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“Would you quit apologizing for my ex-wife being awful?”
“Sorry.” She paused, grimaced. “I mean, umm, okay.”
“Anyway, I’d meant to talk to you before training camp started, but it never seemed like the right time.” He paused, frowning. “No, that’s not true. I didn’t want to ruin our time together by bringing up my marital baggage.”
Abby snorted. “As if I don’t have a matched set myself?”
“It’s different,” he said. “But I should have realized in July she’d have her sights set on you. Finn even warned me I should talk to you about it. But with one thing and another...” He shook his head.
Abby studied Scott, his shoulders slumped, head down, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Is this like with him? Like with meeting the team? You were scared if you told me I’d bolt?”
She hadn’t said anything, yet, about what Kelly had told her, but having caught on, she’d noticed how he’d been treading around her. Her words were abrupt—blunt, even—but they needed to be; otherwise, he might tiptoe around this, too.
Scott twitched and his eyes came up to meet hers, a sheepish expression stealing across his face. “Honestly? Yeah. Lindsay can be kind of a lot to deal with.”
Abby nodded. “I wish you’d told me, but I can understand why you didn’t. And I wish I’d gotten to meet your friends before I had to pick your best friend’s wife out of a crowd of WAGS at a home game.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “But I understand why you did that, too.”
“I didn’t want to scare you off.”
“I know. I get it, but can we stop, now? I trust you, I’m not running, even if I’m scared to death of some of those women and the way they looked at me. Even if Dylan’s mom shows up at my house every day for the next year. I love you, and I love him, and I’m not letting you go.”
“Okay, no more buffering, got it.”
“And you’re going to tell me more about your family, too.” Abby leaned back in his embrace, making eye contact and ignoring the familiar shock of their crystalline depths. They took her breath away every time. “I know they were a huge part of Dylan’s life before you moved back to Charleston, and they loved you enough to move to California when you left for college. I want to hear all about them.”
“Done.”
“Finn, too. Your friendship with him. Oh, and your sister. She’s in Montana, now, right?”
Scott laughed. “Whoa, easy there. I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but you have to tell me stuff, too.”
Abby froze, her throat closing over her words. “What stuff? Will...”
“Not Will,” Scott squeezed her arms. “I won’t ask you to share more unless you want to. But what about your family? Usually, only children are close with their parents, but you don’t talk about yours at all. I’ll tell you anything you want, but you have to share, too.”
Abby bit her lip, eyes dropping to the white plastic buttons on Scott’s shirt. Four tiny holes, with white thread in a crisscross pattern to hold them in place. The rough fabric against the tips of her fingers. The shriek of laughter from Dylan, upstairs, and Gen’s replying yap of excitement.
This conversation hadn’t gone quite the way she’d anticipated, but she wanted them in her life. She would fight.
Maybe it meant not only for them, but for herself, too. Maybe it meant fighting her own demons, until both of them could retire their emotional baggage, or at least get a matched set they could share.
Abby coughed, her throat aching as she forced words past the stone she couldn’t quite swallow. “Okay. Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
Scott pressed the tip of his finger under her chin until she raised her eyes to meet his again. Brushing a gentle kiss over her lips, he nodded. “Good.”
Twenty-Three
WITH THE INITIAL hearing scheduled for a Monday morning, Scott bailed on dinner with his teammates after pulling out a last-minute win during Sunday Night Football. He’d taken a hard hit in the third, one that had rattled his head enough the coaches sent him into concussion protocol, letting the backup take over and putting them seven points down in a matter of minutes.
Then, he’d spent an hour reassuring Abby he hadn’t been seriously injured.
Only later did Kelly tell him how she’d gone almost immediately catatonic in the stands. Only Dylan had been able to get through to her as her breathing accelerated until she almost passed out.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kelly told him. “Not even when Marissa has anxiety attacks. They come on so much slower, so she has time to manage them. But Dylan said her name, and she kind of shook, then pulled him in for a hug and reassured him you’d be okay. It was like a light switch flipped. She wasn’t there, then she was again. Of course, by that point, you’d gotten up.”
Scott grimaced at the description. Kelly might not have seen it before, but he had.
At least Dylan had pulled her back into the moment before she went too far.