Indy adjusts slightly, inhaling a quiet but sharp breath.
“I was stoked, and she was too. She was due that summer, shortly after the draft. I knew I’d be financially set to take care of them both, and this family was everything I ever wanted. The only person I could tell I was going to be a dad was Stevie. Marissa didn’t want to tell anyone, didn’t want her parents to find out until we had the baby, got engaged, and were living in whatever city I ended up playing for.
“The week of the draft, I went number one overall to Chicago. The next day I flew out here and bought this place in cash, furnished it, and got it ready for my soon to be fiancée and child to come home to. Then Marissa went into labor. I immediately caught a flight back to North Carolina and rushed to the hospital. I was too late to be allowed in the delivery room, so I was pacing in the waiting room with an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket for what seemed like hours. Life was like a dream that week. I was going to get everything I had ever wished for in the span of five or six days.
“I remember this guy kept eyeing me in the waiting room, but I had brushed it off at the time. More and more people were starting to recognize me in my everyday life, so I chalked it up to that. I was bouncing, Ind. I was so fucking excited and nervous and happy and scared. Every emotion you could imagine feeling in that moment, I felt. A nurse came and got me once the baby came. She was healthy, Marissa was healthy, but as soon as I walked into the delivery room, something was off.
“Marissa could barely look me in the eye, but I was too overwhelmed to think much of it until she handed me her daughter, and the second I held that little girl, I knew she wasn’t mine.”
Indy sucks a sharp breath, covering her mouth with those red-painted nails.
“Marissa knew it too and I don’t know what caused her to do it, but she spilled every detail right then and there. That guy in the waiting room? Yeah, that was her real fucking boyfriend. It was his kid. He was in on the whole thing. Our so-called relationship was all a scheme. They both played me, and she was trying to get knocked up. They were just trying to get eighteen years of child support out of me.” I laugh in disbelief, hearing how absurd the words sound out loud as I recall that day four and a half years ago. “She was never afraid of the limelight and her parents weren’t religious. She didn’t want anyone to know we were in a relationship because she was playing me the whole fucking time.”
I drop my head down between my shoulders. “I wanted it so badly, Blue. That whole scenario was my dream life. I was so ready for it. I thought I was going to be this cool, young dad who got to grab his kid from the stands and carry them around the court. I wanted to come home to them every day and I got fucking played.”
Indy curves a hand around the back of my neck, soothingly rubbing the skin there. “Ryan,” she says, not having any other words to add.
I stopped crying a while ago, but Indy took over in that department.
“That’s one of the most horrible things I’ve ever heard.”
I wipe at her cheeks. “It’s why I have such a hard time trusting people. I was manipulated by the one person I thought loved me. Imagine how many normal, everyday people would try to use me if I let them close enough.”
“You bought this place to start a family.” She slaps a palm over her mouth. “Oh my God, my room is painted yellow. That room was supposed to be—”
“I fucking hate that room.”
She buries her face in her hands. “Why are you living here? This apartment is like a prison for you. You can barely go outside as it is, then you’re stuck in here. The place you bought for the life you planned.”
I stay silent as I watch her put together more and more pieces of the puzzle.
“This is why you’re…Have you not been with anyone since?”
With her hips in my hands, I run my palms over her leggings, trying to calm us both down. “I have. I tried to do the casual thing, but that’s never really been my style. The two years after everything happened, there were maybe three women in total. Random partners. No one I knew.”
I wipe at her cheeks.
“Please keep going,” she begs, those brown eyes glossed with tears.
Exhaling, I continue. “It was too weird for me as a man in his mid-twenties not to be having sex, right? So, I tried, but every time I was with someone, I’d be in my head the entire time, trying to figure out how they were going to use it against me. I was so fucked up, Blue, that the few times it happened, I would take the used fucking condom with me and dispose of it somewhere else. That’s how paranoid I was. It was to the point that none of it was worth it. I was doing it because I thought I had to, so I gave myself permission to stop trying.”
“That’s why you left the other night?”
I nod. “It scared me.”
“You don’t think I’d—”
“No,” I cut her off before she can even form that sentence. No, I don’t think she’d try to use me in any way, shape, or form. “I just haven’t allowed myself to want someone in a very long time. That’s what scared me.”
She offers me a soft smile, urging me to continue.
“But, um…” I hesitate. “Even though that day was one of the worst days of my life, it wasn’t necessarily her that messed me up. It was the wakeup call and realization of who I was to the world that fucked me up more than any of it.” I look to the side of her, unable to make eye contact. “I’ve never really suffered from mental health stuff before, but I fell into a pretty dark depression for a solid two years afterward. Everything I had ever wanted was taken that day, but I also learned that I would never be able to have it.”
She jolts back a bit. “Ryan, you can have anything you want. If you want a family, you can have that.”
“Really, Ind? I can’t even do what we did the other night without freaking out. How the hell do you think I’d ever be able to trust someone enough to have more? To have a family with them?” My head drops low. “God, this is embarrassing.”
“Why are you embarrassed? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Because I’m not allowed to do anything wrong! No one can know about this. People expect me to be perfect, to not fuck up. But no one has any idea that for two years, the only thing that got me out of bed was a contractual obligation to be at practice and games. Other than that, I was sleeping the days away, eating when I was reminded to. My apartment”—I motion around—“was a fucking mess. Why do you think I’m as much of a clean freak as I am now? There was a two-year time span I was living in filth because I didn’t have the mental capability to find the energy to clean it. I was in a never-ending loop of darkness, and not a single soul knew that after a game was over their precious golden boy of basketball was going home and living in misery.”