Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

brADEN

My phone rang, startling me out of my sleep. The chick in bed next to me grumbled some nonsense about having a headache, and I rolled my eyes as I sat up, shocked at the picture I saw on my caller ID.

"Mom?" I answered, yawning.

"Braden Garrett Hicks, you may be a bigshot professional football player now, but you are still a member of this family!" she growled at me.

What the hell? It was way too damn early for this, especially before I'd had coffee.

"Whoa. Back up, Mom," I said as I got out of bed and found some sweats to throw on. "What did I do?"

"How could you?" she sniffled.

"How could I what? Catch me up a little. I'm lost."

I walked into the bathroom and shut the door so the girl I'd fucked last night didn't overhear my personal conversation. Even though I'd made her sign an NDA – come on, a dude in my position's gotta have some protection – that didn't mean I needed to make it too easy for her to overhear something she shouldn't.

"How could you miss his funeral?" my mom said, her voice catching in a sob.

All the spinning gears in my head came to a screeching halt as I sank down onto the edge of the tub. What was going on? Who had died, and why hadn't I been told about it? I might have been an asshole sometimes, but my family, biological and chosen, meant everything to me. I would never have missed a funeral.

"Whose funeral?" I asked quietly.

"Uncle Terry's," she sobbed.

No. That wasn't possible. I'd just messaged with him on Facebook two weeks ago. The last time I'd seen Uncle Terry was right after the draft. He'd seemed perfectly healthy, and he was so excited to see me play my first game. He'd always messaged me after every game, telling me how well I'd played or where I'd fucked up and how I could do better next time.

"What? When? How?" I choked out. "Why didn't anyone call me?"

"Don't pull that shit with me, Braden! Not today!" she spat.

"Mom, when have I ever lied to you? When have I ever missed any important family functions?" I reminded her, swallowing the lump that rose in my throat. "I never got a call. I had no idea. When did Uncle Terry die?"

"Jameson called you a week ago," she insisted. "He said your number went to some PR company, but he left a message with a woman named Vicki."

Blood boiled in my veins and my free hand clenched into a fist as my sorrow at losing my uncle turned to rage.

My cousin had to have called my old number. At the start of the season, when my phone had started blowing up with calls from newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations asking for interviews or sound bites, I'd gotten a new private number and just given it to family and close friends. But I'd kept my old number and had it forwarded to my publicist so that she could field the interview requests. I'd told her that it used to be my personal number and that I might end up getting some personal calls on it, and I'd asked her nicely to please either give them my new number or pass on any messages to me. Apparently, in this case, she'd done neither. And now I'd missed my favorite uncle's funeral because she'd flaked.

"I am going to kill her," I growled.

"What?"

"Vicki's my publicist. I must have forgotten to give Jay my new number. I fucking told her some personal calls might slip through and asked her to either give the people my new number or pass the messages on to me. She never called me, Mom. I swear to God, she never called me." My voice broke as the grief started to leak through again. "When did he die? How did he die?"

"A week ago today. He had pancreatic cancer," she sniffled. "He never told anyone except Heidi and the kids. I guess the outlook was never good to begin with."

I sighed. "Is there anything I can do now? Like, any bills I can help with? I can't…I would have been there if I'd known."

"I know they still have a ton of medical bills from his treatment," she suggested.

"What hospital?"

"Olathe Med."

"I'll call them and see what I can do. I'm so sorry, Mom," I said, once again choking down the lump in my throat. "I'll talk to you later, okay? I have to be at the gym in a couple of hours, and I need to call my publicist and find out why in the actual fuck she thought I wouldn't want to know about my uncle dying. Tell Jay, Prue, and Aunt Heidi I'm so sorry, please."

"I will," she sighed. "Take care of yourself down there."

"Always do," I told her.

I hung up with my mom and stood up, the grief once again turning to rage. If my fucking publicist had just passed on a goddamn message, I could have been there today mourning my uncle's death and celebrating his life with my family. Instead, I was nine hundred miles away from them. And all because someone I fucking paid to field phone calls for me had dropped the ball.

"Fuck!" I screamed, letting my fist fly into the wall.

"Baby?" I heard a whiny voice say from the other side of the door. "I have to pee. Can you finish up in there?"

I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths so I wouldn't flip out on this woman, some local sports journalist whose name I didn't even remember. Just because I'd stuck my dick in her last night, that didn't give her the right to call me "baby." I'd stuck my dick in plenty of chicks; she was just the latest in a long line. And I'd made that crystal clear last night.

I threw the door open and stormed out. "Do whatever you have to do in there and get out of here."

"What's the matter, baby?" she said with an annoying as fuck pout. "I thought we could grab some breakfast. Maybe go for another round?"

"I have shit to do," I barked, grabbing my wallet and shoving a Ben Franklin into her hand. "Here. That'll pay for your Uber and breakfast. Go take care of whatever, get dressed, and get the fuck out. And don't call me ‘baby.'"

I grabbed a shirt from the dresser and stormed out of the room and downstairs toward my training room, not letting her answer. I had a phone call to make.

"Garman and Garman, Vicki Preston speaking," came the bitch's voice.

"What the fuck , Vicki?!" I roared.

"Braden. This is a surprise," she said in a syrupy-sweet voice that oozed with disingenuity. "What's wrong, honey?"

God, I fucking hated it when she called me "honey." I'd asked her numerous times to stop, but she'd never gotten the message.

"Care to tell me why you didn't think I needed to know that my uncle died ?!" I growled. "I missed his fucking funeral today because of you!"

"W-wait, what?" she stammered.

"I told you when I had my old number forwarded to you that a couple of personal calls might end up slipping through because it was my old phone number! And I asked you to either give them my new number or pass on a message. Apparently, you did neither, because my cousin called that number and asked you to pass on a message, which you failed to do. That's fucking unacceptable !"

So unacceptable, in fact, that I was seriously considering firing her ass right now, regardless of how much it would cost me to get out of our contract since I couldn't actually prove negligence.

"Oh, Braden," she murmured, and I almost – almost – believed she actually had a heart. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. My secretary must have taken the call and not passed it on to me. Is there anything I can do for you now?"

I took a deep breath, ignoring her once again calling me by a pet name. Maybe this was all a colossal misunderstanding and miscommunication. Vicki had never dropped the ball like this before. She was an entitled bitch who seemed to think the world owed her everything just because she was moderately good-looking, but she was good at her job.

"No. It's too late. But is there anything else you've neglected to tell me?"

"No, honey. I promise. And I'm going to talk to my secretary about passing on all messages to me, whether or not she thinks they're important, as soon as we hang up."

"Next time this happens, you're fucking fired. Are we clear?"

"Yes," she mumbled uncomfortably. "I'm so sorry, sweetie. This won't happen again. I promise."

"No, it won't," I muttered, hanging up on her ass.