Dax (Arizona Vengeance 4)

“Guess who else is coming?” Erik asks with a huge, knowing grin on his face.

“Tacker,” I guess, but I bet Legend and Bishop were thinking the same thing.

Erik nods enthusiastically. We’ve all been struggling to find ways to spend time with Tacker. He won’t come to any team events, and he’d shunned my invitation to dinner. But Tacker really likes Billy. They sort of have a bond that none of the other players have with him. The one thing we’ve all figured out with Tacker is he has a soft spot for those who can’t help themselves, which puts Billy and Charlie on his list of people he’ll actually leave the house for.

This is, of course, great news. We need to make a concerted effort at Billy’s party to make Tacker understand he could still be a very vital part of this team if he just wanted to.CHAPTER 21ReganThe Miles and the Monahans hail from the outskirts of Ann Arbor, just west of the city. I flew into Detroit, then took a thirty-five-minute Uber ride to the Monahan’s house.

Dax had wanted to pick me up. He’d played in Chicago last night, and the team flew into Detroit this morning on their fancy private plane. He has the day off, so he rented a car and headed straight to his parents’ house to wait for me to arrive.

To say I’m a little nervous is an understatement. Which is silly, I get that. The Monahans are like family to me. I’ve known them my entire life. Our parents were best friends. As we kids all played, went to school, and spent holidays together.

When my parents died in a car accident, Linda and Calvin Monahan, and their kids, were as devastated as Lance and I were. I know Lance, Linda, and Calvin spent a great deal of time talking about whether I should stay with them rather than move to New York where Lance was playing for the Vipers. We all gave it serious consideration, but when it boiled down to it, Lance was my brother and I wanted to be with him more than the Monahans. He changed so much of his life to take on the role of my legal guardian, and we became tighter than ever.

But Linda, Calvin, Dax, Willow, and Meredith all stayed a constant presence in my life. We visited as often as we could and talked almost daily either via social media, text, or phone.

So yeah… silly I’d be nervous to see them.

But I am because they know the whole truth of what is going on with me. Well, not the entire truth but enough. Dax offered to fill his parents in ahead of time about my illness and how he’d married me so I could get insurance benefits. I felt like such a chicken, but I gladly took him up on it. He assured me they would be totally fine with it, which deep in my gut I already knew to be true. I think my fears stem from the fact we’ve been duplicitous for a time so there’s some anxiety in finally coming clean about things.

My Uber driver pulls up in front of the Monahan home. It’s two story, the bottom done in brick and the top in white fiber cement siding with blue shutters. The color of the shutters has changed over the years, and I like this new shade. Our neighborhood would be what I call classic lower middle class, with most of the houses built in the sixties and remodeled over the years to remove shag carpeting and replacing it with laminate. My childhood home was remarkably similar, except it was all cement siding done in a beige color with black shutters and sits one block east of here. I haven’t been back there since my parents died and Lance sold it. We used that money to help pay for my undergraduate degree.

Which is funny. Lance made enough to pay for my education ten times over, but we both sort of felt Mom and Dad would have wanted the money from the house to go specifically toward that. They worked hard to give us a good life, and those fruitions helped me to become a nurse.

When the Uber comes to a stop, I thank my driver and slide out of the seat. He pops his trunk but doesn’t make any effort to help me get my suitcase from the back. It’s no big deal as it’s just a rolling carry-on and easily manageable. When I have it out and the Uber is rolling away, I turn to see Dax emerging from the front door of his parents’ house to greet me.

He’s got on jeans and a thick cable-knit sweater in dark gray. It’s freezing out, but he didn’t put on a coat to come out and meet me.