Page 21 of Punked By the Playmaker
A daughter?Mine?
No. She had to be mistaken.
It wasn’t possible. I always used protection.
That last thought stopped me in my tracks.
There was exactly one woman I’d ever fucked bare. Bristol, my situationship back in Hartford during the early days of my career. But I quickly dismissed the notion that she’d been hiding a kid from me all this time. Not only did the timeline not add up—our “breakup” occurred maybe seven years ago; any child she may have carried from our time together would be much younger than Maisie—but I’d seen Bristol five or six months after I ended things, and she hadn’t been pregnant.
Memories of that night gave me pause. It had ended in a fist fight between me and the Comets’ rival team’s new coach/former captain. Leadership from my team had been present, including the man who’d traded me to the Surf, as well as his younger brother, my former roommate, who wasn’t my biggest fan.
They’d all spent years on the road with me and knew I led an active sex life—I was more likely than not to have a woman in my hotel room in whichever city we happened to be playing in that day. I bet they figured that with that many bed partners, I was bound to have impregnated at least one of them over the years, and they saw it as the perfect way to scare the living shit out of me for a few laughs.
Eyes narrowing, I asked the girl, “Who put you up to this? Was it Braxton?”
Maisie blinked at me. “Who’s Braxton?”
Striding forward, I poked my head out the door, shouting, “Very funny! You really had me going for a minute there, but you can come out now!”
There was nothing but silence in reply.
“Who are you talking to?” Maisie looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Joke’s over, kid. You can go home now.” I made a shooing motion with my hands.
Those impossibly large brown eyes filled with tears.
Oh no. I did not do well with crying women.
As I panicked, my words came out in a rush. “Hey, hey, hey. I’m not mad at you. You did a great job playing your part. I mean it. But I’ve figured out my former teammates were using you to make me sweat because I wasn’t always the nicest to them.”
Maisie sniffled. Voice coming out small, she said, “This isn’t a joke. I’m your daughter.”
The girl was good, but I wasn’t buying it.
I folded both arms over my chest. “Okay, then who’s your mother?”
A few rapid blinks, and the tears clinging to her lashes fell down her cheeks. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“What?” Confusion colored that single word. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can you not know who your mom is?”
“I’m adopted.”
That piece of information only further disproved her claim. Every woman I’d been with since I joined the league knew exactly who I was, what I was worth, and where to find me. If one of them found themselves pregnant with my baby, they would have come forward, demanding child support at the very least.
The tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders melted away. “Good. Then you have parents I can call to come pick you up.”
“They’re dead.”
I stumbled back a step. “Dead?”
Maisie ducked her head in a tiny nod. “Bad storm with high winds rolled through in the middle of the night last spring. A tree fell on the house. Sent them to Heaven and gave me this.” She kicked out her prosthetic leg.
Grabbing the back of my neck, I didn’t know what to say.I’m sorryfelt like lip service, not nearly enough to convey my sympathy for all this girl had been through. But regardless of her tragic backstory, it didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t my daughter, and the only reason she’d found her way onto my doorstep was because of a prank.
“Listen, it sounds like you’ve been through a lot, and I’m happy to help in any way I can, but it’s time for you to go home, Maisie.”
“Home is twelve hundred miles away. I used all the money I had saved to get here.”
