Page 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ivy

My body hurts and I have a headache.

As in, my whole body. I’ve felt the aches of the flu, and the aches of being exhausted out of my mind. This is something different entirely.

And I can’t cry.

Is that weird?

I’m a self-confessed oversensitive girl. I am a crier. Stressed out? I’ll cry. Sad? Crying before I even know why. Having an argument? So many tears it frustrates me more.

But I haven’t shed a tear since Pops died.

Ouch.

My chest explodes with pain and I close my eyes. It hurts so badly.

Scott drives with one hand on the wheel and the other on my thigh. His fingers are digging into my jeans and his thumb stokes the fabric absentmindedly. He hasn’t stopped touching me since that kiss in front of eighty-thousand people.

The kiss. Oh god, the kiss.

I have no idea what on earth made him think that would be okay and I felt sick watching him stride toward me, the determination painted all over his gorgeous face. But when his lips touched mine for the first time in weeks, the world started to turn again and a little of the ache I had been feeling in my heart healed.

I don’t care about the photos that are probably circling by now.

I don’t care about the gossip columns, or news reports, or social media posts .

It hardly matters. I should’ve realized that I wouldn’t just be able to move on from the man sitting in the driver’s seat. Not when he’s spent the last two weeks showing me exactly where I rank on his list of priorities.

He’s tied himself to me and wrapped my life around his.

Football and I … well, we will probably never be friends. I still hate the reminder of what I lost every time I look down at the field. Every time I hear an announcer talk about my family. Every time I feel like I have to share a piece of my dad with the rest of the world.

So no, we won’t be friends. But we can be friendly .

Because Pops is gone. My worst nightmare has come true and I’m on my own. At least that’s how I viewed it before this summer. Before Scott.

Now, I see the man sitting across the console from me, his hand holding my leg as if I’m a lifeline and he’s scared I’ll ask him to leave again. The man that has been sleeping on the couch downstairs for two weeks because he didn’t want me to be alone.

Yes, I know.

Of course I know. He’s not exactly quiet and I haven’t been sleeping nearly as much as he and Katie think I have been. The home movies they played today? I’ve been playing them on repeat since I came home from the hospital that night. I’ve been watching Pops games, my dad’s games. I’ve been listening to them talk. To each other, to my mom and nan. To me.

I look down at the jersey. An old but hardly worn Broncos jersey that has been sitting in a sealed box for almost twenty-two years. My dad’s draft day jersey. The one that he would’ve been given when drafted to the Broncos if he hadn’t died before he made it.

I hadn’t even known the box existed two weeks ago.

I left the hospital the night Pops passed with Katie on one side and Dr. Bryden on the other. He gave me a hug after walking us to our car, then he pulled out a crisp white envelope with my name written in Pops’ neat scrawl across the front .

There wasn’t some big confession inside. No huge plot twist that may have set my life on a different path the moment I read it.

It was simply a reminder from Pops.

You need to live a little.

Remember me, remember your dad, but don’t forget to live.

My heart constricts and my nose stings as I remember. I’d read his words over and over, hearing them in his voice and then again in my dad’s.

He is right. Of course, he is.

Pops also told me about the box of football things in the back of his cupboard. He’d been saving them until I got over my resentment which in his letter he hoped would be any day now, now that I was in love with a quarterback. It was full of game tapes, and play diaries, and notebooks, upon notebooks that my dad kept. I’ve been obsessively pouring over them the last few nights. He was good, really good. The Broncos jersey was neatly folded inside, along with a few others. All with my dad’s number and name stitched into it. Pops mentioned in his letter that it was the one they gave him after Mom and Dad died. The same one they had been planning to give him when they got him in the draft that coming April.

I left the box sitting open on my bedroom floor after pulling out the jersey and deciding to wear it.

I fiddle with the hem, glancing down at the large number eighteen on the front .

Scott’s hand pulses on my leg and I look up. He’s staring at me, his other hand resting on his own thigh. I furrow my brow and turn to look out the window. The brownstone looms over us, bathed in afternoon light painted in pretty patterns from the shadow of the trees.

“Want to go inside?” he asks gently. He doesn’t move, waiting for me to decide.

“Sure.” My voice sounds like gravel. I haven’t been talking much lately. No crying, and no talking. Two things I normally excel at are the two things I haven’t really felt like partaking in.

Scott waits for a beat and then makes his move. He’s out of the driver’s seat and at my door before I can even unbuckle my seat belt. He opens the car door and extends a hand. I take it and step out of the car, he keeps his fingers threaded through mine. As we get to the front door, he uses the key I gave him at Christmas to open the door.

Fair enough. I never asked for it back.

Although, I don’t think he would’ve given it to me anyway. According to him, we never broke up. And I guess we didn’t.

I was being a fucking idiot.

I strip off my coat and sit down on the small bench by the door so I can peel off my boots. Before I can reach for the zipper, Scott bends down onto one knee and reaches for my calf. He pulls the boot toward himself and gently takes the tiny zipper between his large fingers, tugging it down. He slips one boot off my foot and then repeats the action with the other.

I can only stare at him as he carefully puts them to the side and stands again, holding out his hand. I let him lead me down the corridor, into the living room and over to the couch. He sits down, pushing back into my usual spot of the couch so he’s nestled right into the corner cushions. Then, he pulls me down onto his lap.

I mold myself to his chest and he covers us with a blanket.

With every breath, every intoxicating inhale of him, I feel as if a tiny surgeon sits in my chest with a tiny needle and thread, stitching the cracks in my heart together one tiny stitch at a time.

An hour passes. Or a minute. I’m not sure. We just sit in silence. His hand runs a soothing path up and down my back and my cheek presses deeper and deeper into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, finally breaking apart .

He doesn’t stop or change or move. He simply replies, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I do. I was a stubborn idiot.” I close my eyes, my stomach churning a little with anxiety. “I should never have pushed you away for something as silly as you playing football. You just weren’t—”

“Part of your plan?” he finishes for me.

I’m not exactly sure how to describe the feeling that washes over me at this moment. It’s something new.

Scott, for all that I have put him through the last few weeks, continues to work, and to fight, and to want me. The feeling settles me. Like roots are starting to anchor me down but those roots are intertwined with his, twirling and twisting around one another’s until they’re tied together with no hope of ever coming apart.

And I’m not scared.

Not like I was.

When Scott looks at me, he sees all of me. Every flaw, every imperfection, every delusional grudge I keep. He sees through the happy mask I have on and into the anxiety, and the fears, and the vulnerability I try so hard to keep inside. He looks at me with acceptance and understanding.

And love.

“No. You weren’t part of my plan,” I murmur back.

“I know, baby.” His hand continues to stroke my back, the soothing circles lulling my exhausted body to relax against him. “Plans don’t always go the way we want them too. I know that scares you. But I’m here. To help. I’m not going anywhere. If you let me.”

My eyes sting and my throat feels scratchy. My stomach twists and turns.

But no tears so instead, I close my eyes.

***

I must have fallen asleep .

I wake up with my body tucked under the heavy covers of my bed and my arms circled tightly around a pillow. My bedroom is dark, the only light coming from the lit hallway lamps where the door has been left open. I sit up, letting the covers fall off my body.

Scott changed my clothes. I’m no longer wearing the jeans or the jersey I’d picked out. Instead, just an oversized Broncos t-shirt. I run my fingers through my hair, pushing the strands out of my face as I yawn. My body still hurts but my headache has gone and the pain in my chest has eased, if only a little.

This morning I left my bedroom in a state. Clothes everywhere, video tapes scattered all over my dresser, the box of football memorabilia open in the center of the room. It’s not a mess anymore. The clothes are gone, the tapes are stacked neatly on the dresser alongside the sealed box. The jersey I wore today is hanging from the curtain rod over my window.

I look at it and I think of my dad.

He would approve of Scott. I know deep down that he would.

Throughout the years, there've been so many times when Pops would try to tell me that my dad would’ve wanted me to love football like he did. To enjoy the game and the connection to him it gave me. I ignored him. Stupidly. I’d ignored a whole part of my dad that I could’ve had before now and even though I know that it’s ridiculous, part of me still hates football.

Still hates that it got him first.

My chest squeezes tightly as the push pull continues inside my head. I can’t move forward and I can’t go back. I know that it’s something I need to work through. Considering the man that’s downstairs probably sleeping on the couch. I can’t let him go, even if I really wanted to. He is a part of me now.

I lean over, opening my bedside drawer and fish out the card Katie gave me last week .

A therapist's office number is printed neatly under a picture of the older woman with gray hair and a kind smile. I turn the card over in my hands and practice taking some steady breaths.

I pull out my phone and set a reminder to call the number first thing on Monday morning.

Just as I’m placing the card back on the bedside, a small knock comes from my open bedroom door. Scott stands there, hair messy and black t-shirt wrinkled. He’s also changed from the suit he wore today. He holds a mug, steam drifting from the top.

“Hi.” I smile shyly at him.

“Hi, yourself.” He moves toward me, placing the mug on the bedside table next to the business card.

“What time is it?” I ask, reaching for my phone realizing when I picked it up before I hadn’t even glanced at the time.

“Just after six. Not late.” He rounds the bed and gets in next to me. As if my body is on autopilot; when he holds an arm out, I crawl into his lap. “You were only asleep for a couple of hours,” he finishes.

“Oh.” He finds a strand of my hair and begins to twirl it around his fingers.

“I made you some tea but if you’re hungry, we can order some dinner.”

“Okay,” I whisper. My heart hammers in my chest.

“What do you feel like? Pizza?” Around and around, my hair is twirled and twisted before he lets it go loose just to repeat the process.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you hungry?” My stomach answers for me with a growl. Scott chuckles and the sound seeps into my skin, chasing away some of the chill I’ve been feeling for weeks now.

“Ivy?” he asks. I hum in response but don’t look up at him. Gently he asks, “What’s the business card for? ”

“Oh. A therapist,” I say. I push away from his chest and the strand of hair he’s holding drops around my face. “I’m going to go and talk to someone. A professional someone.”

“If that’s what you want to do, I think that’s a great idea,” he says softly. No judgment. No curiosity. No further questions. Just unwavering and unquestioned support.

I stare at his handsome face. There are questions I wanted to ask him before Pops passed. After I went to the hospital the night Scott got injured and then he wouldn’t stop blowing up my phone, I made a list of all the things that were still unsettling me.

Where was he playing next year?

What happens if it’s not here?

Do I have to just follow him around as a football girlfriend? Do I want that?

Yes. Maybe. Who knows.

What about the paparazzi? What do we do about them following me home?

Even if I get the help and work through my issues with football, and my dad, and my past, what if I still can’t stand being a part of his world? What happens to us then?

I am so far in love with this man that I want so badly to move past the anxiety and the fear and make a plan—a new plan—with him but what if it’s too hard? What if he decides it’s all too much to be with me?

“Ivy.” His voice jolts me from my thoughts. I feel like I want to cry again.

“I have … there are things we need to talk about. To go through.” I take a deep breath.

“What kind of things?”

“Well … where are you playing next year?” I ask. Anxiety turns over and over inside me and my eyes itch and I blink a few times, desperately trying to get rid of the feeling.

“Here.” Scott sounds so certain but surprise floods me.

“You signed a new contract?”

“No.” He shakes his head, lifting a hand to tuck the stray piece of hair behind my ear. “But I will. If you want to be here, then I’ll play here.”

“And if Uncle Jeff can’t offer you anything?”

“Ivy.” He invades my space, coming so close that I think he might kiss me. I won’t be mad if he does. I miss kissing him. Touching him. Being with him. His green eyes darken, swirling with the gold flecks that give them so much depth it’s as if I’m starting straight into his soul.

“I love football, but I love you more.”

Relief. Pure and utter relief floods me. Like a river breaking a damn, my eyes well with tears, and my body hums, and the waves crash over me. It runs through my veins, warming me and raising goosebumps all over my body.

Scott doesn’t look away. He doesn’t back up. He just stares at me as I stare at him.

“You love me?” I whisper.

“More than anything.”

“Even when I’m being unreasonable, and stubborn, and letting my fears get the better of me.”

“I can handle it. I want to handle it.” He drops his lips to mine in a gentle kiss. “You have changed it all for me. You’re it for me. If Coach can’t find me a deal, although I'm pretty sure he will, then I’ll take a break until I get one. Or I’ll go play for a team nearby. Or we can talk about what happens if I do get offered something else further away. But the point is that whatever happens now I want to make the plan with you. Only with you. Always with you.”

Hot, wet tears run down my cheeks so fast I don’t bother trying to catch them.

“Please don’t cry, baby.”

“I’m overwhelmed,” I sob and it’s so ridiculous that I begin to laugh. I choke out a laugh through the never-ending tears that just keep coming. Weeks and weeks’ worth of tears. “I haven’t been able to cry since they called me about Pops.”

“You haven’t?” He swipes his thumb across my cheek and I sniff. Shutting my eyes, I take a steadying breath. “But you love crying.”

I laugh again. God, this man.

“I know.” I breathe deeply through my nose and exhale, opening my eyes. The endless green is waiting and I sink into it. Sink into him. “You love me?”

“I love you,” he confirms, his hands cupping my head. His fingers curl into my hair and I relax into his touch.

“You love me more than football?” I ask. I hold back my smile, because I know it’s his job, and I am going to work through my issues, and I did decide to call a truce with that world but it’s still nice to hear that I get to win.

“I love you more than football.” He smirks at me, lips hovering inches away.

I lean toward him, closing the gap and falling into him. I kiss him, pouring how much I missed him the last few weeks into the kiss. I sink my hands into his hair and wrap my legs around his waist until he falls back on the bed and I’m straddling him. His tongue fights with mine and his arms circle me, pulling me against him so tightly that there’s no space left between us.

When I pull back for air, I whisper against his lips.

“I love you, too.”