my tight ends and I happened to show up there."

"Is that how you met her?" my mom asks.

Oh.

We haven't discussed how we met, so I offer the truth instead of fabricating something else. I don't want to pile lies on top of lies. "I actually first met her at a restaurant across the street from our practice facility."

"How long have you been seeing her?" My mom is on point with the grilling today, and it's another question I should've been prepared to answer.

"A few weeks. We just attended our first event together this past week." I shrug. "It's new, but it's powerful."

My mom rubs her hands together. "Ooh! Is this the one? Am I finally going to get grandbabies?"

"A seven-year-old isn't exactly a baby, Missy," my dad points out.

Jesus. This is heavy. I wasn't expecting to have to field quite all this from my parents, though I'm not quite sure why I wasn't expecting it. It's natural they'd be curious about the new woman in my life, and I wish I had better answers than what I'm giving.

I guess it's better to play it vague.

"I'll plead the fifth on that front, Mom."

She makes a sour face, but I'm not mentally prepared to answer these questions.

I shift topics to the upcoming season, something that feels much easier to talk about, and after lunch, they show me the new place.

It's an eight-minute drive to my place, and I'm positive that's what my mom liked about it.

I don't want them that close. New York felt too close given what I'm doing behind their backs with the enemy, but I can't exactly craft a reason to stop them from buying the place if it's what they want.

I guess I just have to figure out a way to keep throwing them off the scent.

Maybe that means Sam and I need to get serious fast.