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Chapter Twenty-Five

Ruby

Bruiser was judging me. I was sure of it.

“Quit looking at me like that,” I told him. His ears perked up when I ate another small mouthful of ice cream. “Yeah right, like I’m sharing with you. It’s just a TV show, Bruiser. Millions of people watch this every day, all right? Concerned citizens who want to know the goings-on in the professional sports world.”

He set his head down on his paws and groaned dramatically.

The commercial break ended, and I unmuted the TV. “If you’ve been living under a rock, welcome to the shock of the week coming out of the NFL. Griffin King—all pro-defensive end—signed a two-year, thirty-two-million-dollar deal in Denver.” The commentator raised her eyebrows, looking knowingly at her cohost. “There were rumblings of this, of course. He was seen in Colorado before he signed his contract, but no one seemed to take that as a sure thing, did they?”

The other suit at the desk shook his head. “No. I talked to multiple sources who did not see this coming before Griffin signed his contract. Besides the eye-popping number on that bottom line—which brings him very close to being the highest-paid defensive end in league history—there are lots of rumblings throughout the league that Griffin really did take this deal to avoid going up against big brother a couple times a year in a divisional matchup.”

His cohost smiled. “Can you imagine what holidays are like at the King house? I hope someone brings a referee to Christmas dinner.”

“If I were to place a bet, I think I’d still put my money on Ice Man.”

She made a disbelieving noise. “I don’t know. Did you see him signing that contract? He was not the outgoing jokester we’re used to seeing in Griffin. That looks like a man on a mission if I’ve ever seen one.”

With melting ice cream dripping off my spoon, I stared wide-eyed at the following clip of Griffin sitting at a sprawling desk with the Denver logo directly behind him. His arms flexed as he signed his contract, and the journalist was right. When he looked up into the camera afterward, there was a fierce determination in his eyes.

My chest fluttered when his lips tilted in a subdued, slightly crooked smile as he shook the team owner’s hand. He was wearing a Denver shirt, and briefly, I wondered when he’d taken care of all this. The sight of his stubbled, hard jaw was jarring, and when I got an X-rated memory of him wiping his mouth against my thigh, I had to set the bowl of ice cream down lest I spill it all over the couch.

Bruiser whined at the bowl’s proximity to his nose. I rolled my eyes. “Oh, fine, go ahead.”

Like a masochist, I watched the rest of the segment as they worked their way through a highlight reel of Griffin’s years in New York.

It would get better, right?

There would come a day when the sight of his sweaty arms and the tightly leashed violence he was capable of on the field wouldn’t trigger a tsunami of dangerous butterflies. I swear, they showed him sacking a quarterback, scooping up the ball, and running it into the end zone, and I almost had a little orgasm.

I speared my hands through my hair, then fumbled with the remote to punch the power button.

“Enough,” I hissed.

And I did pretty well staying away from SportsCenter after that. Sort of.

Any time Lauren saw me checking the sports section of the newspaper over the next week, I decided that I could retire early if I got a dollar for every concerned look she sent my way. When she tried to ask me if I needed to talk anything out, I realized just what a phenomenal coping mechanism denial is.

“Nope,” I said forcefully. “I’m just fine.”

“Yeah, you look it,” she mused, setting her chin on her hand while I stamped due dates onto cards with a mighty vengeance. The bam echoed through the library. A woman perusing the romance section gave me a concerned look. “You know, we don’t actually use those cards for anything anymore. Everything’s digital.”

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

I fixed her with a glare. “I’m aware.”

She smiled sweetly. “Feeling the need to get a little angry energy out?”

“Nope.”

Bam.

“It’s completely natural to feel an emotional connection to someone when you have great physical chemistry with them.”

“I know, Lauren. It’s just ... the stupid chemicals in my brain, and they’ll pass.” Bam. “I can get the same high from cuddling a puppy.”

She tilted her head. “Mmm, I don’t think you can.” Then she patted my arm. “When you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be here.”

My eyes burned for a moment, and I watched her walk off, my shoulders slumping. With a groan, I ditched the stamp and walked back into my office. The walls were bare where I’d pulled the framed renders of the butterfly garden and sculpture walk down. That made my eyes burn too.

It was hard to feel like my life was too quiet again. Too empty. Because it wasn’t empty, but at the moment, it felt like it. Eventually, I’d have to watch machinery dig through the dirt and cut down trees, and things would change again. The feeling of loss always came in waves, and it was important not to fight the ebb and flow.

Wanting that land to become something important—and seeing it become something else—sure felt like another one of my failures this week. Something I had thought I was capable of achieving, a fingerprint I could leave behind.

You left one hell of a stamp on me, birdy.

My stomach pinched, just like it did whenever I thought of him, and I took a deep breath, whirling toward my desk.

I sat down and opened my laptop, eyes snagging briefly on the bench facing the weeping willow tree. No more conversations there, for anyone. Not big ones or little ones, or life-changing ones, like the one I’d had with Griffin. There was a heaviness in my chest, and I set my hand there, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths.

For so many years, feeling pressure there had caused a sharp spike of anxiety, wondering what was wrong, wondering if something invisible was happening that they wouldn’t be able to fix. I’d count my pulse and catalog my symptoms and send a note to my doctor making sure I didn’t need to go in.

This wasn’t anything a doctor could fix. So I took another deep breath, reminded myself that I was fine and I was an adult who could handle the end of a casual relationship that was never meant to be anything more. The days would pass, and my life would continue, whether I participated or not. Griffin’s life would pass on a bigger stage, with more eyes watching, and I knew he wasn’t sitting around moping. Neither would I.

With a false display of bravado, I notched my chin up and got back to work.

Griffin

“Quit moping.”

I glared at Marcus, feeding another football into the JUGS machine. It zipped through the spinning wheels and shot toward him. He caught it with ease, tossing it off to the side, where a Denver staff member caught it and added it back into the bin I was pulling from.

“I’m not moping,” I managed through gritted teeth. “I’m here helping you, aren’t I?”

He caught another one, part of his pre-workout routine to catch two hundred and fifty balls before he touched any weights. Normally, one of the training staff helped him, but I was done with weights already and had an hour to kill before I met with the defensive-coaching staff.

“Why don’t you just go back there? It can’t be that far of a drive from your new place.”

An hour and forty-two minutes, depending on the time of day. But I kept that little tidbit right the hell in my own brain.

“Go back for what? To borrow some library books?”

My neck felt hot at the satisfied gleam in his eyes, because it was more of an admission than I’d meant to make.

“Sure,” he said easily, tossing the next ball away and setting up for the next catch. “Or for sex. Can’t imagine she’d kick your ass out.”

“Oh sure, I’m gonna do just that.” I mimicked his stupid voice. “’Sup, girl, you want to keep being my easy side piece when I’m bored?”

He pointed a football in my direction. “I do not sound like that, and that’s not what you’d be doing. You don’t have to go back for sex. Go for a walk. Watch a movie. Tell her you want to fucking date her. Whatever, man. She liked you too.”

His words caused a tight clench in my throat. “It doesn’t matter if she liked me or not. She won’t let herself get in any deeper with someone.”

Marcus sighed. “That doesn’t make sense. Why not?”

I jerked my chin at the employee, some bright-eyed kid whose name I didn’t know. “Can you give us a minute?”

He nodded easily. “Sure thing.”

Marcus motioned for another ball, and I fed one into the machine. “She had a heart transplant a few years ago.”

His head reared back and he dropped his hands. The ball zipped straight into his stomach, and he doubled over with a loud groan. “Fucking hell, that hurt.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re supposed to catch it, asshole.”

Marcus straightened, rubbing at his stomach. “You’re serious? About Ruby?”

After a deep breath, I nodded. He walked over and flipped off the machine. The whirring sound disappeared, and as serious as I’d ever seen him, Marcus listened while I explained what had happened.

His eyes were huge. “And she could just ... reject the heart at any time?”

“Seems like it,” I said lightly. More than once in the past week and a half, I’d found myself sitting up in the middle of the night, researching heart transplant survival rates on my phone. “There’s a guy in Europe right now, he’s lived like ... forty years. Longest of any heart transplant recipient. He had the same condition as Ruby, actually. Got his new heart at seventeen.”

Marcus perked up. “That’s good, right?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed around the rock wedged in my throat, but the fucker wouldn’t budge. “Yeah, that’s good.”

His face filled with understanding. “That’s why you were helping her with the weights and the training. Help her stay healthy.”

I nodded.

“And she doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone because she knows what a heavy load it is to carry,” he continued.

My eyes narrowed. “Since when are you emotionally intelligent?”

“Are you kidding? I’m so good at this shit. Reading people is like, my fourth-best skill in life.”

“I don’t think I want to ask your top three.”

Helpful man that he was, Marcus ticked them off on his fingers. “Playing football. Throwing parties. And cunnilingus.” He smacked me on the shoulder. “I can give you pointers on all of the above.”

“Please don’t.”

He laughed. “I know what’ll make you feel better.”

“Do you?” I asked with a disbelieving tilt of my head.

“I do. Find me in the team film room after your meeting.”

About an hour later—my meeting complete and my head finally shifting back to football, where it belonged—I wound through the maze of hallways until I found the primary film room. Whenever we met as a team, it would be in here. At the front of the room was a giant projection screen, with a podium off to the side. The walls were emblazoned with the Denver logo, and big, cushy stadium-style seats in a deep-blue leather filled the rest of the room. They were big enough for a lineman to fit comfortably, and when I walked in, about thirty guys were talking and laughing, picking seats while Marcus tried to get control of the room.

“All right,” he yelled. “Pick a fucking seat and get comfy.” My eyebrows popped up at his tone, and he winked in my direction. “This is important, assholes. It’s come to my attention in the last few weeks that I may have missed out on a very important seduction technique.” Everyone groaned, but he held his hands up to restore order. “Our newest beast on defense, Mr. Griffin King, is the reason I’ve become aware of this giant misstep, and as an homage to him, I think it’s time to pay it forward and teach the rest of your single asses about it as well.”

Confusion rumbled around the room, and an O-lineman seated to my right held up his fist for a tap. I did, crossing my arms over my chest, because fuck if I didn’t know what was coming next.

He clicked a button on the remote, and the opening credits of Pride & Prejudice filled the screen. I closed my eyes and swiped a hand over my mouth while the room echoed with a chorus of “what the fuck” and “what is this?”

“I fucking love this movie,” the guy to my right whispered.

In surprise, I glanced over at him. “You do?”

“Hell yeah, man. Chicks love a sensitive guy.”

Marcus stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled, the chatter cutting off immediately. “You’re gonna watch and you’re gonna love it,” he instructed, eyes looking a little crazy as he glanced around the room. “Anyone who doesn’t has to sit in the ice bath for thirty minutes.”

About an hour later, every guy in the room was glued to the screen, and from his spot at the podium, Marcus held up his hands and waited for the right moment. “Now watch ... watch what he does here.”

Darcy extended his hand and grabbed Elizabeth’s, and I heard someone whisper, “Oh fuck yeah, he did that.”

When he walked away, flexing his hand out, the guys went wild.

My laugh was loud, and hell if it didn’t feel good after ten days of feeling like I had concrete blocks tied to my lungs. In my pocket, my phone buzzed, and with a smile still on my face, I pulled it out.

Steven: Emailed you the documents you need to sign. Everything’s all settled. Want me to take care of this for you?

Me: That would be great, thank you.

Steven: I’ll pick up the check tomorrow. Might stop by your new place and throw a rager and drive your car around the state.

Me: Have at it, buddy. I’ll give you the keys myself.

Steven: Oh, I think it’s the lack of permission that makes it more fun.

Before tucking my phone away, I pulled in a short breath and tapped on my photo app. The selfie of me and Ruby filled the screen, and my chest ached with a fierce pinch. For a few more seconds, I stared at it—at the lines of her face, the delicate slope of her nose, the long lashes around her gray eyes, and the wisps of golden hair sliding across her face—then let the phone go dark, sliding it back into my pocket so I could pretend like I was fine.