“Is everything okay?” Brody pushed spicy Thai chicken and fettuccini around the plate with his fork. Tuesday night, he’d said he wasn’t feeling well and canceled coming by. And the last few days, he’d been quiet. Tonight his mood was something that resembled sullen. “Do you not like the pasta?”

“Yeah. I’m good. Sorry, babe. The pasta is delicious. Just tired.”

The rest of the evening was pretty much the same. I felt like I was dragging questions out of him. Normally, I was good with quiet. I’d never been a person who felt the need to talk all the time to be comfortable. The thing was, the quiet wasn’t comfortable tonight.

Later, I tried different subjects. Nothing seemed to interest him enough to talk. Brody was also having an after-dinner drink, something that was similarly out of character for him. He poured a stiff rum and Coke and sat down on the couch, staring into his glass as he swirled the liquid.

“What did you ever end up buying when you went shopping the other day?”

He sipped his drink and looked at me with a creased brow. “Hmm?”

“The family friend you were shopping for last weekend. You were in a gadget store when I called you, and you said you were shopping for a friend’s birthday. Remember?”

Brody looked around the room before taking a sizeable gulp. Placing his drink on the table, he lifted a knee and turned to face me. “I got her a wooden checkers board. She lives in a nursing home and has a thing for game shows. She watches them on TV all day and likes to play board games.”

“Oh. That’s nice of you. Is she a friend of your dad?”

He looked me straight in the eyes this time. “She’s Willow’s grandmother, Marlene.”

There was more to this story. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the rest.

“After Willow disappeared, Marlene started to get confused a lot. She had no one but a drug addict for a daughter and a drug addict for a granddaughter. The woman spent her whole life seeing the good in people, and yet when her time came, when she needed that good to show for her, the two of them were nowhere to be found.” Brody had one arm slung over the back of the couch, I reached up and took his hand and squeezed.

“My dad and I took turns looking in on her for a while after I got back from college. But then my dad eventually retired to Arizona, and I’d be traveling four days some weeks with the team. It just wasn’t safe for Marlene to be alone anymore. So I moved her out of her place and into a private nursing home about three years ago.”

“Wow. And you still keep in touch with her?”

“Haven’t missed a Tuesday since the day I moved her in. Promised her she’d see my smiling face every week.” Brody guffawed. “There’s been some pretty shitty losses on Monday that didn’t have my face smiling on Tuesday, but I haven’t skipped a visit anyway.”

“That’s amazing, Brody. Not many people would do that for someone else. Especially not someone who isn’t even their own family.”

“She’s always been like family to me. I was young when my mother died. Marlene tried to help me and my dad out whenever she could. Plus, someone had to be there for her. Willow sure as shit wasn’t.”

I’d been curious to ask about her since the night he told me about what happened in college, but the opportunity had never presented itself. Until now. “What happened to Willow? You mentioned she disappeared after the night with Colin.”

“She was gone for a long time after that. Didn’t resurface until my first year playing in the pros. That was probably her longest sober period since we were teens. Things were good for a while. Until they weren’t.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It wasn’t. She disappeared again one night. I searched for days. Went to all the usual hangouts I’d pull her ass out of when she was using. Missed half my practices, and when I did show up, it was a fucking waste of everyone’s time. I had no focus. Halfway through the regular season, police knocked on Marlene’s door one night. There were a few homeless camps down near the East River—mostly it’s drug addicts who have checked out of life in general. A police boat was patrolling one morning, found her floating face-down.”

“Oh my God.”

“She’d been without oxygen for almost three minutes and was blue from the water temperature. Marlene and I spent two days at the hospital. She crashed twice, and they brought her back. They didn’t know if she would have brain damage if she woke up.”

“That’s awful.”

“If it were you or me, we would have died or been on a feeding tube drooling for the rest of our lives. But not Willow. Ten days later, she walked out of the hospital like nothing had happened.”

“Wow.”

“I thought maybe the whole thing had scared her sober. And for a while, I think it did. Until December third, four years ago.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing. It was the last time I ever saw her.” Brody paused, lifted his glass from the table, and swallowed back the remainder of his drink. “Until this Tuesday.”

 

 

Sleep was nearly impossible that night. There were so many things going through my mind. Things that I made a mental mountain out of because of my own insecurities. Like, for example, the fact that Brody kissed me good night and left it at that. I knew it wasn’t normal for couples to have sex every time they spent the night together. Eventually, there would be nights when we would just need some sleep. We’d settle into a routine and some of the newness would wear off. It was normal. It happened in every relationship. But the fact that it happened on that night had me thinking the worst.

Around two in the morning, I decided to stop obsessing and roll over and go to bed. The small light on my bedside nightstand was on, so I reached over to turn it off. My eyes fell to the place where the framed picture of Drew used to be. The irony hit me then. After all these years, I’d finally decided to try and put my past behind me. Right at the same time Brody’s decided to come back into his life.

 

 

The next few weeks everything seemed to resume to normal. The distance I’d felt for a few days when Willow returned was gone, and Brody returned to his usual cocky-charming self. He even came to Fit Factory with me one Thursday morning. We’d slept at his place, and there was one only a few blocks away.

On the walk over, he held my hand. For a guy who wasn’t looking for more than a fun night only six weeks ago, he’d fallen into boyfriend mode like a pro.

“So what kind of girly shit are we doing at this place, anyway?”

I’d explained the rotational gym program I belonged to. He stopped on the sidewalk before I could answer. “It’s not that Zumba crap, is it?”

“No, it’s not Zumba day. But Zumba isn’t crap. It’s actually hard work. I leave there soaked—that means it was a good workout.”

He returned to walking. “You were soaked this morning, and considering I had you pinned to the wall and did all the work, I don’t think you got such good exercise.”

“You’re a pig, you know that?”

Brody dropped my hand and grabbed a handful of my ass right there on the street. “What’s that say about you? You got it bad for a pig.”

I rolled my eyes. But he was totally right. I had it bad.

A block away from the gym, Brody pointed across the street. “That’s where Marlene lives. Broadhollow Manor.”

I’d walked past the building before. From the outside, it looked more like a ritzy apartment complex than the terrible visual that came to mind when the words nursing home were spoken. “That looks more like luxury condos than a nursing home.”

“It’s a nice place. They keep it clean, and everyone is well taken care of. You should see some of the dumps that I went to see before finding Broadhollow. The places that the state will pay for are one step up from a shelter. I could have bought a luxury condo for cheaper than what the last few years cost me. But it’s worth it. I’d never be able to sleep at night knowing she was in a hole in the wall, and I had bank just sitting around.”

Even though this morning he had cooked me breakfast naked after delivering a delicious orgasm up against the bedroom wall, that last statement made me fall a little harder for the man. My pig.

Arriving at the gym, he opened the door for me to enter first. Before passing through, I stopped, stretched up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek.

“What was that for?”

“For being you.”

He walked in behind me and swatted my ass as he whispered in my ear. “My girl likes dirty pigs.”

The woman at the reception desk was on her cell phone as I signed in. When she hung up, I asked her about a guest pass. She didn’t bother to look up from her phone.

“My membership has a few guest passes. I don’t have one with me today. I was hoping it would be okay, and you could just look up that I haven’t used any yet.”

She huffed in annoyance, her attention having to be refocused from her cell to the computer that was actually part of her job. “Name?”

“Delilah Maddox.”

Her nails clicked away. “Guest name?”

“Um. Brody.”

She halted her clacking. “Last name?”

“Easton.”

Well, that got her attention. Her head whipped up. “You’re . . . ”

“Delilah’s guest.” Brody filled in the blank when she trailed off.

“Oh my God. You’re really Brody Easton. I love you! I’m a huge Steel fan.”

“Thank you.”

She propped both elbows on the counter, cupping her smiling face in her hands. Forget whiplash, this woman had bitchlash; she’d gone from bitch to entranced so fast.

“So what brings you here to our little gym?”

“Exercise,” Brody responded flatly.

She giggled like he’d just said the funniest thing. “This class won’t be exercise to someone like you.”

My response was snippy because . . . well . . . because she was a bitch who had just insulted my exercise, the place she worked and . . . she was busy ogling my boyfriend. “That’s okay. He exercised at home this morning. Wall lunges.”

She nodded. “Interesting. Never tried those. Maybe you can show me how later?”

I plastered on a fake smile. “I don’t think so. But could we get that guest pass?”

“Oh. Okay. Sure. No problem.” She motioned to the entrance behind the desk. “Go right ahead. This one’s on me. He doesn’t need a pass.”

The class was nearly full when we got there, so we took a spot in the back, dropping our gym bags next to us to claim real estate.

“You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

“I wasn’t jealous.”

He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Were too.”

“I’m not the jealous type.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I am not.”

“Care to put your money where your mouth is?”

“You want to bet that you can make me jealous?”

“Yep.”

I extended my hand. “You’re on. Loser gives the other a massage.”

Brody shook my hand and winked. “Okay. But you won’t be massaging my back.”

“Whatever. But this contest goes both ways.”

Brody looked around the room. It was almost entirely filled with women. “You’re going to flirt with some of the women in here? I’m pretty sure this is the best contest I will ever win, and we haven’t even started to play yet.”

The bitchy woman from the front desk came in. “Alex is running five minutes late. So why don’t we get you warmed up? Anyone want to volunteer to help me stretch out the class up front?”

Brody’s hand shot up faster than a geek’s in science class. Bitch looked pleased.

“Mr. Easton. What a treat. Ladies, we have none other than Super Bowl MVP Brody Easton in the class today! And he’s going to come up here and show us how it’s done.” No one had really noticed us in the back of the room, but that changed instantly. Women turned around and gawked. Brody gloated and headed to the front of the class.

I had completely forgotten what an arrogant showman he could be. Shades of the first time I met him in the locker room were back as he stood next to the instructor, working his stretches. At one point, he smiled at me, then tugged his T-shirt over his head. His gym shorts were hanging low on his narrow waist, and every ripped muscle was on full display. Especially that V. The same one I’d recently discovered we both liked when I traced its path with my tongue.

I looked around the room. I definitely wasn’t the only one drooling. I swear I smelled the pheromone soup wafting through the air. I would never admit it, but I didn’t love the way these women were looking at Brody. Yet . . . it wasn’t an immature jealousy. There was a comforting feeling to realize that I knew he wasn’t really interested in them. The entire class might have been transfixed, but the man at the head of the class was only doing it to try to get a rise out of me.

After a few minutes of the Brody show, Alex walked in. He taught classes in the location I usually went to, so we were friendly. Perhaps even friendlier than my confident-to-win-the-bet boyfriend might like. I inwardly smirked, knowing it would only take a sentence or two after class to win our bet. I could practically feel my muscles relaxing under Brody’s massaging rub already.

After class was over, the women circled Brody asking for autographs. He gloated, thinking he was getting a rise out of me, but truly I found the entire thing amusing and was pretty damn proud that jealousy hadn’t reared its ugly head. When the crowd thinned, we headed to the door . . . but not before I stopped to talk to the instructor.

“Hey, Alex.”

“Pretzel. Nice surprise seeing you in this location today.” Alex’s typical flirtatious banter was muted. He glanced at Brody.

“This is Brody Easton. An old family friend.”

Brody squinted at me as he shook Alex’s hand. That little bit of information, indirect confirmation that the man standing next to me wasn’t my boyfriend, was all it took to relax Alex. “Nice to meet you, Brody. You two go way back, huh?”

“Apparently so.”

“Tell me, was our little Pretzel always this smokin’ hot?”

The air chilled instantly. Brody glared at Alex, who didn’t even seem to notice since he went right on adding gunpowder to the cannon.

“Your downward-facing dog still needs to open up a little. Why don’t you stick around a few minutes and let me help you stretch into it?”

“That sounds like a good idea.” I turned to Brody and cheerily stoked the fire I smelled burning. “Why don’t you go on to the locker room and Alex can help me with my positioning? I’ll catch up with you out front.”

Brody tried so hard, but Alex’s dirty leer was too much to handle.

“Fuck this.” His hand possessively gripped my waist. “You win. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Alex looked confused as Brody quickly steered me toward the locker room. “Very cute,” he growled.

“I thought so.”

Leaving the gym, I taunted Brody about my win. “I would have thought you’d be stiff competition. Guess not.”

“I’ll give you stiff . . . ” He took my hand.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the jealous type.”

“Me either,” he grumbled.

“I have to grab a quick shower and head to the station. We have a late-morning planning meeting. They’re adding a few last-minute interviews with some of the Eagles players before this weekend’s game.”

“Meeting with the enemy. You trying to kill me? First Yogi-Asshole and now spending time with the division rivalry. I think I need a little extra attention tonight. I’m feeling neglected.”

“Oh, are you now?”

“Yep. I think I need you to show me how special I am.”

“And what exactly would that entail?”

“I’ll think of something. When I do, I’ll be sure to text you the details while you’re in the middle of your meeting.” The man’s wicked tongue translated well even in texting.

We turned the corner, heading down the block where Marlene lived. Brody was telling me about his schedule for the rest of the week when he suddenly went quiet. It took me a moment to catch up. “Brody?”

He was staring across the street.

“Everything okay?”

The streets of New York were bustling. At first, I didn’t notice anything. But then I saw her. A woman had stopped outside of Marlene’s building and was staring in our direction. People came and went, but she just stood there, fixated on us.

She was absolutely gorgeous. Model-waif thin with long blond hair and eyes so big, I noticed them across a busy street. My heart sank. I knew the answer but asked anyway. “Do you know that woman across the street?”

Brody turned his head face-forward and kept walking. “Yes. That’s Willow.”

And just like that, the confidence I’d felt earlier—the feeling of empowerment—turned into fear and vulnerability. And, yes, even a little jealousy.