CHAPTER 26
Dallas
Last night, it was easy to fall back into quite a few of my old habits at the club. Habits that made me the center of attention.
Made me drink a little too much.
Party a little too hard.
Stay out a little too long.
Now I have to pay the piper… and she doesn’t look happy or relieved to see me.
“If you’d bothered to read the text I sent, then you would know,” Paige says. There are dark shadows under her eyes, and the whites look suspiciously red. Either she threw down with Layton, or she stayed up worrying about me and what I was doing without her.
“Someone bumped into my table and knocked my phone off. The screen’s shattered, and I can’t get beyond the home screen.” I take it out of my pocket to show her. “I haven’t been able to read any texts or take any calls since five this morning.”
“Convenient.”
“Not really.” She moves to brush past me, but I step in her path. “Don’t you want to hear my side?”
“That sounds a lot like the prelude to a confession that ends with if only you’d gone with me, I wouldn’t have done what I did with that woman, or in your case, Drake’s Dolls,” she says bitterly.
Tread carefully, I remind myself. She’s not coming out of left field with her fears, no matter how innocent I am. However, I’m not going to let her slip out of my fingers either.
“There were no women.”
She arches a brow.
“Let me rephrase that… there were no women who had any access to me at any time. I kept it zipped up and my mouth to myself.”
“But not your hands?”
“I’ll give you that. I did dance. There was a time or two that I had to maneuver some ladies away.”
She sets her luggage down, and I breathe a bit easier. “You expect me to believe you?”
“I’m sure you can find at least a hundred videos of me on the dance floor last night.” I shake my head. “Did our conversation in the kitchen not register in that smart brain of yours? I always have the opportunity to be with women who aren’t you. Every away game. Every home game… Hell, when I shop for fucking paper towels, I’ve got women slipping me their number. If you were with me, instead of hiding from the world, I’d say ninety percent of that would stop. Dead on arrival as soon as they got one look at your fine self.”
“You might have a point,” she grumbles, then fixes those baby blues on me. “Why didn’t you come back before now?”
“Because I was in a meeting with one of my longtime club promoters to part ways with him.”
Her nose scrunches. “Why?”
“Because I want to do more with my foundation than to continue to associate it with the club scene. I’m thirty-four, bright eyes—that’s ten years too old to keep doing the same shit.”
“So ancient,” she agrees and almost smiles.
“Baby, let’s talk. Put up your stuff, crawl into bed, and—”
“No. I can’t let you take me to bed.” She closes her eyes briefly, then pins a serious gaze on me. “I need time away from you. Between filling in for Layton, trying to help her not lose it over Joe, and my full-time job, I don’t have the energy to be this upset and unsure.”
Raw panic infuses my brain. “The fuck. You’re just giving up on us?”
“I’m not breaking up with you.”
I smile tightly. “Sure as hell feels like it.”
“Eight days,” she says. “Give me eight days, and then we’ll have lunch to discuss everything.”
“Like a meeting.”
“Call it what you want, but if you do care about me, you’ll give me space.”
“If you care about me, you won’t ask me to walk away from you.” I grit my teeth, wanting to punch the wall, but I’ll only injure my hand. Worse, I’ll scare Paige to death.
“Will you at least use the plane we chartered to fly back home?” I ask. “Let me do that for you, bright eyes.”
She shakes her head, sun-kissed hair sliding over her bare shoulders. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Better than spending a fortune on last-minute tickets.”
“I’m driving back with Layton.” Her gaze slides to the floor. “We’re heading to the car rental place as soon as the Uber driver picks us up.”
I place my finger under her chin and tip it up, leaning down to kiss her cool lips. For half a second, she doesn’t respond at all, but then her mouth starts to move under mine and my heart resumes beating. “Eight days. That’s all you get before I barge back into your life where I belong.”
* * *
Four days into life without Paige and I’m about to go out of my mind from not seeing her.
Not touching her.
Not kissing her, waking up with her, or telling her about the locker-room smack talk.
For once in my life, I miss the hell that is Wednesdays with our trainer. I need the distraction. Need release from the pent-up energy inside I’ll get from beating the shit out of a tire with a mallet.
Instead, I’m hanging out at my brother’s while he does physical therapy with Gus. I watch from the sidelines. Catherine’s at work, so she’s not here to cheer him on, which means the job falls to me.
“Don’t tap out, dude. You’ve just worked up a good sweat.”
Mikey breathes hard and glares at me. “No one. Ask you to b-be. Here.”
“You don’t like spending time with me?” I pound my chest. “I’m hurt, brother.”
“G-go bother Paige.”
Holy shit, he got out a full sentence at one time. I want to congratulate him, but I also don’t want to patronize him. Ever since the accident, Mikey’s become sensitive about how he sounds and I don’t want to contribute to that.
“Not impressed?” he asks.
I shrug. “You did okay.”
“S-some brother you. A-are.”
“Good job making small talk.”
My brother rolls his eyes and grabs hold of the rails on either side of him, shuffling as he puts one foot in front of the other.
“What’s the prognosis?”
“I’ll. Walk for Mom and D-dad. At Christmas,” he says, his jaw squared off. “Don’t r-ruin it.”
“I won’t say a word.” I walk with him down the length of the path his therapist set up. “I have tickets for you and Catherine to come to Night to Play. Think you can make it?”
“Finley sent two w-weeks. Ago.” He eyes me like I have no clue what’s going on in my life and need to get it together.
“I’ve been busy.”
“W-with Paige.”
“And football.”
He grins a little. “Winning.”
“Trying my best to help maintain the streak.” I jog in place while he slowly turns around, his arms tightly gripping the padded rail. “Coach says we have a chance to take it all the way to the Super Bowl.”
My brother snorts as his therapist checks the braces around Mikey’s calves. “If you get tickets for that, consider helping more than just your brother out,” Gus jokes.
“I’d rather you come than my brother… who has little-to-no faith in me.”
Suddenly, Mikey’s legs crumple like a cardboard box under pressure. He hits the ground hard and cries out before Gus and I can help him.
“Shit. I’m sorry, buddy. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Mikey pushes me away, the tears in his eyes running down his cheeks. “I can do. This.”
Gus nods at me. “Usually, he falls at least four times in our sessions. That’s why we keep a mat under him.”
“I’m r-right here.”
“I know you are, buddy.” I watch in amazement and pride as my brother gets back on his feet—with some help from Gus—and starts all over. It’s not because I didn’t think he could do it, but because of how determined he is to not let himself get in the way of his goal. To him, it doesn’t matter that his legs don’t cooperate most of the time… he’s going to continue to grind.
And that’s what I’m going to do as well, follow my big brother’s example and keep grinding until I can convince Paige that we can work anything out.