Chapter One

I was going to murder his ass.

One day.

One day long after I quit, so no one would suspect me.

“Aiden,” I grumbled, even though I knew better. Grumbling only got me the look—that infamous, condescending expression that had gotten Aiden into more than one fight in the past. Or so I’d been told. When the edges of his mouth turned down, got tight, and his brown eyes went heavy lidded, all it made me want to do was stick my finger up his nose. It’s what my mom used to do to us when we were little and would pout.

The man in question, who was on the verge of either a bloody, imaginary death or a carefully crafted one that involved dish soap, his food, and a long period of time, made a noise from behind the bowl of quinoa salad in front of him, which was big enough to feed a family of four. “You heard me. Cancel it,” he repeated as if I’d gone deaf the first time he’d said it.

Oh, I’d heard him. Loud and clear. That was why I wanted to kill him.

Which basically showed how amazing the human mind was; how you could care about someone but want to slit his or her throat at the same time. Like having a sister who you wanted to punch right in the ovaries. You still loved her, you just wanted to sock her right in the baby-maker to teach her a lesson—not that I knew from experience or anything.

The fact that I didn’t immediately respond probably made him add, with that same facial expression aimed right at me, “I don’t care what you have to tell them. Get it done.”

Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose with my left index finger, I lowered my right hand so that the cabinet could hide the middle finger I aimed right at Aiden. If his facial expression wasn’t bad enough, the tone he was using annoyed me even more. It was the voice he used to warn me it was pointless to argue with him; he wasn’t going to change his mind right then, or ever, and I needed to deal with it.

I always needed to deal with it.

When I’d first started working for the three-time National Football Organization’s Defensive Player of the Year, there had only been a few things I wasn’t a fan of doing; haggling with people, telling them no, and sticking my hand into the garbage disposal because I was both the cook and the cleaning lady of the house.

But if there was something I hated doing—and I mean really, really hated doing—it was cancelling on people last minute. It got on my nerves and went against my moral code. I mean, a promise was a promise, wasn’t it? Then again, this wasn’t me letting his fans down, technically. It was Aiden.

Freaking Aiden, who was busy inhaling his second lunch of the day without a care in the world, was oblivious to the frustrations he was going to make me face when I called his agent. After all the trouble we’d gone to schedule it, I was going to have to break the news that Aiden wasn’t going to be signing anything at the sporting goods store in San Antonio. Yippee.

I sighed, guilt niggling my belly and conscience, and reached down to rub my stiff knee with the hand that wasn’t busy expressing my frustrations. “You already promised them—”

“I don’t care, Vanessa.” He shot me that look again. My middle finger twitched. “Have Rob cancel it,” he insisted, as his giant forearm went up so he could shovel what looked like eight ounces of food into his mouth at once. The fork he was holding hovered in the air a moment as he flicked that dark, stubborn gaze to meet mine. “Is that a problem?”

Vanessa-this. Vanessa-that.

Cancel it. Have Rob cancel it.

Boo.

As if I loved calling his asshole agent to begin with, much less so he could cancel an appearance two days before it was supposed to take place. He was going to lose his mind, and then direct his frustrations at me as if I had some kind of pull over Aiden “The Wall of Winnipeg” Graves. The truth was, the closest I’d ever come to helping him make any kind of decision had been when I recommended a camera for him to buy, and that was only because he “had better things to do than camera research” and because “that’s what I pay you for.”

He had a point of course. Between what he paid me and what Zac chipped in from time to time, I could manage to put a smile on my face—even if it was a forced one—and do what was asked of me. Every once in a while, I even did a little curtsy, which Aiden pretended not to witness.

I didn’t think he really appreciated the amount of patience I had exercised when dealing with him for the last two years. Someone else would have already stabbed him in his sleep for sure. At least, when I went through plans for how I’d do it, it was usually in a painless way.

Usually.

Since he’d ruptured his Achilles tendon barely a month into the season last year, he’d turned into something else. I tried not to blame him; I really did. Missing nearly three months of the entire regular season and being blamed for your team not making it to the post season, or the playoffs, was hard to deal with. On top of that, some people had thought he wasn’t going to make a full comeback after having to take six months off to recover and rehab. The kind of injury he’d sustained was no joke.

But this was Aiden. Some athletes took even longer than that amount of time to get back on their feet, if they ever did. He hadn’t. But dealing with him on crutches, driving him to and from rehab and appointments, had taken a toll on my patience more than once.

There was only so much cranky little bitch you can handle in a day, even if it was called for. Aiden loved what he did, and I had to imagine he was scared he wouldn’t be able to play again, or that he would come back and not play up to the same level he’d been used to, not that he would ever voice any fears out loud. That was all understandable to me. I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if something happened to my hands and there was a chance I might not ever be able to draw again.

Regardless, his crankiness had hit a level not previously documented in the history of the universe. That was saying something, considering I’d grown up with three older sisters who all had periods at the same time. Because of them, most things—most people—didn’t bother me. I knew what it was like to be bullied, and Aiden never crossed the line into being unnecessarily mean. He was just a jackass sometimes.

He was lucky I had a tiny, itty, bitty crush on him; otherwise, he would have gotten the shank years ago. Then again, just about everyone with eyes who happened to also like men, had some kind of a thing for Aiden Graves.

When he raised his eyebrows and looked at me from beneath those curly black eyelashes, flashing me rich-brown eyes set deep into a face that I’d only seen smile in the presence of dogs, I swallowed and shook my head slowly as I gritted my teeth and took him in. The size of a small building, he should have had these big, uneven features that made him look like a caveman, but of course he didn’t. Apparently, he liked to defy every stereotype he’d ever been assigned in his life. He was smart, fast, coordinated, and—as far as I knew—had never seen a game of hockey. He had only said ‘eh’ in front of me twice, and he didn’t consume animal protein. The man didn’t eat bacon. He was the last person I would ever consider polite, and he never apologized. Ever.

Basically, he was an anomaly; a Canadian football-playing, plant-based lifestyle—he didn’t like calling himself a vegan—anomaly that was strangely proportional all over and so handsome I might have thanked God for giving me eyes on a couple of occasions.

“Whatever you want, big guy,” I said with a fake smile and a flutter of my eyelashes, even as I still flipped him off.

“They’ll get over it,” Aiden said casually, ignoring his nickname, rolling back two immensely muscular shoulders. I swear they were wide enough for a small person to drape across comfortably. “It isn’t a big deal.”

It wasn’t a big deal? The promoters wouldn’t feel that way, much less his agent, but then Aiden was used to getting his way. No one ever told him no. They told me no, and then I’d have to figure things out.

Despite what some people thought, the defensive end of the Three Hundreds, Dallas’s professional football team, wasn’t really an asshole or hard to work with. For all his faces and grumbling, he never cussed and hardly ever lost his temper without good reason. He was demanding; he knew exactly what he wanted and how he liked every single thing in his life. It was honestly an admirable quality, I thought, but it was my job to make those requests come true, regardless of whether I agreed with his decisions or not.

Only for a little bit longer though, I reminded myself. I was so close to quitting, I could feel it. The thought made my soul rejoice a bit.

Two months ago, my bank account had finally hit a comfortable number through sheer willpower, penny-pinching, and working long hours when I wasn’t Aiden’s assistant/housekeeper/cook. I’d hit my goal: save up a year’s salary. And I had. Finally. Halle-freaking-lujah. I could practically smell freedom in the air.

But the keyword there was ‘practically.’

I just hadn’t gotten around to telling Aiden I was quitting yet.

“Why are you making that face?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked up at him, caught off guard. I raised my eyebrows, trying to play dumb. “What face?”

It didn’t work.

With a fork hanging out of his mouth, he narrowed his dark eyes just the slightest bit. “That one.” He gestured toward me with his chin.

I shrugged in an ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ expression.

“Is there something you want to say?”

There were a hundred things I wanted to tell him on a regular basis, but I knew him too well. He didn’t really care if there was something I wanted to say or not. He didn’t care if my opinion was different from his or if I thought he should do something differently. He was just reminding me who the boss was.

AKA not me.

Asswipe.

“Me?” I blinked. “Nope.”

He gave me a lazy glare before his eyes lowered to focus on the hand I had hidden on the other side of the kitchen island. “Then quit flipping me off. I’m not changing my mind about the signing,” he said in a deceptively casual voice.

I pressed my lips together as I dropped my hand. He was a goddamn witch. I swear on my life, he was a freaking witch. A wizard. An oracle. A person with a third eye. Every single time I had ever flipped him off, he’d been aware of it. I didn’t think I was that obvious about it either.

It wasn’t like I gave people the middle finger for fun, but it genuinely bothered me that he was cancelling an appearance without a legitimate reason. Backing out because he changed his mind and didn’t want to take an afternoon off from training, didn’t seem like one. But what did I know?

“All right,” I muttered under my breath.

Aiden, who I was pretty sure had no idea how old I’d turned this year, much less what month my birthday was, made a face for a split second. Those thick, dark eyebrows knit together and his full mouth pinched back at the corners. Then he shrugged, like he’d suddenly stopped caring about what I’d been doing.

What was funny was, if someone had told me five years ago that I’d be doing someone else’s dirty work, I would have laughed. I couldn’t remember ever not having goals or some sort of a plan for the future. I had always wanted something to look forward to, and being my own boss was one of those things I strived for.

I’d known since I was sixteen at my first summer job, getting yelled at for not putting enough ice into a medium-sized cup at the movie theater I’d worked at, that I would one day want to work for myself. I didn’t like getting told what to do. I never had. I was stubborn and hardheaded, at least that’s what my foster dad said was my greatest and worst personality trait.

I wasn’t shooting for the stars or aiming to become a billionaire. I didn’t want to be a celebrity or anything close to that. I just wanted my own small business doing graphic design work that could pay my bills, keep me fed, and still have a little extra left over for other things. I didn’t want to have to rely on someone else’s charity or whim. I’d had to do that for as long as I could remember, hoping my mom would come home sober, hoping my sisters would make me food when my mom wasn’t around, and then hoping the lady with social services could at least keep me and my little brother together…. Why was I even thinking about that?

For the most part, I’d always known what I wanted to do with my life, so I’d naively thought half the battle was in the bag. Making it work should have been easy.

What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing your goals isn’t a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze. You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong turns along the way, but the important thing you had to remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.

You just couldn’t give up looking for it, even when you really wanted to.

And especially not when it was easier and less scary to go with the flow than actually strike out on your own and make your path.

Scooting the stool he was sitting on back, Aiden got to his feet with his empty glass in hand. His Hulk-sized frame seemed to dwarf the not-exactly-small kitchen every time he was in there… which was always. Big surprise. He consumed at least 7,000 calories a day. During the regular football season, he bumped it up to ten thousand. Of course, he was in the kitchen all day. So was I—making his meals.

“Did you buy pears?” he asked, already pushing our conversation and the middle finger incident aside as he filled his glass with water from the refrigerator’s filter.

I didn’t feel guilty at all about getting caught flipping him off. The first time it had happened, I thought I was going to die of embarrassment and then get fired, but now I knew Aiden. He didn’t care if I did it, or at least that was the impression I got since I still had a job. I’d seen people come up to him and try goading him, calling him all sorts of names and insults that made me reel back. But what did he do when people did that kind of stuff? He didn’t even twitch; he just pretended not to hear them.

Honestly, it was a little impressive to have that kind of backbone. I couldn’t keep it together when someone honked at me while I was driving.

But as impressive as Aiden was, as much as his perfect butt made women double-take, and as dumb as most people would think I was for resigning from a job with a man who starred in commercials for an athletic apparel company, I still wanted to quit. The urge got stronger and stronger each day.

I’d busted my butt. No one else had done the work for me. This was what I wanted, what I had always wanted. I’d kept my eye on the prize for years for the opportunity to be my own boss. Having to call assholes who made it seem like I was an inconvenience, or folding underwear that clung to the most spectacular ass in the country, wasn’t it.

Tell him, tell him, tell him right now you’re planning on quitting, my brain egged on almost desperately.

But that nagging little voice of indecision and self-doubt that liked to hang out in the space where my non-existent spine should have been, reminded me, What's the rush?

Chapter Two

“You can’t.”

“I am,” I insisted calmly as I watched the man on my laptop screen. “Aiden told me to let you know.”

Trevor gave me a look that said he didn’t even remotely believe me, and I found myself not really giving much of a crap what he thought. While it took a lot for me to dislike someone, Aiden’s manager was one of those people I avoided like the plague whenever possible. Something about him just made me want to abort mission each time we had to interact. At one point, I really tried figuring out what it was about him I didn’t like, and it always came back to the same reasons: he was snobby, but mainly he just gave off massive amounts of asshole-ish vibes.

Leaning forward, Trevor planted his elbows on what I could assume was his desk. He tented his hands and hid his mouth behind them. He exhaled. Then he inhaled.

Maybe, just maybe, he was thinking about all the times he’d been a jerk to me and was regretting it; like all the times he’d chewed me out or yelled at me because Aiden wanted something done that frustrated him. That had been pretty much every week since I’d gotten hired.

But knowing him, that wasn’t the case. To regret something would mean you would have had to care about it at some point to begin with, and Trevor... the only thing he cared about was his paycheck. His body language, and the way he’d spoken to me even back when he’d first interviewed me, made it abundantly clear I didn’t rank very high on his list of priorities.

Me quitting was going to make his life slightly more difficult for a little while, and that he wasn’t a fan of.

Apparently, he was bothered a lot more than Aiden had been the night before when I sucked it up and told him the deep, dark secret I’d been withholding. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me” —in hindsight, that had been pretty suck-up of me to say; he hadn’t actually done anything besides pay me, but oh well— “but I’d like for you to find someone to replace me.”

While I’d always known and accepted that we weren’t friends, I guess a small part of me had been foolish enough to think I meant just a little, tiny, microscopic something to him. I’d done a lot for Aiden over the course of the time we’d worked together. I knew I would more than likely miss the familiarity of working for him at least a little bit. Wouldn’t he feel the same way?

That answer to that had been a big, fat nope.

Aiden hadn’t even bothered looking at me after my admission. Instead, his attention had been focused on his bowl when he replied easily, “Let Trevor know.”

And that was that.

Two years. I’d given him two years of my life. Hours and hours. Months at a time away from my loved ones. I’d cared for him on the rare occasions he got sick. I was the one who had stayed with him at the hospital after his injury. I was the person who had picked him up after his surgery, and read up on inflammation and what I could feed him, that would help him heal faster.

When he lost a game, I always tried to make his favorite breakfast the next morning. I’d bought him a birthday present that I may or may not have left on his bed, because I didn’t want to make it awkward. You didn’t remember someone’s birthday and not get him a gift, even if he never thanked you.

What had he given me? On my last birthday, I spent it in the rain at a park in Colorado because he’d been filming a commercial, and wanted me to tag along. I’d eaten dinner by myself in my hotel room. What did I expect from him now?

There had been no begging me to stay—not that I would anyway—or even an “I’m sorry to hear that,” which I’d heard when I’d left every other job before this one.

Nothing. He’d given me nothing. Not even a damn shrug.

It had stung more than it should have. A lot more. On the other hand, I recognized that we weren’t soul mates, but it became even more apparent after that.

It was with that thought, that slight amount of bitterness in my throat at being so dispensable, that I swallowed and focused on my video chat.

“Vanessa, think about what you’re doing,” the manager argued through the camera.

“I have. Look, I’m not even giving you a two-week notice. Just find someone sooner than later. I’ll train them, and then I’m out.”

Trevor tipped his chin up and just stared forward at and through the computer’s camera, the hard glint of the hair product he used catching in the sunlight in his office. “Is this an April fools’ joke?”

“It’s June,” I said carefully. Idiot. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

His forehead furrowed at the same time his shoulders tensed, as if what I said was finally really sinking in. One eye peeked at me from over his fingers. “Do you want more money?” he had the nerve to ask.

Of course I wanted more money. Who didn’t? I just didn’t want it from Aiden. “No.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“Nothing.”

“I’m trying to work with you here.”

“There’s nothing to work with. There isn’t anything you can offer me that will get me to stay.” That was how dead set I was on not getting wrangled back in to the world of The Wall of Winnipeg. Trevor got paid for making things happen, and I knew if I gave him an inch, he would attempt to take a mile. It would probably be easier for him to convince me to stay instead of finding someone else. But I knew his tricks, and I wasn’t going to fall for his shit.

Picking up the glass of water sitting on the kitchen counter next to my tablet, I took a sip and studied him over the top of it. I could do this, damn it. I would do it. I wasn’t going to keep my job just because he was giving me the closest thing to puppy eyes pure evil was capable of.

“What can I do to get you to stay?” Trevor finally asked as he dropped his hands away from his face.

“Nothing.” If a slight bit of loyalty to Aiden and genuine worry had gotten me to stay since I realized I could afford to quit, the night before had cemented me leaving.

I didn’t want to waste any more time than I already had.

Another pained expression took over Trevor’s features. When we’d first met two years ago, he’d only had a couple of gray hairs scattered throughout his head. Now there were more than a couple, and it suddenly made so much sense. If I considered myself a fairy godmother, Trevor must have been seen as a god; a god who needed to make miracles happen out of the most dire of places.

And I wasn’t helping by quitting on who I was sure was one of the most difficult of his clients.

“Did he say something?” he asked suddenly. “Do something?”

I shook my head, not fooled at all by his act. He didn’t care. Before I’d asked him to call me—and he’d insisted we do a video chat instead—I had asked myself whether to tell him why I was quitting or not. It didn’t even take a second to decide. Nah, he didn’t need to know. “There are other things in my life I want to pursue. That’s all.”

“You know he’s stressed out about coming back after surgery. If he’s a little on edge, it’s normal. Ignore him,” Trevor added.

Normal? There were different standards for what ‘normal’ could be considered when dealing with professional athletes, especially athletes like Aiden who breathed and lived for his sport. He took everything personally. He wasn’t some burnout who played because he didn’t have anything else to do, and wanted to make money. Maybe I understood that better than Trevor.

Plus, if either one of us had more firsthand experience with the way Aiden had been since his Achilles tendon rupture, it was me. I’d witnessed it all up close and personal; I also knew how he usually got right before training camp started, and that was right around the corner too, adding on to the things he worried about. Trevor had worked for him longer, but he lived in New York and only visited a few times a year. Aiden only talked to him directly on the phone once a month, if that, since I was his scapegoat.

“I’m sure there’s at least a hundred other people who would love to work for Aiden. I really don’t think you will have a problem finding someone to replace me. Everything will be fine,” I told him smoothly.

Was there at least a thousand other people in the world who would love to work for Aiden Graves? Yes. Minimum.

Would Trevor have a problem finding a new assistant for Aiden? No.

The issue would be finding someone to stay who could deal with the long hours and his prickly personality.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Trevor had said to me after the workforce agency had sent me his way. “Athletes are demanding. It’s basically part of the job requirement. Will you be able to handle it?”

Back then, I’d been working three jobs, sharing a tiny house with Diana and Rodrigo, and unable to sleep some nights because all I could dream about was the massive student loan debt I was swimming in. I would have done just about anything to get out of that situation, even if it meant dealing with someone who may or may not be a psycho by the way others portrayed him.

While Trevor hadn’t been lying—Aiden wasn’t that bad once you figured out what made him tick—at least he’d given me a warning of what I’d be facing.

A demanding, cranky, perfectionist, workaholic, arrogant, aloof, clean freak of a boss.

No biggie.

Aiden Graves needed an assistant, and I had been lucky enough to get the job.

At that point, I had a plan that worried me to death, and student loans that were giving me an ulcer. I’d thought it over a million times and concluded that working for him, while keeping my own business on the side and trying to grow it at the same time was the best way to move forward in my life, at least for a little while.

The rest was history.

Saving money and working seventy hours a week had all finally paid off. I saved enough to keep me afloat in case my business slowed down, and I had my goals to guide me. When things were tough, it was my aspirations and the hope they brought me, that kept me going.

So even on the days when Aiden had me standing behind him, envisioning myself stabbing him in the back because he wanted me to do something ridiculous, like rewash his sheets because I’d left them in the washer for too long, I always did what he needed. All I had to do was remember my student loans and my plans, and I persevered.

Until now.

“You’re killing me, Vanessa. You’re fucking killing me here,” Trevor literally moaned. Moaned. He usually just bitched and complained.

“It’ll be fine. He doesn’t care that I’m leaving. He probably won’t even notice,” I said, trying to be as understanding as I could and at the same time, not really giving much of a crap that he was sweating bullets.

The grimace on his face quickly dropped, a total act, and got replaced by a glare, making him look more like the manager I’d been forced to get to know, than the one who was attempting to backtrack and be nice after so long. He sniped, “I highly doubt that.”

I understood why I was a good fit for Aiden. I was pretty patient, and I didn’t hold his callus, picky nature against him. I knew how to handle crazy in all its forms thanks to my family, but maybe I’d just been expecting so much worse from him, and he’d never gone straight into anger-management zone. He was way too controlled for that.

Realistically though, especially after yesterday, I wasn’t going to hold my breath. Maybe I’d feel worse about quitting if Aiden was my friend or if Trevor had actually been nice to me, but neither one of them would remember me two months from now. I knew who cared about me and who meant something to me, and neither one of them were on my list… and sure, that made me feel a little bad. But survival of the fittest and all that crap, right?

Both Aiden and Trevor would dump me like a hot potato if our roles were reversed. I’d let my misguided sense of loyalty, paranoia, and self-doubt keep me shackled to my not-so-bad cell.

All Aiden needed was someone who could do what he wanted. Cook, clean, wash, fold, answer e-mails, call Trevor or Rob when he wanted things out of my jurisdiction, and post things on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Then there were the things I had to do when he traveled. It wasn’t anything crazy.

Anyone with a little bit of patience could do it.

But from the look Trevor pierced me with, he didn’t feel the same way. Mostly, I thought he was just being lazy. He blew out a breath, and started massaging his temples as the chat buffered and his image blurred for a moment. “Are you positive you want to do this? I can talk to him about reducing your hours…” His voice carried over the speaker even as the screen froze.

I only just barely managed not to ask him to let me think about it. “No.” I couldn’t. I wasn’t going to half-ass this opportunity in my life to go solo. I didn’t want to invite failure in the door by being hesitant.

“Vanessa…” he groaned. “You’re really doing this?”

This was exactly what I’d been working toward from the moment I finished school with my undergrad in graphic design. Graduating had been an uphill battle that sometimes felt like plain torture, and I’d done terrible, awful things to get my schooling done. It was why I had worked multiple jobs at once, why I now technically only had two, and why I had been sleeping four hours a night for the last four years and lived off the bare minimum. I took almost any and every job that hit my inbox and jobs that didn’t: book covers, web banners, posters, bookmarks, business cards, postcards, logos, T-shirt designs, commissioned pieces, tattoo designs. Everything.

“I’m positive.” I had to fight the urge to smile at how confident and determined I sounded even though I definitely didn’t feel that way.

Back at massaging his temples, Trevor sighed. “If that’s how you’re going to be, I’ll start looking for a replacement.”

I nodded and let a sense of hesitant victory tickle my throat. I wasn’t going to let that smart-ass comment at the beginning bother me. This was exactly how I was going to be.

He waved a hand in front of the screen. “I’ll let you know once I find someone.”

Without another comment, he logged off the chat like a rude jerk. He reminded me of someone else I knew with his lack of manners. If it wasn’t for Zac and some of the other Three Hundreds he’d introduced me to over the years, I would have figured everyone in their industry was self-absorbed. But no, it was only a few people, specifically the ones I had to surround myself with. Go figure.

It wasn’t going to be my problem anymore though, was it?

“Vanessa!” a familiar voice bellowed from somewhere upstairs.

“Yes?” I yelled back, exiting the app on my tablet, and wondering if he’d overheard my conversation with Trevor or not. I mean, he was the one who told me to call him in the first place, wasn’t he?

“Did you wash the sheets?” Aiden hollered from where I could only assume was his bedroom.

I washed his sheets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I had every week since getting hired. For someone who worked out almost every day of his life, and sweating had become as natural as breathing, he was religious about having ultra-clean sheets. I learned from the very beginning how important it was that his damn sheets were clean, so I never missed doing them. Ever. “Yes.”

“Today?”

“Yes.” Why the hell was he asking? I always… oh. I always left a piece of the chocolate peppermint patties he liked on his pillow—because it made me laugh—and I hadn’t put one on there this afternoon. The store had been out of them. I guess I couldn’t blame him for being uncertain, but I could blame myself for spoiling him. He’d never acknowledged my little gift, or told me to stop leaving them, so I hadn’t figured he cared. Now I knew better.

Aiden didn’t immediately respond, and I could already envision him humming to himself with uncertainty before sniffing the sheets to make sure I was telling the truth. When there wasn’t a response, I figured he confirmed I wasn’t lying. But then he started yelling again. “Did you pick up my clothes from the dry cleaner?”

“Yes. They’re in your closet already.” I didn’t flinch, roll my eyes, or have an annoyed tone. I had the self-control of a samurai sometimes. A samurai who wanted to go ronin.

I’d barely managed to put my tablet back into my purse when he hollered again. “Where are my orange runners?”

That time, I couldn’t help but cross my eyes. Dealing with him reminded me of being a little kid and asking my mom to help me find something after I’d looked about a total of five seconds. They were where he’d left them. “In your bathroom.”

I could hear movement upstairs. Zac hadn’t made his way back to Dallas yet, so it could only be the big guy looking for his tennis shoes, or when his Canadianisms kicked in—runners. I rarely ever touched his shoes if I didn’t have to. It wasn’t as if his feet smelled—strangely, they didn’t—but they did get sweaty, and I mean, really sweaty. He’d been training so hard the last two months, the sweat had reached an all-time high. My fingers tried not to go anywhere near them if it could be avoided.

I was in the middle of looking through a cookbook trying to decide what to make for dinner, when the thunder that followed a two-hundred–and-eighty-pound man jogging down the stairs started. Seriously, every time he came down the stairs any faster than a slow poke, the walls trembled. I wasn’t sure how the stairs survived. Whatever kind of materials the builder used on them, it had to be good stuff.

I didn’t need to turn around to know he’d made his way into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed, followed by the sound of him munching on something.

“Pick up some more sunblock for me. I’m almost out,” he said in a distracted tone.

I’d already ordered him some days ago, but I didn’t see the point in telling him it was cheaper to order it than to buy it at the store. “You got it, big guy. I’m taking two of your shorts to the seamstress later. I noticed when I was washing them that the hems were loose.” Considering he got half of his clothes specially made because ‘size behemoth’ wasn’t widely carried, I was a little unimpressed those same shorts already needed to get patched.

Juggling the pear he was eating and two apples in his other hand, he tipped his chin up. “I’m running some drills tonight. Anything I need to know before I leave?”

Fiddling with the leg of my glasses, I tried to think about what I had planned on telling him. “There’s a few envelopes I left on your desk this morning. I’m not sure if you saw them already or not, but they look important.”

That big handsome face went thoughtful for a second before he nodded. “Did Rob cancel the signing?”

I almost winced from thinking of the conversation with his agent, another asshole I wasn’t fond of. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if his mom wasn’t fond of him either. Rob was that much of a dick. “I told him to, but he never called back to tell me if he did or not. I’ll find out.”

He nodded again, crouching that massive six-foot-four frame to pick up his duffel bag. “Make sure you do that.” He paused. “Leslie’s birthday is this month. Send a card and a gift card over, would you?”

“Your wish is my command.” In the entire time I’d worked for him, Leslie was the only person who got a gift from him. I couldn’t even be remotely jealous that I didn’t get at least a verbal “happy birthday” on mine. Not even Zac received anything, and I’d know, because if he did, I’d be the one buying the present. “Oh, I made those granola bars that you like in case you want to take some with you,” I added, pointing at the plastic container I’d left by the fridge.

He headed to where I’d indicated, opening the container and pulling out two wax-paper-wrapped bars before shoving all his snacks into his duffel bag. “Come by the gym tomorrow with the camera and my breakfast. I’m going in early and staying until lunch. ”

“Sure.” I had to make a mental note to set my alarm for half an hour earlier than usual. Most days when he was in Dallas during the offseason, Aiden did cardio at his house, had breakfast, and then left to do his weightlifting and other kinds of workouts with whatever trainer he’d deemed to honor with his presence. Some days, he woke up earlier and went straight to the gym.

The facility was located on the opposite side of town, so I’d either have to make him breakfast at my house and go straight there, or wake up even earlier to drop by his house, which was out of the way, and then head over there. No thanks. I barely survived on my usual four to five hours of sleep most nights. I wasn’t about to lose what little I had left.

I stepped back from the counter and grabbed the gallon of water I’d refilled earlier, holding it out for him, locking my gaze on his thick neck before forcing myself to look him in the eye. “By the way, I talked to Trevor about me leaving, and he said he’d start looking for someone else.”

Those dark orbs met mine for a second, only just a split second, cool and distant like always, before he looked away. “Okay.” He took the jug from me as he threw his bag over his shoulder.

Just as he reached the door that connected the garage with the kitchen, I called out, “Bye.”

He didn’t say anything as he closed the door behind him, but I thought he might have wiggled a finger or two. I was probably imagining it.

Who was I kidding? Of course I was imagining it. I was just being an idiot for even thinking there was a possibility he’d done otherwise. While I wasn’t the bubbliest person in the world, Aiden had me beat by a landslide.

With a resigned sigh, I shook my head at myself, and started making my way around the kitchen when my personal cell phone started ringing. Taking a quick peek at the screen, I hit the answer button.

“Herro,” I said, slipping the phone between my ear and my shoulder.

“Vanny, I don’t have time to talk. I have an appointment in a minute,” the bright voice on the other line explained quickly. “I just wanted to tell you Rodrigo saw Susie.”

Silence hung between Diana and me on the phone. Two moments, three moments, four moments. Heavy and unnatural. Then again, that was what Susie did best—messed things up.

I wanted to ask if she was sure it was Susie that her brother, Rodrigo, had seen, but I didn’t. If Rodrigo thought he saw her, then he had. She didn’t have the kind of face that was easy to mistake, even after so many years.

I cleared my throat, telling myself I didn’t need to count to ten, or even five. “Where?” My voice came out in a slight croak.

“In El Paso yesterday. He was visiting his in-laws this weekend with Louie and Josh, and said he saw her at the grocery store by the old neighborhood.”

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Nope. That wasn’t enough.

I had to start counting all over again, all the way to ten the second time. A thousand different thoughts went through my head at the mention of Susie’s name, and they were all pretty terrible. Each and every single one of them. It didn’t take a genius to know what she was doing in the old neighborhood. Only one person who we both knew still lived there. I could still remember our old stomping ground so clearly.

It was where Diana and I had met. Back when I lived with my mom, Diana’s family had lived next door to us. They’d had the pretty house—the freshly painted blue one with white trim and a nice lawn—the dad who played with his kids outside, and the mom who kissed boo-boos. The Casillas were the family I had always wanted when I’d been a kid, when things had been at their worst, and the only thing I found consolation in was my notebook, not the mess within the walls of my house.

Diana had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d eaten over at their house with my little brother until Mom had lost custody of us. Diana had always done what my own family didn’t, and that was watch out for me. She was the one who had found me—Stop it. Stop it. It wasn’t worth the energy it took to think about things in the past I was over. It really wasn’t.

“Huh. I had no idea she was back.” My voice sounded just as robotic aloud as it sounded in my head. “I just talked to my mom a week ago and she didn’t say anything.” Diana knew I was referring to my real mom, the person who had actually given birth to me and my four other siblings, not my foster mom of four years who I still kept in touch with.

At the mention of my birth mom, Diana made a small noise I almost missed. I knew she didn’t understand why I bothered trying to have a relationship with her. Honestly, half the time I regretted it, but that was one of those rare things I never told the person I was closest to in the world because I knew what she would say and I didn’t want to hear it.

“I figured you would want to know in case you were planning on visiting,” she finally said in kind of a mutter.

I didn’t visit El Paso often, but she was right. I definitely wouldn’t want to go now that I knew who was there.

“I really have to go in a sec, Vanny,” my best friend quickly added before I could say anything. “But did you tell Miranda you’re leaving?”

The ‘Miranda’ went in one ear and out the other. I’d been calling him that for so long, it sounded so natural it didn’t even register. “I just told him yesterday.”

“And?”

She couldn’t just let me sulk in my reality. “Nothing.” There was no point in lying or making something up that would make me seem more important to Aiden than I was. While I didn’t tell anyone a whole lot about him because of the non-disclosure agreement I signed when I first started working for him, Diana knew enough to get why his name was saved on my personal phone under Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.

“Oh,” was her disappointed response.

Yeah. I thought so too.

“He’ll miss you once you’re gone. Don’t worry about it.”

I highly doubted that.

“Okay, I gotta go, my client is here. Call me later, Van-Van. I get off work at nine.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Oh! And think about letting me dye your hair once you’re out of there,” she added before hanging up on me.

Diana’s comment made me smile and kept me smiling as I headed into Aiden’s office to tackle his inbox. Talking to Di always put me in a good mood. The fact she was one of the most easygoing people I’d ever met, had also soothed my soul more often than not. She never gave me shit for how much I worked because she worked a lot too.

But I told her the same thing my foster dad had told me when I was seventeen, and I told him I wanted to pursue my artwork: “Do what you need to do to be happy, Vané. Nobody else is going to watch out for you but you.”

It was the same belief I held onto when I first told my foster parents I wanted to go to school a thousand miles away, and what I told myself when I didn’t get a scholarship and my financial aid was merely a drop in the bucket to go to said school. I was going to do what I needed to do, even if I had to leave my brother— with his blessing—in the process. I’d told him the same thing when he was offered a scholarship for a college right after I moved back to Texas to be closer to him.

Sometimes it was easier to tell other people what they should do than to actually practice what you preached.

That had been the real root of my problem. I was scared. Scared that my clients were going to disappear and my work would dry up. Scared that one day I’d wake up and have absolutely no inspiration any more when I had my photo-editing program open. I was worried that what I’d worked so hard for would crash and burn and everything would go to hell. Because I knew firsthand that life could be taking you in one direction, and the next moment, you’d be going in a completely different one.

Because that was the way surprises worked—they didn’t tend to pencil themselves in to your schedule and let you know they were visiting ahead of time.

Chapter Three

This place smells like armpits, I thought as I made my way past the cardio equipment at the facility where Aiden had been training at since we’d gotten back from Colorado.

Located in the business warehouse district on the outskirts of Dallas, the facility had the equipment necessary for all levels of weightlifting, plyometric exercises, calisthenics, strongman, and powerlifting. The building itself was new, nondescript, and easy to miss unless you knew what you were looking for. It had only been open about three years, and the owner had spared no expense on any square inch of the gym. The facility boasted that it trained some of the most elite athletes in the world in a wide range of sports, but I only paid attention to one of them.

Aiden’s schedule had been as consistent as it could be in the two years I’d been with him, considering everything that had happened in the last ten months. After football season ended, and after he’d been cleared to train this year, Aiden headed to a small town in Colorado where he rented a house from some ex-football star for two months. There, he trained with his high school football coach. I’d never outright asked him why he chose there of all places to spend his time, but from everything I knew about him, I figured he enjoyed the time away from the spotlight. As one of the best players in the NFO, there was always someone around him, asking for something, telling him something, and Aiden wasn’t exactly the outgoing, friendly type.

He was a loner who happened to be so good at his sport there wasn’t a way around the spotlight he’d been thrust upon from the moment he’d been drafted. At least, that was what I’d learned from the countless articles I’d read before sharing on his social pages and the hundreds of interviews I’d sat through with him. It was just something he put up with on his road to being the best—because that’s what fans, and even people who weren’t fans, referred to him as.

With a work ethic like his, it wasn’t a surprise.

After his seclusion in the middle of nowhere—I’d gone with him twice because apparently he couldn’t live without a chef and housekeeper—he, we, flew back to Dallas, and his high school coach went back to Winnipeg. Aiden then worked on other aspects of his role with another trainer until the Three Hundreds called him in for team camp in July.

In a couple of weeks, official practices would begin and the insanity that surrounded an NFO season with one of the highest caliber players in the organization would start all over again. But this time, I wouldn’t be part of it. I wouldn’t have to wake up at four o’clock in the morning, or have to drive around like a crazy person doing the hundreds of things that seemed to pop up when he was busy.

This August, instead of dealing with planning meals around two-a-day practices and preseason games, I’d be in my apartment, waking up whenever the hell I wanted, and not having to cater to anyone else’s needs but mine.

But that was a party I could throw in the near future, when I wasn’t busy looking for Aiden while my hands were full.

Past the cardio machines and through two swinging double doors was the main part of the training ground. At a cavernous, ten-thousand-square-foot size, red-and-black décor swam in front of my eyes. Half of the floor looked like turf and the other half had lightly cushioned black flooring for a weight training section. Scattered around the building at six o’clock in the morning, were only about ten other people. Half of them looked like football players and the other half looked like some other sort of athlete.

I just had to look for the largest one of them all, and it only took a second to spot the big head on the turf section by one of the eleven-hundred-pound tires. Yeah, 1100-pound tires.

And I thought I was badass when I managed to carry all of my grocery bags to my apartment in one trip.

A few feet away, a familiar-looking man stood by watching The Wall of Winnipeg. Finding a spot out of the way but still close enough to take a decent picture, I sat cross-legged at the edge of the mats perpendicular to Aiden and his current trainer, pulling out the DSLR camera I’d suggested he should buy specifically for this purpose a year ago. One of my duties was to update his social media pages and engage his fans; his sponsors and fans enjoyed seeing live shots of him working out.

No one paid me any attention as I settled in; they were all too busy to look around. With the equipment out of the bag, I waited for the perfect shot.

Through the lens, Aiden’s features were smaller; his muscles seemed not as detailed as they were when you saw them in person. He’d been cutting his calories for the last two weeks, aiming to drop ten pounds before the start of the season. The striations on his shoulders popped as he maneuvered around the massive tractor tire, squatting in front of it, making the full muscles of his hamstrings look even more impressive than they usually did. I could even see the cleft that formed along the back of his thigh from how developed his hammies were.

Then there were those biceps and triceps that some people seemed to think had gotten the size they were due to steroids, when I knew firsthand that Aiden’s body was fueled by massive amounts of a plant-based diet. He didn’t even like taking over-the-counter medications. The last time he’d gotten sick, the stubborn-ass had even refused to take the antibiotics the doctor had prescribed. I hadn’t even bothered to fill the painkiller prescription he’d been given after his surgery, which might have been why he’d been so grumpy for so long. I wouldn’t even get started on his aversion to sodium laurel sulfates, preservatives, or parabens.

Steroids? Give me a break.

I snapped a few pictures, trying to get a really good one. His female fans always went nuts over the shots that showcased the power contained within that great body. And when he had tight compression shorts on while he was bent over? “BAM. I’M PREGNANT,” one of his fans had written last week when I posted a picture of Aiden doing squats. I’d almost spat water out of my mouth.

His e-mail inbox got flooded after those kinds of posts went up. What the fans wanted, they got, and Aiden was all for it. Luckily for him, between semesters, I’d taken a photography class at the local community college in hopes of snagging a few gigs during the summer doing wedding photography.

The tire started its path to getting flipped. Aiden’s face contorted as sweat poured down his temples and over the thick, two-inch scar that slashed white vertically along his hairline before melting into the beard that had grown in overnight. I’d overheard people talk about his scar when they didn’t know I was listening. They thought he’d gotten it during a drunken night in college.

I knew better.

Through the lens, Aiden grimaced and his trainer urged him on from his spot right beside him. I snapped more pictures, suppressing a sleepy yawn.

“Hey, you,” a voice whispered a little too closely into my ear from behind.

I froze up. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. There was only one person in the group of people that circled Aiden’s life that made my creeper-radar go off.

And this will hopefully be one of the last few times you see him, I told myself when I had the urge to flinch.

There was also the fact my gut said that making my dislike of him known would just make this situation worse, and it wasn’t like I would tell Aiden his teammate gave me the heebie-jeebies. If I hadn’t told Zac who was my friend that Christian made me feel uncomfortable, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell the person who wasn’t. But it was the truth. I minded my own business when I showed up to anything Three Hundreds related and tried to be nice or at least polite to the people who were kind to me. Trevor had drilled it into my head when he’d interviewed me that I wasn’t to be seen or heard. The attention always had to be on the big guy and not some crazy-ass assistant, and I was totally fine with that.

Plastering a tight, forced smile on my mouth, even though I wasn’t facing him, I kept the camera where it was, ready for action. “Hi, Christian. How are you?” I asked in a friendly voice that I really had to dig in there for, easily ignoring the good-looking features that disguised a man who had gotten suspended a few games last season for getting into a fight at a club. I thought that said a lot about him to begin with, because who did something that stupid anyway? He made millions a year. Only a total idiot would jeopardize a good thing.

“Great now that you’re here,” Creeper Christian said.

I almost groaned. It wasn’t like I’d known he was training at the same place Aiden was. I doubted Aiden even knew or cared.

“Taking pictures of Graves?” he asked, taking a seat on the floor next to me.

I brought the viewfinder eyepiece to my eye, hoping he’d realize I was too busy to talk. “Yep.” Who else would I be taking pictures of? I snapped a couple other shots as Aiden managed to flip the tire again and resuming that wide-legged, squatted position after each time.

“How you been? How long has it been since I’ve seen you?”

“Good.” Was it bitchy to be so vague? Yes, but I couldn’t find it in me to be more than cordial to him after what he’d done. Plus, he knew damn well how long Aiden had been out of the season. He was the team’s star player. Someone from the team had been constantly in contact with him since his injury. There was no way Christian wouldn’t have kept up with Aiden’s progress. It seemed like every time I flipped through The Sports Channel, some anchor or another was making a prediction about Aiden’s future.

The heat of his side seared into my shoulder. “Graves sure got back on his feet real quick.”

Through the lens though, I found Aiden glowering over in my direction, his trainer a few feet away jotting down something on the clipboard he’d been holding.

I was torn between waving and getting up, but Aiden beat me to decision making by saying loudly, “You can leave now.”

You can—?

Lowering the camera to my lap, I stared over at him, pressing my glasses a little closer to my face with my index finger. I’d heard wrong, hadn’t I? “What did you say?” I called out the question slowly so he could hear me.

He didn’t even blink as he repeated himself. “You can leave now.”

You can leave now.

I gawked. My heart gave a vicious thump. My inhale was sharp.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

“Kill them with kindness,” Diana’s mom would say when I’d tell her about my sisters picking on me. I hadn’t necessarily taken her words into account when dealing with my family, but they had made sense to me once I was old enough to have to put up with other people’s bullshit.

Being the kind of person who smiled at someone who was being a jackass usually pissed off the assholes a lot more than being rude in return did.

In some cases though, people might also think you had brain damage when you did it, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

But in this case, in that moment, forcing myself not to obviously flip Aiden off was a lot harder than normal.

It was one thing for him to ignore me when I tried to be playful with him, or when I said “good-bye” or “good morning,” but for him to act that way with me in front of other people? I mean, he wasn’t exactly a teddy bear on the best of days, but he usually wasn’t a model for Asswipe & Fitch. At least, not when we were around other people, which was rare.

One, two, three, four, five. I had this.

I raised my eyebrows and beamed over at him like nothing was wrong, even though I was pretty much seething on the inside, and wondering how to give him diarrhea.

“What the fuck is his deal?” Christian muttered under his breath as I settled the camera back into its case, and then into my bag. I couldn’t decide whether to leave as quickly as possible or stay where I was because he was out of his damn mind if he thought I was going to do his bidding when he talked like that to me.

The reminder that I didn’t need to take his crap anymore hit me right between the eyebrows, and my shoulder blades. I could take him being aloof and cold. I could handle him not giving a single crap about me personally, but embarrassing me in front of other people? There was only so much you could forgive and ignore.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

“Is he always like that?” Christian’s voice jump-started me out of my thoughts.

I shrugged a shoulder, conscious not to put my foot in my mouth in front of someone who was practically a stranger even though said man wasn’t exactly on my list of people I would pull out of a burning building at the minute. “He’s a good boss,” I let the bland, forced compliment out, getting to my feet. “I don’t take it personally.”

Usually.

“I need to get going anyway. See you,” I said as I slipped the strap of my bag over my shoulder and picked up the insulated bag with the big guy’s food inside.

“I’m sure I’ll see you soon,” he noted, his tone just a little too bright, too fake.

I nodded before noticing Aiden taking a knee on the turf, staring over with a perfectly impassive expression on his face. Fighting the uneasy feeling I got from him practically telling me to scram, I went to stand on the other side of the tire. He was sweaty, his T-shirt clinging to the muscles of his pectorals like a second, paler skin. His face was tight, almost bored—so basically the norm.

I tried to steady my words and heart. Confusion, anger, and, honestly, a little hurt soured my stomach as I watched him. “Is there something wrong?” I asked slowly, steadily as I tapped my fingers along the stitching of the bag with his camera and my things inside.

“No,” he answered sharply, like he would have if I’d asked him if he wanted something with fennel for dinner.

I cleared my throat and rubbed the side of my hand against the seam of my pants, warily, counting to three that time. “Are you sure?”

“Why would anything be wrong?”

Because you’re being a massive douche bag, I thought.

But before I could make up something else, he kept going. “I don’t pay you to sit around and talk.”

Oh no.

He leaned his entire upper body forward to rest against the length of his leg in a deep stretch. “Did you bring my breakfast?”

I tried to be patient. I really did. For the most part, I had patience on lockdown. There was no sense of “this is mine” when you had three older sisters who didn’t respect anyone’s boundaries, and one little brother. Needless to say, I didn’t get my feelings hurt particularly easily, and I didn’t hold 99 percent of things against my brothers or sisters when they said something they wouldn’t mean later on.

But that was the problem, Aiden wasn’t my brother. He wasn’t even my friend.

I could take a lot, but I wasn’t obligated to take anything from him.

In that moment, I realized how over this shit I was. I was done. Done.

Maybe I was scared as hell of quitting, but I would rather take a gamble on myself than stay there and get insulted by someone who wasn’t any better than me.

Calmly, calmly, calmly, despite the angry ringing in my ears, I made myself focus on his question and answered, my voice stony, “Yes.” I held up the bag he clearly would have seen when I walked up to him.

He grunted.

As much as I could respect Aiden for being so determined, focused, and logical, sometimes…

It grated on me just how blind he was to everything else in his life. In all the time I’d worked for him, he still couldn’t grace me with more than an occasional “thank you” or “good lunch.” Sure, I knew that you shouldn’t expect someone’s gratitude for doing things just because it was good manners, but still. I could count the number of times he’d smiled at me or asked me how I was doing on one hand. One freaking hand. I was a person who filled a role, but I could have been any person filling this role and it wouldn’t have mattered.

I did a good job, hardly ever complained, and always did what needed to be accomplished even if I didn’t want to do it. I tried to be nice to him, to mess with him even though he definitely didn’t care for it, because what was life if you took it too seriously?

But he’d pretty much just told me to “shoo” in front of other people.

“Is that all?” Aiden’s rough voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “I have a workout I need to finish.”

It was an oddly relieving sensation that pierced through my chest right then. I felt… like I could breathe. Standing there, I felt right. “Yeah, that’s all, boss.” I swallowed, forced a smile on my face, and walked out of there with my head held high, thinking, I’m done. I’m so done.

What was wrong with him?

I’d been around Aiden dozens of times when he was having a bad day. Bad days with Aiden Graves were nothing new or anything to particularly hold on to. Even practices with the Three Hundreds were serious business for him. Every mistake he made was like a strike against his soul that he dwelled on. He’d said so in interviews plenty of times in the past, how he lay in bed going over plays until he went to sleep.

He was cranky on days that the sun was out and he was cranky on cloudy days too. I could handle grouchy men who preferred their own company. Usually he just glared and maybe snarled a bit.

No big deal. He didn’t throw things or yell.

But acting like an asshole with me in public? Saying that kind of stuff? That was new even for him, and that was probably why I was handling it so badly. Sometimes the worst things you could ever hear were wrapped in sweet tones and calm voices.

I walked out of the facility distracted. I even drove my car muttering to myself under my breath. Twenty minutes later, I pulled into Aiden’s subdivision and parked on the street like usual. When I opened the front door, I realized something was wrong when the alarm system wasn’t beeping.

The alarm wasn’t beeping.

“Zac?” I yelled, reaching into my purse for my pepper spray at the same time I made my way through the kitchen, toward the door that led into the garage, to see if there was a car in there.

I didn’t make it that far.

Sitting on the onyx countertop right next to the refrigerator were dangling long legs stuffed into brown leather cowboy boots. I didn’t need to look at the upper body above them. I knew what I would see: a threadbare T-shirt, a narrow, handsome face, and light-brown hair hidden beneath that black Stetson he’d owned for years.

Zachary James Travis was draped across the counter with a bag of chips in his lap. At six foot three, Zac was the second string quarterback of the Dallas Three Hundreds. Plagued by one injury after another, Austin, Texas’s once-upon-a-time star had stumbled through the last six years of his career. Or so the sports analysts said.

But that wasn’t how I knew Zac. With a twang in his accent, clothes that told everyone the only thing he worried about was them being clean and comfortable, and a smile that made most women swoon, he was my buddy. My confidant where his roommate was not.

And I hadn’t seen him in almost three months since he’d left to go back home for part of the offseason.

In that instant though, I didn’t miss him that much. “You almost got sprayed in the face! I thought you were coming next week.” I panted with my hand on my chest, the other hand clutching my pepper spray.

Dropping his boot-clad feet to the floor, I finally let my eyes go up to find that he was standing there with his arms open, smiling wide. He was fresh faced, tanner than usual, and, eyeing his middle section, maybe a little thicker. “I missed ya too, darlin’.”

Temporarily pushing aside the veil Aiden’s crappy mood had put over my head, I couldn’t help but smile. “What are you doing here?”

“I figured it wasn’t gonna kill me to come back a little early,” he explained as he rounded the kitchen island and came to stand in front of me, pretty much towering over my five-foot-seven frame. Before either one of us could say another word, his arms were around me.

I hugged him back. “The only person that might be getting killed soon is you-know-who. I’ve almost poisoned him a few times these last couple of months.” I took a sniff of him and almost laughed at the scent of Old Spice he insisted on wearing.

“Is he still alive?” he drawled the question lazily but seriously.

Thinking about his comment at the facility had me scowling into his shirt. “Barely.”

Pulling back, the smile Zac had on his face withered, his eyes narrowing as he studied my features. “You look like hell, sugar. You’re not sleepin’?” he asked as he kept eyeballing what I was sure were the circles under my eyes.

I shrugged beneath his palms. What was the point in lying? “Not enough.”

He knew better than to give me shit; instead, he simply shook his head. For a second, I thought about how Aiden would react to the four or five hours I usually squeezed in. He was even more religious about getting anywhere from eight to ten hours of snooze time daily. That was also part of the reason why he didn’t have any friends. Thinking about Aiden reminded me of the conversations I’d had recently and how I hadn’t talked to Zac in two weeks.

“I finally told Aiden,” I blurted out.

His thin mouth fell open, those milky-blue eyes going wide “You did?”

Zac had known what my plans were. Soon after we started getting to know each other, he’d seen me working on my tablet while I was having lunch one afternoon, and asked me what I was doing. So I’d told him.

He’d simply grinned at me back then and replied, “No shit, Van. You got a website or somethin’?”

Since then, I’d redone the logo for his personal website—after I’d insisted how much of a good idea they were for branding himself—and done various banners for his media pages. As a result, he’d gotten me more work through a couple of the other players on the team.

I threw my hands up and put a smile on my face at the same time I wiggled my fingers. “I did it. I told him,” I practically sang.

“What he say?” the most unapologetically nosey man I’d ever known asked.

I fought and lost the urge to grimace at the memory of how much Aiden hadn’t said. “Nothing. He just told me to let Trevor know.”

One of Zac’s light-brown eyebrows twitched. “Huh.”

I ignored it. It didn’t matter if Zac thought the same thing I did: What a dick thing to do. “Yay,” I muttered, still giving him spirit fingers because even memories of Aiden weren’t going to rain on my parade of quitting soon.

He eyed me speculatively for a moment before the emotion was wiped off, and he slapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make me go Oof. “It’s about damn time.”

I rubbed my arm. “I know. I’m relieved I finally sucked it up. But between you and me, I still want to hurl when I think about it.”

He watched my hand for a second before making his way back around the island. With his back to me, he said, “Aww, you’ll be fine. I’m gonna miss the hell out of your meatloaf when you’re gone, but not all of us get to do what we love for a livin’. I’m glad you finally get to join the club, darlin’.”

Some days, I didn’t completely understand why I wasn’t madly in love with Zac. He was a little full of himself, but he was a pro football player, so it wasn’t exactly a surprising trait. Plus, he was tall, and I loved tall guys. In the end though, all I felt and had ever felt toward Zac was friendship. The fact that I’d gone out to buy him hemorrhoid cream a couple of times probably helped solidify the lines in our friend zone.

“I’ll make you meatloaf anytime you want,” I told him.

“You said it.” Zac grabbed a banana from the metal tree next to the fridge. “I’m so damn happy to hear you did it.”

I shrugged, happy but still a tiny bit nervous about the situation despite knowing it was mostly unreasonable. “Me too.”

For a second, I thought about telling him how Aiden had been acting an hour ago, but what was the point? They had polar-opposite personalities as it was, and I knew they got fed up with each other at times. Really, when I thought about it, I wondered how or why they still lived together. They didn’t spend much time together or go out and do stuff that friends did.

But with one guy who felt so uncertain with his position on the team that he didn’t want to buy a house, and another who wasn’t even an American resident, I guess they both found themselves in weird situations.

“How much longer are you—?” Zac started to ask just as his phone rang. With a wink, he pulled it out of his pocket and said, “Gimme a sec it’s—damn, it’s Trevor.”

Ugh. He and Aiden had the same manager; it was how they ended up living together.

“He knows?” he asked, pointing down at the illuminated screen of his phone.

I scrunched up my nose. “He hung up on me.”

That earned me a laugh. “Lemme see what he wants. Then you can tell me what he said.”

I nodded again and watched as he answered the call and headed toward the living room. Setting my bag on the counter, I started cleaning up the kitchen, remembering at the last minute that it was trash day. Pulling the bag out, I put another one in there and then headed into the garage to grab the city-issued can.

I slapped the button to open the garage door. I held my breath before opening the bin lid, throwing the bag in, and then dragging the can down the driveway toward the curb. Just as I was setting it in place, a woman ran by across the street in a steady pace, heading in the direction of where one of the subdivision’s walking trails started.

Something, which was as close to jealousy as I thought I could get, panged through my stomach. I eyed my knee and flexed it a little, knowing I could jog if I wanted to, but most of the time I was too tired. Years of physical therapy had done a lot and I knew my knee would ache less if I actually exercised regularly, but I just didn’t have the time… and when I did have the time, I spent it doing other things.

What a bunch of excuses, weren’t they?

I wanted all these things out of my life…

I had finally put in my notice to quit and everything seemed to be going okay. Or at least, things could have been a lot worse than they were. Maybe it was time to start working on other things I wanted to do. I’d been so focused on building up my business the last few years that I’d put off doing a hundred other things I could remember wanting to do when I was a kid.

Screw it.

I only had this one life to live, and I didn’t really want to sit back and not accomplish the things I wanted.

It was time, damn it.

Chapter Four

The thing with having a terrible day is that a lot of times, you don’t know it’s going to be a bad one until it’s too late; it isn’t until your clothes are on, you’ve eaten breakfast, and you’re out of the house, so it’s too late to go back to request a sick day… and bam! The signs stare you right in the eye, and you know your day has instantly gone into the shitter.

I woke up that morning at five o’clock, slightly earlier than usual because it was going to be a busy day of running around, to the smell of my coffee machine going, and my alarm clock blaring the most obnoxious tone in its programming. I showered, slipped a thick headband on to keep the hair out of my face, and threw on a pair of slim, red, cropped pants, a short-sleeved blouse, flats, and my glasses. My two cell phones, tablet, and laptop were all sitting together on the counter in the kitchen. I grabbed my things, poured a travel mug with coffee, and hauled ass out of my apartment when the sky was still sleepier than it was awake.

I managed to make it all the way to the parking lot when things started to go wrong. I had a freaking flat. My apartment complex was too cheap for working outside lights, so it took me three times as long to change the tire than it would have usually taken me, and I stained my pants in the process. I was running late, so I didn’t go back to change.

Luckily, the rest of the drive went by fine. There wasn’t a single light on at any of the other houses surrounding my boss’s, so my usual spot in front of the 4000-square-foot home was empty. I went inside through the front door, disarmed the security panel, and headed straight to the kitchen just as the pipes began humming with use upstairs.

I put on the apron hanging from a hook in the corner of the kitchen because one stain was enough for only having been up two hours. I pulled fruit out of the freezer, the kale and carrots I’d washed and prepped the day before out of the fridge, measured a cup of pumpkin seeds out of a glass container on the counter, and dumped it all into the five-hundred-dollar blender on the countertop. On the mornings when he didn’t leave the house to go to training first thing, he had a big smoothie, worked out a little at home, and afterward had a ‘normal’ breakfast. As if a sixty-four-ounce beverage could be considered a snack.

When I was done blending the ingredients, I poured the mixture into four big glasses and placed Aiden’s portion in front of his favorite spot on the kitchen island. Two apples out of the fridge later, I set it all right next to the glasses of smoothie. Like clockwork, the sound of thunder on the steps warned me The Wall of Winnipeg was on his way down.

We had this routine set up that didn’t require words to get through it.

The second sign I’d been given that today wasn’t going to be my day was the scowl Aiden had on his face, but my attention had been too focused on washing the blender to notice it. “Good morning,” I said without glancing up.

Nothing. I still hadn’t been able to give up greeting him even though I knew he wouldn’t respond; my manners wouldn’t let me.

So I went on like always, washing dirty dishes as the man sitting on the stool in front of me drank his breakfast. Then, once he was ready, he finally cracked the silence with a low, sleep-stained and hoarse-voiced, “What’s the plan for today?”

“You have a radio interview at nine.”

He grunted his acknowledgment.

“Today is the day the Channel 2 news people are coming by.”

Another grunt, but that one was especially unenthusiastic.

I didn’t blame him; at the same time, I didn’t understand why his manager had even gotten him that kind of publicity with the local news. It was one thing for him to get through an interview in a hotel room in the pressroom after a game, or in the locker room, but one at his house? I’d spent the day before dusting the hell out of the living room and kitchen in preparation for it.

“Then you have that luncheon the senior center you donated money to invited you to. Last month, you had me confirm with them.” I kind of eyed him after I said it, half expecting him to say he’d changed his mind and wasn’t going.

He didn’t. He nodded that tiny baby nod that could have been easy to miss.

“Did you want me to go with you?” I asked just to be sure. Most of the time, I accompanied him anywhere he went in Dallas, but if I could get out of it, I would.

“Yes,” he grumbled his sleepy reply.

Damn. “All right. We should get going by eight just to be on the safe side.”

He lifted a couple of fingers in acknowledgment or agreement, whatever. Five chugs of smoothie later, he got up and handed over the empty glasses. “I’ll be in the gym. Get me fifteen minutes before we need to leave so I can shower.”

“You got it, boss.”

Chapter Five

One week turned into two, then three, and finally four.

In the days that followed me walking out of Aiden’s house, and subsequently quitting my job, I thought about Aiden a lot more than I would have ever expected when I wasn’t busy working. Most of those times didn’t even revolve around me wanting to kill him either.

After I walked out of his house, my foot couldn’t hit the gas pedal fast enough to get me home. The first thing I did was start on a new project, more determined than ever to succeed at what I loved doing. I was ready and willing to bust my ass to make things work, no matter the cost.

The ties had been cut as far as I was concerned.

Aiden had been a fucking jackass, when I had never accused him of being anything other than practical and determined. I could relate to that, but I couldn’t connect with him being such a traitor. I was no Trevor or Rob. I didn’t make extra money off the choices he made, and if anything, things were better for me when he was happier. Hadn’t I tried to do what was best for him? Hadn’t I tried to do things that made him happy?

Yet he’d let that asswipe talk about me when I’d spent last Christmas in Dallas, instead of going to see my little brother, because he still hadn’t been able to move around much at that point.

Unfortunately, I thought about Aiden first thing in the morning for days after I walked out. My body wasn’t used to sleeping in until eight; even on my days off, I was usually up and about by six. I thought about him as I made my breakfast and chomped on breakfast sausage. Then I thought about him again at lunchtime and dinner, so used to making his meals and eating part of them.

Each day for those first two weeks of freedom, I thought about him often. You couldn’t work with someone five, six, or even sometimes seven days a week for two years without getting into a routine. I knew I couldn’t just erase him from my life like he’d been drawn in with a pencil.

Much less erase that moment when I realized I’d been holding on to a job with a man who wouldn’t come to my funeral, even if it fell on a day he was supposed to rest. The fact I had family members who wouldn’t go to my funeral didn’t really help ease the sting of it enough.

After a few days, my anger abated, but that feeling of betrayal that had seared my lungs didn’t exactly go away completely. Something had been going on with him; that much had been obvious. Maybe under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have acted like such a massive prick.

But he had crossed the thin little line I’d drawn in the imaginary sand. And I did what felt right.

So it was done.

I kept living my life as my own boss, which was exactly what I’d planned on doing anyway.

And I didn’t look back at what I’d done.

Chapter Six

“Oh shit.”

I spotted the black Range Rover in the parking lot the instant the taxi pulled up in front of the complex by the guest entrance. There was no way I could miss it; I’d taken it to get an oil change and a wash a few times in the past. It wasn’t necessarily the nicest car in the lot—a few of my neighbors had Escalades and Mercedes that I wasn’t sure how they afforded—but I recognized Aiden’s license plate number.

Yet it still caught me off guard to see it there.

He hadn’t exactly left my apartment with a smile on his face a few days ago. After I clearly told him I didn’t want to go back to work for him, he’d looked at me like I was speaking a different language, and asked, “Is this a joke?”

There went arrogance for you.

I’d answered the only way I would. “No.”

He had gotten to his feet, turned his attention toward the ceiling for a moment, and left. And that was that.

The last thing I expected was for him to come back. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d learned that this was a person who once he put his mind to something, nothing deterred him from his goal. This was the person who only heard what he wanted to hear. That didn’t exactly leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I guess a big part of me just wanted and expected to make a clean cut with him, especially after he’d made his lack of loyalty so apparent.

The fact that he’d somehow gotten my address and gone out of his way to come to my apartment when he hadn’t even been able to put in a single effort to ask me how I was doing, frustrated me more than it probably should have. It was too little too late. All I would have wanted from him in the past was at least a little bit of loyalty, if not friendship, and he hadn’t even been able to give me that.

“Everything all right, ma’am?”

“Everything is fine, thanks,” I lied, gripping the handle. “I thought I lost my keys, but I found them. How much do I owe you?”

Paying my fee, I slipped out of the car and hurried through the gate.

I made my way toward my apartment with one hand wrapped around my pepper spray and the other with my keys and wristlet, all too aware that I’d had too much wine to drink to deal with this crap right now.

My visitor was in the same spot on the stairs I’d found him days ago.

Aiden’s gaze almost immediately landed on me, hovering on the hem of the dress I’d worn to dinner as he climbed to his size-thirteen feet. Dressed in workout shorts that reached his knees and a T-shirt, I was pretty sure he’d left practice and come straight over. If my dates were right, the team was halfway through preseason training camp, focused more on the rookies than on veterans like Aiden.

“We need to talk,” he stated immediately, his eyes scraping their way to my chest and catching on the low dip of the cotton sundress right between my breasts.

Huh.

I gave him a side look as I approached my door, ignoring the curious expression he was giving me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t worn dresses around him before, but none of them had been above my knee, and they had all covered The Girls. The one I had on now? Not so much. But it had been my ‘I’m meeting up with a man for the first time in almost two years’ dress on a blind date with someone I’d met on the matchmaking website I’d signed up for a few weeks back. While we’d gotten along pretty well in the messages we’d exchanged, we hadn’t hit it off in person. Paranoid about meeting a stranger that could write down my license plate, I’d taken a cab to the Italian restaurant we were having dinner at.

“Give me a few minutes,” he said in a slightly less confident and aggressive tone, his eyes still dipping to my dress.

The temptation to say ‘Oh, you finally want to talk after two years?’ was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back and raised my eyebrows at him before sliding the key into the lock.

A muscle in his cheek twitched and he ground out, “Please.”

Hell was about to freeze over. He’d said please?

Before I could think about it much more, voices suddenly came from one of the apartments above mine, damn it. Aiden’s big frame was a little too eye-catching, especially when he happened to be a celebrity in Dallas. Just a few days ago, I’d seen a handful of Three Hundreds jerseys around the complex with GRAVES stitched on the back. The last thing I needed was for someone to see him when I had made sure for years not to let anyone find out he was my boss.

“Come in,” I muttered, waving him in quickly before someone spotted him.

He didn’t need to be told twice. Aiden squeezed his way inside with just enough time for me to close and lock the door just as three men came down the stairs. I walked around him and headed into the kitchen overseeing my living room, frustrated with myself for inviting him in.

“You look different.” His comment had my steps faltering for a moment.

“I’ve worn dresses in front of you before,” I snapped a little more bitterly than I would have liked.

“Not one like that,” came the quick, nearly brash retort that came out aggressively enough for me to frown. “I wasn’t talking about your shirt.”

My shirt?

“You look different.”

I sniffed and circled around the kitchen counter. “My hair is a different color, and I lost weight. That’s all.”

Taking a seat at my small table, Aiden’s gaze brushed over the part of my body he could see, my face, my neck, chest, and bare arms. Good lord, he made me self-conscious. Making another sweep over me with those dark orbs, his thick eyebrows climbed up his forehead as he made an indiscriminate noise, like a “hmm.” Like most things with Aiden, another thought immediately forgotten. The next comment out of his mouth confirmed it. “I want you to come work for me again.”

I couldn’t hold back my groan as I turned to the refrigerator.

“I mean it,” he kept going as if I doubted him.

I took my time opening the fridge, and ducked inside to pull out the water jug in there. I was stubborn. I accepted my flaw honestly. But Aiden? Good grief. He had me beat by a landslide; he took stubborn and hardheaded to a whole new level. He was supposed to have just forgotten my existence after a couple of days.

Keeping my attention down as I closed the fridge door, I took a calming breath in and let it out. I knew him, and the way he was acting really shouldn’t be a surprise. It was like spoiling a kid his entire life and then trying to put your foot down once it was too late. I’d let him get away with too much over the course of the time we’d known each other, and I had to deal with it now. “I meant what I said too. I don’t want to, and I’m not going to.”

Silence ticked by, second on top of second, buoyant and endless with the things I thought we both could have said to each other but didn’t.

The chair Aiden was sitting on creaked with his weight. I didn’t want to look at him. “You don’t get on my nerves,” he noted almost as if I’d cured cancer.

I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t even look at him. You don’t get on my nerves. I had to set the jug on the counter, and grip the sharp edge of the countertop with my free hand. How did he expect me to respond? Did he want me to thank him for such a heartfelt compliment?

I counted. One, two, three, four so that I wouldn’t just blurt something out in frustration. Picking and choosing my words carefully, I lifted my head and pulled a glass out of the cabinet. “Tell your next employee that talking isn’t required,” I said as I poured water into my cup.

“I never told you that,” his rough, low voice responded.

“You didn’t have to.” Actions spoke louder than words after all.

He let out an exasperated noise and followed it up by saying something that stopped me in the middle of putting the water jug back in the fridge. “You’re a good employee.”

One, two, three, four, five.

Of all the things he could have said…

I could have smacked him in the face right then. I really could have. “There are plenty of good employees in the world. You pay well enough for someone to not half-ass their duties.” I set the water into the fridge and closed the door. “I don’t know why you’re here. Why you’re insisting that you want me to come back when I don’t want to be your assistant anymore, Aiden. I can’t make myself any clearer.”

There. I’d said it, and it was painful and relieving at the same time. “Do you remember when I first started working for you? Do you remember how I’d tell you good morning every day and ask how you were doing?”

He didn’t reply.

Perfect. “And do you remember how many times I’ve asked you if there was something wrong, or tried to joke around with you only for you to ignore me?” I licked my lips and paused where I was, one shoulder against the refrigerator, able to see him at the kitchen table. “I don’t think anyone could get on your nerves unless you let them. And anyway, I told you that none of this matters any more anyway. I don’t want to work for you.”

The big guy sat forward in his seat, his nostrils flaring. “It matters because I want you to come back.”

“You didn’t even care that I was there to begin with.” Sudden irritation at what he was trying to do set the nerves of my spine on fire. You will not bang your head against the fridge. You will not bang your head against the fridge. “You don’t even know me—”

“I know you,” he cut me off.

Exasperation like I didn’t know gripped my chest. “You don’t know me. You’ve never tried to know me, so don’t give me that,” I snapped and immediately felt guilty for some stupid reason. “I told you I was quitting, and you didn’t give a shit. I don’t know why you care now, but it doesn’t matter. This work relationship between you and me is done, and that was all we had to begin with. Find someone else, because I’m not going back to work for you. That’s the end of the story.”

Aiden didn’t blink, didn’t inhale or exhale; he didn’t even twitch. His gaze was locked on me like his pupils were all-knowing lasers capable of emotional manipulation. For the longest moment in time, there wasn’t a single sound in my tiny apartment. Then abruptly, in a tone that was completely Aiden, as if he hadn’t just heard a single word that came out of my mouth, he said, “I don’t want someone new. I want you.”

I suddenly wished I could have recorded his comeback so I could sell it on the Internet to the hundreds of girls who filled his inbox every week with offers of dates, blow jobs, companionship, and sex.

But I was too busy getting more and more aggravated by the second to do so.

Where the hell was he getting the nerve to say that to me?

“Maybe—and I just want you to think about it for the future—you should consider what other factors are important in employee retention. You know, like making people feel appreciated, giving them a reason to stay loyal to you. It isn’t just about a paycheck,” I replied as gently as I could, even though I knew damn well he didn’t exactly deserve to get handled with kid gloves. “You’ll find someone. It’s just not going to be me.”

His brown eyes sharpened and left an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I’ll pay you more.”

“Listen to me. This isn’t about money, for freaking sake.”

About a thousand different thoughts seemed to go through his head in that instant as one of his cheeks pulled back into what seemed like half a grimace.

I had no idea what he was thinking, and I sighed. How did we get to this point? Six weeks ago, I couldn’t get him to tell me ‘Hello.’ Now, he was at my apartment, sitting at my hand-me-down dining room table, asking me to work for him again after I’d walked out.

It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

His chin tipped back in a determined gesture I was too familiar with. “My visa expires next year,” he ground out.

And… I shut my mouth.

A few months ago, I remembered opening his mail, and seeing something about his visa in an official-looking letter. A letter that I thought he might have gotten again right before I quit, when I’d told him he needed to check the things I’d left on his desk.

I didn’t get how a visa could be used as an excuse for being a jerk.

“Okay. Did you already send the paperwork to renew it?” The words had no sooner come out of my mouth than I was asking myself what the hell I was doing. This wasn’t my business. He’d made it not my business.

But I still wasn’t expecting it when he said, “No.”

I didn’t understand. “Why not?” Damn it! What the hell was I doing asking questions? I scolded myself.

“It’s a work visa,” his words were slow, like I was mentally impaired or something.

I still didn’t get what the problem was.

“It’s subjective to me playing for the Three Hundreds.”

I blinked at him, thinking maybe he’d taken one too many hits to the skull in his career. “I don’t get what the problem is.”

Before I could ask him why he was worried about his visa when any team he signed with would help him get a new one, he cleared his throat. “I don’t want to go back to Canada. I like it here.”

This was the same Winnipeg native that had only once gone back to his motherland in all the time we’d worked together. I’d grown up in El Paso, but I didn’t go ‘home’ much either because nothing really felt like home any more. I hadn’t had a place that made me feel safe or loved or warm, or any of the feelings I figured could be associated with what ‘home’ should feel like.

I glanced at the wall to the side of his head, waiting for the next revelation to help make sense of what he was saying. “I’m still not understanding what the issue here is.”

With a deep sigh, he propped his chin on his hand, and he finally explained. “If I’m not on a team, I can’t stay here.”

Why wouldn’t he be playing? Was his foot bothering him? I wanted to ask him but didn’t. “Okay… isn’t there some other kind of visa you can apply for?”

“I don’t want to get another visa.”

I blew out a breath and shut the refrigerator door, my fingers instantly going up to my glasses. “Okay. Go talk to an immigration lawyer. I’m sure one of them can help you get your permanent residency.” I chewed on my cheek for a second before adding, “You have money to get it worked on, and that’s a lot better than most people have it.” Then an idea entered my head, and before I thought twice about suggesting it, or talked myself out of not saying anything because I wasn’t feeling particularly friendly, I blurted it out. “Or just find an American citizen to marry you.”

His gaze had drifted to the ceiling at some point, but in that moment, he shifted it to scrutinize me. Those broad features were even and smooth, and not even remotely close to a scowl.

“Find someone you like, date them for a little bit or something, and then ask them to marry you. You can always get divorced afterward.” I paused and thought about a distant cousin of Diana’s. “There’s also people out there who would do it if you paid them enough, but that’s kind of tricky because I’m pretty sure it’s a felony to try to get your papers fixed by marrying someone for that reason. It’s something to think about.”

I blinked, noticing his expression had gone from scrutinizing to contemplating. Thoughtful. Too thoughtful. This weird sensation crept over my neck. Weird, weird, weird, telling me something was off, telling me I should probably get out of his line of view. I took a step back and eyed him. “What is it?”

Nothing in this world could have prepared me for what came out of his mouth next.

“Marry me.”

“What?” It came out of my mouth as surprised and rude as I imagined it did, I was positive of it.

He was on drugs. He was seriously on fucking drugs.

“Marry me,” he repeated himself, like I hadn’t heard him the first time.

I leaned back against the kitchen counter, torn between being weak from shock and dumbfounded from how ridiculous his statement was, and settled for just staring blankly in the general direction of his granite-like face. “You’re on dope, aren’t you?”

“No.” The usually taut corners of Aiden’s mouth relaxed a fraction of an inch; the tension in his body diminishing just a tiny amount, but it was enough for me to notice. “You can help me get my residency.”

What in the hell was going on with him? Maybe it was brain damage after all. I’d seen some of the guys he went up against, how could he have gotten off scot-free after so many years? “Why would I do that?” I gaped. “Why would I even want to do that?”

That strong jaw seemed to clench.

“I don’t want to work for you, much less marry you to help you get your papers fixed.” An idea rang through my brain, and I almost threw my hands up in joy at the brilliance behind it. “Marry someone who can do all your assistant stuff, too. It makes perfect sense.”

He’d started nodding when I brought up the assistant idea, but the emotion in his eyes was a little disturbing. He looked way too determined, too at peace with whatever crazy crap was going on in his big head. “It’s perfect,” he agreed. “You can do it.”

I choked. As badly as I wanted to say something—to argue with him or just tell him he’d lost his mind—nothing managed to come out of my mouth. I was flabbergasted. Fucking flabbergasted.

Aiden was on crack.

“Are you insane? Did you drop a barbell on your neck bench pressing?”

“You said it; it’s a perfect plan.”

What had I done? “It’s not perfect. It’s nowhere near perfect,” I blabbered. “I don’t work for you anymore, and even if I did, I wouldn’t do it.” Seriously? He was thinking I would? I didn’t know him to be anything but practical, and this was just outrageous.

But he wasn’t listening. I could tell. He had his thinking face on. “Vanessa, you have to do it.”

Did he not understand that we weren’t friends? That he’d treated me in the opposite way you would treat someone you cared about?

“No. I don’t and I’m not.” If I met the right person, I wasn’t opposed to getting married some day in the future. I didn’t think about marriage often, but when I did, I kind of liked the idea of it. Diana’s parents had been a perfect example of a great relationship; of course, I’d want something like that in the future, if it was possible. Realistically, I knew I would be fine on my own too.

And I wasn’t going to scratch kids off my list of things I’d like if I also had the right person in my life. I faintly knew what I wanted in a partner, but more than anything, I knew what I didn’t want.

And Aiden, even on his best days, wasn’t that person. Or anywhere near it. Sure he was good-looking; anyone with eyes could see that. His body alone had women of all ages turning in their seats to get a good look because Aiden breathed virility, and what woman didn’t like a man who looked like he drank testosterone in gallons? He was a big drink of cool water, or so I’d been told. Okay, and he had money, but that wasn’t a hard requisite for a future boyfriend or husband. I could make my own money.

That was it though.

Except for the first three months of my employment, I had never once thought to myself that I had feelings for The Wall of Winnipeg. I was physically attracted to him, sure. But for me, and because of everything I’d seen my mom go through, jumping from one relationship to another my entire life, that wasn’t enough. My last boyfriend hadn’t been the best looking guy on the planet, but he’d been funny and nice, and we liked the same things. We got along. The only reason we’d split up was because he’d been offered a job in Seattle, and I hadn’t been convinced I was head over heels in love with him enough to move across the country, even further away from the few people in my life who mattered to me. I’d done it once already going to school in Tennessee.

Aiden didn’t fit any of the same qualifications my ex had. He wasn’t funny or nice, we didn’t like the same things, and based on the last two weeks of our work relationship, we didn’t get along.

And why the hell was I even thinking about reasons why this was a bad idea? It was a terrible one point blank. One I wasn’t going to go through with. No way, no how.

Aiden, on the other hand, wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t have to say a word for me to know he was ignoring everything coming out of my mouth.

“Aiden, listen to me”—for the second time in your life, I added in my head—“I’m sure Trevor can find you someone. Just ask.”

That comment had him snapping to attention. His thick, dark eyebrows straightened. “I’m not telling Trevor.”

I pushed at my glasses even though they were in place.

“Would you?” he questioned.

Yeah, that had me wincing. I wouldn’t trust Trevor to put something in the mail for me. “What about Rob?”

No response.

Huh. Touché. “Zac?”

Aiden simply shook his head in denial.

“Your friends?”

“I would have told them already if I wanted them to know,” he explained in a careful tone that made too much sense.

With that comment, a few things suddenly made sense. Of course he’d been serious about coming back from his injury. But on top of that, his extra terrible mood at the fear of being deported if he was let go by the organization added to that. Even more so, dealing with his manager and agent, who didn’t seem to be totally onboard with whatever it was Aiden wanted once his contract came to the end, only made matters worse. But there was one thing that didn’t really add up once I thought about it, and it wasn’t the reason why he didn’t want to go back to Canada or why he didn’t want to stay in Dallas.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked hesitantly.

Those brown irises settled on me, lines scorching his broad forehead.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I frowned in return. “You’ve never really told me anything before.” I blinked. “Ever. But now I quit, and you’re suddenly over at my apartment, asking me to come back to work for you when you hadn’t given a single crap that I was quitting, and you want me to marry you to get your papers fixed. You’re telling me things you don’t want to tell anyone else about and… it’s weird, man. I don’t know what the hell you expect me to tell you.”

“I’m telling you because…” He opened his mouth and closed it just as quickly. Opened it once more before closing it again, the muscles in his cheeks moving, as if he didn’t really know why he was doing so. Hell, I didn’t get it. Finally, Aiden shrugged those massive, rounded shoulders and made sure our gazes met. “I like you as much as I like anyone.”

Damn it.

God damn it.

Diana had told me once that I had no backbone. Actually, I’m pretty sure her exact words had been, “You’re a sucker, Van.”

I like you as much as I like anyone shouldn’t have been a compliment. It really shouldn’t have. I wasn’t that dumb. But…

A rough laugh tore its way out of me unexpectedly, and then I was snickering, raising my eyes to the popcorn ceiling.

Coming from someone like Aiden, I guess it was the biggest compliment I could ever get.

I like you as much as I like anyone. My word.

“Why is that funny?” Aiden asked, a frown curving his mouth.

I slapped a hand over my eyes and leaned forward over the kitchen countertop, giggling a little as I rubbed at my brow bone in resignation. “There’s a huge difference between me not irritating the hell out of you and us being friends, Aiden. You’ve made that perfectly clear, don’t you think?”

His blink was innocent, so earnest, I had no idea what to do with it. “I don’t mind you.”

I don’t mind you.

I started cracking up—really cracking up—and I was pretty sure it sounded like I was crying when I was really laughing.

“You’re the most even-tempered woman I’ve ever met.”

Even-tempered. He was killing me.

This was what my life had come to. Taking half-assed compliments from a man who only cared about one thing: himself. A man who I’d tried to make my friend over and over again to no avail.

To give him credit, he waited a bit before saying carefully, way too calmly, and almost gently, “This isn’t funny.”

I had to squat down behind the kitchen cabinets because my stomach was clenching so badly.

“You’re asking me—oh, hell, my stomach hurts—to perform a felony, and your reasoning for having me do so is because you ‘like me as much as you like anyone,’ because you ‘don’t mind me,’ and because I’m ‘even-tempered.’” I held my hands up to do air quotes over the top of the cabinets. “Holy crap. I didn’t think you had a sense of humor, but you do.”

The best defensive player in the NFO didn’t hesitate with the opening I gave him. “You’ll do it then?”

I couldn’t even find it in me to be annoyed by his persistence after that. I was still laughing too much over my greatest attributes as a possible fake wife. “No, but this has been the highlight in my time knowing you. Really. I wish you’d been like this with me from the beginning. Working for you would have been a lot more fun, and I might have even thought about coming back for a little bit longer.”

It still wasn’t enough though. Working for him permanently wasn’t part of the plan, especially not after everything that happened, and everything he was asking of me now. Marry him.

He was out of his damn mind.

The plan after becoming entirely self-employed on my graphic design work was to pay off the terrifying amount of student loans I still had, buy my own house, buy a new car, and the rest… it could all fall into place in its own time. Travel, find someone I liked enough to be in a relationship with, maybe have a kid if I wanted one, and continue my financial independence.

And to make money, I needed to work, so I forced myself to my feet and shrugged at my old boss. “Look, you’ll find someone if you just try a little. You’re attractive, you have money, and you’re a decent guy most of the time.” I made sure to pin him with a look that emphasized the ‘most of the time.’ “If you found someone who you liked, even a little bit, I’m sure you could make it work. I’d give you one of my friends’ phone numbers, but they’d drive you nuts after ten minutes, and I’m not mad enough at you to give you any of my sisters’.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, not knowing what else to say, fully aware that I would more than likely never understand what had led him to this time and moment with me.

And what did he do?

His eyes roamed my face as his forehead wrinkled and he shook his head. “I need your help.”

“No you don’t.” Shrugging again, I offered him a reluctant smile, a gentle one because I was well aware he wasn’t used to having someone tell him no. “You’ll figure everything out on your own. You don’t need me.”

Chapter Seven

Flipping my grilled cheese sandwich over, I snickered into the phone. “I’m not going. I don’t think he liked me much anyway, either.”

“I didn’t like Jeremy until our third date and look at us now.” Diana’s argument was probably the worst one she could have chosen.

The five times I’d met him over the last six months was five times too many. I knew for a fact her brother felt the same way about him. We’d hung out with him for Diana’s birthday, and within minutes, we’d shared a ‘he’s a jackass’ glare. Neither of us tried to hide our dislike, and in this instant, nothing actually came out of my mouth, which said more than enough, I figured.

Not surprisingly, she knew what the silence was for and sighed. “He’s really nice to me.”

I highly doubted that. The times we’d gone out, he’d tried to pick a fight with someone… for no reason. He seemed high strung, moody, and way too cocky. Plus, I didn’t like the vibe he gave off, and I’d learned to listen to my gut when it came to people.

I’d told her enough times how I felt, but she continuously brushed it off. “Hey, I don’t have anything nice to say, so I’m not going to say anything,” I told her.

The big sigh that came out of her let me know she didn’t want to talk about Jeremy anymore—well aware it was a lost cause. Nothing would get me to change my mind about him unless he saved my life or something. “I still think you should go on another date. At least you can get a few drinks out of it.”

Why had I even told her my date last night had invited me out again? I knew better. I really did. “I drank about as much wine as my liver could handle last night just to get through two hours. I’m good.”

She made a “meh” noise. “There’s no such thing as too much wine.”

“Is there something I should know about?”

“I don’t know. Is there?”

“I don’t know, Betty Ford. You tell me.”

The person who was almost as much of a sister as she was my friend, barked out that familiar loud laugh that was about as close to home as possible. “Fuck you. I only drink two, maybe three times a week.”

“If that’s your way of trying to convince me you don’t have a drinking problem, it isn’t working.” I laughed.

She blew out a raspberry. “I don’t even know why I talk to you sometimes.”

“Because no one else likes you but me, your brother, and the boys?”

Di made a genuine thoughtful noise. “That’s probably it.”

We both burst out laughing at the same time.

“When are you free?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since she’d dyed my hair.

“Oh, ah, let me get back to you. I have plans with Jeremy.”

Yeah, I might have rolled my eyes a little. “Well, let me know when you don’t.” I let the Jeremy thing in one ear and out the other.

“I will. I wanted to try a different color on you. Are your roots showing yet?”

I was in the middle of mulling over how she hadn’t asked if she could dye my hair again when three sharp knocks rattled my door. “Hold on one second.” Turning off the stovetop range, I made my way toward the door. It wasn’t either of my neighbors; neither of them knocked hard enough so that the door rattled on the rare occasion they dropped by.

With that thought, I knew exactly who it was before I even made it to the peephole.

“Fart breath, let me call you back later. I, uh, someone’s knocking on my door,” I explained abruptly. I still hadn’t told her, or anyone, about Aiden coming by to ask me to come work for him again, much less tell them that a week ago he’d asked me to marry him so he could become a permanent resident. I had thought about calling Zac, but decided against it.

“Okay. Bye.” I didn’t get a chance to say bye before the dial tone filled the receiver.

“Who is it?” I asked, even though I would have bet twenty bucks I already knew.

“Aiden,” the voice on the other side of the door answered just as I went up on my tippy-toes to peer into the peephole. Sure enough, a tan complexion with chocolate-colored eyes and a familiar, tightly pressed mouth greeted me through the glass.

It wasn’t until I opened the door that I realized he had a hoodie on and over his dark hair. I raised my eyebrows at him as he stood there, resembling his nickname as his shoulders took up the doorframe. He really did look like a damn human wall. “You’re back.” I blinked. “Again.”

While I grudgingly accepted that sometimes I didn’t have a backbone, I was also well aware that once you gave me a reason to stop liking you, it was nearly impossible to win yourself back into my good graces. You could ask Susie. While I could get over Aiden being a grumpy little B, the Trevor thing had gotten him into irreconcilable territory. Basically, he’d made it to The Land of the Forgotten. When it came down to it, he’d hurt me.

He gave me a look I wasn’t sure how to interpret before slipping inside my apartment—without an invitation—his chest brushing against my arm in the process. He was radiating a massive amount of heat, and I didn’t need to look at the clock to know he’d just gotten out of a training session. He also smelled like he’d skipped a shower in the locker room.

I had just closed the door when Aiden stopped in the hallway, hands on his hips, giving me a hard glare that I didn’t understand. “You live with drug dealers.”

Oh.

I shrugged a shoulder at him. “They leave me alone.” Sure, I’d had to tell them “No thanks” about a dozen times, but I didn’t clarify that point.

“You know that they’re drug dealers?”

I shrugged again, deciding right then that this judgmental ass wasn’t going to find out some of the people in the buildings on either side of mine were in a notorious gang that hung blue bandanas out of their pockets. So I went with changing the subject, thinking about my sandwich sitting on the pan waiting for me. “Do you need something?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself, damn it.

Sure enough, Aiden nodded, still standing there in the hallway between the door, and the rest of my place. “You.”

Me.

In another world, with another person, I’d like to think that I would love to hear someone say they needed me. But… this was Aiden. Aiden who thought he “needed” me to marry him; Aiden who had only showed up to my apartment because he needed something from me. In my imagination, I shaped my fingers like a gun, held them up to my forehead and pulled the trigger. In reality, I just stared at him impassively, my eyelids lowering on their own, not amused. “No.”

“Yes.”

Good grief. “No.”

“Yes,” he insisted.

My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything since having breakfast hours ago. Grumpiness started climbing up my shoulders, edging me on to getting an attitude with this delusional human being. Shoving my glasses up so that they rested on the top of my head, I rubbed at my eyes with a sigh; peeking at him with a blurry eye. “I’m honored, really,” if I was being honest with myself, not really, “but I’m the last person you should be asking.”

His nostrils flared, and he tipped his chin up high, his jawline accentuating. This massive man who faced other big men for a living was glowering at me. At me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No—”

“Then there isn’t a problem.”

I rubbed at my eyes with the meaty part of my palms some more, and tried to rein in my frustration. Blowing out a breath, I set my glasses back on my nose, and stared at the behemoth in my hallway. Obviously, we were going to have to go there. “Where would you like me to start?”

When all he did was give me that look that made me want to stick my finger in his nose, I figured that expression was going to be the best answer I would get out of him. If he wanted to be a pain in the ass, I could be a pain in the ass too. What did I have to lose? We weren’t friends, and he hadn’t cared about my feelings before, so I shouldn’t feel guilty for being honest with him.

So I started. “Okay.” I rolled my shoulders for battle, eyeing the canvas piece with one of my favorite hardback covers for moral support. It was a heart made out of multicolored stilettos for a book called Heeling Love. I’d been pretty proud of myself for that one. “One, we don’t know each other.”

“We know each other,” Delusional argued.

I wanted to move on to my next claim, but apparently we weren’t going to be able to until he understood each of the more-than-apparent reasons why me helping him fix his immigration status was a terrible idea. “I know you pretty well, but you don’t know a single thing about me besides my first name. Do you even know my last name?”

“Mazur.”

I knew him. I freaking knew him, so I folded my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes. “You looked up my name, didn’t you?”

He was giving me the same face that drove me nuts. It was so damn smug. There was this one popular shot of him during a press conference after a game with a similar glare aimed at a reporter who had asked him a stupid question. Panties all over the U.S. were dropped that day. Yet the only thing that pointed chin, flat mouth, and cool eyes did to me was frustrate the shit out of me. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

“I don’t know whether you’re just pretending to be ignorant or if you really are just that hardheaded,” I gritted. “I worked for you for two years, and you didn’t know my last name. You couldn’t even tell me ‘Hi.’ Aiden, this isn’t you asking me to let you borrow twenty bucks or give you a ride to the airport. You don’t know me, and you don’t even like me. And that’s okay, I’m not worried about it, but we can’t ‘get married,’” I busted out the air quotes, “to fix your papers when you don’t like me. You can’t ignore me for years, not give a shit that I’m leaving, treat me like crap, and then expect me to jump to help you when you ask.”

“I told you. I like you as much—”

Oh my word. I was dealing with a brick wall. My eye almost twitched as I fought the urge to not make a pun about his nickname. “As you like anyone. Is that why you let Trevor talk about me? Because you like me?”

His hand went up to rub at the side of his neck, a color that was nearly pink staining his cheeks. “I do—” he started to argue. The pink managed to make its way down to his throat.

Damn it.

I had to count to six, my spine going rigid as I did it. My vocal chords went tight. This was so pointless. “Fine. Fine, Aiden. I don’t even know what the hell that means, but okay; you’ve sure shown me in the last two years. Now you don’t have an assistant and you want to become a resident and you’re here. That seems real genuine, don’t you think? But okay, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you can tolerate me for some strange reason, and you didn’t want me to get all conceited so you didn’t make it noticeable.” That sounded like total bullshit to my ears. “How about, what you’re asking me to do is a felony? I could go to jail and you could get deported? What about that?”

“It’s only illegal if you get caught.”

My mouth dropped open. I was at a total loss for words. Was this a dream? Was this even real life?

“I have a plan,” he concluded in that low, low voice that reminded me of an eighteen-wheeler revving its engine.

Too late, I had a feeling this was a lost cause. “The government takes this stuff seriously, you know. I would be the one going to jail, not you.” Okay, I didn’t know if I would really get jail time or not, but maybe.

“I’ve done my research. I have a plan.”

Here he went with his freaking plan again. “I have a plan too, and part of my plan isn’t to marry someone to help them get their immigration paperwork together. I’m sorry, Aiden. I’m really sorry, but you’re in about the best place you can be to find someone to marry you if that’s what you want. You shouldn’t have to though. Maybe you can pay somebody a lot of money to fast track your paperwork.”

“Getting married is the best way to go about it.” He paused. His big hands visibly clenched at his sides, and I swore he looked even bigger in that moment. “I don’t want another visa.”

My heart reacted a little because it was weak and pathetic, and because I felt like a jerk for telling him no. I hated not helping people who needed it. But this was ridiculous. Here was a man who had never been particularly kind to me or tried to be my friend until I’d quit on him. Now it seemed like he was asking the world of me, and I didn’t feel entitled to give it to him. “I don’t know what to tell you.” I shook my head. “You’re out of your mind. I’m not doing it, and I don’t know where you’re getting the balls to ask me to.”

His gaze locked on mine, irrepressible and unflinching, like I hadn’t just told him no again. His chin tipped up as his lips disappeared for a moment, curling behind his teeth. Teeth that I knew were white and perfect. “You’re that mad at me?”

I aimed my imaginary gun in his direction and pulled the trigger before taking a deep breath to calm myself. “Even if I would have left on good terms, I still wouldn’t go back to work for you, much less help you get your visa or your residency, or whatever it is you want to do.”

His eyes roamed my face slowly, making me extremely aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing makeup... or a stinking bra. Luckily, I’d only seen Aiden look at something other than my face once, and that had been that night when he’d showed up and I had been in a short dress. Then again, I’d also never seen him glance at a woman’s chest or ass either. He’d told the media a dozen times in the past how he didn’t have time for relationships, and he was right. He didn’t. “I can see it in your face, Vanessa,” he stated, making me temporarily ignore the situation I was in.

The word stupid ricocheted around in my head. “I haven’t been mad at you since I walked out of your house.”

“You’re lying. You’re making that face you do when you’re trying not to show you’re angry,” he explained, even as his gaze stretched over me, making me feel pretty self-conscious.

“I’m not,” I practically grunted out.

His impassive face said what words didn’t. Liar.

I lost it. I was hungry, grumpy, and irritated. That was the absolute truth. From the way a vein in my forehead pulsed, I was still holding a not-so-insignificant amount of residual anger toward him too. “Okay. Fine. Yes, I’m still a little pissed at you. You let Trevor of all people talk about me behind my back.” I blinked. “Trevor.” By that point, my blood didn’t know whether to rush to my face or away from it. “Trevor would sell his own kid for a price. Maybe we’re not friends, but you have to have known I cared about you a lot more than fucking Trevor.”

Just saying his name aloud made me angry, and I had to tell myself to reel it in.

One, two, three, four, five.

I bit the inside of my cheek and blinked at him. “You’ve never said a single freaking ‘sorry’ to me ever. Do you understand how rude that is? You never apologize for anything, anything. After everything I did for you, everything I’ve ever done for you, things that went above being just your employee, and you just… I would never, ever let anyone talk shit about you,” I said, making sure his gaze met mine when I said it so he could understand, or at least see, that I wasn’t just being an asshole to be an asshole.

“On top of that, you were acting like a major prick before I quit,” I accused him, feeling that familiar burn of disappointment scorch my chest. “Why would I want to do anything for you? There’s no loyalty between us. We aren’t friends.” I shrugged. “You might not know anything about me, but I know almost everything there is to know about you, and that means nothing now. I’m done. I respected you. I admired you, and you just… didn’t care. I don’t know how you can expect me to brush all that off as nothing.”

Honestly, I was surprised I’d lost it, and I might have been even more shocked that I wasn’t panting at the end of my spiel.

The vein in my head was pulsing. My hands fisted, and I felt angrier than ever in the past. Yet, when I really focused in on the hoodie-wearing man standing five feet away in the hallway of my apartment, I couldn’t help but pause.

The cords in his neck pulled taut. The hard slashes of his cheekbones seemed more prominent than ever. But it was the emotion in the shape of his mouth that I had never seen before. “You’re right.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t expect him to sort of apologize—a small part of me, did. But…

What?

“I shouldn’t have let him say that.”

“No shit.”

He ignored my comment. “I should have treated you better.”

Was I supposed to disagree?

As if sensing how much his words were failing, Aiden’s shoulders pulled back in resolution. “I’m sorry.”

My hands opened and closed at my sides. I wasn’t sure what to say, even as I tried to steady the angry beat of my heart.

“You were a great assistant,” Aiden added.

I still kept on eyeing him. Of course I had been a good one, but I was also the only assistant he’d ever had so…

With a hand to his neck, his Adam’s apple bobbed. I’d swear those impressive shoulders slumped forward. “You’ve always been loyal to me, and I didn’t appreciate it until you were gone.”

Neither one of us said a word for a few extended moments. Maybe he was waiting for me to rail him again, and maybe I was waiting for him to ask me to do something that I didn’t want to do. Who knew? But it must have been long enough for Aiden to finally clear his throat.

“Vanessa, I’m sorry for everything.”

I could believe he was slightly sorry, but a bigger part of my conscience believed he wouldn’t be apologizing if he didn’t wanted something from me. I couldn’t help but feel skeptical, and I was positive that emotion was written all over my face.

But Aiden wasn’t an idiot or anywhere close to it, and he kept going. “I’ve been angry over other things that have nothing to do with you. I haven’t tried to be nice, that’s true, but I’ve never gone out of my way or wanted to be mean to you either.”

I snorted, the scene at the gym, and at the radio station at the front of my brain.

He must have known exactly what I was thinking about because he shook his head, frustrated or resigned, I didn’t know or care. “I’m sorry I took that out on you. Apologizing doesn’t change anything, but I mean it. I’m sorry.”

Did I want to ask what other things he was angry with? Of course. Of course I did. But I knew if I asked him to elaborate it would seem like a sign he was on the road to maybe, possibly winning me over.

He wasn’t.

So I kept my mouth shut. There was a lot of things I would be willing to forgive, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he’d let me down when I didn’t have high hopes for him to begin with. Aiden became just another person who didn’t live up to the expectations I had. What kind of crap was that? Plus, the stresses surrounding him being an asshole for a short period of time didn’t explain the rest of the months and years he’d never given me the time of day.

Aiden kept watching me with those coffee-colored eyes, watching, watching, watching. “I’ve been incredibly stressed lately,” he said, his words like bait.

All this stuff I had already known.

He licked his top lip and tilted his head down before letting out a long, low exhale. “Can I use your bathroom?”

I pointed in the direction of my bedroom and nodded. “It’s in there.”

He disappeared through the door between my living room and kitchen a second later, and I took that moment to let out my own shaky breath. My head had started hurting just a little bit at some point, and I knew it was the result of hunger and tension. In the kitchen, I grabbed my now-cold sandwich, and leaned over the sink while I took a few bites out of the grilled cheese.

I wasn’t even halfway done eating when Aiden appeared, leaning against the doorway that led from the kitchen into my bedroom, crossing his arms over his chest. If I wasn’t in such a shitty mood, I would have appreciated the breadth of his shoulders, or how his arms were perfectly proportionate to the rest of his massive size. I didn’t need to look at his thighs to know those things had the width of a redwood tree.

“I’ll pay you,” he said while I was not checking him out.

Ready to tell him one more time that I was fine money-wise, Aiden kept going before I could.

He laid the bomb. “I’ll pay off your student loans and buy you a house.”

I dropped my sandwich in the sink.

Chapter Eight

To say that I had an Achilles heel would be an understatement.

Growing up in a family with five kids and a single mom, money had always been tight. So, so tight. Scarce, really. Crayons in elementary school were those off-brand ones that didn’t color so well. I’d worn mostly hand-me-downs exclusively until I was old enough to pay for new things myself, and that hadn’t been until I was with my foster parents.

But if there was one thing that having so little for so long had taught me—it was the value of money and appreciation of belongings. No one respected money more than I did.

So, it had been to my utmost horror, when I applied to college and received zero scholarships. None. Nada. Not even $500.00.

I was smart, but I wasn’t an extraordinary student. I was shy in school. I didn’t raise my hand much in class, or joined every extracurricular activity available. I didn’t play sports because there wasn’t disposable income lying around to buy uniforms, and there hadn’t been any for us kids to join league teams either. My favorite thing had always been hanging out by myself, drawing and painting, if I had paints. I didn’t excel at anything that could have gotten me a scholarship. My high school hadn’t had a fine arts program worth anything; the closest class I’d been able to take was Wood Shop and I’d excelled at it. But where did that lead me?

There was a very clear memory of my high school guidance counselor telling me how average I was. Really. She’d said that to me. “Maybe you should have tried harder.”

I’d been too shocked to have to count to ten after that.

All As and a couple of Bs hadn’t been good enough. Yet I’d still been horrified and disappointed when I got accepted to every decent school I applied to, but received no financial help other than a federal grant I qualified for because of my financial need, but that only covered 10 percent of my total yearly tuition.

And, of course, the school I wanted to go to was out of state and incredibly expensive. I’d loved it more than I loved any other one I’d gone to check out with my friends the fall of my senior year.

So, I did the unthinkable. I took out loans. Massive student loans.

Then I did the next most unthinkable thing in the world: I didn’t tell anyone.

Not my foster parents, not my little brother, or even Diana. No one knew except me. There was no other person in the world who carried the burden of nearly $200,000.00 on their conscience but me.

In the four years since graduating with my bachelors, I’d been paying off as much as I could from my loans while also attempting to put money aside in savings to eventually be able to dedicate myself full-time to my dream. A debt as large as the one I had was a bottomless pit that you had to accept like it was Hepatitis—it wasn’t going anywhere—but it only served to make me work harder, which was why I didn’t mind going to work for Aiden, and then doing my design work well into the middle of the night afterward. But there was only so much you could take, and I’d saved and paid off a significant enough of a chunk to get to the point where I felt like I could breathe for the first time in years… as long as I didn’t let myself look too closely at the loan statements I got in the mail every month.

But…

“What do you think?” the big man asked, leveling his stare right at me as if he hadn’t just busted out the greatest secret in my life.

What I thought was he was out of his damn mind. What I thought was my heart shouldn’t have been beating so quickly. What I also thought was no one else should have known about how much money I owed.

Mostly though, a small part of me was thinking there was a price for everything.

“Vanessa?”

I blinked at him before looking down at my poor, contaminated sandwich sitting in the sink. Then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and opened them once more. “How do you know about my loans?”

“I’ve always known.”

What? “How?” I felt… I felt a little violated honestly.

“Trevor did a background check on you.” That sounded vaguely familiar now that he mentioned it, even though it was disturbing to hear they knew something I’d tried so hard to keep to myself. “There’s no way you’ve managed to pay them off,” Aiden stated.

He was right.

Vomit. Vomit. Vomit.

“Whatever you owe, I’ll pay it.”

Just like that. I’ll pay it. Like $150,000.00 was no big deal.

I liked to watch that show on television where bosses went undercover at their businesses and then at the end, they surprised their employees with some crazy amount of money to go on vacation, or to pay off whatever it was they owed money on. More often than not, I got teary-eyed watching it. The employees would usually always cry and say how they never expected something like that to happen to them, or they would talk about how much of a blessing the money was going to be for their families. Or how much the gift they were being bestowed was going to change their lives.

Yet here I was.

My hands shook. The ability to breathe was stolen from my lungs.

My loans were my Achilles heel.

I was only slightly ashamed of myself for not immediately thinking his offer was preposterous. Why wasn’t I kicking him out or telling him to go eat shit? Why wasn’t I laughing at his idea? Or telling him to get the hell out because he couldn’t buy me? He hadn’t treated me well. He didn’t deserve for me to do him a ‘favor’, and put my life on the line for him.

Clenching my hands at my sides, I let the sensation of being overwhelmed wash over me. He was offering to pay off this thing that weighed on my soul like a cement block in a pool. Who did that?

Better yet, who said no to an offer like that? I liked to think I made wise decisions; that I did what was the best for me, or would be the best for me in the long run. But $150,000.00? Holy shit.

“I’m willing to compromise,” Aiden offered, his eyes even, his voice steady, which didn’t help any.

I sputtered.

Shut up, Van, I told myself. Shut up, shut up, shut up and just say yes, you idiot. Don’t talk him out of this. Don’t be that dumb. You can get over anything for that much money. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, even if he hurt your feelings, even though it’s stupid and illegal, and doesn’t make any sense because there are a million other women in the world who would do it for less.

But I couldn’t shut up. I just couldn’t. It was that nagging little part of my personality that I’d had to hone over the years—the one that didn’t know how to keep quiet sometimes.

I lifted my eyes and looked at the bearded man standing in my apartment offering me a lifeline, an opportunity. A felony, I made myself remember. He was asking me to do something that was essentially illegal. This man that had never given two single shits about me until now that he needed something, and he had no one else to ask. “Aiden….”

The most muscular man I’d ever known took a step forward, and dropped his hands to his sides, pinning me in place with his gaze alone. “It has to be you. I’ve thought about it. No one understands my schedule the way you do. You don’t get on my nerves, and you’re…” He shook his head and crucified me on the spot. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Tell me what you want and you’ll have it. Anything.”

The headache that had been hanging around my temples from hunger suddenly intensified.

Tell him no, the smart part of my brain said. I could pay off my loans eventually. I still had time.

But the other part of my brain, the logical one, told me it would be dumb to waste this opportunity. All I had to do was marry the guy, right? Sign a piece of paper? Save a fortune worth of interest?

Oh, hell. I couldn’t seriously be changing my tune from one minute to the next. I’d just been telling him how we weren’t friends and how much he’d hurt my feelings, and how dumb he was being for even bringing it up… and now I was thinking about his offer all in a matter of a few minutes. Then again, over a hundred thousand dollars was riding on this offer. This wasn’t nothing.

It was when my hand started shaking worse than before that I had my temporary answer, and even then, simply wanting to consider the option made me feel like a prostitute.

I might be thinking of myself as being a prostitute, but at least I’d be a prostitute free from debt, wouldn’t I?

His gaze was totally fixed on me standing there, in my tiny kitchen in baggy Dr. Pepper pajama pants and a spaghetti strap tank with no bra. This incredibly handsome and intimidating man wanted…

There was something wrong with me. There was something seriously wrong with me.

Tell him to screw off. Tell him to screw off.

I didn’t.

“Let me think about it,” I said, my voice breaking, unsure.

He didn’t cry victory at me not immediately telling him to go to hell, which was surprising. Instead, Aiden said very calmly, “That’s fine.” He hesitated for a second, rocking from one foot to another. “I am sorry I messed up.”

A knot formed in my throat at the expression on his features.

“I’m used to being on my own, Vanessa. Nothing that I did or said had anything to do with you. I want you to understand that.”

Without another word, the man known as The Wall of Winnipeg let himself out. The only sound signaling his departure was the door slamming shut behind him.

I was going to think about it. Going to think about marrying a guy for money when I’d walked out on him a month ago for not defending me to his manager, for not upholding the tiny bit of a bond I thought we shared. What the hell was I doing?

Being smart, that logical part of my brain whispered.

Chapter Nine

I didn’t call Aiden and he didn’t call me.

I couldn’t blame the lack of communication on him not having my cell phone number; I’d given it to him before I left his house the day I’d agreed to do what we were doing.

A week passed, and when he hadn’t bothered getting into contact with me, I didn’t think much of it. The Three Hundreds were in the middle of preseason games according to the news. I knew how busy this time of the year was for him.

Plus, there was the small chance that maybe he had changed his mind. Maybe.

Well, I didn’t know why else he wouldn’t call, but I made myself not think about it more than I needed to, which I figured wasn’t much, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stress about it.

The reality that there was a chance he had found some other way of getting his residency petition filed wasn’t as crippling as I would have imagined, considering there was over a hundred thousand dollars riding on our deal. I wouldn’t even say I was disappointed but…

Okay, maybe by the fifth day into the week I might have accepted that I was a little, tiny bit disappointed. Having my loans paid off would have been… well, the more I thought about having that amount of money resting on my shoulders, the more I realized just how repressing it was. It would be one thing if I owed that much money on a house, but in freaking school loans?

If twenty-six-year-old Vanessa could talk to eighteen-year-old Vanessa, I wasn’t sure I would have still gone to such an expensive school. I probably would have gone to community college for my basics then transferred to a state college. My little brother had never made me feel guilty for leaving; he’d been the one to tell me to go. Every once in a while though, I regretted the decision I’d made. But I was a stubborn jackass idiot who wanted what she wanted come hell or high water, and I’d done what I wanted to do at an incredibly high expense.

By the seventh day into our no-communication spree, I was more than halfway through coming to terms with the fact that I would be in debt the next twenty years of my life, and that I’d already assumed that would be the case the instant I’d gotten that first statement in the mail after graduation.

So why cry over it?

I had told him the truth. I didn’t need him or his money.

But I would have taken it because I was an idiot, but I wasn’t that much of an idiot.

Chapter Ten

The weekend came way too quickly and way too slowly at the same time. I’d woken up each night sweating profusely. I was going to commit a felony. I was getting married. And of all the people in the world, it was Aiden I was doing this with and for.

It didn’t matter how many times I reminded myself that what we were doing wasn’t real, my body couldn’t be fooled. All these changes—the moving, the living in a different room, sleeping in a different bed—they were all battling my brain for attention at all hours of the day, giving me a case of insomnia.

The only thing that eventually managed to lull me to sleep was the knowledge that I knew exactly what I was doing, what I was getting out of the hoax of a lifetime. Debt freedom and a house. I reminded myself of that repeatedly.

And we were going to Vegas to get it over with.

“It will make more sense if we do it there. We’ve gone twice together already,” he’d explained to me after I’d agreed with him that speeding into it was fine. “If we did it here, we’d have to go to the courthouse to apply for a marriage license and get a Justice of the Peace to perform a ceremony.”

He was right. We’d gone to Vegas twice. Once for a signing and the other time for a commercial he shot. Plus, I completely understood where he was going with doing it in Dallas. Someone would recognize him the instant he got out of the car at the courthouse. I could already picture a crowd if we tried to get our marr— the word gave me indigestion. License. There’d be a crowd if we went to get our license.

Actually, I think it was the word ‘our’ that gave my insides gas.

“Everyone goes to Las Vegas to elope,” the big guy had added as if I didn’t know.

Obviously, I did.

“There’s no waiting to apply for a marriage license,” he had ended with as he’d polished off a sandwich.

Another truth.

How can you argue practicality? There wasn’t a point in having any of my few loved ones there, and honestly, I really wouldn’t have wanted them to be in attendance. This wasn’t some everlasting marriage built on love. I’m pretty sure I had told Diana more than once that I was going to have a beach destination wedding if the time ever came.

If the time came, that had been my plan. Maybe someday in the distant future, it’d be a possibility.

For now, for this, Las Vegas would work.

With his credit card in hand, the morning after I moved in, I reserved two first-class plane tickets, because explaining to Aiden that flying economy was cheaper was a pointless argument I’d tried once and failed at miserably. I also scored a two-bedroom suite at the hotel we’d stayed at in the past. We’d fly in Sunday evening and leave Monday afternoon. In and out, we would sign some papers, maybe take a picture, and then head back.

On the day before we were supposed to leave, I was at the grocery store when I spotted the customer in front of me wearing a wedding band, and it hit me.

Was Aiden going to need a ring? Was I going to need one?

He’d never said anything about engagement rings or wedding rings, and I wasn’t sure if that was something we’d need to pull off the believability factor. Would they check that out at the interview? Would they care? I remembered Diana’s cousin Felipa had worn a wedding ring way before things got serious between her and her husband. But I’d also met couples before who didn’t bother with rings.

So…

I looked online to see if there was anything about whether agents checked that kind of thing or not, and I knew The Proposal wasn’t a good example of how immigration issues actually worked. What was I supposed to do?

Chances were, he wouldn’t wear it. But….

Get one anyway, my brain said. I could worry about one for myself when the time came, but it would be months until then.

I’d learned to trust my instincts, so that evening when he was running drills after hours by himself at the Three Hundreds’ training facility, I fought the nagging feeling in my belly and snagged his College National Football Championship ring from the drawer where he kept it. Holding onto it for dear life, I headed to a small jeweler I’d visited in the past to get my favorite pair of earrings fixed when I’d messed them up.

The jeweler had a lot of rings to choose from, but not much in sizes large enough to fit Aiden’s fingers. Luckily, he said he could get something resized for me in record time, and I chose a basic fourteen-karat white gold band. It was nothing remotely fancy or even eighteen karat, but… no one likes a picky bitch, and I was paying for it out of my own pocket, so he better not complain.

I was buying my soon-to-be fake husband a wedding ring that he may or may not wear.

After all, we had to make it believable. So even if he didn’t wear it, at least he’d have it, I figured.

It only made me not want to get it more.

Chapter Eleven

“Where are you going?”

With one hand on the staircase handrail, I finished thrusting my heel into my tennis shoe and glanced up at the man standing in front of me with a wary look on his lightly bearded face. “I’m going for a run. Why?”

The big guy glanced down at the overpriced accessory on his wrist, an expensive workout watch I know he’d gotten for free because I’d been the one to open the box when he got it. “It’s five o’clock,” he said, as if I didn’t know how to read time.

I did, and I’d learned how to a long, long time ago.

He’d gotten home about an hour ago while I was upstairs going over the fifth draft of a paperback cover for an author I’d decided never to work with again. The guy was driving me nuts, changing his mind from one revision to the next, and if it wasn’t for my motto—never leave a client unhappy because they’ll tell everyone you suck—I would have told him to shove his money down his throat and find someone else.

Yeah, I was feeling on edge, and I knew I needed to get out of the house for a little while, even if it was already later than I normally would have liked to go for a run. So I’d been surprised when I first heard Aiden make his way from the kitchen into the foyer where I was trying to finish getting ready to leave.

We hadn’t seen each other much since we’d gotten back from Las Vegas a little over a week ago, but things had been fine. It was kind of weird how the trip had sort of relaxed me around him, and it seemed like the sentiment was mutual. Aiden had even started knocking on my doorframe when he walked by my room when he got home. He didn’t say much more than, “Hey,” loud enough to be heard over the music I liked to play while I worked, but it was something, I thought.

“I’m only doing five miles,” I let him know right then, grabbing my other shoe off the floor and balancing on one foot to slip it on like I had the other one. It was a lot harder than it should have been, mainly because I was too aware he was watching me, probably expecting me to fall.

“It’s going to get dark soon,” he said, as I struggled to get my heel into my tennis shoe.

“I’ll—damn it—I’ll be fine.” I started to fall over, flailing an arm out for balance, and instead, getting a big hand catching my elbow to keep me steady. I flashed him a sheepish look and let some of my weight lean on him as I finally got my heel in. “Thanks.” I took as step away. “Anyway, it shouldn’t take me more than a little over an hour. I’m still running a little slow, but I won’t be gone long.”

Aiden blinked those great, dark eyelashes at me before reaching up to scratch at his chin, those lean cheeks puffing just slightly. Resignation, that clear, clear emotion that seemed to melt its way down from his hairline and over that perpetual wrinkle between his eyebrows and the sides of his mouth, had me blinking.

“Give me a minute,” he sighed as he moved around me and jogged up the stairs, two at a time, the house shaking in response. Briefly, I feared for the life of the stairs. Then I realized what he was doing.

Was he…?

“You don’t have to come with me,” I shouted, taking a moment to absorb those perfect glutes and rock solid calves defying gravity as they made their way up the stairs. Why would he even want to come along, anyway? The memory of what he’d said in Las Vegas when I took off on my own suddenly came back to me. You aren’t the only one who takes their promises seriously.

“I’m not asking,” he yelled back just as he reached the clearing.

Torn between thinking it was nice and cute that he didn’t want me going out for a jog alone at dusk, I remembered how important it was for him—for big guys in his position in general—to keep their cardio to a minimum. They couldn’t afford to lose weight when they needed to keep their size, especially someone with a diet like Aiden’s, who had to consume more physical food than someone who ate meat to get an appropriate amount of calories and not go hungry. It was why Aiden worked out so hard during the day and made a severe effort to rest as much as he could during his off time.

Then I wondered, could he even run five miles?

I took a step closer to the staircase. “You really don’t. I won’t be gone long. I’ll take my phone.”

There was a pause, and if I really focused, I could hear his dresser drawer slamming shut. “One minute.”

This stubborn ass. “No, Aiden, stay here!”

“Thirty seconds,” the hardheaded mule replied.

Why was I even waiting around arguing with him? He really should stay home. He didn’t have any business putting strain on his tendon if he didn’t have to.

“I’ll be back soon!” I took my glasses off and set them on the table right by the door, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I wanted to buy a strap to keep them from falling off when I ran, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I’d almost always been farsighted, but I swear my vision was getting worse and worse every year. It was probably time to get a new prescription. Just as I reached the door, I heard that giant, two–hundred-and-seventy-pound body stomping around before the stairs took another beating.

“I told you to wait,” he grumbled on the way down.

I glanced at him over my shoulder and scrunched my nose. “I told you to stay. You’re not supposed to be doing a whole bunch of cardio.”

He was apparently going to pretend I hadn’t said anything. “Let’s go.”

I patted the fanny pack clipped around my waist in case he hadn’t seen it. “I have a flashlight and pepper spray. I’ll be fine.”

The expression on his face wasn’t an impressed one. “That’s nice. Let’s go.”

“Aiden, I’m being serious.”

“Vanessa, let’s go.”

He had busted out that damn tone of voice again, which only meant one thing: This was one of those times that it was pointless to argue with him. I realized that now.

Waving me to go through the doorway first, he set the alarm to stay, since Zac was napping in his room, and followed me onto the paved stone walkway leading up to the house. Facing each other, I took a long step back with my right leg and got into runner’s pose. “Aiden, I’m not joking. Stay home.”

“Why?” He mirrored my stretch, making the material of his shorts squeeze those massive thighs like a second skin. I didn’t even know a leg had as many perfect, delineated muscles until I’d seen Aiden in compression shorts.

I had to force myself to quit fondling those big hams with my eyeballs. I didn’t know what it was about muscular thighs that drove me nuts. I could live without a six-pack, but developed quads and calves were my Kryptonite. “Because you shouldn’t be running.” Before I could think twice about what was in my mouth, I said the worst thing you could possibly tell a highly competitive person. “And I don’t know if you can run five miles, big guy. Plus, your Achilles—”

What had I done?

The Wall of Winnipeg, the man who had dragged himself into becoming the greatest defensive player in the NFO, leveled a gaze at me that for the first time in the years we’d known each other, made me uncomfortable. It was unsettling. Beyond unsettling. And I wished I had something to hide behind.

“You worry about running your own five miles, all right?” he quipped in a quiet, rough voice.

God help us. I lifted my hands up, palms toward him, and shrugged, backing away in surrender. “Whatever you say.”

My middle finger twitched, but I kept it under wraps and with its brothers and sisters. We stretched in silence for the next few minutes, our quads, hamstrings, and calves getting needed attention. I did it because of my knee injury, and Aiden because his body was worth millions. Millions and millions.

The fact he was breaking the strict rules he put on himself just so I wouldn’t go out for a run alone, definitely made an appearance in my heart and head, chipping away a little more at that aggravation I’d built up with him since I had quit. I just hoped he didn’t regret it tomorrow.

“I’m ready,” the stubborn mule reported.

I nodded and kept my eye roll to myself. “The trail around here is only two miles. I’ve been circling it.”

He simply jerked his chin down and followed me toward the gated entrance. I waved at the security guard as we slipped through the side door, and soon enough, we started jogging.

As big as Aiden was, it was amazing how he didn’t lumber. He definitely wasn’t a sprinter by any measure, but he was constant, consistent. His stride was even, his breathing good, and those long legs, which had to weigh at least eighty pounds apiece, somehow made it so he wasn’t a half mile ahead or behind me. I had no idea how much distance he usually covered when he did cardio, usually on the bike or doing sprints, but I knew he kept track of that sort of thing religiously.

But he kept up, mile after mile, even as his breathing got heavier and each step became more of a fight for him. And when we rounded the last corner, about a quarter of a mile away from the house, I slowed down. Neither one of us said much as we walked side by side. I had my hands on my hips as I caught my breath, and when I happened to look over, his hands were in the same position as mine.

As if sensing me checking him out, Aiden raised those thick, nearly black slashes called his eyebrows.

I raised my eyebrows back at him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He gave me a smug and slightly sour look. We walked for a little while in silence before he asked, “When did you start running?”

Wiping at my brow, I made a face at myself. “Right before I quit.”

Aiden did a double take I couldn’t miss.

I remembered the day I’d been outside of his house and I’d seen that woman running. “I didn’t have time for it before.” And I hadn’t exactly been motivated to, but I kept that part to myself. “I want to run a marathon in a few months. I just need to get up to six miles without going into cardiac arrest afterward.”

We walked a little longer before he added, “One of our conditioning coaches runs marathons. I’ll ask him if he has any tips. You should really be following a training guide so you don’t get injured.”

“Oh.” Huh. “Thanks. It’ll still be at least a month before I can even start at the rate I’m going, but we all have to start somewhere, I figure.”

He made a thoughtful noise but didn’t say anything else as we walked the rest of the way home. I could tell he was busy thinking about something from the way the creases at his eyes intensified, but he didn’t voice whatever it was going through that big noggin.

We made it back to the house just as the streetlights switched on. Taking positions on the lawn, we each dropped into stretches. I smiled at him and he kind of quirked up his mouth a bit in a delayed response.

“Has your preseason been going okay?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I switched legs and shot him a look at his evasiveness, but he was busy inspecting the ground. “How about your tendon?”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

That had those brown eyes up. His peaceful, serious face turned mildly irritated. “Really.”

“Okay, smart-ass. I’m just making sure.” I snorted, shaking my head as I dropped my gaze to the ground.

There was a pause before he spoke up again. “I’m all right. I’m being careful. I know what’ll happen if I’m not.”

We both knew. He could lose everything.

I suddenly felt just a little bit like an asshole. “I just wanted to be sure you were doing okay. That’s all.”

Even though his face, by that point, was tipped down, I noticed the ripple in his trapezius muscles telling me what I wanted to know. He was all right, but he was stressed. “Everything is going better than anyone expected. The trainers are happy with my progress. I’m doing everything they’re telling me to.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little at that. “You know that’s one of the things I used to like the most about you. You know what you want and you’ll do whatever you have to get it. It’s really…” Attractive wasn’t the right word, and it definitely wasn’t the one I would choose to willingly say out loud in front of him. “Admirable.”

Honestly, looking back on my word choice fifteen seconds later, I knew that I’d meant what I said with the best intentions, but when I took in the lines bracketing the mouth I’d kissed a week ago, maybe it hadn’t come out that way.

“You don’t anymore?” His question was low.

Shit. “No, I do,” I backtracked and reached up to mess with my glasses, remembering right then that I’d taken them off, and dropped my hand. “I don’t know why I said I used to. I still do. You inspired me to quit, you know. I figured you of all people would understand why I did it.”

He turned his head so slowly, it was honestly a little creepy. But the way he looked at me…? I wouldn’t know how to describe it. The only thing I knew for sure was it made the space between my shoulder blades tickle.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, that hard mouth twitching as he nodded almost reluctantly. “I understand.” He cleared his throat and turned his attention back to the ground, getting to his feet and pulling his heel back toward his butt. “How’s your work going?”

Oh, lord. This might be the longest and most personal conversation we’d ever had. It was kind of exciting. “It’s been steady. I’ve been able to take on more projects, so I can’t complain.” I glanced at him to see if he was listening and he was. “I actually just got invited to go to one of the biggest romance novel conventions in the country, so that’s pretty exciting. I should be able to get more work if I go.”

“I thought you do book covers?” he asked.

“I do, but they let other people have tables as long as they pay, and if I go, I might be able to get more work out of it. Half my clients are authors, the rest is a mix of whatever anyone asks me to do.”

He switched legs as he asked in a genuine voice, “Like what?”

And it was moments like these that made the distance between us in the past so apparent. “Anything really. I’ve had some commissions for business cards, business logos, posters, and flyers. I’ve made a few designs for band T-shirts. A few tattoo designs.” I pointed at the shirt I was currently wearing. It was off-white with a neon colored sugar skull and ruby red roses surrounding the crown of the head. THE CLOUD COLLISION was spelled out just below the jaw. “I made this for my friend’s boyfriend’s band. I’ve also done some work for Zac and a couple of guys on your team.” I didn’t miss the way his head jerked up when I mentioned that. “Mostly redoing their logos and doing banners for them and things like that,” I told him, almost a little shyly, self-conscious about my work.

“Who?” he asked, perplexed and more than slightly surprised.

“Oh. Um, Richard Caine, Danny West, Cash Bajek, and that linebacker who got traded to Chicago during the offseason.”

“I never heard anything about it.”

I shrugged, trying to smile to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal.

He made this soft, little thoughtful sound of his, but didn’t add anything. The silence that wrapped around us wasn’t awkward at all. It just was what it was. After a few more stretches, Aiden touched me on the shoulder before disappearing into the house, apparently done.

By the time I made it inside and slipped my glasses back on, I found Zac standing at the stove in the kitchen. Aiden had taken a seat at the kitchen island with a glass of water. Grabbing a glass from the cabinet, I filled it up with the same.

“What are you making for dinner?” I asked Zac as I peeked over his shoulder.

He gave what smelled like onions and garlic a stir. “Spaghetti, darlin’.”

“I love spaghetti.” I batted my eyelashes when he glanced at me, earning me a grin. I took a seat on the stool one down from Aiden’s.

The tall Texan let out a soft laugh. “There’s more than enough. Aiden, you’re on your own. I put meat in the sauce.”

He just lifted one of those rounded shoulders dismissively.

I got up to get another glass of water when Zac asked from his spot still at the stove, breaking up the two pounds of ground beef he’d added to the vegetables. “Vanny, were you gonna want me to help you with your draft list again this year?”

I groaned. “I forgot. My brother just messaged me about it. I can’t let him win again this year, Zac. I can’t put up with his crap.”

He raised his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I got you. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thank—what?”

Aiden had his glass halfway to his mouth and was frowning. “You play fantasy football?” he asked, referring to the online role-playing game that millions of people participated in. Participants got to build imaginary teams during a mock draft, made up of players throughout the league. I’d been wrangled into playing against my brother and some of our mutual friends about three years ago and had joined in ever since. Back then, I had no idea what the hell a cornerback was, much less a bye week, but I’d learned a lot since then.

I nodded slowly at him, feeling like I’d done something wrong.

The big guy’s brow furrowed. “Who was on your team last year?”

I named the players I could remember, wondering where this was going and not having a good feeling about it.

“What was your defensive team?”

There it went. I slipped my hands under the counter and averted my eyes to the man at the stove, cursing him silently. “So you see…”

The noise Zac tried to muffle was the most obvious snicker in the world. Asshole.

“Was I not on your team?”

I gulped. “So you see—”

“Dallas wasn’t your team?” he accused me, sounding… well, I didn’t know if it was hurt or outraged, but it was definitely something.

“Ahh…” I slid a look at the traitor who was by that point trying to muffle his laugh. “Zac helped me with it.”

It was the thump that said Zac’s knees hit the floor.

“Look, it isn’t that I didn’t choose you specifically. I would choose you if I could, but Zac said Minnesota—”

“Minne-sota.”

Jesus, he’d broken the state in two.

The big guy, honest to God, shook his head. His eyes went from me to Zac in… yep, that was outrage. Aiden held out his hand, wiggling those incredibly long fingers. “Let me see it.”

“See what?”

“Your roster from last year.”

I sighed and pulled my phone out of the fanny pack I still had around my waist, unlocking the screen and opening the app. Handing it over, I watched his face as he looked through my roster and felt guilty as hell. I’d been planning on choosing Dallas just because Aiden was on the team, but I really had let Zac steer me elsewhere. Apparently, just because you had the best defensive end in the country on your team, didn’t mean everyone else held up their end of the bargain. Plus, he’d missed almost the entire season. He didn’t have to take it so personally.

It only took a second for him to see who I had on there and he flicked his dark irises back up at me. “Zac helped you?”

“Yes,” I muttered, feeling so, so bad.

“Why didn’t you put Christian Delgado on your team?”

Just the sound of his name made my upper lip begin to snarl.

But before I could say anything, Zac chipped in, “I know I told you to add Christian.”

He had. I just hadn’t because he was a scumbag. Getting up, I went back to the fridge, refilled my glass, and muttered, “I didn’t want to.”

The master of “Why?” didn’t let me down.

The fact was, I was a terrible liar, and I wouldn’t be surprised if both Aiden and Zac realized I was making things up if I did. “I don’t like him,” I answered bluntly, hoping but knowing that wasn’t going to be a good enough answer for either one of their nosey asses.

“Why?”

“I just don’t. He’s a slimeball.”

“I don’t like him much either, darlin’,” Zac claimed.

Keeping my gaze on my glass for longer than necessary, I gradually lifted my head and immediately noticed Aiden’s dark irises on me. He was thinking, and I was pretty sure disbelieving at the same time, that intelligent face making me antsy. Did he know I was hedging around the answer?

If he did, he let it go for the time being when he dropped his attention back to my phone. That little line between his brows left me on guard. The line deepened as he asked, Zac, “Why did you tell her to choose Michaels?”

Zac responded something that left Aiden shaking his big head. “Don’t listen to him. I’d help you if you asked.”

We were having another moment like the one earlier when he’d asked about my work. I thought about not bringing it up, then decided against it. “I did once. Two years ago. I asked you a question about wide receivers and you told me to look it up on the Internet.”

He winced. Aiden literally winced. And I felt just the teensiest bit guilty for reminding him of something that hadn’t been important enough for him to remember.

In the spirit of being nice since he’d gone for a run with me, I reached across the counter and patted his hand. “Hey, we have the next five years for you to help me out.”

Chapter Twelve

It was amazing how easily you could settle into a major change in your life.

Or maybe it just amazed me how easily it was for me to live with Aiden and Zac, and keep living my life in the same way I’d been doing in that month after I quit. Really, it wasn’t that life itself had changed much; I was just in a new environment, but still doing the same thing I’d done back at my apartment.

A few weeks passed in the blink of an eye, and before I knew it, I’d been at my new house for a month. I’d signed paperwork two weeks ago. The season had started for the guys last week. Basically, life was going and heading in its same old trajectory.

Except the house didn’t completely feel like my own. It reminded me of back when I was a kid, sleeping over at Diana’s, when I couldn’t walk around in my underwear or go braless because it wasn’t my house. Then again, I spent the majority of my time in my room working and no one was ever home, so I could pull off whatever outfit—or lack of an outfit and underwear—I felt like wearing, only running up the stairs like a crazy person when the garage door opened. Then there was the small issue of having to turn down the volume on my computer’s speakers when one of the guy’s was home and I was working.

I still hadn’t talked myself into spending time in the living room watching television even when the guys weren’t around. Fortunately, claustrophobia hadn’t gotten to me yet considering most of my time was spent in the same place, and that was because I made sure to go to the gym a couple times a week, to see Diana once a week or every other week, and took my time going to the grocery store. I watched Netflix on my TV when I was bored. I drew in my sketchpad when I felt like it. Sometimes I hung out with Zac, but that didn’t happen often because he’d been spending a lot of time away from the house after practices and meetings, seeing his girl of the season.

By the time I woke up each morning, both guys were already gone. They were basically the best roommates ever. Best of all, Aiden was the type of roommate who you didn’t have to pay rent to.

I’d brought it up, of course. That day that I’d moved in, I’d asked him what bills I could help him pay, and all he’d done was give me that bored face that my temper hadn’t become immune to. Then I’d asked again, and he’d just ignored me.

He’d said he would work on being my friend, but I couldn’t expect a miracle overnight, could I?

If it was strange for either one of them having me in this house, they didn’t say anything about it or make me feel like an intruder, mostly because they both had enough on their plates. Zac had passingly mentioned to me how stressed he was about another quarterback the team had picked up, and Aiden lived and breathed for his sport, never allowing himself to slack off. Not that that was anything new. He nodded at me every time we happened to be in the same room together and offered me his leftovers if there were any, which there usually wasn’t because the poor guy seemed to be surviving off smoothies, fresh fruit, sweet potatoes, canned beans, nuts, brown rice, and at least one frozen meal daily.

That wasn’t my business though, was it?

But every day, I would find the recyclable bin filled with more cardboard containers than the day before. It made me feel bad, guilty.

It also made me wonder again why Trevor hadn’t hired him someone who did all the same duties I’d been responsible for. I knew he’d hired Aiden someone to answer his e-mails because I’d logged on to his account just to see what the damage was and found that every few days there were replies, but no one ever appeared at the house, and sometimes I’d find mail from his PO Box sitting in the kitchen after he got home. Where was his Vanessa 2.0?

Chapter Thirteen

A couple of weeks later, after Aiden had completely recovered from his sprain, I was in my room working on a paperback cover for one of my favorite clients when I heard the garage open and close, followed by the beeping of the alarm, and finalized by the loud slap of the door being slammed shut. Lowering the volume on my computer speakers, I sat there a minute.

I didn’t need to look at the culprit to confirm who it was. Aiden wasn’t the slamming-the-door-shut-out-of-anger type of person. He tended to stick to venting his grievances with words or on the field or gym, or more often than not, he went into his room and stayed there doing who knows what. I’d never figured out what he did in there for hours.

That was what alarmed me. It had to be Zac, and Zac was usually too laid back to react to anything like that… unless he had a reason to be really pissed.

I stayed in my room and faintly listened to the angry noises coming from the first floor: the cupboards being forcefully closed, the loud clatter of plates on the counter, and the “Goddammit!” that was shouted twice. It all wafted up the stairs and wrapped around me in my room. But I stayed where I was.

If Zac was angry, he needed space to cool off. At least that was the best way to deal with my sisters when they were pissed.

So I left him alone, despite wanting to know what happened.

Sometime later, stomps echoed their way up the stairs and down the hall.

And that was how I knew something was really wrong. Zac always told me hi. Then his bedroom door closed with a bang just down the hall from my room.

For one brief second, I thought about texting Aiden to ask if he knew what was going on, but if he didn’t text me back, it would just make me mad. So I waited instead.

Chapter Fourteen

“So how’s it going, living in sin?”

I gave an awkward laugh, shaking the wok in my hand at the same time. Uncomfortable laughs were what you got when you felt guilty. I still hadn’t told Diana that Aiden and I had gone to Las Vegas.

It was a damn miracle. She usually knew I started my period ten minutes after I did. We liked to celebrate another month of not being pregnant.

I could only think about two other things I’d ever lied to her about. Apparently, I liked to live life on the edge because I knew I was in for a reckoning the likes of which I’d never seen when she found out the truth. Because, at this point, I was in too deep and there was no way in hell I was going to admit what I’d done.

The biggest problem with lying to your closest friend was finding the right line to straddle. Enough truth to be believable but not enough of a lie so they could notice you were full of shit, which was exactly what I needed to find, so I went with diverting her attention by going for middle ground. “It’s going fine.”

“Fine? That’s it?”

“Yeah. Fine.” What the hell else could I say? While things between Aiden and I were better than they ever were, nothing amazing had happened. He lived his life and I lived mine. He was a busy guy; I’d always known that and nothing had changed. “The most exciting thing I’ve found out was that Aiden gets his groceries delivered once a week, and that he hired some lady who lives in Washington to answer his e-mails. Crazy stuff, huh?”

She went “hmm,” paused, and then asked, “Why does it feel like you’re lying to me?”

She could already tell. What the hell? And why was I surprised? “Because you’re crazy?” I offered, making a face into the phone in panic.

“Doubtful.”

“It’s more like a fact, but anyway, there’s nothing to tell you. We don’t see each other that much. The most he does is wave at me.” Sometimes he talked to me, but we didn’t have to be technical, did we?

“B-o-r-i-n-g.”

I groaned. “S-o-r-r-y.”

“Really? You don’t have anything juicy to tell me?”

“Nope.” I’d already worked for him for two years, if there was something bad to tell her, I couldn’t have told her anyway. I’d signed a non-disclosure agreement.

The disgruntled sound out of her mouth made me grin. “Fine. Are you going to El Paso this weekend after all?” she asked, already moving on, knowing if I hadn’t already told her something, I probably wouldn’t.

“Yes,” I confirmed with only the smallest bit of anxiety going through my stomach.

I was going to El Paso for my mom’s birthday.

Did I know I was more than likely going to regret taking the trip hours after I got there? Yes. Nine times out of ten, that had been the case.

But it was her fiftieth birthday, and her husband was planning a party for her. She’d love to see me there, he’d said to me. Lay on the guilt-trip, why didn’t he? I talked to her once a month. I figured that wasn’t too shabby to begin with considering everything.

From the way he’d made me feel, one call every four weeks wasn’t good enough. At least enough for me to feel obligated to go, even though my gut said it was a stupid idea.

“Where are you staying?”

“At a hotel,” I responded. I could stay with my mom if I wanted to, but I didn’t. The last time I’d stayed with her had ended terribly. There was also my two oldest sisters, but I’d rather camp out under a bridge than do that. Finally, there were my foster parents who I was planning on dropping by and visiting while I was in town, but I didn’t want to impose on them.

“Is Oscar going?” she asked about my little brother.

“No. He already started school.”

“Are you going by yourself?”

“Of course I’m going by myself,” I answered before thinking about just what I was saying.

Wasn’t the Three Hundreds’ bye week coming up? That was the week they got off a season to let the players rest. Should I go by myself? Would it be a good idea to take Aiden around my mom? My sisters? That idea had me cringing.

But I could have him around to break the news. Now that idea seemed like the only one that could have convinced me. There was no chance of my family members telling Diana or her family, so I wasn’t worried about it getting around that way. “Actually, maybe I won’t.”

The nosey broad took a swift intake of breath. “Really?”

“I might ask Aiden, so keep your mouth shut.”

“I will.” She was such a damn liar. I didn’t believe her at all. I didn’t believe she hadn’t told at least her brother that I was living with Aiden, but since no one had accused me of being a prostitute yet, I had started believing she’d actually kept her mouth shut for once in her life about why I’d moved in with him. She knew it was illegal, and we’d always joked that if one of us went to jail, we would both go, so we could pretend to be each other’s lovers.

The opening and closing of the garage door let me know someone was home. “I’ll tell everyone about your porn bookmarks if you don’t,” I threatened her with a snicker.

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

You never forget accidentally coming across your friend’s—predominantly man on man—porn bookmark folder, no matter how hard you try. “No.”

“Like you’ve never seen gay porn,” she sniped bitterly. “You think Susie might be at your mom’s?

And just like that, my nice, fine day was kicked in the shin. I bit the inside of my cheek and reached up to push my glasses further up my nose. “I don’t know. I talked to my mom a few days ago, but she didn’t mention anything.”

Not that my mom would.

If I did see Susie, chances were high it wasn’t going to end well. It never had. Even people I didn’t know who knew about our situation, were well aware that was a fact. We were like two magnets constantly repelling the other.

Damn it. I knew Diana was just trying to be helpful, but simply thinking about Susie made my head start hurting.

“I don’t think you should go by yourself or with Aiden, for the record.”

That wasn’t surprising. I just wished she wouldn’t have brought up Susie. “I know.”

“But you’re still going?”

I’d already given my word I would. How could I take it back? “Yes.”

She didn’t approve and it was evident over the phone.

“I want to finish eating so I can get back to work. I’ll text you later. Give the demons a hug from me next time you see them, and tell Drigo I haven’t forgotten he still has the DVDs I let him borrow a month ago,” I said to her, rubbing at one of my throbbing temples.

“I will. I’m babysitting them tomorrow. I’ll let you know when I’m off next week so I can do your hair again, ‘kay?”

We hung up just as the door that connected the garage to the kitchen opened and Aiden came in, his duffel in hand.

“Hi,” I said, turning off the stove.

“Hi, Vanessa.” Aiden dropped his bag on the floor by the door and then made his way toward where I was standing, his nostrils flaring at the smell of lentils, chopped vegetables, and sundried tomatoes mixing together. “Smells good.”

I gave him a side-look, only letting what seemed to be an extra-large shirt on his double-extra-large frame distract me for a second. “There’s enough for both of us, if you have a normal, human-sized meal instead of a Hulk-sized one.”

He sniffed, and I think it was more at my comment than to actually smell the food again. “Thank you,” he said, making his way toward the sink to wash his hands. He seemed to hesitate at the island for a minute before taking two plates down from the cupboard and setting them on the counter by the side of my hip.

When the timer for the noodles went off, I drained them, splitting up half the pot on two plates and leaving the other half in the pot. I scooped up the stir-fry and placed it on top of the noodles as Aiden put two red apples side by side in the spot he usually ate at.

We sat down to eat. Each of us just sitting there, not on our phones or computer or anything. Just… sitting there.

“Has Zac come down?” he suddenly asked.

“Once. He came out of his room around noon, but that’s it.” It had been almost a week since he’d been let go from the team, and apart from the day we’d gone out, he hadn’t left his room more than he needed to, which was solely for meals. He didn’t want to talk to anyone or do anything, and I wasn’t sure what to do, if I should even do something.

Aiden made a “hmm” noise.

“I don’t know what to say to him, or if I should do something,” I admitted. I wasn’t good at consoling people. I really wasn’t. Some people knew what to say in all types of situations, knew what words were needed, and they used them perfectly. Me? I usually just settled for an “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t good with words even though I did want to do something for Zac. I just didn’t know what.

The big guy raised his shoulder. “Give him some time,” he suggested.

Mr. Congeniality right here was trying to give me advice on what I should do? Did that mean I should do the opposite?

“Yeah, I guess I will,” I said, before my conversation with Diana came back to me. “Umm, I’m going to El Paso for a few days this weekend. Remember I told you?” I stabbed at a few pieces of pasta scattered around the plate. “It’s my mom’s birthday.”

He shifted in his stool, the side of his knee touching mine. “Okay.”

There was no reason for me to feel awkward. None. If he said he’d go, great. If he didn’t want to go, it wasn’t a big deal. “I was thinking… maybe you could come with me. I haven’t told her we got married, and I would rather tell her in person than let them find out some other way.” I fidgeted in my seat and slanted him a look out of the corner of my eye.

Aiden simply forked some food into his mouth, chewing slowly.

I scratched at my ear. “If you want.” Then I added, “It’s just for the weekend.”

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Why had I even bothered saying anything?

Aiden scratched at his jaw with the end of the fork in his hand. He twisted his lower body in his seat, his knee hitting the side of my leg again before he said, “I’d need to be back Sunday night.”

I almost had to do a double take. “Really?”

He shrugged down at his food, super casual, or at least as casual as someone his size could be. Honestly, I was surprised he could fit that butt onto one stool. I was even more surprised the stool’s legs hadn’t given out yet under his weight. “Yeah,” was his reply.

“Oh… okay. I was planning on leaving Friday. It’s an eight hour drive.”

That had his face swinging to me, his expression going from blank to disturbed in a second flat. “You want to drive there?”

I nodded.

He stared at me for a second longer before reaching into his pocket, pulling out his black leather wallet, and then holding a silver credit card out in my direction. “Buy two tickets and rent a car. I don’t do long road trips.”

Did I know he didn’t like riding in a car for longer than absolutely necessary? Yes, but I wanted to cross my eyes anyway. If I didn’t have to do an eight-hour road trip, I wasn’t going to, especially not if I wasn’t paying for it.

He couldn’t be considered my sugar daddy if we were legally married, right?

Shoving the thought aside, I took the card from him hesitantly. “Are you sure?”

He didn’t hold back his eye roll. “Get an afternoon flight, they usually let us out around three.” He eyeballed me from the side. “Don’t rent one of those tiny economy cars either just to save money.”

Yeah, his bossiness was bringing back not the best of memories. I nodded anyway and held his card between my fingers, hesitating. “Is this supposed to be a test?” I asked hesitantly.

Back to being busy eating, it took him a second to answer before he turned to me with a furrow between those thick eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

“Is this a test?” I wiggled his credit card. “To see if I’ll spend your money or offer to pay for my own ticket.”

That full bottom lip of his dropped just a little, his eyelids hanging low. Then he shook his head slowly, so slowly I knew he was exasperated… or he thought I was a complete idiot. One or the other. Maybe both. “Don’t be dumb. I wouldn’t offer to pay for the tickets if I didn’t want to. You know me better than that.”

He had me there. I shrugged. “Okay. All right.” Sheesh. “I just wanted to be sure because if you want to pay for them, I’m not going to tell you no.”

“Just buy the tickets and rent the car.” He got up with his plate in hand and walked around to the sink before adding, “Where are we staying?”

“I was planning on staying at a hotel.”

“Good. What are you going to tell your family?”

I scratched at the back of my neck before picking at my food. “Just my mom. I don’t—my sisters don’t need to know. Either way, no one’s finding out the truth. They don’t know I’m living with you. I figured—” Shit. What? Was I expecting my mom to not remember who I worked for? Of course she remembered. Now. Ten years ago, she didn’t remember half the time that she’d given birth to me and I relied on her. That was an easier truth to consider than the idea that she loved drinking more than she loved her kids.

I needed to stop. I needed to stop five seconds ago. Everything in my life had worked out for the better. I had no reason to complain. My life was better than fine. Way better.

With that reminder, I cleared my throat and pasted a playful tone to my words. “If she asks, I’ll just tell her I quit and you came after me. You realized how madly in love with me you were—”

Honest to God, he snorted.

I put my hand on top of the table and extended my middle finger at him even though I smiled. “—and you can’t live without me, so we eloped. I figured I should stick with at least a partial truth so it doesn’t get too complicated. You got a problem with that?”

Aiden shook his head, the corners of his mouth pulled tight in a smirk that eased my soul a little more. Everything in my life had worked out. “No.”

Jackass. I couldn’t help but snicker. “You’ll take one for the team then, so that can be the story we tell everyone who finds out?”

“What team?” he asked.

“You and me. Team Graves-Mazur. We signed a contract together. Sort of.” I smiled.

That bearded chin dipped to his neck, and I could see his mouth twitching. “All right. I’ll take one for the team.”

Chapter Fifteen

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” I snarled as I tried to shake off my anger for about the millionth time in the last day.

Diana scoffed as she moved around me, a stained plastic bowl in one hand, a brush in the other. Her brown eyes temporarily shifted from the section of my head she’d already put color on, to meet my gaze before she blew a raspberry. “You know I don’t want to talk about your family, but when I think they can’t get any shittier, they do.” Liar. She didn’t mind going over the finer defects of four-sixths of my family. How many times had we sat in her room and acted out the hundreds of things we’d do and say to my sisters in retaliation for whatever they’d put me through? A hundred? Not that we’d ever gone through with any of it. They were older than us, and you didn’t mess with crazy.

“The worst part was after Ricky grabbed my arm, no one said anything. They all wanted to act like nothing had happened.”

“Jesus, V,” my best friend muttered. “I told you not to go.”

She had, and I’d been stubborn and didn’t listen. “I know.”

Her hand touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Not as sorry as I was.

I made it three hours at my mom’s before everything went to hell. Three hours before I stormed out of her house, pissed out of my mind. I was honestly surprised that I had managed to spend the night at my hotel before heading to the airport first thing in the morning to catch a flight back to Dallas on standby. The anger hadn’t abated as much as I’d hoped on a good night’s sleep, and the flight back hadn’t helped much either.

As soon as I landed, I’d texted one of the only people in the world who was loyal to me, and then headed over to Diana’s so I could tell her everything and get it off my chest. Did it help? Not much, but it was something. So I told her everything that had happened as she dyed my hair some surprise color I told her she could choose. It was one of the benefits of being your own boss.

“Wait, so you didn’t tell me what happened with Aiden,” she finally noted.

Good grief. There I went getting pissed off all over again. At least that was one issue I’d managed to set aside for a while since the day before, but all of a sudden it was another fresh wound to add to my already existing one. “He called and cancelled on me at the last minute.”

She winced. Her “ooh” just barely audible.

“Yeah,” I mumbled as her boob passed about an inch from my face. “His old coach was coming into town or something, and he was busy watching game film or something with the team when he called, but it doesn’t matter. It was a stupid idea to invite him anyway.”

“I’m sure he had a good reason to cancel,” Di tried to assure me.

There was only one reason, and it was the most important one to him. I didn’t need the details to know what the exact wording would be. “Yeah. I’m sure he did.” I let out a shaky breath. “I’m just in a shitty mood. Sorry.”

“No, I can’t believe it,” the smart-ass gasped.

I reached forward and tried to pinch her through the apron she’d put on, but she danced out of the way with a big grin on her face. “Leave me alone.”

She stuck her tongue out. “Put your potato head down for a second, would you?”

I mocked her as I did what she asked. Diana took a step toward me, her belly inches away. She must have reached forward because her shirt went up an inch, exposing a sliver of skin.

I frowned.

Reaching from under the hem of the cape she’d put on me, I pulled her shirt up even higher, exposing a row of small bruises shaped like a smaller version of the ones on my forearm.

“What are you doing?” She took a step away.

I looked up at her, at her face, her neck, her arms, and saw nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

“What?” Her tone was a lot less harsh the second time, but I knew, I knew from the way she rubbed her pant leg that something was going on. That was her nervous tic.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I had to count to ten again before I could manage to not lose it. “What happened?” I asked her as coolly and calmly as possible even though I was already on my way to becoming even angrier than I’d been when I first showed up.

Diana tried to brush it off a little too quickly. “Nothing. Why?” She had the nerve to look down and pull up her shirt in the same way I had. She even frowned as she touched the bruises I’d bet my first born she knew damn well about.

“Where did those come from?”

She didn’t look up as she answered. “I remember hitting my hip.”

“You hit your hip?” She was lying. She was damn well lying out of her ass.

“On the counter.”

“On the counter?” I asked slowly. This felt like a terrible dream.

My best friend—my best friend of my entire life—lied again. “Yeah,” she insisted.

“Di—” I wasn’t going to lose it. I wasn’t going to lose it front of her.

“Let me finish putting this on your hair,” she cut me off.

“Diana—”

“Tip your head down one more time, Vanny.”

“Di.” I grabbed the hand she had extended toward me. Her brown eyes shot to mine, her expression startled. “Did Jeremy do that?”

“No!”

A knot formed in my throat, growing bigger and bigger by the second. “Diana Fernanda Casillas.” Yeah, I went with her whole name. My hand shook. “Did Jeremy do that?”

This fucking liar supreme met my gaze evenly, and if it weren’t for her palm hitting her pant leg again, I would have believed she was telling me the truth, that this person I loved, who I would do anything for, and who I felt would do anything for me, wouldn’t lie to me.

I wasn’t even about to focus on the fact that I’d kept things to myself in the past. That I hadn’t told her I’d married Aiden. That she didn’t know about my student debts. None of that configured into my thoughts in that instant.

“No, Van. He loves me. I hit my hip.”

That knot in my throat swelled and I could feel my eyes well up as her gaze met mine unflinchingly. That was the problem. Diana was just like me. Once she was in too deep, she wasn’t about to dig herself out of the hole she was in. She wasn’t about to back down and tell me the truth.

“I’m fine, Van. I swear.”

She swore. The tingling in my nose got worse. “Di,” I kind of croaked out.

The smile that took over her mouth hurt me. “I hit my hip, stupid. I promise.”

I didn’t think Diana would ever know how bad she was hurting me. I’d like to think the lies I’d told her had been to protect her, so she wouldn’t worry about me being in disastrous debt, and I hadn’t told her Aiden and I eloped because she had a big mouth and she’d tell everyone. I knew she’d grudgingly understand that after she was done being mad for not being the first person I told. She didn’t know how to keep a secret; we all knew it.

But this…

I didn’t have it in me to keep my mouth shut even though I knew there was no way in hell she was going to backtrack and admit the truth. Tightening my hold on her, I tried to ignore the severe beating of my heart and made sure her eyes met mine. “Di—”

She was lying. She was being a massive liar as she said, “It’s just a bruise, Van.”

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t.

Chapter Sixteen

“You’re up early,” I noted dryly as Zac dragged his feet behind him into the kitchen.

The big Texan raised two sleepy eyebrows in my direction. If I didn’t know any better, the expression on his face would lead me to think he was drunk, but he was just really tired. “Mm-hmm.”

Okay. Someone wasn’t in the mood to talk, and that was fine by me. It wasn’t like I’d woken up in a fantastic state of mind. It didn’t help that the first thing I did after I was awake was call Diana’s brother so I could tell him about what I’d seen the day before, only for him to let me know that one of his sons had already told him about them a couple days ago.

“I tried talking to her, but she said she hit her hip,” he’d explained.

So she was keeping her story straight; I still didn’t believe it. “I don’t believe her.”

Her brother had made a hesitant sound that left a bad taste in my mouth. “I don’t know, Van. I don’t like that douche as much as you do, but I don’t think D would lie about it.”

That was the problem with growing up in a family that was usually honest and open with each other—you didn’t know the lengths someone would go to hide something shameful. And I knew right then that unless Diana blatantly told her brother that Jeremy was getting physical, or unless she ended up with a black eye, he wouldn’t assume the worst.

The conversation had been pointless, only adding to the aggravation simmering under my veins for days. I was perfectly fine admitting to myself that when I hadn’t been tossing and turning last night, I’d been wide awake, thinking about all the things I shouldn’t. All the things I knew better than to let bother me, but it was impossible to ignore them when they’d all hit me so hard. One after another, nip, nip, nipping away at my resolve.

Aiden. My mom. Susie. Diana.

My technically husband. My mom. My sister—though I still wanted DNA reports to confirm that connection. My best friend of my entire life.

Was there anyone in this world I could trust? I could rely on? Only myself it felt like sometimes. You would figure I’d know better by now.

The sound of weights clinking together in the gym down the hall had me scowling. Someone had already been busy working out by the time I’d come down the stairs. While most athletes took their bye week off to vacation or spend time with their families, the big guy didn’t. Hadn’t.

I should have known better.

By the time I was done talking myself into pushing thoughts of them away, Zac had nuked some oatmeal in the microwave and dumped a cup full of toppings on it, taking the seat opposite mine at the breakfast nook. A part of a puzzle Aiden was working on decorated the middle of the table. Zac and I happened to glance at each other at the same time, and we smiled at one another, his a tired one and mine an aggravated-but-I’m-trying-not-to-be one.

My tablet sat next to my bowl of cereal; I had been absently flipping through page after page of a website that sold T-shirt designs from freelance artists. I’d sold some of my work on there in the past, and I was looking to see if any designs gave me ideas to work on today, unless I got an unexpected last minute request.

The doorbell ringing once—not long enough to be annoying but not too short to be ignored—had me getting to my feet. “I got it.”

The face on the other side of the peephole had me smiling a little. Leslie didn’t deserve my bitch face when I only saw him a couple times a year. “Good morning,” I greeted as I opened the door.

“Wonderful morning to you, Vanessa.” Leslie smiled back. “After you.”

A gentleman. That had me genuinely smiling as I stepped back and let him in, watching as he closed the door.

“How are you?”

My chest gave a dull throb in response. “I’m okay,” I answered about as honestly as I could. “And you?”

The expression on his face caught me off guard completely. It was like he was surprised I told him the truth, or maybe he wasn’t at all surprised I wasn’t fine, and was just acknowledging that I’d been honest with him. “I’m alive. I can’t ask for more.”

That had me sniffing in near indignation. I could be mopey every once in a while if I wanted. That sounded pathetic even in my own head. Letting out a slow, controlled breath, I nodded at the older man. “Good point.” I gestured with my head toward the gym. “Aiden’s working out. Would you like something to drink?”

“Do you have any coffee?”

I was the only coffee drinker in the house. “I’ll make some right now.”

With his hands behind his back, he dipped his chin in thanks. “I appreciate it. I’m going to check up on Aiden.”

Leslie peeked into the kitchen and raised his hand, giving Zac a no-tooth smile. “Morning, Zac.”

I headed into the kitchen as Leslie went to the gym, and scooped out the pre-ground coffee beans into the coffeemaker, hitting the button to start the brew. By the time I made it back to my seat, Zac was scraping the sides of his bowl, looking way more awake than he had half an hour ago. “You feelin’ better?” he asked.

“Not really.” Was I that obvious? I lifted a shoulder. “What are you doing today?”

“Gonna work out.”

I held out my fist for him to bump, and he only slightly shook his head as his fist connected with mine.

“You want to go for a run today?”

To give him credit, he tried to control his facial features so that they didn’t resemble a grimace. “Sure.”

“Don’t sound so excited.” I laughed.

Zac grinned immediately. “I’m foolin’ ya, Vanny. What time do you wanna go?”

“Is four okay?”

He nodded. “I’ll be back by then.”

I held up my hand again and he fist bumped it.

“I’m gonna get dressed so I can get outta here,” Zac said, already pushing his chair back.

We agreed to see each other later, and after rinsing off his plate and sticking it in the dishwasher, he disappeared up the stairs. With the intention of finishing looking through the rest of the current posts on the website I still had up on my tablet, I made it through one more page before Leslie appeared.

“Thank you for making this,” he said once he was at the coffeemaker, pulling out a cup from the correct cabinet without needing direction.

“Oh, you’re welcome.” I put my tablet to sleep, figuring I didn’t have much time before Aiden appeared. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his crap right then. Just thinking his name had my blood boiling.

A real wife.

Fucking asshole.

“I’m sorry for dropping by unexpectedly,” Leslie chimed in from his spot at the counter, pouring coffee.

That had me snapping out of cursing Aiden in my head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

“It isn’t okay. I felt terrible after Aiden told me you were going home.”

Home. What a word to use for El Paso.

“I didn’t mean to take up your time alone. I remember what it was like to be a newlywed,” the man who had put into motion Aiden’s future said.

Newlyweds. I wanted to puke. “It really is okay. I know how much you mean to him.” Or at least, I had a good idea of how much the older man meant to him.

Aiden had two friends he kept in touch with semi-regularly. He saw them in person maybe once a year. Other than them, there was only Leslie. Leslie who had been his coach in high school. Leslie who Aiden had said repeatedly had groomed him and pushed him to succeed. In the twelve years since he’d graduated high school, they still saw each other often enough. Leslie continued to train Aiden in Colorado when the season was over. Then there were the other times that the former coach came by to visit.

If that wasn’t its own form of love and respect—at least in Aiden’s case— I had no idea what was.

My comment though had him chuckling. “Only because he knows how much he means to me.”

As bitter as I felt, I couldn’t help but soften a little as Leslie walked around the island with his cup in hand. His eyes strayed to the table, a smile coming over his face. “He’s still doing those?” He gestured toward the puzzle.

“All the time. Especially when he’s stressed.”

Leslie’s smile grew even wider, turning wistful. “He used to do them with his grandparents. I can’t remember there ever not being a puzzle at their home.” He snickered softly. “You know, after his grandmother died, he didn’t speak to me for almost a year.”

Uh. What? His grandmother?

“I can’t tell you how many times I tried calling him, left him voicemails. I even went to several of his games at Wisconsin to see him, but he went out of his way to avoid me. It damn near broke my heart.” He took the seat that Zac had just left. His white eyebrows rose as he looked at me from over the top of his cup. “That’s between you and me, eh? He’s still sensitive about that time period.”

Aiden? Sensitive?

“When his grandfather died, he was devastated, but when Constance, his grandmother, passed away… I’ve never seen anyone so distraught. He loved that woman like you couldn’t imagine. He doted on her. She’d told me he called her every day after he went away to school,” he continued on like this wasn’t the greatest secret I’d ever heard.

There was no way I could pull off being casual about what he was saying. Plus, I had a feeling that the second he really looked at my facial expressions, he’d know damn well I had no clue about anything relating to his grandmother and grandfather.

And because I was tired of being lied to so much over the course of the last few days, I went with being honest with this man who had never been anything but kind to me. “I didn’t—he’s never even mentioned his grandparents to me before. He doesn’t like to talk about things,” I admitted, messing with the leg of my glasses.

Leslie set his cup on the table and gave me a little shake of his head. “That shouldn’t surprise me.” Of course it shouldn’t. “Between us” —he tipped his forehead forward— “he’s the most remarkable man I’ve ever met, Vanessa. I’ve told him that before a hundred times, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t believe, and I’m not sure he cares. When I first met him, I couldn’t get a single sentence out of him. One sentence, can you imagine that?”

I nodded, because yes, yes I could imagine that.

“If I would have asked him to try out for the football team on any other day than the one I did, he never would have agreed. His grandfather was alive back then, you know. He was already living with them. Aiden had gotten in trouble with the lacrosse coach again the day before for fighting with his teammates and his grandfather had told him something—he’s never told me what—that got him to agree to try out. It took me four months to get him to really talk to me, and I was persistent. Even then, the only reason why he did was because his grandfather had a heart attack and I had this feeling he needed someone to talk to.” Leslie let out a sigh at whatever memory was bouncing around in his head. “You can’t live your life bottling everything up. You need people, even if it’s only one or two, to believe in you, and as smart as that boy is, he doesn’t understand that.”

At some point, I’d planted my elbows on the table and set my chin in my hands, caught up in every detail he was telling me. “Did you know his grandparents well?”

“His grandfather was my best friend. I’ve known Aiden since he was in diapers.” Leslie’s mouth twitch. “He was the fattest baby I have ever seen. I remember looking at his eyes and knowing he was sharp. Always so serious, so quiet. But who could blame him with his parents.”

I had about a million more questions I wanted to ask but didn’t know how to.

“He’s a good man, Vanessa. A great one. He’ll open up to you in time. I’m sure of it,” Leslie added. “He used to say he would never marry, but I knew all it was going to take was him finding the right girl to convince him otherwise. Even mountains change over time.”

And that had me feeling like a schmuck. Like a giant, fake schmuck.

It messed with my head.

I wasn’t his real wife. He didn’t love me. This was all a charade.

The knot from the night before swelled in my throat again, leaving me unable to speak for a moment while I tried to collect my thoughts. “I know he’s a good man,” I finally managed to get out with a tremulous smile that felt way too transparent. “And, hopefully, we have a long time ahead of us,” I added even more weakly.

The way Leslie’s featured lit up made my stomach roll.

I was a fluke. A con woman. Imaginary.

I was what I made myself to be.

“Is he almost done?” I forced myself to ask as I snuck my hands under the table and clenched them.

“Almost. He should be—oh, here he is. Were you eavesdropping on us?” Leslie joked.

I pushed my chair back, trying to school my emotions, my face, and my body all to behave and get through these next couple of minutes until I could disappear in my room. Before I could even make it to the island, the big guy was in the kitchen, heading to the sink.

“No.” Those brown and caramel irises were on me.

Rinsing off my bowl, I set it in the sink as I faintly listened to Leslie and Aiden discuss his workout. I ignored the way his shirt clung to his sweaty chest, ignored the way he kept glancing at me. Regardless of what Leslie had said, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him even if he’d loved the hell out of his grandparents.

Somehow, I managed to paste something similar to a grin on my face as I walked right by Aiden, purposely letting my shoulder brush his arm because I was positive Leslie was watching. “I have a lot of work to do. I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” I said more to the older man than to the one I was married to.

Only Leslie responded.

Which was fine. It was totally fine, I assured myself as I climbed the stairs. Aiden could be pissed at me all he wanted. I was mad at him.

I had just gotten to the top when my phone started ringing. Closing the door behind me—because anyone who would be calling me right then was not going to be on my list of people I’d want to talk to—I picked up my cell from where I’d left it on the nightstand. MOM flashed across the smooth screen.

To give myself credit, I didn’t flip the phone off, curse, or even think about not taking the call. I was going to take the damn call because I wasn’t petty. Because I had nothing to feel bad about.

I just didn’t want to talk to her. Now or anytime soon. That was all.

“Hello.”

“Hi, baby.”

Okay. That had me rolling my eyes. “Hi.”

“I’ve been so worried about you,” she started off.

Was that why she’d waited almost two days to call? Because she was so worried? Damn it, I was being a bitch. “I’m fine,” I let her know in a dull tone.

“You didn’t have to leave like that.”

There was only so much a person could handle, and I was at my tipping point. I’d been at my tipping point, and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t ignored my instincts and gone to El Paso, this could have been prevented. I’d been the idiot. Then I’d given everyone else the ability to piss me off. “You—”

“I love you both.”

“I know you do.” Once upon a time, when I was a lot younger and lot more immature, it had killed me that she loved us equally. I wasn’t a borderline psychopath like Susie. I hadn’t been able to understand how she didn’t take my side each time there was an issue. But now that I was older, I realized there was no way I could ever ask that of her. It was just one of those things. On a bitchy day, I thought broken things couldn’t help but love other broken things.

I might not be flawless, and I might have hairline fractures all over the place, but I’d sworn to myself a long, lone time ago that I wouldn’t be like either of them.

It was a terrible, shitty thought. Mostly because I held my mom and Susie as the prime examples of who and what I didn’t want to ever be.

But there was only so much I could take. “I’m not asking you to not have a relationship with her, but I don’t want one with her. Nothing is ever going to change between us. I might get along okay with Erika and Rose sometimes, but that’s it.”

“Vanessa—”

“Mom. Did you hear what she said? She said she wished she’d hit me harder with her car. She tried to spit on me. Then Ricky grabbed my arm. I have bruises. My knee hurts every single day from what she did.” Damn it, my voice cracked at the same time my heart seemed to do the same. Why couldn’t she understand? Why? “I’m not trying to argue with you, but there’s no way I could have stayed after that.”

“You could have walked away,” said the woman who had walked away a hundred times in the past. This was the person who couldn’t deal with her problems if there wasn’t some sort of bottle around.

Damn it. I was so angry with her in that moment, I couldn’t find a single word that wouldn’t be brutal, that wouldn’t hurt her feelings. She said some things that I didn’t listen to because I was too focused on myself. I shoved my sleeves up my forearms in frustration. Squeezing my free fist closed, I didn’t even bother trying to count to ten. I wanted to break something, but I wouldn’t. I fucking wouldn’t. I was better than this. “You know what? You’re right. I really have to go. I have a lot of work to catch up on. I’ll call you later.”

And that was the thing with my mom. She didn’t know how to fight. Maybe it was a trait I’d picked up from my dad, whoever the guy was. “Okay. I love you.”

I’d learned what love was from my little brother, from Diana and her family, and even from my foster parents. It wasn’t this distorted, terrible thing that did what was best for itself. It was sentient, it cared, and it did what was best for the greater good. I wasn’t going to bother analyzing what my mom viewed as love again; I’d done it enough in the past. In this case, it was just a word I was going to use on someone who needed to hear it. “Uh-huh. Love you too.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until the tears hit my chin and plummeted to my shirt. Fire burned my nose. Five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-old Vanessa all came back to me with the same feeling that had been so strong in those years: hurt. The Vanessa who was fifteen and older had felt a different emotion for so long: anger. Anger at my mom’s selfishness. Anger at her for not being able to clean her act up until years after we’d been taken away from her. Anger for being let down for so long, time and time again.

I had needed her a hundred times, and ninety-nine of those times she hadn’t been around, or if she had been, she’d been too drunk to be of any use to me. Diana’s mom had been more of a mother figure to me than she had been. My foster mother had been more maternal than the woman who had given birth to me. I had practically raised Oscar and myself.

But if it weren’t for everything I’d been through, I wouldn’t be where I was. I wouldn’t be the person I was. I’d become me not because of my mom and sisters, but in spite of them. And most days, I really liked myself. I could be proud of me. That had to be worth something.

I’d barely managed to wipe off my teary face and set down my phone when a familiar bang-bang-bang called a knock rattled my door. If I was capable of snarling, I’m sure the facial expression I made would have been called exactly that.

“Yes?” I called out in a sarcastic tone, resisting the urge to throw myself back onto my bed like a little kid. Not that I’d ever done that, even back then.

Considering “Yes?” wasn’t exactly an invitation to come in, I was only slightly surprised when the door opened and the man I didn’t exactly want to see in the near future popped his head inside.

“Yes?” I repeated, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from calling him something mean. I was sure my emotions were written all over my face, my eyes had to have some trace of the tears that had just been in them, but I wasn’t going to hide it.

Aiden opened the door completely and slipped inside, his eyes sweeping across the room briefly before landing back on me sitting on the edge of my bed. His eyebrows scrunched together as he witnessed what I wasn’t trying to hide. His mouth depressed into a frown. One of his hands went up to reach behind his head, and I tried to ignore the bunched biceps that seemed to triple in size at the action. His Adam’s apple bobbed as his gaze swept over my face once more. “We need to talk.”

Once upon a time, all I’d wanted was for him to talk to me. Now, that wasn’t the case. “You should really be spending time with Leslie while he’s here.”

Those big biceps flexed. “He agreed I should come up here and talk to you.”

I narrowed my eyes, ignoring the tightness in them. “You told him we got into a fight?”

“No. He could tell something was off without me saying anything.” Those massive hands dropped to his sides. “I wanted to talk to you last night.”

But I’d ignored his knock. I made a vague noise. What was the point in lying when I’m pretty sure he was well aware of the fact I’d been awake then?

Aiden fisted his hands for a moment before bringing them back to cross his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”

I wasn’t remotely impressed by his directness and I was sure my face said that.

In true Aiden fashion, he didn’t let my expression deter him from what he’d come to say. “I don’t like things hanging over my head, and if you and I are going to have a problem, we’re going to talk about it. I meant what I told you in your apartment. I do like you as much as I like anyone. I wouldn’t have come to you for all of this if I didn’t. You always treated me as more than just the person who paid your check and I see that now. I’ve seen it for a while, Van. I’m not very good at this crap.” Did he look uncomfortable or was I imagining it? I wondered. “I’m selfish and self-centered. I know that. You know that. I bail on people all the time.” He had a point there. He did. I’d witnessed it firsthand. “I get it, you’re not that kind of person. You don’t go back on your word. I… I didn’t think you’d care if I didn’t go,” he said carefully.

I opened my mouth to tell him that no one liked being bailed on, but he trudged on before I could.

“But I understand, Van. Just because people don’t complain to my face when I do it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss them off, all right? I didn’t mean to be an asshole downstairs. I only wanted to make sure you made it back fine and you weren’t going to kill me in my sleep for flaking out on you. Then I got mad.”

I had thought about killing him, but it surprised me just a little bit that he assumed I would think that.

Before I could linger on that thought too long, Aiden leveled that dark gaze on me. “If you had done that to me…” He looked a little uncomfortable at whatever he was thinking and let out a shaky exhale. “I wouldn’t have handled it as well as you did.”

That was a freaking fact.

“I wasn’t nagging,” I stated. Then thought about it and, in my head, amended the statement to add ‘mostly’ to it.

He tilted his head to the side like he wanted to argue otherwise. “You were nagging, but you had a right to. I have a lot going on right now.”

My first thought was: The end has come. He’s opening up to me.

My second thought was: It’s so obvious he’s stressed as hell.

I hadn’t caught onto his body language, or the tightness he carried both in his shoulders and his voice as he spoke, but now up close, it was obvious. He’d been through a lot in just the first month of the regular season. He’d already sprained his ankle. Zac had gotten kicked off the team. On top of that, he was worried about his visa and his future with not just the Three Hundreds but in the NFO, period. His injury would be a factor in his career for the rest of his life. Any time he made a mistake, people would wonder if he hadn’t come back as strongly as he’d been before, even if it had nothing to do with his Achilles tendon.

The guy looked ready to snap, and it was barely the end of September. I wanted to ask him if he’d heard anything back from the immigration lawyer, or if our marriage license had showed up, or if Trevor had quit being a pain in the ass and started to look for another team or a better deal or whatever it was that he wanted out of the next stage of his career but…

I didn’t. Today would be a bad day for me to ask and for him not to answer. I was too raw and tired and disillusioned.

And it was in that moment, with that thought, the slightest bit of remorse flickered through my brain because I realized that maybe I had been itching for a fight. Maybe. And maybe this really had been the worst time—for him—to give him so much shit when he already had so much on his shoulders.

Plus, I wasn’t in the best state of mind either.

But apologizing wasn’t my forte and doing so wasn’t easy, but a good person recognized when they were wrong and accepted their faults. “I’m sorry for exploding on you. I was angry that you didn’t go, but I know why you bailed. I just don’t like it when people say they’ll do something and then don’t, but I’ve been like that for a long time. It has nothing to do with you.” I took those words straight from the Bank of Aiden. On top of that, there was everything else that had built up over the course of the weekend that wasn’t his fault. Not that I would bring it up.

His response was a nod of acceptance, of acknowledgment that we’d both handled the situation badly.

“So, I’m sorry too. I know how important your career is to you.” With a sigh, I held out my hand to him. “Friends?”

Aiden glanced from my outstretched palm to my face before taking my hand in his. “Friends.” It was midshake that he looked down at his giant hand swallowing mine, and the most disgusted expression came over that perfectly stoic face. “What the hell happened to your wrist?”

Yeah, I didn’t even bother trying to pull my sleeve down and play stupid. I’d forgotten that I’d tugged them up like an idiot. I slipped out of his hold and let the familiar flow of anger creep down the back of my neck once more at the memory of my sister’s idiot husband.

Specifically, him grabbing my arm and yanking me away after I’d yelled at Susie because she’d practically said she wished she’d have killed me. I’d told her she was out of her goddamn mind. But I hadn’t asked her for the millionth time why she hated me so much. What could I have possibly done before I was even four years old to make me her archnemesis? I was mad at myself for not preventing the entire situation, mostly. Then again, her husband had dropped his grip of steel the minute I’d charged my leg upward to try and knee him in the balls, ramming him straight into the inner thigh instead.

“It’s nothing.”

Those dark brown eyes blazed up to meet mine, and I swore on my life, the fury in those irises was enough for me to stop breathing. “Vanessa,” Aiden growled, literally growled, as he softly tugged the sleeve further up my forearm to display the five-inch bruise just above my wrist.

I watched as he gazed at the stupid, stupid discoloration. “I got into an argument with my sister.” Was there a point in not telling him who it was with? I only had to glance at the hard drawn line of his mouth to know he wasn’t going to let this go. “Her husband was there and he got a little handsy, so I tried to knee him in the balls.”

His nostrils flared and a muscle in his cheek visibly twitched. “Your sister’s husband?”

“Yes.”

His cheek spasmed again. “Why?”

“It was stupid. It doesn’t matter.”

Was that a grumble caught in his throat? “Of course it matters.” His voice was deceptively soft. “Why did he do it?”

I knew that look on his face; it was his stubborn one. The one that said it was pointless to argue with him. While I wasn’t crazy about spreading Susie’s business around, much less share how rocky my relationship with my third oldest sister was, Susie and I could be on Jerry Springer. She made her choices years ago, and it was no one else’s fault but her own what she had gotten out of them. We’d grown up under the same circumstances, neither one of us having something the other didn’t. I couldn’t feel any pity for her.

Rubbing my hands over my pant legs, I blew out a breath. “She didn’t like the way I was looking at her and we got into a fight,” I explained, leaving out a couple of details and colorful words, even though it wasn’t much of an explanation. “Her husband overheard us arguing” —her calling me a bitch and me telling her she was an immature twat— “and he grabbed me.”

You snobby bitch. What gives you the right to think you’re better than me? She’d had the freaking nerve to yell in my face.

I’d responded in the only way all that pent-up anger in me was capable of. Because I’m not a fucking asshole who loves to hurt everything in her life. That’s why I think I’m better than you.

Aiden’s calloused fingertips suddenly brushed lightly over the bruising, lifting my wrist in the cradle of those hands that were an instrumental part of his multi-million dollar body. The tic in his cheek had gotten worse as I tipped my head further back to look at that hard line his jaw made when he was gritting his teeth. His breath rattled out, and the thumb and index finger of one of his hands circled the middle of my forearm as he said, “Did he apologize?”

“No.” I made myself clear my throat, uncomfortable, uncomfortable, uncomfortable.

I saw him gulp. The air filled with an unfamiliar tension. His swallow sounded loud in my ears. “Did he hit you?”

And just like that, I realized—I remembered why he might be so upset over the situation. I flashbacked to that memory I’d shoved to the back of my brain because I’d been worried about getting fired. How the hell could I have forgotten about it?

Chapter Seventeen

My eyes were crossing from staring at stock images for so long when my phone beeped with a text message. Sliding my glasses up over my forehead into my hair, I yawned and picked up my smartphone.

Text Message

Miranda P.

Curious—more than curious because this was the first time I’d ever gotten a text from him—I pulled up the message and read it. Then I read it again. And again. And then I just stared blankly at my desktop computer screen.

They had found out.

Before I could panic, I made myself stretch my fingers wide and take a calming breath. You already knew this was bound to happen. At least that’s what I told myself.

The more I thought about it, the more I should have been appreciative that the people at the chapel in Las Vegas hadn’t recognized him. Or that people on the street had been oblivious and hadn’t seen us going in and out of there. Or that the receptionist at the acupuncturist hadn’t snapped a picture on her phone and posted it online.

Because I might not understand all people, much less most of them, but I understood nosey folks. And nosey folks would do something like that without a second thought. Yet, I reminded myself that there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

It would be fine. So, one gossip site posted about us getting married. Whoop-de-do. There was probably a thousand sites just like it.

I briefly thought about Diana hearing about it, but I’d deal with that later. There was no use in getting scared now. She was the only one whose reaction I cared about. My mom and sisters’ opinions and feelings weren’t exactly registering at the top of my list now… or ever. I made myself shove them to the back of my thoughts. I was tired of being mad and upset; it affected my work. Plus, they’d made me sad and mad enough times in my life. I wasn’t going to let them ruin another day.

Picking my phone up again, I quickly texted Aiden back, swallowing my nausea at the same time.

Me: Who told you?

Not even two minutes passed before my phone dinged with a response.

Miranda: Trevor’s blowing up my phone.

Eww. Trevor.

Me: We knew it was going to happen eventually, right? Good luck with Trev. I’m glad he doesn’t have my number.

And I was even gladder there wasn’t a home phone; otherwise, I’m positive he would have been blowing it up too.

I managed to get back to looking at images on the screen for a few more minutes—a bit more distracted than usual—when the phone beeped again.

It was Aiden/Miranda. I should really change his contact name.

Miranda: Good luck? I’m not answering his calls.

What?

Me: That psycho will come visit if you don’t.

Was that me being selfish? Yes. Did I care? No.

Aiden: I know.

Uh.

Me: You’re always at practice…

Aiden: Have fun.

This asshole! I almost laughed, but before I could, he sent me another message.

Aiden: I’ll get back to him in a couple days. Don’t worry.

Snorting, I texted back.

Me: I’m not worried. If he drops by, I’ll set him up in your room.

Aiden: You genuinely scare me.

Me: You don’t know how many times you barely made it through the day alive, for the record.

He didn’t text me back after that.

Chapter Eighteen

I was in my room when the doorbell started going off like crazy. In all the time I’d spent at my new house, no one ever came over. Heck, even when I didn’t live there, no one ever dropped by unexpectedly. The community’s gate kept solicitors out, and his neighbor’s weren’t exactly outgoing. If someone wanted a cup of sugar, they took themselves to the grocery store and bought it. I wasn’t really sure who to expect, but when I checked the peephole, I was completely caught off guard.

Completely, totally, 200 percent caught off-guard. Damn it.

It was Trevor. The guys’ manager. The king of all asswipes.

“Who is it?” Zac yelled from somewhere upstairs, more than likely his bedroom. He had just gotten home about an hour ago, and we were planning on going for a run soon.

“It’s Trevor!” I whisper-hissed, totally aware that he could hear me. The front door was sturdy but it wasn’t soundproof.

There was a sound. A curse. Then Zac: “I’m not here!”

Double damn it. “Fine! You owe me!”

“Sure!” the traitor bellowed before his door slammed closed.

Grinding my teeth, I said a prayer under my breath and undid the lock.

“Hi… Trevor.” I kind of sniffed with a frown, not even bothering to make myself smile and act as if I was happy to see him. The fact was: I wasn’t. The wonderful fact was: I didn’t have to pretend to be.

The emperor of jackasses didn’t even waste the effort it would have taken to pretend to be civil. His expression went from exasperated, to blank, to shocked, and finally into a scowl in the blink of an eye, and the scowl kept pulling down at his lips each second that passed. “Where’s Zac?” he practically spat.

What would happen if I closed the door on his face?

I knew Trevor had found out that we’d gotten married, and I was aware they’d ‘talked about it,’ whatever that meant. But I had no idea what had been said. No idea what Trevor knew or didn’t know. And I suddenly wanted to cuss at myself for opening the door before finding out what I was supposed to say.

But if anyone could smell weakness in the air, it was this asshole. I couldn’t falter. I couldn’t bend. So I blinked at him, cool and distant. “Oh, hey. I’m doing great and you?”

The lines bracketing his mouth deepened, making his dark hairline pull forward. I wasn’t imagining it when his eyelid twitched. “Don’t get me started on you. Where’s Zac?”

“Please, don’t scare me.” That time, I couldn’t help but smirk at him, getting too much pleasure from the disdainful expression on his face. “Zac isn’t here.”

Trevor stared at me with those condescending eyes of his, that twitchy eyelid getting worse. “I know he’s here.”

“He’s not.”

“You were just yelling at him!” His shoulders hunched and everything. “I heard you.”

I leveled an even glare at him and his three-piece suit in this weather. “First off, don’t yell in my face. Secondly, you’re imagining things because I’m home alone.”

He didn’t need to say it. I could tell word for word what he was thinking and that went along the lines of “I hate you.”

I didn’t like him either. I couldn’t say I blamed him. I’d be thinking the same thing too because I know he’d heard me.

“You’re really going to tell me he isn’t here?” he asked, cocking his head a half inch and looking at me through narrowed eyes.

I nodded, busting out my best acting skills to smile brightly at him even though I was aware there was nothing to brag about.

He simply stared at me.

And I smiled even wider. “I really need to get back to work. You should give him a call. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

That must have been enough to snap him out of whatever trance he was in because he shook his head. “That’s why I’m here. He isn’t answering my calls. He isn’t answering anyone’s calls or any fucking e-mails. He’s turned into Aiden—”

That immediately made my ears go hot. “Hey.”

“It’s completely unacceptable.”

I sucked in a breath and grinded my teeth, raising my hand up to stop him. “Stop it.” Yeah, I went for it. What was he going to do? Fire me? “Calm down. Chill out. Don’t yell in my face because I will slam the door shut in yours. I don’t know why neither one of them return your calls or your e-mails, so maybe think about that, huh? They’ll call you back when they want to call you back, but I wouldn’t call you back either if I was just going to get bitched at. And don’t talk shit about your clients in front of me. I don’t like it and it’s unprofessional.”

His face had progressively gotten redder with each word that came out of my mouth. A heavy vein in his neck had begun standing out at some point. “Do you understand how this works?” he asked carefully, crisply.

If he thought I was going to back down, he had another thing coming. Months ago, I would have kept my mouth shut and dealt with the fact he was technically my superior. He wasn’t anymore though. “You work for them, right?” I asked in a smart-ass tone.

“You don’t know anything,” he hissed.

What was the point in wasting my breath?

Was he shaking? “I don’t know what you did to get Aiden to marry you, but we should hash this out now,” Trevor kept going.

“You think I did something to marry him?” I scoffed, slightly panicking. Trevor had seen us together when I worked for Aiden; he had to have witnessed the lack of fireworks between us.

The jerk nodded in that way that said how much of an idiot he genuinely thought I was. “Are you pregnant?”

The “no” was so sharp and ready on my tongue that I almost didn’t catch it. It just about slipped from my lips from how pissed off I was at his ridiculous fucking assumption. What did he think I was?

A tramp. He thought I was a gold-digging tramp.

Of course that’s what he thought. Why wouldn’t he? I couldn’t imagine how many times Aiden must have made it clear how little he cared about my existence in the time we worked together.

The point was, I was still insulted. And I didn’t owe him shit, even if I wasn’t pregnant.

Biting down hard on my molars, I flashed him a crazy-person smile. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters!” he barked, pointing at me as his ears turned red. I’d swear on my life there should have been steam coming out of them to perfect the moment. “He told me you two don’t have a prenup.” He literally gasped in outrage. “That was the second thing I told him he needed to have when I signed him. Wear a condom and sign a prenup—”

I raised an eyebrow at him, just letting him vent by that point.

“—and of all the women in the world—of all the women in the world—he marries you. In Vegas. In secret, and he doesn’t tell me. I’m trying to do what’s best for him.”

There’s really only so much you can take from someone who’s speaking so fast, whose voice turns so shrill, it reminds you of a chalkboard. “Then do what’s best for him. I’m not going anywhere, and you don’t need to understand what there is between us. You aren’t the only one who wants him to do well. So how about you worry about the things that really matter, like where he’s going to play next year, if you really want to stress about something your little peanut brain can’t understand.”

Trevor stared at me for a second, his throat expanding, nostrils flaring. “Peanut brain?”

“I’m done talking to you. I’ll definitely make sure to tell both of them you were here. Bye.” Just like that, I calmly shut the heavy door in the middle of him speaking. I hadn’t even slammed it. How was that for being a badass?

It took a second for me to realize just how draining that conversation had been. Sheesh. I honestly felt a little sick as I climbed the stairs back to my room.

I’d really never done anything to him. Not a single freaking thing besides be a smart-ass when he deserved it. Good grief.

Just as I was walking back to my bedroom, Zac’s door swung open and his face peeked at me from the crack, all big eyes, nose, and mouth. “I’m sorry.”

I waved him off. “You owe me. Get dressed so we can go on a run.”

He wrinkled his nose. “You want to go out to eat instead?”

“No.” I smiled at him brightly. “Get dressed and let’s go. You need to get out of the house, darlin’.”

“Van,” he nearly whined as I disappeared into my room and closed the door behind me.

Before doing anything else, I picked up my phone and sent Aiden a quick message.

Me: The Angel of Shit paid a visit. Just warning you.

I’d taken off my clothes when my phone beeped with a message.

Aiden: Trevor?

Me: Yes If he shows up again, you might have to bail me out of jail, was the last thing we messaged each other before I left.

Chapter Nineteen

The next day, my phone rang in the late afternoon.

Aiden flashed across the screen. He’d called me twice before, and that had been when he’d been standing outside my door back at my apartment and to bail on me.

I hit the ‘answer’ button. “Hello?”

“Vanessa.” He didn’t ask if it was me; he just sort of said my name, as if demanding it to be.

“Yes?”

“My car won’t start,” he said in a tone that sounded accusatory, but couldn’t have been. What did he think? That I went and booby-trapped his starter? If I hadn’t done it when he used to piss me off, why would I do it now when he hadn’t recently?

“Is your battery dead?” I asked, confused. He had leased it brand new only a year ago, there was no way it needed a new battery so soon.

He muttered something under his breath, his tone abrupt. “I’ve already taken care of it. There’s a tow truck on its way.”

Uh. “Okay. What do you need then?”

“Can you pick me up?” he just went right out and asked.

I blinked, surprised that he was calling me and not taking a cab. “Oh. Sure. Where are you?”

“I’m at the main building. Where the team trains,” he replied, fully aware that I knew what place he was referring to. I’d been there a few times in the past. “I need to go pick up some papers from the immigration lawyer’s office today, too.”

Eyeing the thunderstorm going on outside through one of the windows in my room, I sighed. I hated driving in the rain, but he rarely asked for any favors… unless they were major, life-changing ones. Whomp, whomp. “Sure. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He grunted out a “Thank you” that was as forced as it sounded and hung up.

Some things never changed, did they? I smirked, saved my work, grabbed my purse, and headed downstairs to nab my keys. In a little more than no time, I made it to the facility I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back to and showed the old pass Aiden had gotten me to get in through the security gate.

My phone’s ringtone going off scared the hell out of me as I steered my car toward the correct building and parking lot. Half expecting it to be Aiden, I was surprised when Diana’s name flashed across the screen.

“Her—”

“How could you not tell me?” the familiar voice on the other end of the line yelled.

Shit. “Hello to you too.”

“Don’t you ‘hello to you too,’ cabrona.”

Okay. She’d gone with cabrona. That was how pissed off she was. Fair enough.

“Do you want to know how I found out?” I didn’t, but she didn’t bother waiting for me to confirm an answer she should know. “Rodrigo told me!”

I winced.

As if I hadn’t heard her the first time, she yelled again. “Rodrigo!”

I wasn’t going to apologize. I knew it would just make it worse. I was aware of how things worked with her. At this point, the only thing to do that wouldn’t piss her off more was to man-up to what I’d done and let her ream me.

“You got married and you didn’t tell me!”

I stayed quiet and kept an eye out on the building to make sure Aiden wasn’t appearing.

“It’s because you think I’d tell everyone, isn’t it?”

That was definitely the wrong question to answer. So I kept my mouth shut.

“You don’t love me anymore? Is that it? Am I old news?”

Still, I kept my mouth closed.

“I can’t believe you!” She let out a shriek that seemed to echo. Knowing her, she was more than likely in her car. “I’m going to punch you in the cooch.”

At that, my silence ended. “I’d like to see you try.” She hadn’t grown up with my sisters. I knew how to fight a girl.

At least better than she did.

“No! Don’t talk to me right now,” she insisted. “You didn’t tell me you got married. You’re on probation, and I need to get back to work. I’m on my lunch break. If you want to get back on my good side this year, I’d like some of those chocolate-dipped strawberries.”

That had me snorting. She was out of her damn mind.

“You owe me.” With that, she hung up as I pulled into the parking lot I was looking for. I let my forehead drop onto the steering wheel. That had gone better and worse than I’d imagined it would, but I was a little relieved it was out in the open, finally.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I looked around the empty lot. I wavered on getting out when a giant lightning bolt painted a jagged streak across the rainy lavender-gray sky. Minutes passed and still he didn’t come out of the Three Hundreds’ building.

Damn it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I jumped out of the car, cursing at myself for not carrying an umbrella for about the billionth time and for not having waterproof shoes, and ran through the parking lot, straight through the double doors. As I stomped my feet on the mat, I looked around the lobby for the big guy. A woman behind the front desk raised her eyebrows at me curiously. “Can I help you with something?” she asked.

“Have you seen Aiden?”

“Aiden?”

Were there really that many Aidens? “Graves.”

“Can I ask what you need him for?”

I bit the inside of my cheek and smiled at the woman who didn’t know me and, therefore, didn’t have an idea that I knew Aiden. “I’m here to pick him up.”

It was obvious she didn’t know what to make of me. I didn’t exactly look like pro-football player girlfriend material in that moment, much less anything else. I’d opted not to put on any makeup since I hadn’t planned on leaving the house. Or real pants. Or even a shirt with the sleeves intact. I had cut-off shorts and a baggy T-shirt with sleeves that I’d taken scissors to. Plus the rain outside hadn’t done my hair any justice. It looked like a cloud of teal.

Then there was the whole we-don’t-look-anything-alike thing going on, so there was no way we could pass as siblings. Just as I opened my mouth, the doors that connected the front area with the rest of the training facility swung open. The man I was looking for came out with his bag over his shoulder, imposing, massive, and sweaty. Definitely surly too, which really only meant he looked the way he always did.

I couldn’t help but crack a little smile at his grumpiness. “Ready?”

He did his form of a nod, a tip of his chin.

I could feel the receptionist’s eyes on us as he approached, but I was too busy taking in Grumpy Pants to bother looking at anyone else. Those brown eyes shifted to me for a second, and that time, I smirked uncontrollably.

He glared down at me. “What are you smiling at?”

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, trying to give him an innocent look. “Oh, nothing, sunshine.”

He mouthed ‘sunshine’ as his gaze strayed to the ceiling.

We ran out of the building side by side toward my car. Throwing the doors open, I pretty much jumped inside and shivered, turning the car and the heater on. Aiden slid in a lot more gracefully than I had, wet but not nearly as soaked.

He eyed me as he buckled in, and I slanted him a look. “What?”

With a shake of his head, he unzipped his duffel, which was sitting on his lap, and pulled out that infamous off-black hoodie he always wore. Then he held it out.

All I could do was stare at it for a second. His beloved, no-name brand, extra-extra-large hoodie. He was offering it to me.

When I first started working for Aiden, I remembered him specifically giving me instructions on how he wanted it washed and dried. On gentle and hung to dry. He loved that thing. He could own a thousand just like it, but he didn’t. He had one black hoodie that he wore all the time and a blue one he occasionally donned.

“For me?” I asked like an idiot.

He shook it, rolling his eyes. “Yes for you. Put it on before you get sick. I would rather not have to take care of you if you get pneumonia.”

Yeah, I was going to ignore his put-out tone and focus on the ‘rather not’ as I took it from him and slipped it on without another word. His hoodie was like holding a gold medal in my hands. Like being given something cherished, a family relic. Aiden’s precious.

I couldn’t help but glance at him out of the corner of my eye from time to time as I drove. The radio wasn’t on and it was one thing for us to eat at the counter together quietly but a totally different thing for us to be in the car not saying a word. “Did they tell you what was wrong with your car?” I made myself ask.

“The driver thought it was something with the computer.”

That made sense. I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as more lightning filled the horizon. “Has your training been going okay?”

“Fine.”

“Please tell me more,” I snickered. “At least you’ve won all your games so far.”

“Barely,” he said in a thin tone that seemed sandwiched between frustration and anger.

I’d seen a short segment just yesterday about this superstar the Three Hundreds had played against a few days ago, and I’d been amazed. “That guy from Green Bay was huge.”

I could feel the insulted expression he was shooting my way even though I was facing forward. “He isn’t that big,” he corrected me with a huff.

He was though. I’d seen pictures of the guy the Three Hundreds were playing against, and I’d seen him on television. The guy was six foot five and just shy of three hundred pounds; he was definitely stockier than Aiden and I could tell those extra pounds weren’t pure muscle, but big was big. I kept my mouth shut though and didn’t insist he was wrong. I could pretend his opponent hadn’t been the size of Delaware. Sure.

“Well, your team won.”

Aiden shifted around in his seat. “I could have played better.”

What could I say to that? I’d sat through enough interviews with people fawning all over him to know that Aiden soaked up every single one of his imperfections and every mistake he’d ever committed. It was stupid and wonderful how much he expected of himself. Nothing was ever good enough. He had so much to improve on, according to him.

“Oh, Aiden.”

“What?”

“You’re the best in the country—and I’m not just saying that to be nice—and it means nothing to you.”

He made a dismissive noise, those long fingers resting on his knee kind of flicked up in a dismissive gesture. “I want to be remembered years from now. I have to win a championship for that.”

Something about his tone pecked at my brain, at that part of me that had stayed up for years to quit my day job one day. “Then you’ll be happy?” I asked carefully.

“Maybe.”

I wasn’t sure what it was about his ‘maybe’ that chewed up my insides. “You’ve won Defensive Player of the Year three years out of eight, big guy. I don’t think anyone will ever forget you. I’m just saying. You should be proud of yourself. You’ve worked hard for it.”

He didn’t agree or disagree, but when I turned to look at the passenger side mirror, he was facing out the window with what amounted to about the most thoughtful expression I’d ever seen.

Maybe.

On the other hand, I might have been imagining it.

My phone started ringing loudly from its spot where I’d left it in the cup holder. I glanced at it, but the screen was faced down, and I couldn’t get a good look without grabbing it, which I sure as hell wasn’t going to do, especially not when the rain started slapping the windshield more forcefully. As quickly as the ringing came on, it went out.

Then it started all over again.

“Are you going to answer that?” Aiden asked.

“I don’t like to talk on the phone when I’m driving,” I explained, just as the phone stopped ringing.

He hummed.

Then it started once more.

With a sigh, he grabbed it and looked at the screen. “It’s your mom.”

Oh shit. “Don’t—”

“Hello?” the big guy answered, putting the phone to his face. “She’s busy.” I turned my head to see his lower lip slightly jutting out. “I’ll make sure to let her know.” By the amount of anger in his enunciation, that was the last thing he was planning on doing.

How about that. Before I could thank him for his phone answering skills, he touched my phone’s screen and set it back into the cup holder. Wariness wiggled around in my belly and I cleared my throat. “My best friend finally found out we got married.”

“I thought you told her.”

“She knew we were going to do it, but I didn’t tell her we actually did. She said her brother told her, so I wonder how he found out.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

Thinking about how the conversation had gone again, I smirked at myself. “No. She was too busy yelling.”

Aiden made a thoughtful yet absent sound.

“That might be why my mom called. I’m usually the one who calls her.” Except for when she’d called in the wake of my failed trip to El Paso. Just thinking about it made me mad all over again. Maybe I’d wait to call her back… next month. I shook the bitter thought off. “Where’s your lawyer’s office at?”

Thirty minutes later, I pulled my Explorer into the multi-level covered parking lot adjacent to a tall professional office building.

“I’ll wait here,” I said, turning off the engine.

Aiden shook his head as he opened the car door. “Come with me.”

I eyed my legs and then shook my own head. “I’m not really dressed…”

The big guy didn’t even take in anything other than my face. “You always look fine. Come on.”

He didn’t wait for me to argue. He just shut the door on me.

I growled under my breath and got out, tugging my damp bottoms down and realizing that Aiden’s hoodie was actually so long it went over my shorts… Great.

With a resigned sigh, I found Aiden waiting for me off to the side. At least he had the decency not to mock me for how much of a mess I looked. Thunder and lightning shook the walking bridge we had to take to cross over from the lot to the building, and I might have walked a little faster than usual. Aiden had barely opened the door for me when the lights inside the building went in and out for a second.

The lights in the hallway flickered twice more as we walked to the elevator bank. Then they blinked again just as the big guy pressed the button to go up.

I paused, taking in the deserted hallway. “Should we take the stairs?”

He gave me a side look that said what he was thinking—you’re an idiot, Vanessa. Instead, he verbally went with, “I’m too tired.”

Oh. Huh. “Okay.”

Before I could think too much more about the consequences of riding around in an elevator during a storm, the doors slid open. A couple was already inside, and they shuffled over into the corner to give us room when we entered. I didn’t miss the way the man’s eyes widened as Aiden backed against the opposite corner where they were, across from the doors. I put my back against the wall closest to him. “What floor, big guy?”

“Six.”

Pressing the button, the lights blinked again as the doors shut. Wariness made my stomach churn as the elevator eased its way upward. The lights flashed one more time before the elevator jerked, stopping, plunging us into total darkness.

One, two, three, four—

Holy shit.

Holy freaking shit.

I tried to blink as the other woman in the elevator squealed, and her partner asked, “What the hell?”

There wasn’t even an emergency light on.

It was pitch black.

Shouldn’t there have been a backup light?

Panic instantly seized my throat. Okay, it gripped my entire body, stringing every muscle so tight it hurt. In the time it took me to suck in a breath, my body began shaking. I made myself squeeze my eyes closed, ignoring the couple whispering in the corner.

Okay. Okay.

Everything was okay.

Everything would be okay, I told myself.

I was fine.

It was just a little outage because of the storm; big buildings like this had backup generators that would kick in in no time.

Didn’t they?

I started patting the wall next to me to find the buttons on the panel, easing my touch around until I felt a small gap in the metal, feeling around the perimeter of it. It was rectangle-shaped, where I figured an emergency phone had to be. Elevators had emergency lines… I thought. The latch opened easily, and I grabbed the small phone from inside. I couldn’t see a single thing, and as I touched around, there wasn’t any pad of any sort to call out. There wasn’t even a dial tone. The elevator wasn’t moving. The lights weren’t coming back on.

I held the phone against my ear, but there was no noise of any sort on the other end.

The power was completely out. The power had to be out.

My stomach seemed to drop to my knees.

It was so dark I couldn’t see my fingers when I brought them up close to my face. I could hear my breathing getting louder by the second, feel my chest start to puff in quick, restless breaths that I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

But the hum I was expecting, the one that signaled the power coming back on, didn’t make its appearance after another minute. It didn’t come back on after three or four minutes either, and the fear I’d been trying to ignore seized me in its rude, greedy grip even tighter.

“Vanessa?”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t think.

“Vanessa,” came Aiden’s voice again, whispered, strict and tight in the small space. “What the hell are you doing?”

I squeezed my eyes closed tighter, fighting it, fighting it, fighting it. “Nothing,” I think I managed to wheeze out.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Chill out. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. You’re just in an elevator. You’re okay.

I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t anywhere near being okay.

I had asthma. Since when did I have asthma?

A hand touched my shoulder just as I blindly replaced the phone where it was and moved my hands down my stomach and thighs until I was hunched over, gripping my knees for dear life.

Think, Vanessa. Think.

“You’re Aiden Graves, aren’t you?” the male voice speaking sounded like a hum in the background.

“Yes,” Aiden bit back in his familiar low grumble, his tone not inviting another remark. The hand on my shoulder tightened as I fought back a gasp for air. “Vanessa,” he repeated my name.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

But I couldn’t. I was panicking. I squeezed my knees harder with my palms and somehow managed to suck in a rabid breath.

Think.

I was fine. The elevator wasn’t that small. The lights were going to come back on eventually. I gasped sharply through my mouth.

“Sit down,” Aiden hissed, the one hand on my shoulder putting enough pressure that I didn’t bother picking a fight as I sank to my knees.

My keys! I slapped my hands around the pocket of Aiden’s hoodie, and finally found the hard lump I was looking for in the right pocket. I yanked my keys out and latched on to the slick, metallic tube I’d had on my keychain forever. The small button on the back clicked into place… and nothing.

It wasn’t working.

My phone! I started patting around my pockets when I remembered watching Aiden set my phone into the cup holder in my car. Cold dread sucked me in.

“Calm down,” Aiden demanded in the dark.

You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re in an elevator. You’re okay, I reminded myself.

“Vanessa.” I sensed the radiant heat of his body against my knees. “You’re fine,” he stated over my wild pants.

I was too riled up to be embarrassed that I couldn’t seem to breathe. I definitely couldn’t open my mouth to talk either, much less get all bent out of shape for him bossing me around.

Another hand joined the first and curled big and consuming over my shoulders. “You’re all right,” Aiden’s low, gravelly voice murmured in the dark elevator.

“What’s wrong with her?” the unfamiliar male voice on the other side of the elevator asked. “Is she okay?”

“Take a deep breath.” Thumbs kneaded my shoulders, ignoring the question from the stranger. “Breathe.”

Breathe? I tried, but it came in and out as mostly a choke.

“Through your nose… come on. In. Out through your mouth. Calm down.” Those big thumbs made small, almost angry circles over me. “Slow breath. Slow. In your nose, out of your mouth.” If this had been any other situation, I would have been surprised by how calm and cool his tone was. How gentle and unrushed. How very unlike the person who had just been snapping at me when he first realized something was wrong.

“You’re fine,” Aiden commanded with a squeeze of the mitts he called hands. “Calm down. You got it,” he coached me through the next ragged breath. “I’m right here.” His breath washed over my cheek as his palms cupped my upper arms. “I’m not going anywhere without you.” He squeezed, his words ringing through my ears. “You’re not alone.”

I was fine. I was fine.

It took a few wild inhales to really get a good breath in that didn’t seem like I was struggling not to drown. As soon as I could, I shifted off my stinging knees to sit on my butt, dragging my legs up to my chest.

“Breathe, breathe, breathe,” Aiden commanded.

I couldn’t make myself open my eyes, but it was all right. I was still shaking, but I could live with that as long as I could get oxygen into my lungs. In my nose, out of my mouth like the big guy had said. My breaths were sharper than they should have been, but there they were.

“You got it?” Aiden began moving around, his knee hitting my foot as I sensed him sit next to me.

“Yes,” I puffed out, putting my forehead on my knees.

I was okay. I was okay.

My body gave a near violent shake that said otherwise.

I was fine. I was fine. One breath in, one breath out. I clenched my eyes closed. I wasn’t alone. As if to make sure, my hand crept over my lap and down my thigh until I brushed the side of Aiden’s hip. My fingers touched the hem of his shirt, and I pinched the thin material between my fingertips.

I wasn’t alone. I was fine. I shuddered out a breath as my biceps spasmed.

“Better?”

“Little bit,” I muttered, rubbing my fingertips over the sewn hem of his shirt. Stop being a baby. You’re not dying. You’re okay. I made myself open my eyes and raised my head until it dropped back to the wall behind me. I couldn’t see a single thing, but I was okay.

I was all right.

One deep exhale out, and I was breathing out of my mouth, calm, calm, calmer. By that point, the other couple in the elevator had resorted to whispering so low I couldn’t bother to understand what was being said. Aiden, on the other hand, was familiarly silent, his deep, even breathing telling me he wasn’t at all affected by whatever the hell was going on with the weather and the elevator.

Then again, if I weren’t so terrified of the dark and small spaces, none of this crap would be a big deal either. It wasn’t like we’d be stuck inside forever, and it wasn’t like the elevator would suddenly plummet and we’d all die.

I hoped.

The elevator gave a sharp jerk and the woman screamed as the lights in the ceiling flashed bright for one precious second before going out once again.

Fuck this.

With skills I didn’t even know I possessed, I was up, sliding over Aiden’s knee, and in his lap so fast I had no idea I’d even done it, because if I’d thought about it, there was no way in hell I would have done it. No fucking way. But the fact was, I had.

I was in Aiden’s lap. He was cross-legged on either side of me, each of his muscular thighs cocooning my hips, his chin just behind my ear. I shivered.

Behind me, Aiden straightened; under my butt, his thighs tightened and strained.

It was then that I felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, already lifting up to lunge off him.

“Shut up,” he said as his hands landed on my bare knees, shoving me back down onto him; my back hit the solid wall of his chest and it was right then I realized his shirt was soggy from the rain. I didn’t care. Under me, his legs relaxed, my bottom settling on top of his feet.

It was like sitting on a beanbag. A big, firm, slightly wet beanbag that breathed… and had two hands cupping my naked kneecaps. Immediately and pathetically, I let out a long, deep breath and relaxed in the cocoon of Aiden. One of his thumbs rubbed the sensitive skin on the inside of my knee, just a quick circle-shaped brush that had me letting out another sigh.

The big guy hummed into the shell of my ear, his breath warm and way too comforting. “You want to tell me what that was about?” he asked in a whisper.

“Not really,” I mumbled, clasping my hands in my lap.

He made a tiny scoffing sound but didn’t say anything for a moment until… “You’re sitting on me. I think you owe me.”

I tried to lunge up again, even though I really didn’t want to, but those huge hands clamped down even tighter, that time with his fingers spread wide, covering my kneecaps and part of my thighs.

“Stop it. I’m teasing you,” he commented.

Teasing me? Aiden? Letting my head droop forward, I kept my eyes closed and let a rattled sigh out. “I’m scared of the dark.” Like that wasn’t completely obvious.

He didn’t even let out a single breath. “Yeah, I got that. I would have given you my phone to use as a flashlight but the battery went dead after I talked to you.”

“Oh. Thanks anyway.” I made myself let out another deep breath. “I’m really scared of the dark, like the dark in here when I can’t see anything. I have been since I was a kid,” I explained tensely.

“Why?” he cut in.

“Why what?”

He made that exasperated noise of his. “Why are you scared of the dark?”

I wanted to ask if he really wanted to know, but of course he damn well did. I didn’t necessarily want to tell him—nor had I ever wanted to tell anyone—but he had a point. I was a twenty-six-year-old sitting on his lap after I’d been on the verge of having a panic attack because the lights had gone out. I guess I sort of owed him.

“It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. Okay? When I was five, my sisters” —though I’m pretty sure I would now blame Susie as being the main mastermind behind the incident— “locked me in a closet.”

“That’s why you’re scared?” he had the nerve to scoff before I continued.

“With the lights off for two days,” I finished up.

Aiden’s voice didn’t just react, it seemed like his entire body did too. Inch by inch, what felt like from his toes and up, went rock solid. “Without food or water?”

The fact that he thought about that small detail didn’t escape me. That was the shitty part. At least now, I thought that was the shitty part of the story. “They left me water and candy bars. Chips.” Those bitches, even at seven, eight, and nine, had already been vicious by then. They had planned it. Planned on locking me in there because they didn’t want to watch over me while our mom was gone. They hadn’t wanted to play with me, for God’s sake. They had taunted through the door before leaving me.

I shivered even though I really would rather not have.

“Where was your mother?” he asked in that creepy, calm tone.

I wasn’t sure what it was about all these memories I’d shoved aside for so long suddenly coming back that made me feel like a raw, open wound. I couldn’t control the long breath I let out. “I think she was dating someone back then. It might have been my little brother’s dad. I don’t remember that well. He was in and out of our lives for a few years. All I know for sure was that she wasn’t at home then.” Sometimes she’d disappear for a few days at a time, but that was my burden to bear.

“Who let you out?”

“They did.” They unlocked the door and made fun of me for being a baby and peeing on myself. It had taken me an hour to get myself to crawl out of there.

“What happened after that?” He was still talking in that effortless, patient voice that screamed ‘wrong’ at the top of its lungs.

Shame and anger made me shake. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

“Of course I told my mom. It was her closet they put me in. I’d peed in there. She had to get the carpet replaced because it smelled so bad.” I’d smelled so bad. My hands had been so messed up from banging on the door, and my voice so hoarse from screaming at them to let me out… or to at least turn on the closet light… or if they couldn’t turn on the closet light to turn on the bedroom light… to no avail. I never knew for sure what they’d done in those two days I was in there, and frankly, I didn’t care at all.

I didn’t. Because kids that young shouldn’t have been left alone to begin with.

His chest started puffing against my back as if his breathing was difficult. “She did nothing to your sisters?”

I wanted to crawl into myself. The tone he was using raked at my nerves, pulling the sides of the stab wound called my childhood wide open for inspection. It made me feel small. “No. She yelled at them, but that was it. I mean, she stayed home for a month or two afterward” —that was one of the times I remembered her being mostly sober— “and I slept with her every night. After that, I moved my things and shared a room with my little brother.” I’d started locking the bedroom door after that as well.

The fingertips on my knees kneaded for a second, but I bet my life it was a subconscious gesture, mostly because his labored breathing hadn’t gone anywhere.

“I have to sleep with a light on,” I admitted to him, feeling his chest huff behind me. Dumb, dumb, dumb. “I don’t know why I just told you that. Don’t make fun of me.”

There was a pause. A hesitation before, “I won’t,” he promised effortlessly. “I wondered why you had so many at your apartment and in your room.”

I knew he’d noticed. “Please don’t tell Zac. I wouldn’t hold it passed him to hide under the bed when I’m sleeping to try and scare the crap out of me.”

“I won’t.” His palms shaped my knees. The insides of his arms seemed to frame my shoulders and arms. His breathing was low but not so steady against my ear. “It isn’t stupid that you’re scared. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s everyone else who should be ashamed of themselves.”

The only way I managed to answer was with a nod that I wasn’t sure he knew of or not. Another rattling breath made its way out of my chest like a gust and I touched a patch of skin somewhere around his knee as I kept my eyes closed. “Thank you for helping me calm down, big guy. I haven’t lost it like that in forever.”

“Don’t worry about it,” was all he muttered in return.

I kept my hand on his leg, my fingertips against the coarse dark hairs that covered his legs. My breathing sounded too loud, my heart was still beating a little weird, while Aiden’s was soft and barely audible. I focused on the in and the out of my lungs.

The other woman in the elevator mumbled, “This sucks.”

It did. It really did.

The silence ate up the minutes, and I let my back loosen, the top of it touching Aiden’s pectorals. The insides of his upper arms cradled me. His breathing was so even it made me sleepy.

The elevator gave a jerk that had me opening my eyes in reaction as the lighting flickered twice and stayed on. The woman on the other side squealed, but I couldn’t even be remotely scared. I only cared about the lighting.

And it was right then, not being plunged in the dark, that I finally witnessed with my own two eyes the sight of me sitting on Aiden. Two long, muscular legs circled me, so long that the knees jutted out way passed where mine ended. Two heavily muscled triceps popped on either side of my arms, playing my bodyguards. But it was the big hands on me, the wrists propped up so effortlessly on my thighs, that made something in me react.

He was hugging me. For all intents and purposes, Aiden was hugging me. Surrounding me.

Tilting my head back, I swallowed that thing making its way from my stomach to my throat, and prepared a nervous, slightly shy smile over my shoulder. Except when my gaze landed on Aiden’s face, it was so serious… so damn serious. It wiped the expression right off my mouth.

The elevator gave another jerk and almost immediately, the phone on the wall began ringing.

With a light tap to my knee, Aiden picked me up and moved me off to the side, as if my weight was nothing to him—and it definitely wasn’t nothing. He got to his feet and reached toward the wall, picking the phone off the cradle. His gaze drifted over me in the process, those ultra-sober features making me feel like I’d done something wrong all of a sudden. “Yes… It’s about time… Yes.” Just like that, he hung up, probably in the middle of the conversation. “It’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

Drawing my legs up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and nodded at his comment. He didn’t sit back down; instead, Aiden leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. One ankle went over the other.

Not ten minutes later, a loud noise pierced through the elevator, and the next thing I knew, it began its ascent again. When the doors finally opened, two building employees were standing there, asking if we were fine, but Aiden walked right passed them as if they weren’t there.

“Are you okay?” one of the employees asked.

Was I okay? I hadn’t been, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Mostly, I was a little bit embarrassed I’d freaked out and uncertain what the hell the look on Aiden’s face had been about when the lights had come back on.

“Are you coming?” the big guy asked from where he was waiting.

There was the man I knew. “Hold your horses, sunshine. I’m coming.”

His lips moved in a way that told me he wasn’t particularly fond of ‘sunshine,’ but most importantly, he knew I didn’t care that he hated it. “Let’s go. He’s paid by the hour and we’re already late.”

It didn’t take long to find what we were looking for. A hardwood-framed glass door with etchings on the front and a plaque on the wall right next to it, deemed that this was the lawyer’s office.

Sleek, beautiful, hardwood furniture in warm shades of brown and green welcomed us. It hit me again right then that I looked like a fifteen-year-old hoochie mama in a giant-sized sweater that made it seem as if I didn’t have any clothes on underneath. Aiden didn’t look much better; his T-shirt was clingy, he had on long, black shorts that went past his knees, and he was in running shoes. The difference was, he didn’t give a single crap what he looked like.

Directly in front of the doors, an older woman behind a desk smiled over at us. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes. We had an appointment with Jackson. I’m the one who called to say I was running late,” Aiden explained.

That changed everything. “Oh, Mr. Graves. Right. One moment please. The lighting issue pushed his meeting late.”

The lighting issue. Aiden and I looked at each other.

I couldn’t freaking help it, especially now that we were out of the elevator of terror, I snickered and let the uncontrollable smile take over.

Those underused corners of his mouth tipped up just a little—just a freaking little—but it was what it was. He’d smiled. He’d fucking smiled at me. Again. And it was just as magnificent as it had been the first time.

When we took a seat to wait, he turned that big body to the side and pinned me in place. “What’s that look on your face for?”

I reached up and touched the sides of my mouth and cheeks, finding that, yeah, I was mooning. Not smiling. I was mooning.

He’d smiled at me. Was there any other way in the world to react?

“No reason.”

His lids dropped low. “You look like you’re on drugs.”

That wiped my not-smile off my face. “I like your smile. That’s all.”

The big guy shot me a sour look. “You make me feel like a Grinch.”

“I don’t mean to. It’s a nice smile. You should do it more often.”

The grumpy expression on his face didn’t assure me of anything. Eventually, when I sat up straight, he draped his arm over the back of my chair. Waiting until the woman at the desk was on the phone, I whispered, “What exactly are we doing here?”

“He wants to go over some information with me,” he explained.

Couldn’t the lawyer just have e-mailed it to us, I wondered, but kept my question to myself. “So I can’t wait here?”

“No.”

I fidgeted and lowered my voice even more. “The lawyer thinks this is real, doesn’t he?”

“It’s fraud otherwise.”

Damn. I slunk in my seat, the bare heat of his forearm grazing the top of my neck. That damn word sent fear coursing through my spine. I didn’t want to go to prison.

As if he was reading my mind, Aiden whispered, “Nothing is going to happen. No one’s going to believe this isn’t real.”

I didn’t know where he got his confidence from, but I needed to find some.

Luckily it didn’t take too long for the door leading from the waiting room to the office to open. A couple came out, too busy speaking in a language that sounded like German to pay attention to us.

It was show time apparently.

The second after we stood up, the receptionist waved us forward. I slipped my hand into Aiden’s and gave it a faint squeeze.

He squeezed mine right back.

Chapter Twenty

“Zac! Are you almost ready?” I yelled down the hall as I shoved my heel into my running shoe.

“I’m putting on my shoes, Mrs. Graves!”

Idiot. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.” I told him as I slipped my other one on.

“Okay,” he yelled back just as I hit the stairs. Down them and into the kitchen, I found Aiden sitting in the breakfast nook with a big glass of something brown and funky looking in front of him that I’d bet a kidney had some kind of bean and vegetable in it.

Heading to the refrigerator to get a sip of water before the start of our jog, I asked over my shoulder, “Big guy, do you want anything from the fridge while I’m up?”

“No thanks.”

It was Monday afternoon after the Three Hundreds played an away game the day before. The poor guy had gotten home from Maryland at four o’clock in the morning, and he’d had to drag himself out of bed at nine to meet up with the team’s trainers, then sat through one meeting after another. His body language expressed just how exhausted he was. How could he not be?

I filled half my glass with water and chugged it down. Across the room, Aiden finally took his attention away from the current puzzle he was finishing, and asked, “Where are you two going?”

“For a run.”

“Why is he going with you?” he plainly asked, a crease forming between his eyebrows. His long fingers seemed to swallow the puzzle piece in his hand.

“I talked him into doing the marathon with me.” Was this really the first time he’d seen us leaving?

Something about what I said must have intrigued him because his head jerked back and what looked like the beginning of a laugh took over his mouth. “He’s going to run a marathon?”

Well that sounded insulting even to my ears. The fact that Zac walked into the kitchen the moment Aiden began his question, didn’t help the situation any. He scrunched up his nose as he cast his ex-teammate a long look. “Yeah.”

“You have the worst cardio I’ve ever seen,” Mr. No Social Skills claimed, not at all embarrassed that he’d been overheard.

I couldn’t disagree with him there. Considering Zac was an elite athlete, the first few times we’d gone running together was like going with a clone of myself during those initial two months after I’d decided I wanted to start training. I hadn’t even been able to get two miles done without severe knee pain and panting, and I’d thought that was pretty good.

Zac, on the other hand, made it seem like I was leading him across the Mojave Desert barefoot and without water.

“I do not,” he argued. “Why are you nodding, Van?”

I stopped what I was doing. “You do—oww! You didn’t have to pinch me.” I glared at who I thought was my friend, suddenly standing right next to me. “You do have terrible endurance. Your breathing has been worse than mine.”

“I can do a marathon if I want to.” Zac’s cheeks turned slightly pink as I tried to back away from him to avoid getting pinched again.

“Of course you can. Your breathing just blows right now.” I slapped him on the back, dodging out of his reach a second later. “Let’s get this over with,” I said, making sure I was at least five feet away from him at all times. “Let me pee first though, Forrest Gump.”

Zac laughed, half-assed lunging at me one more time.

I jumped back. I casually noticed Aiden out of my peripheral vision looking at me. Specifically my legs. My tights were all dirty and I’d had to dig out a pair of shorts from my drawer that I hadn’t worn in years. They were too tight and too short, and I’d had to put on a baggy T-shirt so the elastic band digging into my stomach and hips wouldn’t be noticeable. I’d lost almost fifteen pounds since I’d started running, but I still didn’t have anything close to a six-pack.

So I was a little surprised when those thick eyebrows knit together, his gaze focusing. “What happened to your leg, Van?”

I’d worn skirts and dresses around him on a few occasions when I worked for him. I had always figured he just hadn’t cared to find out where I’d gotten the scarring that went from above my knee to below it. Hell, I’d been wearing cut-offs when we’d gotten stuck in the elevator together and sat in his lap afterward. His hand had been on my knee. How hadn’t he noticed?

Now I realized he hadn’t even looked at it.

I didn’t care that it wasn’t pretty, and I’d never tried to hide it. It was my badge of honor. My daily reminder of all the physical pain I’d gone through, of all the anger I’d had to get under control, and what I’d done with it. I’d finished school. I got back on my feet. I’d accomplished my goal of growing my business and venturing out on my own. No one else had done it for me but me. I’d saved. I’d worked. I’d persevered. Me. No one else.

And if I could do all that, when I was strong and when I was weak, I could remember it and let it lead me. My achy knee never let me forget what we’d been through in the last eight years.

I made my way out of the kitchen because the truth wasn’t a big deal. “I got hit by a car.”

I just usually didn’t tell people that it was my sister who’d been the driver.

By the time Zac and I made it out of the house, the sun had just started to hang low in the horizon. We jogged steadily for six miles one way before turning around to get back home. That last two miles on the way home we used as our cool down. After we’d caught our breaths, Big Texas abruptly snorted and asked, “How the hell hadn’t Aiden noticed your knee ‘til today?”

I let out a sharp snicker. “I was wondering the exact same thing.”

“Jesus, Vanny, I think I noticed it the first week you started workin’ for him.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t notice stuff that’s not football related unless it smacks him in the face.”

It was true.

Then he said, “Like you.”

And it was like something crashed down on my shoulders. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the truth was like a boa. It could be this heavy snake that could wrap around your neck and kill you, or it could be a feather boa, a nice, fun accessory to your life. In this case, I was going to force myself to take the truth in the form of the feather version. I’d already faced reality and that reality was the one Aiden had admitted to me: he hadn’t appreciated me until I left.

It was what it was. You couldn’t force someone to care about you or love you. I knew that way too well.

But Aiden was a man who only loved one thing, and if you weren’t that one thing, too bad. It was all he’d known for so long, he hadn’t looked in his peripherals at everything else surrounding him. I could accept that nothing else was anywhere near as important as football. What I wasn’t able to do was wrap my head around what Leslie had said regarding Aiden’s grandparents and the grief he’d gone through when he lost them. He’d never even mentioned them in front of me. But I guess that was just the way he was.

Now though, in his own way, I knew he cared about me. That said something, didn’t it? I didn’t think I was trying to pull at straws or make something bigger than it needed to be. I was simply taking what I could get and not making it out to be something it wasn’t.

I could live with that.

So I shrugged at Zac. “Yeah, exactly like that. He’s just so focused he doesn’t care about anything else. I get it.” I did.

With a big sigh, Zac sniffed. “It’s workin’ for him. He’s the only one on the team that’s an All-Pro.” The shape his mouth took after he finished talking made a bittersweet sensation go through my heart. I couldn’t help but think: Poor Zac.

So I smacked him in the arm. “Quit pouting. You’re only twenty-eight. That one quarterback played until he was almost forty, didn’t he?”

“Well… yeah. He did.”

“See?” That was enough for now, wasn’t it? I went with changing the subject. “Are you doing anything for Halloween?”

Chapter Twenty-One

I was sitting at my computer when the first massive lightning bolt hit. The house shook. The windows rattled. Wind howled, slapping the house’s siding. The height of the storm I’d seen the meteorologist on TV forecasting had finally come.

And I panicked, saving my work as quickly as I could so I could turn off my computer.

Then the next bolt hit, the light so bright right outside my window it seemed unreal, closer to a nuclear blast than an act of nature. The lights had no hope. Just like a candle going out, they were there one second and gone the next.

“Fuck!” I muttered to myself, already diving from my desk toward the bed, blind, slapping my hands around so I could find the nightstand. My knee found it first, and I cursed, grabbing the spot that I was sure was already turning into a bruise with one hand and finding the top drawer with the other. It didn’t take me long to find the small LED flashlight inside. I made sure it was always in the left corner, and sure enough, it was right there.

Flicking it on, I sucked in a deep breath before jumping back on the bed and sliding under the covers. The flashlight was the best thing money could buy; five hundred lumens for a contraption three inches long. I moved the bright beam around the ceiling and toward the open doorway, listening as the screaming winds outside got louder. I shivered.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t gotten a warning that a storm was coming in advance. It had been raining steadily for some time, but instead of the storm moving away, it had just gotten heavier and heavier. Great.

This was so stupid. I hated being so scared of the dark. I really did. It made me feel like a dumb little kid. But no matter how much I tried to tell myself it was okay, that I was fine….

That didn’t do anything.

I still shook. My breathing still got bottled up in my throat. I still wanted the lights to come back on.

“Vanessa? Where are you?” Aiden’s rough voice carried its way from down the hall. I could barely hear his footsteps as they got lost mixed in with the noise outside.

“In my room,” I called out, weaker than I ever would have wanted. “What are you doing awake?” Sleepy Pants had gone to bed at his usual time: nine. Three hours ago.

“The thunder woke me up.” Another big flash of lightning illuminated the body filling the doorway a moment later, and I flicked my flashlight at his legs.

His bare legs.

He was only wearing boxer briefs. There wasn’t a shirt over his chest. Aiden was standing in my doorway in just boxer briefs, his medallion around his neck, and muscles.

So many muscles.

Stop it. I needed to stop it right away.

“Jesus. How bright is that thing? Point it at the floor, would you?” he said in a voice that confirmed he’d been dead asleep just minutes ago. I flicked the light toward the ceiling instead. “You all right?”

“I’m okay,” I said, even as an unnecessary shiver racked my spine. “Just pissing my pants. No big deal.” The laugh that came out of my mouth sounded just as fake and awkward as it felt. I sounded like a crazy person.

The sigh he let out made it seem like he was completely putting himself out as he strode forward, around the side of the mattress before stopping, towering. “Scoot over.”

Scoot?

I wasn’t going to ask. I should, but I didn’t as my heart seemed to climb into my throat and take a seat.

I scooted. Neither one of us said a word as he climbed onto my bed and under the covers as if it was no big freaking deal, like this wasn’t the first time he’d done it. I didn’t let myself get all shy and prude-ish, or anywhere near it. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I wasn’t going to say no to the other half of my paperwork getting into my bed when I’d rather not be by myself.

Lightning flashed brighter than bright through the two windows in my room once more before plunging the house into that eerie darkness that creeped me the hell out despite the beam of light aimed at the ceiling.

Without a shameful bone in my body, I wiggled over the foot between us until his elbow touched mine.

“Are you shaking?” he asked in a strange tone.

“Only a little bit.” I scooted an inch closer, soaking in the heat his body was throwing off.

Aiden sighed like I was torturing him while all I’d done was mind my own business in bed. “You’re fine.”

I moved the light in the shape of a circle across the ceiling. “I know.”

Another great big sigh only possible from a man his size made its way out of his throat. “Come here.” His voice seemed to rumble across the sheets.

“Where?” I was already next to him. I rolled onto my side.

“Closer, Van,” he ordered, exasperated.

I wasn’t anywhere near being worried about how weird it was to be in bed with someone who hadn’t even given me a real hug once in the entirety of the time we’d known each other. I definitely wasn’t thinking about how he was mostly naked and how I only had underwear and a tank top on.

So I moved over, right on over until I realized he wasn’t on his back any longer. He was on his side. I practically pressed up against him, my face right between his pecs, my arms between my chest and the middle of his.

He was warm, and he smelled wonderful, like the expensive coconut oil and herbal soap he used. The same stuff I used to order him from online once upon a time when things between us had been so different. I couldn’t begin to imagine that Aiden—that same man who had spent a minimum of five days a week keeping me at arm’s length five months ago—was in my bed right then because he knew about my phobia.

Later when I was capable of it, I’d think about him waking up and coming to my room, but right then wasn’t the time.

He shifted a little, just a little. The bristles covering his chin brushed my forehead for a split second. He made a noise, a soft one, a relaxed one, and his facial hair touched me again, lingering just a moment longer on my skin. “How have you survived the last twenty years being terrified of the dark?” His question was so cottony, so pliable, I opened my mouth to answer before I thought twice about it.

“I always have a flashlight,” I explained. “And except for these last two years, I’ve always lived with someone. Plus, it’s rare that I’m ever in complete darkness. You learn how to avoid it.”

“You lived with a boyfriend?” he asked casually, his breath warm on my hair. If his tone was a little too casual, I didn’t pick up on it.

“Uh, no. I’ve never ‘lived’ with one. I’ve only had three and it never came up.” I locked my gaze on that shiny gold medal draped high over his left pectoral. “Have you ever lived with a girlfriend?”

The scoff that came out of Aiden made me jump just because it was so unexpected. “No.” His tone sounded either disgusted or disbelieving that he would do something so stupid. “I’ve never been in a relationship.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Ever?”

“Ever,” the smug-ass responded.

“Not even in high school?”

“Definitely not in high school.”

“Why?”

“Because every relationship will end up one of two ways: you’ll end up breaking up, or you end up marrying the person. And I don’t like wasting my time.”

That had me tipping my head back so I could meet his eyes. His expression said he thought I’d lost my damn mind, but my mind was too busy to be lost. He had a point about the outcome of relationships, but the rest of it… His lack of dates. The religious medallion around his neck. It all suddenly made sense.

“Are you…” I couldn’t get it out. “Are you saving yourself for marriage?”

He didn’t throw his head back and laugh. He didn’t flick me on the forehead and call me an idiot. Aiden Graves simply stared at me in the shadowy room, his face inches from mine. When he was done staring at me, he blinked. Then he blinked some more. “I’m not a virgin, Vanessa. I had sex a few times in high school.”

My eyes bulged. High school? He hadn’t been with anyone since freaking high school? “In high school?” My tone was as disbelieving as it should have been.

He picked up on what I was trying to hint at. “Yes. Sex is complicated. People lie. I don’t have time for any of it.”

Holy. Shit. I watched his face. He wasn’t lying. Not even a little bit. That suddenly explained what the hell he did in his room for hours by himself. He masturbated. He masturbated all the time. I felt my face get hot as I asked, “Are you a born-again virgin?”

“No.” Those lashes lowered over his eyeballs again. “What would make you think I was?”

“You’ve never had a girlfriend. You don’t ever go on dates.” You jerk off all the time. Crap, I needed to stop thinking about him and his hand and all the time he hung out in his room.

Aiden was definitely giving me a ‘you’re an idiot face.’ “I don’t have time to bother trying to have a relationship, and I don’t like most people. Women included. ”

I wrung my hands, which were still between our two bodies. “You like me a little.”

“A little,” he repeated with only a small curve to the corners of his mouth.

I let his comment go and reached forward with one of my index fingers to point at the St. Luke’s medallion around his neck. “Isn’t this a Catholic saint? Maybe you’re religious.”

His big hand immediately went up to touch the quarter-sized object he carried around with him always. “I’m not religious.”

I raised my eyebrows, and he gave me an exasperated expression.

“You can ask whatever you want.”

“But will you answer?”

He huffed as he settled that massive, mostly nude body in front of me. “Ask your damn question,” he quipped brusquely.

I held the tip of my index finger directly above his medal before drawing my hand back toward my chest, feeling uber shy. I’d wanted to ask him for years, but I’d never been confident enough to. What better moment than when he was commanding me to ask? “Why do you always wear it?”

Without a hint of reservation, Aiden answered. “It was my grandfather’s.”

Was that my heart making a racket?

“He gave it to me when I was fifteen,” he went on to explain.

“For your birthday?”

“No. After I went to go live with him.”

His voice was smooth and comforting. Everything about it had me closing my eyes, sucking up his words and giving me this sense of openness. “Why did you go live with him?”

“Them. I lived with my grandparents.” The bristles of his beard touched my forehead again. “My parents didn’t want to deal with me anymore.”

That was definitely my heart making all kinds of horrendous noises. This all felt too familiar, too painful even for me.

Possibly too painful even for Aiden.

What Aiden was saying didn’t add up with the man across from me. The one who rarely raised his voice in anger, hardly ever cursed, rarely fought with any of his opponents much less his teammates. Aiden was a low-level charge—determined, focused, disciplined.

And I knew way too well what it was like to be unimportant.

I wasn’t going to cry.

I kept my eyes closed and Aiden kept his secrets close to his heart.

His breath touched my forehead. “Did you ever go to therapy?” he asked. “After what your sisters did?”

Maybe this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have after all. “No. Well, I went to a psychologist when I left my mom’s house. Well, when CPS took custody. They only asked questions about what things were like where my mom was concerned. Not about… anything else really.” In hindsight, I figure they wanted to be sure I hadn’t been abused by her or anyone else she could have brought into her kids’ live. The psychologist must have seen something in my older sisters that he didn’t like because we got split up into different houses. Honestly, I’d never been happier than I was after that.

How messed up was that? I couldn’t even bother feeling that guilty about it, especially not when we’d gone to a good family with strict but caring adults. Not like what I’d had before. “I don’t like being scared. I wish I wasn’t, and I’ve tried not to be,” I blabbered on mindlessly, feeling defensive all of a sudden.

He reared back, and I could tell he was looking at me with an uncertain expression. “It was only a question. Everyone is scared of something.”

“Even you?” I made myself meet his eyes, easily batting away the defensiveness I’d felt a moment ago and clinging onto the subject change.

“Everyone but me,” came his smooth, effortless response.

That had me groaning. The bright beam of light between us was throwing shadows over parts of his face. “No. You said it. Everyone’s been scared of something. What about when you were a little kid?”

The silence went thoughtful just as thunder made the windows rattle. I subconsciously touched him right between the pecs with my fingertips.

“Clowns.”

Clowns? “Really?” I tried to imagine a tiny Aiden crying over men and women with overly painted faces and red noses, but I couldn’t.

The big guy was still facing me. His expression clear and even, as he dipped his chin. “Eh.”

God help me, he’d gone Canadian on me. I had to will my face not to react at the fact he’d gone with the one word he usually used only when he was super relaxed around other people. “I thought they were going to eat me.”

Now imagining that had me cracking a little smile. I slid my palm under my cheek. “How old were you? Nineteen?”

Those big chocolate-colored eyes blinked, slow, slow, slow. His dark pink lips parted just slightly. “Are you making fun of me?” he drawled.

“Yes.” The fractures of my grin cracked into bigger pieces.

“Because I was scared of clowns?” It was like he couldn’t understand why that was amusing.

But it was. “I just can’t imagine you scared of anything, much less clowns. Come on. Even I’ve never been scared of clowns.”

“I was four.”

I couldn’t help but snicker. “Four… fourteen, same difference.”

Based on the mule-ish expression on his face, he wasn’t amused. “This is the last time that I come over to save you from the boogeyman.”

Shocked out of my mind for a split second, I tried to pretend like I wasn’t, but… I was. He was joking with me. Aiden was in bed joking around. With me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I was just messing with you.” I scooted one more millimeter closer to him, drawing my knees up so that they hit his thighs. “Please don’t leave yet.”

“I won’t,” he said, settling on his pillow with his hands under his cheek, his eyes already drifting to a close.

I didn’t need to ask him to promise not to leave me; I knew he wouldn’t if he said so. That was just the kind of man he was.

“Aiden?” I whispered.

“Hmm?” he murmured.

“Thank you for coming in here with me.”

“Uh-huh.” That big body adjusted itself just slightly before he let out a long, deep exhale.

Without turning around, I laid the flashlight down behind me and aimed the beam toward the wall. He didn’t ask if I was really going to leave the flashlight on all night—or at least however long the battery lasted—instead, I just smiled at him as I took my glasses off and set them on the unused nightstand behind me. Then I tucked my hands under my cheek and watched him.

“Good night. Thank you again for staying with me.”

Peeking one eye open, just a narrow slit, he hummed. “Shh.”

That ‘shh’ was about as close to a ‘you’re welcome’ as I was going to get.

I closed my eyes with a little grin on my face.

Maybe five seconds later, Aiden’s spoke up. “Vanessa?”

“Hmm?”

“Why was I saved on your work phone as Miranda P.?”

That had my eyes snapping open. I hadn’t deleted that entry off the contacts when I quit, had I? “It’s a long, boring story, and you should go to sleep. Okay?”

The “uh-huh” out of him sounded as disbelieving as it should have. He knew I was full of shit, but somehow, knowing he knew, wasn’t enough to keep me from falling asleep soon after.

And when I woke up when it was still dark outside, rain pattering the windows, it took me a moment to realize where I was: on my bed, and I was doing my best to imitate a blanket.

Aiden’s personal human blanket.

One of my legs was thrown over his thigh, a forearm was flopped across his bellybutton, and the top of my head was literally nestled onto his bicep. My freaking mouth was an inch from his nipple.

What in the hell was I doing?

Moving my head slightly back, I found Aiden on his back with his palm acting as his pillow—where his pillow was, I had no idea—and his other arm, the one who’s biceps I was using as a pillow, was wrapped around my neck.

Pulling my leg and arm back so that I wasn’t acting like a massive octopus, I slowly rolled over, keeping my head where it was. I tried to imagine what Aiden would have thought if he’d woken up and found me in that position, and I didn’t want to know.

What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I didn’t know who he was trying to fool, because he wasn’t fooling anyone.

The black knit beanie he had pulled down to nearly his eyebrows wasn’t hiding anything. Neither were the sunglasses he’d left on even after we got out of the car. Sure his hoodie mostly hid just how developed those big muscles underneath it were, but a nearly three-hundred-pound man wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

It was like dressing an elephant in camouflage.

In this case, it was a sports superstar going into a college-level basketball game trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with the most minimal effort. That was the thing about Aiden, he never really went out of his way to go incognito. He just preferred being a hermit at home to avoid being spotted. Hence why I’d been hired. I understood. I really did. He valued his privacy, and in my heart, I knew he would be the exact same way if he weren’t famous.

Yet here he was, walking into a basketball stadium with me in Denton, Texas, where there was going to be at least a few hundred people in attendance, all to watch my little brother play.

When I’d gotten up early that morning, the day after Thanksgiving, the last thing I expected was to find Aiden awake at the breakfast nook. Usually the day after a game, he slept like the dead and even went as crazy as to get an extra two or three hours more of snooze time. With the Three Hundreds’ game falling on Thanksgiving Thursday, the team gave the staff and players the rest of the weekend off.

But there he’d been at nine in the morning, in the kitchen, in his pajamas, eating an apple, looking just as surprised to see me awake as I was to see him. After dinner the night before, we’d watched two episodes of “Dragonball Z,” and then Aiden had tromped upstairs to hit the sack.

“Where are you going?” he had blatantly asked that morning.

“My little brother has a game,” I answered him as I made my way toward the fridge to make breakfast.

Holding the apple up to his face, his features went pensive. “What kind of a game?”

It was then that I realized I had never told him. “He plays college basketball for Louisiana.”

The Wall of Winnipeg blinked. “What position?”

“Point guard.” I wasn’t sure why, but I suddenly asked, “Do you want to come? It’s only an hour away.”

“I was planning on resting today…” He kind of trailed off and shrugged. “What time do you want to leave?”

Yeah, I’d been dumbstruck for a second.

It had only taken me the entire drive to decide that maybe I should have left him home. It wasn’t like I cared if fans came up to him or anything—he was what he was—but I hadn’t taken into consideration that he might not enjoy being gawked at for hours if anyone recognized him.

And why wouldn’t anyone recognize him? He was the face of a professional NFO team in Texas. Even people who didn’t watch football knew who he was with the big-name endorsements he had.

I then reminded myself that Aiden was always well aware of the pros and cons to the decisions he made. Always. He was a big boy and he made his own choices, so screw it. If he wanted to tag along, who was I to say no? I kept my mouth closed and my advice to myself.

And so, hours after my invitation, we were at the coliseum where the university held their games. Finally getting a chance to watch my little brother play for the first time this season, I was pretty excited both to see the team’s starting point guard and to have The Wall of Winnipeg tagging along when he was usually content to stay home.

After picking up the tickets I’d bought on the way from will-call—I had originally only purchased one—we made it through security without any issues. In no time at all, we found our section and Aiden gestured me to go ahead of him down the stairs.

The stadium wasn’t anywhere near being packed. Considering it was the day after Thanksgiving, most of the North Texas’s students were probably with their families, doing things other than going to a basketball game. There were only a couple handfuls of Louisiana colors in the stands. It suddenly explained why we’d gotten such good seats at the last minute.

By the time we sat down, the game hadn’t started yet, but it was almost time for the players to come out. I smiled over at Aiden when he was seated next to me, the side of his denim-clad knee touching mine. I reached over and patted his thigh. I mean, I’d sat on his lap. He’d slept in the same bed as me. I’d given him a hug. What was a little pat in comparison? “Thank you for coming.”

His careful expression slowly melted into a flat one. His words were clear cut. “Shut up.”

I stared at him for all of two seconds before grinning and touching his thigh again with a snort. “What? I can tell you thank you as much as I want.”

“Don’t.”

I ignored his comment. “I’m glad you came. Doing things with someone else is a lot more fun than being alone, even if you’re telling me to shut up. I appreciate it. So sue me.”

Aiden made an exasperated sound. “I’m going to find the bathroom. I’ll be back.”

I gave him a thumbs-up before he got to his feet, which earned me an annoyed look, and then he disappeared up the stairs. I sat there drumming my fingers on my kneecaps waiting for the players to come out of the locker rooms. Someone tapped on my shoulder from behind, and I glanced back to see three guys in their early twenties sitting forward, eager expressions splashed all over their faces.

“Hi,” I said a little uncertainly, wondering what was going on.

One guy elbowed the other one, and the third cleared his throat as he scratched behind his ear. If there was one thing I knew, it was people who felt awkward, and these guys were it.

“Is that Graves?” the one in the middle who had gotten the elbow asked.

Shit.

“Who?” I smiled sweetly, using my best dumb-girl eyes along with it.

“Aiden Graves,” the friend said, like that would help if I really had no idea who that was.

Was I supposed to admit it was him? Or continue playing like I’d never heard of Aiden? A part of me wanted to go with the latter, but if someone caught a really good look of him and confirmed that it was him…

Well, Aiden wasn’t the type to run away from anything.

So I dropped the doe eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Our secret.”

From the way they reeled back, they were either shocked or they didn’t believe me. All three of them blinked for a second before suddenly snapping out of it.

“It’s really him?” One of them whispered.

The one in the middle muttered, “Holy fuck,” before going a little pale.

“He’s even bigger in person,” the one on the right muttered, turning in his seat to look around like Aiden would have magically reappeared in just a couple of minutes.

The guy was right though. Pictures didn’t do him justice. Hell, I was used to seeing Aiden up close and personal all the time, and I still hadn’t become desensitized to him.

“What is he doing here?” the one on the left asked.

It was a fair question. Aiden had gone to college in Wisconsin. “My brother plays for Louisiana,” I explained, deciding to go with the truth again. I mean, I couldn’t really pull off a lie well anyway.

“Are you his girlfriend?”

The guy in the middle hit his friend on the right with his forearm. “Don’t be a fucking idiot. Obviously she’s his girlfriend, dumbass.”

“You’re both dumbasses,” Lefty stated. “He got married. I saw it online.” A hesitant look came over his face as he glanced at me. “Didn’t you?”

Shit. Well, I did this to myself. In for a penny, in for a pound. My face got all red and hot even though I was trying to will it not to. “Yep.”

“I’m not surprised. I love your hair.” Righty smiled.

Yeah, my face went a little hotter and I shifted in my seat, conscious that I was two weeks past when I needed to do something with the fading teal color in my hair or just color over it. “Oh, thanks.”

“Dude, would you shut the fuck up? Graves can eat you if he doesn’t kill you,” his friend, the guy in the middle, whisper-hissed.

I took that as my cue to turn around and face forward. They kept arguing behind me in whispers. Should I have played dumb?

Sometime later, in the middle of a little girl singing the National Anthem, Aiden’s big-ass butt plopped down into the seat next to mine. I tucked my elbows in to give him more room just as he handed over a souvenir cup filled with what I had a feeling was going to be Dr. Pepper. He had a bottle of water in his other hand.

I leaned over and patted the top of his hand. “Thank you, big guy.”

He made sure to meet my eyes before leaning into me in return; his tongue poking at the inside of his cheek. “You don’t have to thank me all the time.”

“Shut up.” I used his line on him, earning me a head shake and a flash of a tiny grin in return from the man whose face was about four inches away from mine. Just as he started to pull away, I tugged on his hoodie sleeve so he could come closer.

He did. Aiden was so close the side of his bristly jaw brushed the tip of my nose. I didn’t jerk back, but I stayed in place, letting that wonderful clean scent coming off his skin fill my nostrils. “Those guys sitting behind us recognized you,” I whispered.

Aiden shifted his face just enough so that his mouth brushed my earlobe. “Did they say anything to you?” That gritty, deep voice seemed to go straight to the center of my chest.

It took everything in me not to shiver as his breath hit the sensitive spot on my neck. “They asked if you were you and I said yes.” I had to swallow as another soft puff of breath hit my neck. “And they know we’re… you know… together.”

He didn’t react.

“I didn’t know what to say. Sorry,” I whispered.

That had him pulling back just enough to give me a dry look. “Vanessa—”

I beat him to it. “Shut up.”

“I was going to tell you to stop saying sorry, but that works too.”

Did he just smile at me? Did he just smile smugly at me? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure, but I was going to take it as a yes. Yes, he had just smiled at me playfully.

And that had me blinking once. My heart beating twice. “In that case…”

“Shut up,” he finished for me.

I burst out laughing as I reached into my purse and pulled out a red apple I had hidden under my scarf to get it through security, and handed it over. “What a good boy. If you behave, I might have a smashed up Vega bar in my pocket for you.”

I didn’t know what it said about me that I carried snacks around for him, but whatever. He was like my puppy I had to make sure ate enough. You know, a massive puppy that made my insides feel discombobulated from time to time. Yeah, discombobulated. It was that bad.

He took the apple from me and reclined into his seat just as the teams’ centers approached the middle of the court for tip-off. How the hell had I missed the players getting on the court? I took off my jacket, rolled back my shoulders, and prepared to cheer on my brother.

“Which one is he?”

I pointed at the six-foot-three, pale-skinned idiot who I used to put on dresses for fun when we were younger. “Number thirty.”

“He’s taller than I thought he’d be,” Aiden noted absently.

“I think his dad was tall.”

Aiden glanced at me briefly. “You don’t have the same one?”

“No. At least, I’m pretty sure we don’t. I’ve never met mine as far as I know.” And by that I meant, I’d never had any man pick me up and tell me I was his as a kid. My little brother’s dad hadn’t paid much attention to me when he’d been around. When I saw Aiden out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his face was tight. His jaw jutting. “What is it?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You’ve never met your father?”

My neck went a little hot and for some reason I got embarrassed. “No.”

“Do you look like your mom?”

I reached up to mess with the leg of my glasses. “No.” My mom was a blonde, somewhat pale and she was only five-five. I was more peach-skinned, my hair a natural brown with a little red, and taller than the rest of the women in my family. “My friend Diana’s mom used to tell me she thought my dad must have been Hispanic or maybe Mediterranean or something, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Have you always been tall?”

If I really strained and stood up straight, I was almost, almost five eight. “My sisters used to call me The Blind Giraffe.” Where’s The Blind Giraffe at? Bitches. “I was all legs and glasses—ooh look. They’re about to play.”

From the first time I jumped to my feet to cheer on my brother, I could tell Aiden wasn’t prepared for what kind of fan I was. At least, what kind of fan I was for my little brother. By the beginning of the second half, he had started leaning away from me, fussing and whispering, “You’re scaring me,” after I got to my feet and started yelling at the ref for a shitty call made against Oscar, my little brother.

But it was the way he made his eyes go wide during halftime and pretend to shrink even further away from me that made me laugh.

“Who are you?” he deadpanned, which made me snicker.

“What? I was the same way at your game yesterday.”

Those black eyelashes hung low over his eyes. “Zac’s seen you?”

I nodded.

Aiden blinked. “I think I want my jersey back.”

I blinked back. “Tough shit, sunshine. It’s mine now.”

The corners of his mouth had barely started to pull up when someone yelled, “The Three Hundreds suck! You suck, Toronto!”

What in the hell?

Just as I started to glance around to see what idiot was yelling, Aiden’s index finger touched my chin. I stopped. “Don’t bother.”

“Why?” I tried turning my head, but apparently his finger had Hulk-like strength because it didn’t go anywhere.

“Because I don’t care what he thinks,” he said in a tone so serious I quit trying to look elsewhere and focused in on that handsome, grave face.

“But it’s rude.” His hand moved from my chin around to the back of my head, that big palm cupping my neck. His thumb to the tip of his middle finger seemed to stretch nearly all the way around my throat.

“Do you think I suck?” he asked me, seriously, in a voice low enough for only me to hear.

I snorted, about to open my mouth and say something really smart-ass, but his thumb dug deep, the pressure making me groan out a hoarse noise of holy shit, do it again. But somehow I managed to say, “No,” instead.

“Then why would I care what someone else thinks?” he murmured, steady and confident.

I didn’t lower my face as I told him the truth. “I can’t help it. I didn’t like people talking about you when I worked for you, and I like it even less now.”

Those dark brown eyes bore into mine. “Even when you used to flip me off?”

“Just because you’ve made me mad doesn’t mean I ever stopped caring about you, dummy,” I whispered in a frown, totally conscious of the guys sitting behind us. “I would have done just about anything for you back then, even when you got on my nerves. I might have just waited until the last minute to push you out of oncoming traffic, but I’d still push you out of the way.”

I tipped my head in the direction of where the idiot had yelled from a minute ago. “Now it’s definitely going to bother me that you’re just minding your own business, living your life, and someone you don’t know is yelling that kind of stuff. That guy doesn’t know you. Who is he to talk shit to you?”

Damn it, just thinking about it had me craning my neck to try and turn around, but the hand on my neck kept me in place. All that intense Aiden-focus burned through the flesh of my skin, through the calcium of my bones, and straight into the very root of me. His nostrils flared at the same time as his thumb did that circle-massage thing that made my leg go numb.

“The only people in the world who can hurt you are those you let have that ability, Van. You said it—that guy doesn’t know me. In my entire life, I’ve only cared what four people thought about me. I’m not worried about that nobody back there, understand me?” His hand moved, one finger slipping behind my ear to rub around the shell where it met my head. Dry and callused, it was probably the most intimate thing anyone had ever done to me.

Words—breathing—life seemed to catch in my throat as I took in those incredibly long lashes framing such potent eyes. The line of his shoulders was imposing and endless. His face was so severe and thoughtful, it plucked at my heart, but somehow, somehow I got myself to nod, the world in my throat. “I get it.”

I did. I got it.

Did he care what I thought? He explained himself, his decisions and his thoughts. But what did it mean?

He’d said he had four people in his life, and I now figured those had been his grandparents and Leslie. Who was the other person whose opinion mattered to him, I wondered?

I bit the inside of my cheek and let out a shaky breath. “I know you don’t care what that asshole thinks, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to pretend he punched me in the arm. You’d just have to be my ‘witness.’” I smiled weakly at my joke. “Team Graves, right?”

Aiden didn’t smile back.

His forehead tipped forward, and before I could react, before he said another word to me, he leaned forward, forward, forward and pressed his mouth just to the side of my mouth. A peck. A shot better than tequila, made up of friendship and affection and organic sugar.

When he pulled back, just a few inches, just enough for our eyes to meet, my heart pounded this crazy rhythm that might have been a borderline heart attack. I couldn’t help but smile. Nervous and confused and overwhelmed and completely caught off guard, I had to gulp.

“GO BACK TO DALLAS!” the man sitting somewhere behind us yelled again, and the hold Aiden still had on the back of my neck tightened imperceptibly.

“Don’t bother, Van,” he demanded, pokerfaced.

“I’m not going to say anything,” I said, even as I reached up with the hand furthest away from him and put it behind my head, extending my middle finger in hopes that the idiot yelling would see it.

Those brown eyes blinked. “You just flipped him off, didn’t you?”

Yeah, my mouth dropped open. “How do you know when I do that?” My tone was just as astonished as it should be.

“I know everything.” He said it like he really believed it.

I groaned and cast him a long look. “You really want to play this game?”

“I play games for a living, Van.”

I couldn’t stand him sometimes. My eyes crossed in annoyance. “When is my birthday?”

He stared at me.

“See?”

“March third, Muffin.”

What in the hell?

“See?” he mocked me.

Who was this man and where was the Aiden I knew?

“How old am I?” I kept going hesitantly.

“Twenty-six.”

“How do you know this?” I asked him slowly.

“I pay attention,” The Wall of Winnipeg stated.

I was starting to think he was right.

Then, as if to really seal the deal I didn’t know was resting between us, he said, “You like waffles, root beer, and Dr. Pepper. You only drink light beer. You put cinnamon in your coffee. You eat too much cheese. Your left knee always aches. You have three sisters I hope I never meet and one brother. You were born in El Paso. You’re obsessed with your work. You start picking at the corner of your eye when you feel uncomfortable or fool around with your glasses. You can’t see things up close, and you’re terrified of the dark.” He raised those thick eyebrows. “Anything else?”

Yeah, I only managed to say one word. “No.” How did he know all this stuff? How? Unsure of how I was feeling, I coughed and started to reach up to mess with my glasses before I realized what I was doing and snuck my hand under my thigh, ignoring the knowing look on Aiden’s dumb face. “I know a lot about you too. Don’t think you’re cool or special.”

“I know, Van.” His thumb massaged me again for all of about three seconds. “You know more about me than anyone else does.”

A sudden memory of the night in my bed where he’d admitted his fear as a kid pecked at my brain, relaxing me, making me smile. “I really do, don’t I?”

The expression on his face was like he was torn between being okay with the idea and being completely against it.

Leaning in close to him again, I winked. “I’m taking your love of MILF porn to the grave with me, don’t worry.”

He stared at me, unblinking, unflinching. And then: “I’ll cut the power at the house when you’re in the shower,” he said so evenly, so crisply, it took me a second to realize he was threatening me…

And when it finally did hit me, I burst out laughing, smacking his inner thigh without thinking twice about it. “Who does that?”

Aiden Graves, husband of mine, said it, “Me.”

Then the words were out of my mouth before I could control them. “And you know what I’ll do? I’ll go sneak into bed with you, so ha.”

What the hell had I just said? What in the ever-loving hell had I just said?

“If you think I’m supposed to be scared…” He leaned forward so our faces were only a couple of inches away. The hand on my neck and the finger pads lining the back of my ear stayed where they were. “I’m not.”

As if the peck he’d given me hadn’t done enough damage, the way he said that sent my heart pounding again. My chest flushing hot. Everything I thought I knew seemed to spiral out of control.

He was messing with me. Flirting with me. Aiden Graves. What was this?

It didn’t help that, before I managed to get my heart back in shape or get my head on straight, my phone started vibrating. When I saw the incoming message as a picture from Diana, I didn’t think much of it.

But when I unlocked the screen and saw the picture, it only sent me reeling all over again.

She had attached a shot of her television. On the screen was a picture of Aiden and me sitting in the stands just minutes before, his face so close to mine, his arm around my back. It looked… well, I didn’t know what exactly it looked like, but Aiden and I were laughing. I could see what it didn’t look like.

It didn’t look like this thing between us was fake.

But then it got me thinking. Had Aiden just been extra friendly and flirty because he suspected this would happen?

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was the garage door opening and closing at noon the following Monday that had me saving my work.

Neither one of the guys should have been home that early.

Zac had just gotten back from south Texas the night before, and he typically hadn’t been getting back from training until three or four. On Mondays, Aiden didn’t get home earlier than three. It was the shortest day for him out of the week, and after having the weekend off following their Thanksgiving Day game, there was no way he’d get home earlier. Mondays usually just consisted of a visit with the trainers, a workout, lunch, and a couple of different meetings that included watching the last game’s film.

So who the hell was home, and why?

I got up and called out, “Who’s home?” When there wasn’t a response, I jogged down the steps to make my way toward the kitchen and paused when I spotted Aiden drinking a glass of water. “What the hell happened to your face?” I just about shouted the second I caught sight of the red and purple along his jaw.

He set the glass of water down on the countertop and gave me a flat look. “I’m fine.”

He was so full of shit. I made my way around the island anyway. “I didn’t ask if you were fine. What the hell happened?”

He didn’t reply as he stuck his hands under the sink’s fountain sensor and splashed water on his face. What the hell did he do? Aiden rarely got into fights. Hell, he’d told me why they were so few and far between, and I’d never heard a better reason for it. He didn’t have an explosive temper; he usually just bumbled around at being irritated all day.

As he dried his face, I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer, wincing when he set the towel aside, giving me an up close look at the bruises that were going to take up a good portion of his face in a few hours.

Did I realize he was trying to avoid talking about whatever happened? Of course. I just didn’t care.

Handing over the ice pack the instant he’d thrown away the paper towels, I took a step back and took in his features again in disbelief. “Did you get jumped?”

“What?” His gaze swung over to me as he frowned just a little bit. He was insulted. He was genuinely insulted. “No,” he snapped, not in a mean way.

“Are you sure?” I asked hesitantly. Sure, he was huge, and sure, in raw strength, he definitely had 99 percent of other men beat, but if there were multiple larger-than-average guys trying to beat him up, it could happen. Right? Just thinking about that possibility suddenly pissed me right off.

Pressing the ice pack against the line of his jaw, he shook his head just the tiniest bit, his eyes doing this dismissive flutter. “I didn’t get jumped.”

His assurance wasn’t doing it for me, damn it, and I was getting angrier by the second. I touched his arm. “Tell me what happened, Aiden.”

“Nothing.”

Nothing. The right side of my mouth went tight. “You beat yourself up then?”

That scoff said more than the word “No” did.

“Then…” I trailed off, not giving this up.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I’d already known that from the beginning. But as stubborn as he was, I was too. And I wasn’t going to let it go because this right here, the clear signs of him getting into a fight with someone on his team was a sign of the apocalypse. Aiden didn’t give enough of a shit about his teammates to care what they said about him or to him.

He’d said it at the game, there were only a few people he’d ever met whose opinions mattered to him. And I knew that wasn’t something he said for the heck of it. He meant it.

I’d been trying my best since Friday not to think about the basketball game we’d gone to. Or at least, I’d attempted not to think about what he’d said to my sister’s husband or how he’d looked at Susie like he wanted to kill her. The memory of him grabbing my hand and walking with me to the car in silence as anger marred that handsome face, had drilled a hole straight into my heart. Then, as we’d sat in my car, he’d said, “I’m sorry I didn’t go with you.”

All I’d managed to do was sit there and frown. “To where? El Paso?” His response had been a nod. “It’s fine, big guy. It’s all water under the bridge now.” I couldn’t help but reach over and put my hand over the top of his. “That was nice of you to stand up for me, by the way.”

Well, I thought it had been more than nice, but the realization of what I thought I felt was something I never wanted to voice.

Then Aiden had gone and done it as he faced forward out of the windshield, teeth gritted, jaw tight. “I’ve let you down too many times. I won’t do it again.”

Just like that, this feeling of dread poured through my stomach, making me antsy. He’d spent the rest of the weekend more remote than normal. While he hadn’t become outgoing since we’d begun getting along a lot better, Aiden had retreated into himself a little more. He’d worked out and finished and started another puzzle, which was his telltale sign that he was trying to work something out in his head or relax.

It all suddenly made me nervous, and a little, tiny, baby bit worried. Pulling one of the stools at the island back, I plopped into it and simply stared at that discolored, harsh face in unease. “I just want to know whether I need to steal a bat or make a phone call.”

His mouth had been open and poised to argue with me… until he heard the last thing I said. “What?”

“I need to know—”

“What do you need to steal a bat for?”

“Well, no one I know owns one, and I can’t go buy one at the store and have it caught on videotape.”

“Videotape?”

Did he know nothing?

“Aiden, come on, if you beat the shit out of someone with a bat, they’re going to look for suspects. Once they have suspects, they’ll look through their things or their purchases. They’ll see I bought one recently and know it was premeditated. Why are you looking at me like that?”

His mauve-colored eyelids went heavy over the bright whites of his eyes, and the expression on his face was filled such a vast range of emotions, one after another after another, that I wasn’t sure which one I was supposed to hold on to. He switched the icepack to the other side of his bruised jaw and shook his head. “The amount you know about committing crimes is terrifying, Van.” His mouth twitched under the rainbow of whatever he was thinking. “It scares the hell out of me, and I don’t get scared easily.”

I snorted, pretty pleased with myself. “Calm down. I went through this phase when I was into watching a lot of crime TV shows. I’ve never even stolen a pen in my life.”

Aiden’s careful expression didn’t go anywhere.

“I’m not trying to kill anyone… unless we had to,” I joked weakly.

His nostrils flared so slightly I almost missed it. But what I didn’t miss was the way the corners of his mouth tipped up into a tiny smile.

I smiled at him as innocently as possible. “So do you want to tell me who’s going to get the fists of fury?” I hoped I sounded as harmless as I intended, even though I felt the exact opposite as every second passed.

“Fists of fury?”

“Yep.” I held up my hands just a little so he could see them. He had no idea the number of fights I’d gotten into with my sisters over the years. I didn’t always win—I rarely won if I was going to be honest—but I never gave up.

The sigh that came out of him was so long and drawn out, I kind of prepped myself for the half-assed answer that was going to come out of his mouth.

“It’s nothing.” There it was. “Delgado—”

The brakes in my head came to a screeching halt. “You got into it with Christian?”

He glanced at me through those incredibly long eyelashes, moving the ice pack a little lower on his jaw. “Yes.”

That dreaded feeling in my stomach got worse. “Why?” I hopefully asked as calmly as I could, but I was pretty sure it came out relatively strangled.

Please, please, please. Don’t let it be why I think it might be. Christian had been a creep on Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t like he’d made grabby hands at me.

Aiden’s face said it all. His mouth opened slightly and the tip of his tongue touched the corner of it. That brief silence was cold. “You could have told me,” he accused.

I gulped. “Told you what?”

His gaze was through the thick row of his eyelashes, and I caught his hand flexing over the icepack. “What he did to you. How he acts around you.”

Zac. I was going to wring his neck. “I’ll tell you what I told Zac: it isn’t a big deal.”

The big guy went stone-cold still. A muscle in his jaw popped and a vein in his neck throbbed.

“It is a big deal, Vanessa. Zac mentioned it to me right before he left, but I thought if it was a big deal, you would have said or done something about it. You didn’t.” He leveled that dark, angry gaze at me, his jaw tightening. “I saw the way he looked at you after the game. I heard the way he talked to you while I was right there. He knows we’re married, and he still did that shit.”

Did he just cuss for the second time in a week?

“I am not okay with that,” he claimed in that incredibly deep voice, his spine straight and shoulders back. “I’m not fine with you always thinking you have to deal with things on your own.”

Remorse filled me, but only for a second. I straightened my own back and glared right back at him. “You didn’t have to get into a fight with him over it, Aiden. I don’t want that guilt on my head. The last thing I want is for you to get angry with yourself later.”

Plus, what would I have done back then? Told Aiden his teammate had tried coming on to me? He wouldn’t have done anything. I knew that. The Aiden from a few months ago knew that, too.

“I did have to, and I would do it again.”

I blinked. Then I blinked a little more, having to look up at the ceiling so that I could collect my words. A touch at the side of my jaw had me tipping my head back to look into those deep brown eyes.

Everything about him was serious and intent. “I know you think I wouldn’t care,” he said in that whisper voice that bled solemnness, “but I would. I do. We’re in this together.”

My mouth suddenly dry, I nodded. “Yes.”

“Trust me, Van. Tell me. I won’t let you down.”

Yeah, my throat and tongue thought they were the Sahara. My eyes on the other hand wanted to be the Amazon. I didn’t even realize I needed to sniffle until I did it. As much as I’d been telling myself over the last two days that I’d imagined being a wee bit in love with him, my heart held on to the truth. I was. I hated it, but I was. I recognized it, sensing that stir in my chest. I was falling, if not more than a little, in love with Aiden. My husband of convenience.

And it was terrible. I had no right. No business to do so. This was an agreement between two people who barely spoke to each other. How could I do this for the next five years? What the hell was I going to do with it?

I had no idea.

“You believe me, don’t you?” he asked, tearing me out of my thoughts.

I made myself focus on the face that was as familiar to me as the rest of my loved ones’ were; that tight mouth, the hard lines of his cheekbones, the thick slashes of his eyebrows. Control and discipline in flesh and bone.

I nodded, forcing myself to give him my best easygoing, total-liar smile. “I do. Of course I do.” I touched his forearm. “Thank you again for standing up for me.”

He grumbled, “Stop it.”

I smiled a little more genuinely. “I have this cream for bruises, let me go grab it.”

Aiden jerked his head back like I was about to try to shove a hot dog in his mouth. “You know I don’t care about bruises.”

“Too bad. I do. He can be black and purple tomorrow—and I freaking hope he is—but I’d rather you didn’t.” I winced at the small crack in his lip. “What did he have to do? Take a running start to reach your face?”

Aiden burst out laughing, not even grimacing as his cut split wide.

“Seriously, Aiden.” I reached up to touch his bruised jaw gently with my fingertips. “Did he sucker punch you?”

The big guy shook his head.

“He actually managed to get a fair shot in?” I wasn’t going to lie. I was a little disappointed. Aiden getting punched was almost like finding out Santa Claus wasn’t real. He’d gotten into a handful fights in his career before—I’d seen footage of it online when I shared it on his fan page because people were vicious and loved that kind of thing—and while he wasn’t this hotheaded asshole who liked to get into it for no reason, each time it happened, he beat the shit out of whoever tried to start something with him.

It was impressive. What could I say?

Then he gave me that dumb look that drove me nuts and I frowned. “No. I made sure he hit me first, and I let him do it twice before I hit him back,” he explained.

This sneaky son of a bitch. I didn’t think I’d ever been so attracted to him before, and that included all the times I’d seen him in compression shorts. “So he’d get blamed for it?”

One corner of his mouth pulled back in a smug half-smile.

“Are you going to get into big trouble?”

He raised a big shoulder. “They might just dock my game check. They won’t sit me out. We’re too deep into the season.”

That had me choking. “A game check?” That was thousands. Hundreds of thousands. A stupid amount of money. Everyone in the world could look up his annual salary online. All that money was split up into seventeen total payments deposited throughout the regular season. All that money. I had to bend over and slap my hands against my knees, already on the verge of gagging. “I’m going to throw up.”

The sigh he let out went in one of my ears and out the other. “Stop. You’re not going to throw up. Let me shower, and then I’ll put that cream on,” he said, patting me on the back lightly.

He was wrong. I was going to throw up. How the hell had he just upped and thrown away that much money? And for what? All because Christian was an idiot who thought common rules of society didn’t apply to him?

I knew Aiden. I knew he had the self-control of a saint. He thought his decisions through. He didn’t even enjoy beating someone up, or something like that. He had thought enough about what he was going to do, to know that he wanted Christian to get the first punch in. I wasn’t going to think he hadn’t taken the repercussions of getting into a fight into consideration.

And he’d done it for me.

What a fucking idiot. He could have just given me the money and that would have been enough to make me forgot about that weasel trying to shove his tongue down my throat while attempting to grab my butt over a year ago.

But as much as I thought of how dumb it was to lose a game check, this burst of something special and warm filled my heart before quickly being replaced by guilt.

I ran upstairs, grabbed the stinky bruise salve that worked like a miracle, and headed back down, knowing what I needed to do to help ease the responsibility I felt for what happened. I grabbed a few things out of the freezer and the pantry and turned on the oven to make a quick meal for my off-white knight in shining armor.

When he came down the stairs a little later, the quinoa had just finished cooking and I’d turned off the stove.

“Smells good,” he commented, going around to grab a glass from the cabinet and filling it up with water. “What are you making?”

“Chana masala,” I told him, knowing he’d be well aware of what it was.

I wasn’t surprised when he made a hungry noise as he leaned a hip against the counter and watched as I lined one of the big mixing bowls I used to always put his meals in with bagged spinach. I peeped at him out of the corner of my eye and took in the coloring along the solid lines of his face.

It pissed me off.

“What’s that face for?” the man I’d once assumed didn’t know much about me asked as I measured two cups of the grain and dumped it into the bowl.

Shrugging a shoulder, I put three cups of the chickpea mixture over everything. “Your face is making me mad.”

He snickered and I groaned, realizing just how that came out. “I didn’t mean it like that. You have a fine face. Very good-looking.” Shut up, stupid. Just shut the hell up. “It’s your bruises. I feel bad. I should have done something about it when it happened instead of making you deal with it.”

Passing the giant bowl over, he held it between us, catching my eyes. His face was pensive and as open as it got, but what I realized was there wasn’t a trace of residual anger left on him. He really wasn’t bothered by what happened, not at all. “Don’t worry about it. I did what I wanted to do.”

He always did what he wanted to do. What was new? “Yeah, but it happened a long time ago.”

“And that makes me feel even more responsible, Van.”

I frowned. “For what?”

“For everything. For not noticing. For not caring. For not making you feel like you could tell me things.” His voice was hoarse and just a little ragged.

My heart hurt.

I really hurt in that split second following his admission.

Realistically, it wasn’t like I hadn’t known that we hadn’t been BFFs when I worked for him. I’d known, damn it. I’d known. But to hear him say it….

It felt like an ultra-fresh burn to a delicately skinned place. That place being right between my breasts. The most important place of all.

It took every single ounce of emotional maturity I had in me not to… well, I wasn’t sure how I could have reacted. But I did realize, the more I suppressed the hurt, that I couldn’t—shouldn’t—hold him being honest against him. It wasn’t news. He hadn’t cared about me, and he’d taken me for granted. At least he realized it now, right?

Yeah, telling myself that wasn’t helping much. My eyes really wanted to get teary, and I wasn’t going to let them. It wasn’t his fault.

I made sure to meet his eyes. “It’s all right. You did something now.” I took a step back. “Enjoy your food. I started putting up the tree this morning, but I stopped to return some e-mails. I’m going to go ahead and finish it.”

Those chocolate-colored eyes roamed my face for a second and I knew, though he didn’t say anything, that I’d been caught.

Whether he didn’t want to deal with me being a softie or if he understood my need to lick my wounds in private, he kept his words to himself and let me walk out of the kitchen with my heart a little burned around the edges.

I’d left a huge mess in the living room that morning. A bomb seemed to have gone off in a pile of tissues, and boxes were strewn everywhere. I’d gone shopping the day before to buy Christmas ornaments and decorations, and spent so much money, but I hadn’t minded because this was the first year I’d really have a tree of my own. I hadn’t bothered putting one up at my apartment because I was gone so much and there really hadn’t been room. Instead, I’d put up a three-foot pre-lit tree with glued on ornaments. This year though, the little tree was now in my bedroom.

Here, at Aiden and Zac’s, I scored a seven-foot Douglas pine that Zac had helped me carry and set up the night before. In a house full of tall men, there wasn’t a single step ladder in the vicinity, so I’d resorted to dragging a stool into the living room to help me reach the places I couldn’t on my own. The lights had gone on this morning, and I’d squeezed in some ornaments too.

I usually loved putting up a Christmas tree. We’d had one at my mom’s house a few times, but it wasn’t until I was with my foster parents that putting up a tree and decorating became a big deal. It had started to mean something to me. Climbing onto the stool, I couldn’t ignore the thought circling back around in my head.

He hadn’t given a shit about me.

Or at least, he hadn’t appreciated me.

That second idea was just as bitter as the first one.

I worked in silence for a little while, wrapping a beautiful red ribbon around the branches then stepping back to adjust it. I had just started opening up more boxes of ornaments when I sensed the other presence in the room.

Aiden was standing between the hallway and the living room, and his gaze was sweeping through the room, taking in the rest of the decorations I’d put up. The reindeer candles, a sparkly red Christmas tree made of wires, the wreath on the mantel, and finally, the three hanging stockings.

The three hanging stockings that I’d stitched sequins onto the night before, spelling out the first letters of each of our names. Black for Aiden, green for Zac, and gold for me.

Eventually, he tore his gaze away from the stockings and asked, “Need help?”

I’m not going to take this personally, I told myself. “Sure.” I held out the box I’d just opened in his direction.

Aiden took it, glancing from the decorations to the tree and back at me. “Where do you want them to go?”

“Wherever.”

Taking a step closer to the object of our decorative talents, he shot me a look. “Where do you want them to go, Van? I’m sure you had it planned out.”

I did, but I wasn’t going to give my help any shit. “Anywhere as long as they aren’t too close together…. Really. I just don’t want them close together…. And maybe keep them toward the top since those are small. Big ornaments go closer to the bottom.”

The sides of his mouth twitched, but he nodded seriously and went to work.

We stood there in front of the tree for the next hour, side by side. His arm brushed mine, my hip brushed his, and more than a couple of times, he caught me trying to climb up on the stool before he plucked whatever ornament I had in my hand and put it up himself. Neither one of us said much.

But once we were done, we took a couple steps back and took the seven feet of gloriousness all in.

I had to say, it was beautiful even if it looked a lot smaller with Aiden next to it. Red and gold with hints of green here and there, glass ornaments hanging from long branches, ribbon circling it—it was the kind of tree I’d dreamed about as a kid. I glanced at Aiden. His face was clean and thoughtful, and I wondered what he was thinking about. Instead though, I went with a safer question. “What do you think?”

His nostrils flared just a little and a soft, soft, soft smile perked up the corners of his mouth. “It looks like something from a department store.”

I rubbed at my arm and smiled. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

The firm man nodded. “It’s nice.”

It’s nice? From Aiden? I’d take it as ‘it’s amazing’ from just about anyone else. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it, the happier it made me, and the more grateful I was for all I had to be thankful for.

Thanks to Aiden, I was living in a wonderful house. Thanks to Aiden, I had money to buy the decorations, ornaments, and the tree. And thanks to Aiden, I had managed to save up enough money to pursue my dreams.

Maybe we hadn’t been soul mates, and maybe he really hadn’t cared about what I added to his life until I was gone, but I had so much because of him. And I would continue to have so much because of him too. That knowledge softened the hurt from an hour ago enough for me to clear my throat and say, “Ai—”

He interrupted me. “Are you putting up lights outside?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Diana’s horrified face warned me about what she was going to say before she actually vocalized it. “Get inside before anyone sees you,” she practically hissed.

I made sure she watched me roll my eyes as I brushed past her into her apartment. Yeah, I knew I had about an inch of my natural hair color peeking out from my roots, but I didn’t really care. The only reason why I hadn’t dyed it back to its normal reddish brown was because I’d texted her for the first time since Thanksgiving to ask what box of dye at the pharmacy she recommended, and gotten:

You’re already on my last nerve. Buy it and I’ll kill you.

Which was why I found myself driving an hour to go visit her on her day off a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, putting up with the sneer on her face as her gaze roamed over my hair again. I swear she might have even shuddered a little.

Her repulsion wasn’t enough to keep me from kissing her on the cheek and giving her butt a slap in ‘hello.’ It had been way too long since we’d last seen each other. She’d pretended to be mad long enough.

She gave me a parting smack in return as her eyes wandered over me briefly. “Besides your hair, you look really good.”

I felt really good. “I’ve been running four days a week and riding a stationary bike once a week.”

Diana eyeballed me again. “You should probably buy new clothes soon.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged and looked her over, not so subconsciously looking for finger-shaped bruises on any of her exposed skin. I didn’t find any, but I did notice the bags under her eyes. “You look tired.”

The fact she didn’t flip me off when that would have been her normal reaction didn’t hit me until much later. “I am tired. I’m glad you noticed.” She knew better than to wait for me to apologize. “I’ve been working doubles, I’m not getting enough sleep. I’m turning into you.”

“A successful, hardworking woman. I think I’m going to shed a tear.”

“Oh, fuck off. Go into the kitchen and take your shirt off,” she cracked up. I didn’t even get a chance to make a joke about her wanting me to strip before she stopped me with a hand. “This isn’t Striptease. I’m not giving you a dollar or taking you out to dinner first.”

“Fair enough,” I muttered and made my way into the kitchen where I peeled my T-shirt over my head.

“So… how have you been?” she asked slow and purposely awkward.

I used the same dull tone. “I’m fine. And you?”

“Good,” my robot-voiced best friend replied.

Our eyes met and we both smiled. She shoved at my shoulder and I tried to pinch her stomach. “Are we fine now?” I asked with a laugh.

“Yeah, we’re fine. Now tell me everything I’ve missed.”

We spent the next hour talking. I told her about Thanksgiving and going to Aiden’s game. Twenty of those minutes consisted of us going over the day of my little brother’s game, how Susie had showed up, what Aiden had said to her husband, and then explaining the hatred on the big guy’s face as he’d stared at my sister. I told her about him helping me with the Christmas tree and lights. How he got into a fight with Christian, whom she remembered clearly from that night at the bar because she’d threatened to kick his ass after I told her what had happened.

By the end of it, she had me under a helmet that looked like something out of the NASA space program, and she looked dazed.

“Jesus,” she said twice.

“I thought I was over this stage in my life.”

“No shit. It’s like something out of those novelas my mom watches.”

“The same ones we used to watch with her,” I pointed out. It was how I’d learned Spanish.

Diana laughed from the spot she’d taken in front of me, sitting with her legs crossed. “We would run home after school and watch them, didn’t we?” She made a wistful noise. “It seems like forever ago, huh?”

It really did. I nodded. They were some of my fondest memories before I’d been moved across town and never experienced them again. While living with my mom had left me with a handful of good memories and a dozen terrible ones, it had still been everything I’d known.

Di seemed to brush off whatever distant memory she was thinking of and asked, “What are you gonna do then?”

“With what?”

“With your husband. Who else?”

She could have been talking about my sister. Smart-ass. “Nothing.”

Diana gave me this expression that said, ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ “Don’t ‘nothing’ me. You’re still goo-goo with him. I can see it.”

I opened my mouth to tell her I wasn’t goo-goo over anybody, but she did her hand thing again, stopping me.

“You’re really gonna try and lie to me? I can see it, Vanny. Hello. You can’t sneak anything by the master.” I’d snuck my marriage by her, but why bring that up? “Seems to me like he likes you too. I don’t think he’d spend so much time with you if he didn’t.”

All I could do was let out a restrained grunt.

“You’re gonna be together for the next five years. Why not make the best out of it?” she brought up.

I wanted to mess with my glasses, but I kept my hand lowered. “We made a deal, Di. This was supposed to be business. It isn’t his fault I’m an idiot.”

“Why are you an idiot? Because you want someone to love you?”

“Because he doesn’t love anything. He doesn’t want to. How awkward would it be if I did or said anything? I’m not going to back out on our deal now. He cares about me, but that’s all.”

If there was anyone in the world who knew me almost as well as I knew myself, it was her. And what she said next confirmed that. “Vanny, I love the hell out of you. You’re my sister from another mister, you know that, but you have a messed up conception of what you’re willing to work for and risk. I don’t know if he’s capable of loving you or not, but what’s the worse that will happen? You guys are married. He isn’t going to divorce you now.”

What was the worse that would happen?

I’d lose my friend.

Diana reached forward and tugged at the hem of my jeans. “Do whatever you want. I only want you to be happy. You deserve it.”

I scrunched up my nose, not willing to talk about Aiden any longer, every time I did, especially when it was with the L-word in the subject, it made my entire body hurt. I’d loved enough people in my life who didn’t love me back and didn’t bother hiding it. So I guess Diana was right—there was only so much risk I was willing to take.

That was depressing.

Clearing my throat, I pointed at the Christmas tree behind her, ready to talk about something else. I couldn’t believe the holidays were less than a week away now. When I’d worked for Aiden, time had gone by fast, but since I’d quit, it went by even faster than before. “When are you leaving for your parents?”

“I’m leaving Christmas Eve. I have to be back at work on the twenty-sixth,” she explained. “Are you staying here?”

Where else would I go?

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I’m in love.”

Watching Leo zoom from side to side across the tile floor, a vision of everything wonderful in the universe, I couldn’t help but agree with Zac. All three of us loved the little yellow ball of fur, and it had only been two full weeks. In that time, between Aiden and I, we’d potty trained the little turkey and set up a schedule. When the big guy was gone, I kept him with me and made sure to take him outside every couple of hours.

Leo was brilliant, and I completely regretted giving him to Aiden instead of keeping him. Not that it really made much of a difference who he belonged to since he technically spent more time with me anyway with his daddy gone all the time. With the Three Hundreds moving through the post season, advancing through the wild card bracket, they were entering the divisional playoffs. Their game was the next day, and needless to say, the man who insisted on carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders was feeling every inch of stress.

Needless to say, I was giving him a wide birth and trying to be as supportive as I could, which meant I’d been making enough dinner to feed everyone in the household. Aiden was Jedi-level focused, and when he was home, he spent all the time he could with his new kiddo, while also resting as much as possible.

“I love him,” I said as the little guy trotted over to where we were sitting at the nook, draping his body over my sock-covered foot. “He sleeps on my lap for hours while I’m working. It’s so hard not to want to keep him on me all day.”

Zac leaned down to give him a rub with the tips of his fingers, but Leo was out cold. We had gone for a twelve-mile run at the gym where he was training, and immediately afterward took Leo out of his crate, which Aiden kept in his room, and let him run around in the backyard. Sitting straight, Zac took a big drink of the lime green Gatorade bottle sitting in front of him. “Are you goin’ to the game tomorrow?”

“I was planning on it. Did you want to go?”

He went back to peeking under the table. “You have anybody else to go with you?”

Since that first game, Zac hadn’t gone with me to any of the rest. I’d been going alone. “I can go by myself. It isn’t a big deal.”

“I know you can go by yourself, but it’s a division game. It’ll be nuts.”

I crossed my eyes. “I grew up with three psychos. I can handle nuts.”

Zac raised his eyebrows and I realized what the hell I said. I could handle nuts. Idiot.

I groaned. “You know what I mean.”

He grinned big, wide, and so not innocent. “Just for you, I won’t say nothin’.” The doofus winked. “Look, I’ll go with you tomorrow. Just make sure Aiden gets us good seats since you think you’re too good to sit in the box.”

“Too good to sit in the box?” I squawked. “I just don’t want to get friendly with the other players’ wives. That’s all.”

That had Zac sitting back with a frown. “Why?”

“I told you.” Or was it Aiden I told? I couldn’t remember. “I feel like a phony.”

“You’re not a phony.”

I lifted up a shoulder. “I feel like one. Plus the season is almost over. Who knows what’s going to happen. He hasn’t kept me in the loop at all about what’s going on with Trevor or even brought up when he’s leaving for Colorado this year.” Honestly, I hadn’t thought too much about him leaving for the offseason because I didn’t want to. The one and only time I had, it had made me sad to think about not seeing him for months at a time. I’d rather live ignorantly than with this weight of missing someone who wasn’t gone around my shoulders. Plus, he would tell me when he was leaving… wouldn’t he?

“He hasn’t told me a single thing, Vanny, and the last time I talked to Trevor, it was just to go over what my goal for the offseason was,” Zac explained.

That gave me an excuse to forget about Colorado for the moment and remember that what Aiden decided to do with the rest of his career didn’t just affect me; it affected Zac too. If he went to a different team, it wasn’t like Zac would go. Things had been so strained between them the last couple of months, that I had no idea where they stood. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“My old Texas coach gave me a call a few weeks ago. Said he was plannin’ on retiring this year, and he’s from a town real close to Ma’s. I think I might end up heading back to Austin to work with him.”

Austin? I gulped selfishly. “Really?”

“Yeah. It wouldn’t hurt to go home. I told you how guilty PawPaw made me feel during Christmas,” he explained. Zac said his grandpa kept reminding him he wasn’t getting any younger.

Then the second step of the future hit me. Sure we’d only been living together for five months, but… we might end up in different states. Forever. I’d be essentially losing Zac, one of my closest friends. What kind of messed up, self-absorbed dimension had I been living in to not contemplate these outcomes?

He must have seen the despair on my face because he let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. “Why you gettin’ upset, sugar?”

“Because I won’t be seeing you anymore,” I said with every ounce of horror I felt. “You’re basically my second best friend.”

“Ahh shit, Van. You’re basically my best friend, too.” Those blue eyes widened for a moment. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you these last few months.”

I had to reach up to swipe at my eyes with the back of my hand. I’d been the biggest crybaby since Christmas, and I had no reason for it. “Why am I getting so upset? We’ll still text message each other, right?”

“Of course we will. Of course we will. Come on.” Were his eyes getting shiny? “Gimme a hug. You’re gonna make my mascara run.”

I laughed even as I threw my arms around him. “You’re an idiot, but I love you.”

With two arms slung over my shoulders, his chest gurgled beneath mine in what sounded like a watery chuckle.

“You don’t have to do the marathon if you don’t want to,” I let his shirt know.

“You haven’t put me through hell for me to back out on you now, darlin’. We’re doin’ it.”

“But if you’d rather go to Austin sooner than later…”

“We’re doin’ this,” he insisted. He pulled back, his hands going to my upper arms so he could peer down at me. “You know you’re gonna be all right, don’t you?”

“Doing the marathon or if I have to move with Aiden?”

Those light blue eyes narrowed down at me. “I’m not worried about you doin’ the marathon. You got that thing in check. I meant movin’.”

“Oh, yeah.” I shrugged. “I’m not that worried about it. I don’t do much here in Dallas anyway, and Aiden’s been keeping me company a lot more.”

Part of me expected him to say something like “I’d noticed” because he’d been teasing me mercilessly from the moment he came home after the New Year and seen the ring Aiden had bought me. The fact I only took it off when we went running didn’t help. Instead though, Zac nodded, his smile easy. “He’ll make sure you’re fine.”

That had me snorting. I wanted to tell him about Aiden and how I’d been feeling but… I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Every day this thing with him just got stronger. Worse. How do you fall in love with the man you’re supposed to divorce in a few years? I was an idiot, and sometimes I didn’t want to face the facts of just how stupid I was.

I wasn’t really convinced of the idea that Aiden would make the effort to make sure I settled in okay in a new city. I knew what his main focus in life was, and it definitely wasn’t me. “How are things going with both of you anyway? Has it gotten any better?” I hadn’t really seen them talk much in the last few weeks, not that they ever talked much to begin with, period.

“All right.” His answer was as innocent as I expected. “Why?”

“I haven’t really seen you two talk. I was just wondering if something had happened.”

Zac shook his head. “No. Things are different now. That’s all. He doesn’t know what to say to me, and I don’t know what to say to him either. The last time I tried to talk to him he lectured me on how it was my fault I got cut from my team. I know it’s my fault, but I don’t wanna hear him say that. Look, don’t worry about him and me; I’m not the one who’s got his ring on my finger. You two are gonna be fine.”

Wait a second…. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what.” He winked.

“No. I don’t know.” I didn’t like where this was going, and I definitely disliked the intelligence in his eyes even less.

When Zac put a hand on the top of my head and gave me a pat, I crossed my eyes. “Don’t be a dunce. He got into bed with you—”

“Because I was scared!”

“He got into a fight for you, Van. If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does.”

“Because—”

He apparently didn’t care what I had to say. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. I know how you’ve always looked at him.”

No.

“You’ll never meet anybody more loyal than him, Van, and I don’t know anybody better that Aiden could have ended up with. You might be the only person in the world who can put up with his ass. I just hope you two do something about it and not waste time.”

I could only stare at him blankly.

It was the garage door opening that snapped us both out of the stare down we were having. By the time we separated, with Zac thinking he knew some dirty little secret and me not sure what the hell was going on, Aiden had opened the door to the garage. Leo shot up from beneath the table, bounding toward his daddy.

Immediately crouching down, Aiden scooped up his blond ball and hoisted him up into those brawny arms that seemed so at odds with the now ten-pound puppy. His eyes swung from Leo to Zac then to me. I was sure we looked pretty suspicious just standing there like deer caught in the headlights, but oh well.

I smiled at him, hoping I didn’t look as flustered as I felt. “Hey, big guy.”

“Hi.” With the arm that wasn’t holding Leo up, he reached up to stroke down the length of Leo’s spine, his irises bouncing back and forth between Zac and me once more. Walking toward us, he tipped his chin down to nuzzle the puppy before stopping in front of me and dipping his cheek to plant a soft, dry kiss on my cheek that had me rooted in place.

What the hell was happening?

What in the hell was happening?

“I’m going to shower,” Zac said, shooting me a smirk that said ‘See?’ With a smack to my lower spine, he left the kitchen, leaving me there alone, confused and wondering if this was a dream I hadn’t woken up from.

Restraining the urge to pinch myself, I gulped and glanced at Aiden as my insides went haywire. “How was your day?” I pretty much croaked out.

The big guy shot me a funny look as he rubbed the other side of his cheek against Leo’s fur. “Fine. Meetings and practice.” Aiden had Leo so high up, the puppy’s body hid everything below his eyes. “How was your run?”

“Tiring. We did twelve miles on the hill setting at the gym.” He kissed Leo’s nose and something in me died. “Your kid’s already run around outside, and he’s pooped and peed.”

At ‘your kid’ a small smile curled the corners of Aiden’s mouth. Those brown eyes switched back to me and asked, “You’re still coming to the game tomorrow?”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course. Is that fine?” I’d gone to every home game since that first one with Zac. While Aiden hadn’t invited me to any games away, I hadn’t invited myself either. I didn’t want to spend the money when I could go to a perfectly good game minutes from our house.

Aiden made a noise on his way toward the refrigerator. “Don’t ask me stupid questions, Vanessa.”

“Well. I don’t want to just assume, thank you.”

He huffed and said over his shoulder, “You know I would tell you if I didn’t want you there.”

“I figure, but you never know.”

Aiden’s attention was forward when he replied with something that had me wondering if he was dying. Or delusional. Or maybe this entire moment was just a dream. “You don’t ever have to worry about me not wanting you somewhere. Got it?”

And like the idiot I was, the one who didn’t know how to process hints, or roll with things in a clever, cute way, I said the dumbest thing I could have said, “Oh. Okay.”

Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

It haunted me the rest of the day.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tossing the fifth shirt over my shoulder, I groaned. It wasn’t until I had to pack that I ever thought I didn’t have enough clothes. It was like a ninja snuck into my closet and drawers and stole everything that fit me well and looked good.

“What are you doing?” Aiden’s low, grumbling voice asked from behind me.

I turned around to spot him leaning against the doorframe, hands in the pockets of his gray sweatpants, one ankle over the other. I blew a lock of pink hair that had fallen into my eyes away in frustration. “I’m trying to pack for my trip tomorrow.”

“What’s the problem?”

Damn it. I sighed. He really did know me, and that only made me feel sheepish. “I can’t find anything I want to wear.” That was mostly the truth. The other half of the truth was that I’d been pretty grumpy since his last game when he’d admitted he was going to Colorado after kissing me like it was no big deal. He was leaving in two weeks. For two months.

He raised his eyebrows as if telling me to continue, only egging on my nerves.

“I feel like I’m going to the first day of school tomorrow. I’m so nervous,” I admitted the other tiny part of it.

Aiden frowned as he uncrossed his legs and took a step inside my room. “About what?” he asked, bending down to pick up two of the shirts that had landed on the floor. Setting them on the bed, he took a spot right next to them on the mattress facing me.

“The convention.” This was exactly how I’d get before the first day of school. The nerves. The nausea. The dread. The worry about who I would sit with. If anyone would actually come by my table. What the hell had I been thinking registering? It wasn’t like I was starving for business. I got a steady flow of new customers, on top of my returning, loyal clientele.

“It’s a book convention. What are you worried about?” He picked up the last shirt I’d tossed on the bed and held it up, looking over the long sleeves and royal blue color. “What’s wrong with this one?”

Nerves were eating up my chest and my soul, and he had no idea or any way to comprehend what I was going through. I didn’t think Aiden knew what insecurity was. I ignored his comment about the shirt. “What if everyone hates me and no one talks to me? What if someone throws something at me?”

Aiden snorted, setting the shirt he’d been holding aside and picking up the next one on the pile. “What are they going to throw? Bookmarks?”

That had me groaning. “You don’t understand…”

Aiden peeked at me from over the collar of the blouse, and from the wrinkles around his eyes, I could tell he was smiling just a little bit before he put it on the other side from where he’d left the blue one. “No one is going to throw anything at you. Relax.”

I swallowed and went to take a seat on the bed next to him, his thigh touching mine. “Okay, probably not, but what if… no one comes by my booth? Can you imagine how awkward that would be? Me sitting there all alone?” Just thinking about it was making me anxious.

Shifting on the mattress, he reached over and touched my thigh with his fingertips. The smile on his face melted completely off and he stared at me with that hard, serious face. “If no one goes by your booth, it’s because they’re stupid—”

I couldn’t help but crack a little smile.

“—and they don’t have any taste,” he added, giving me a squeeze.

My smile might have grown a little more.

“I looked at your website. I saw the before and after images of what you’ve done. You’re good, Van.”

“I know I’m good—”

His chuckle cut me off. “And people think I’m cocky.”

I elbowed him in the arm with a laugh. “What? I am. There’s not a lot of things I’m really good at, but this is the one thing no one can take away from me. I’ve worked hard at it.”

The expression on Aiden’s face hinted at amusement as he held up the blue shirt he’d previously set aside. “Then you know you have nothing to worry about. Take this one with you.”

I grabbed the shirt he held with a huff and nodded, quietly folding it. I moved around the room and collected the other things I wanted to take with me. I was only spending two nights, I didn’t need a whole bunch, but I was still taking more than enough just in case. I’d rather have too many shirts than not enough.

I kneeled down to grab my carry-on luggage from beneath the bed, casting a glance at him as he folded the shirts I’d set aside that I wasn’t taking.

He caught me looking at him and only slightly raised his eyebrows. “Stop looking like you’re going to be sick, Van. You’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that, but then again you’re not intimidated by anything, big guy. You run at guys the same size as you or bigger for a living.”

His eyebrows crawled up even higher on his forehead. “Fear is all in your head.”

“I hate it when people say that.”

“It’s true. What’s the worst that will happen? People won’t talk to you? They won’t like you? People who really know you like you.”

“Trevor doesn’t.”

Aiden gave me that flat, exasperated look of his. “Since when do you care what he thinks? Trevor is an idiot when it comes to anything that won’t make him money. So what if there’s a chance some people that you don’t know don’t like you? Their opinion shouldn’t matter. At the end of the day, you’re still going to be you—the you I know who would flip me off in the middle of a stadium—and no one’s opinion will change that.”

Oh brother.

This huge knot filled my throat and I couldn’t do a thing but kneel there awkwardly and look at him. To a certain extent, he was right. I didn’t usually care what other people thought. Of course, I didn’t like to be embarrassed, who did? But for Aiden “The Wall of Winnipeg” Graves, the hardest working, most dedicated person I had ever met, to think so highly of me? Well, it meant more to me than it should have.

Way more.

He finished folding the rest of my clothes and patted the stack next to him. “Am I driving you to the airport?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“My friends are coming to visit after I get back from the All Star Bowl.”

Leaning against the counter two days after we got back from Toronto, I gulped down the rest of the water in my glass and narrowed my eyes in Aiden’s direction. Sitting at the breakfast table, he’d greeted Zac and me when we’d dragged our feet inside following our run a few minutes ago.

I was exhausted, beyond exhausted, and with only three weeks left until the marathon, I was seriously beginning to doubt I’d be able to finish it. I’d been struggling to finish eighteen miles a week ago, so a little over twenty-six? Eighteen miles was more than I ever imagined I could do, so I realized I wasn’t appreciating the long strides I’d taken over the last few months. Needless to say, I was busy worrying about how the hell I was going to tackle eight more miles when Aiden made his comment.

I blinked at him. “What?”

“My friends are coming to visit…” He trailed off as if making sure I was listening. “After the All Star Bowl.”

I was listening, but I didn’t get why he was giving me a strange, expectant look. He’d learned he was voted into the All Star Bowl when we’d flown back to Dallas from Toronto. He was set to leave tomorrow. “Okay…”

“They’re coming to visit us.”

Slowly backing up toward one of the stools at the island, I slid onto it, forcing my sluggish, distracted brain to focus. Us. He’d said us. They were coming to visit—

Oh shit. “Us.”

He nodded solemnly, watching me closely.

Okay. “And they want to stay here?” I asked, even though it was a stupid question that I already knew the answer to. Every time his friends had come by in the past, they had always stayed with him.

Why would this time be any different?

Oh right, because I lived with him and stayed in the room that had always been used as a guest room.

And because we were legally technically married and had agreed to pull this charade off so neither one of us would get in trouble with the law.

Oh hell.

Realistically, it wasn’t the end of the world, and we could figure something out. We could. We would. It wasn’t a big deal. This was bound to happen at one point or another. “Okay. Do you… I can stay with my friend while they’re here if you want. You can pretend I went to visit someone.” Or maybe I could find a last minute getaway somewhere warm. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d gotten Diana to pretend to be sick so we could go somewhere.

Apparently, my comment irritated him. “This is your house too. I’m not asking you to leave because they’re coming. We knew this was going to happen. They want to see you too. It isn’t a big deal.”

Why did that seem to be his life’s motto when it was something that mostly only affected me? And why wasn’t I telling him that I’d met his friends in the past before and that it really wasn’t necessary for us to see each other now? It didn’t really matter if I was home or not, did it?

“I already told them you were going to be here,” he concluded.

There went my argument.

He scratched his jaw and my gaze stuck to the white-gold wedding band he’d started wearing right after Toronto. I wanted to ask him about it but I was too much of a coward to. “You’ll have to stay in my room,” he explained.

With him obviously. Where the hell else would I sleep? One of the guys usually took the bed and the other crashed out on the couch downstairs.

The problem wasn’t that I would just stay in his room.

The problem was that I would have to stay in his room with him, on his bed, was what he wasn’t telling him, but knew he was implying. It wasn’t like you could exactly hide a blow-up mattress, and I knew this diva sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep on the floor because neither was I.

It’s not a big deal, I told myself. It’ll just be like a sleepover. I’d done sleepovers a thousand times. Aiden and I were adults, sharing a bed didn’t mean anything. We’d already done it the night the lights went out. We’d done it again in Toronto when he surprised me. We would just be, literally, sleeping on opposite sides of a California king-sized bed. Doing it again shouldn’t cause me to lose any sleep over it.

Except for the small fact that I’d been carrying this love I felt for him around my neck since the book convention, and it had only gained weight each day we were together.

“Okay,” I found myself agreeing as my heart warned me I was asking for it. “That’s fine.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know, Van. They’re coming the day after I get back. It’ll work out,” he assured me.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Why are you staring at me?”

Could I have tried to play off the fact that I’d been lying in bed with my head propped up on my palm, staring at him? Absolutely not. What the hell else could I have been looking at? I’d been doing it for so long that, knowing Aiden, he’d waited to make sure I was doing what he thought I was doing.

Which I had been.

I’d woken up maybe ten minutes before and laid there, appreciating how cozy it was under the heavy covers and on the perfectly comfortable mattress. But when I finally forced myself to open my eyes, the first thing I saw was the big guy. Aiden was on his side, his hand pillowing his head. That normally harsh face was… well, it was still pretty rough. It wasn’t soft and dreamy; he honestly looked like he was thinking about bad plays in his sleep. His mouth was slightly open with the softest, even breathing coming out of it. With the covers pulled up to his chin, he looked too damn cute.

I hated it.

Why? Why him?

Of all the people in the world I could have chosen to think the world of, it had to be this one. The one who didn’t want a real relationship because he didn’t want to put time into it. The guy who only loved one thing in his life and everything else came trailing after it.

Then again…

He’d been making a serious effort to spend time with me. He’d done things for me that I still couldn’t completely wrap my head around. He’d been more than just friendly with me.

What did it mean though? Weren’t those part of the requirements mandatory in a real relationship? Wasn’t it enough to be with each other when you could, or was I just trying to convince myself there was something there? He’d kissed me. That couldn’t mean nothing, could it?

That was exactly what I was in the middle of thinking of—and eyeing those great lips—when he caught me. So all I could do was give him a closed mouth smile. “Why not?”

Cracking both eyes open, Aiden rolled to his back and stretched his arms high behind his head, rolling his wrists in the process as he yawned.

“Thanks for putting me in bed last night,” I said, watching the swift line of his throat as he yawned again.

He grumbled, “Uh–huh,” as he rolled his shoulders before slipping his arms beneath the covers again.

“And for giving me a massage.” I had already tried moving my legs, and sure they were sore, but I knew how much worse they could be. I’d done everything I was supposed to do to help prevent the stiffness, but there was only so much a body that wasn’t 100 percent to begin with could handle.

“There wasn’t much to massage.”

Uh. “What’s the supposed to mean?”

“I have more muscles in my glutes than you have in your thighs.”

Anyone who had seen Aiden’s ass would know that was a fact, so I wasn’t going to take it personally. Maybe because I was still so sleepy, I raised my eyebrows at him and said, “Have you seen your butt? That’s not an insult. It has more muscles in it than most people have all over their bodies.”

His own thick eyebrows rose about a millimeter, just slightly but enough for me to notice. “I didn’t know you paid that much attention to it.”

“Why do you think you have so many female fans?”

Aiden let out another low groan, but he didn’t tell me to stop.

“You could raise a small fortune if you ever auctioned off the chance for a person to take a—”

“Vanessa!” Mr. Proper reached over to throw a hand over my mouth, like he was shocked.

That big hand literally covered me from ear to ear, and I burst out laughing though it was muffled.

“You make me feel cheap,” he said as he slowly pulled his hand away, but the shine in his eyes said he didn’t really mind it that much.

I stretched my own limbs with a yawn. “I’m just telling you what anyone else would.”

“No, no one else would ever say that to me.”

So he had a point. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth then.”

He made this noise that had me rolling to face him again. “You always have.”

Why did it feel like he was trying to tell me something? “I’ll always try to be honest with you,” I lied, hesitantly. Unless it was something I was scared to tell him, like my feelings for him, or me quitting.

“You can tell me anything.”

How was I supposed to live my life after that? Especially when I was lying on his bed and he was sitting up next to me, sharing the same covers. I wished I had the guts to tell him anything, but the truth was, I didn’t.

There was only so far I was willing to jump on my own.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I stared at the screen of my phone until the MOM flashing across it finally bleeped out, replaced by MISSED CALL.

Not a single bit of me felt guilty for letting her call go to voicemail. Not one single freaking little bit. I’d call her back. Eventually. I was too tired after my run.

“Darlin’, you want somethin’ to eat?” Zac’s voice piped up unexpectedly from his spot across the kitchen.

I hadn’t even realized I’d zoned out so completely when my phone started buzzing. I raised my eyes to find my roommate with one hip against the counter, a spatula in his other hand. But it was the crutch he had shoved under his armpit that caught my gaze. I didn’t need to look around to know he’d left his other crutch propped up by the refrigerator. I’d found it there at least ten other times over the course of the last two weeks.

Yeah, crutches. The first time I’d seen them was when he and Aiden’s friends had showed up to the house, after spending hours at the emergency room thanks to a hairline fracture in his foot. Every time I saw them, they made me want to cry. Not because he’d broken some bones, which was terrible in itself, but because of what it reminded me of.

They reminded me of Diana’s face when Aiden and I picked her up.

Aiden had driven me to the hospital the minute I got myself together enough to explain what happened. How Diana had gone out with her coworkers and stayed out late. How her boyfriend had showed up to her apartment in the middle of the night, angry that she’d stayed out so late. Had she cheated on him? How many dicks had she sucked? Why hadn’t she invited him? She told me about how he’d then hit her and kept hitting her before storming out, enough so that she knocked on her neighbor’s door and had him drive her to the hospital. How she filed a police report against him.

I’d spent the next two days at her apartment so she wouldn’t be alone, listening to her tell me how wrong things had gone. How embarrassed she was. How stupid she felt.

I couldn’t remember much after that. I felt like I was in a dream. The guilt I felt for not making her tell me something was going on was suffocating, debilitating. Why hadn’t I said more? Done more? This was my best friend. I knew better. Hadn’t I lived with the lies of what was secretly going on at home for half my life?

Her black eye, busted lip and the bruises I saw all over her wrists and neck when I sat in the bathroom with her while she showered were seared into my eyelids. I wasn’t surprised at all when, on the second day, she said she wanted to go stay with her parents in San Antonio for a while. She wasn’t sure how long, she just knew she wanted to go be with them. I helped her pack two suitcases.

I knew Aiden’s friends were gone by the time the taxi dropped me off at home; there weren’t any cars other than mine in the driveway or street. Aiden had been in the nook when I first came inside. He’d walked up to me and hugged me without a word, letting me bury myself into that great big chest.

I’d been helpless countless times in my life—too many times really—and once more, as an adult, was nearly too much to bear. Because there was nothing you could do when someone you care about had something like that happen.

And the anger and the regrets ate you up.

In the days that followed, I couldn’t shake off the guilt or the disappointment in myself for not doing something or making Rodrigo, Diana’s brother, confront her. When I went to Aiden’s bed that night, and every night afterward because being with him made me feel better, he welcomed me without a word or expression of complaint. I didn’t feel like talking, and I’d gone to the only person in the world who would understand better than anyone what had happened to someone I loved.

Then the day came that he was set to leave for Colorado. He’d stood in front of me in his room, given me a hug, kissed my cheek, kissed my mouth gently, slipped something over my head and he left.

My friend was gone. My puppy with him.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone.

It wasn’t until he was out of the house that I looked down and saw what he had left me with. His medallion. The St. Luke’s medallion his grandfather had given him. It made me cry.

Zac, who I didn’t think knew how to handle the mood I was wrapped in, didn’t do much more than make sure I ate, and checked on me from time to time.

But nothing changed the biggest truth resting on my soul in the aftermath of Diana leaving: I missed the hell out of the big guy. Missed the shit out of him.

Good things in life were precious, and I’d been too much of a coward to do anything about the gift I’d been given, and it seemed like I was reminded of it every day.

From the moment he’d landed in Durango, Aiden had begun texting me. First with:

Made it.

Then he’d attached a picture of Leo sitting on the floor of the rental car he had for the next two months. Then a picture of him running through the snow at the house in Colorado.

A week passed in the blink of an eye. He sent me at least four text messages a day. Two of which were always of Leo, and the other two were usually something random.

Took your entire Dragonballs collection in case you’re wondering where it is, he’d let me know. I hadn’t even noticed the DVDs were missing.

Leo ate the toe of my runner while I was showering.

How’s your knee?

He sent me bits and pieces every day that tugged at me, only making me miss him more through the haze of sorrow surrounding my thoughts and heart.

After a couple of days of missing just about everyone I loved, I accidentally found the toy I’d bought from Rodrigo’s kids months ago. The small plastic clown had been hidden beneath a stack of papers I’d put in my nightstand. I’d bought it with the intention of putting it in Aiden’s shower as a joke, but I’d forgotten all about it.

It made me cry, these deep, belly tears that had me on the floor with my back to the bed. I cried for Diana who had looked beyond devastated at her boyfriend’s betrayal. I cried for my mom who I couldn’t find it in me to call back. And I cried because I loved someone who might not love me back no matter how badly I might want him to.

At the end of it, I got up to my feet, set that clown on the corner of my desk, and resolved myself to keep going. Because doing otherwise was not an option.

I dug into work with a vengeance; I got back to training even though my motivation had hitched a ride to a different continent. I’d retreated into myself more with this hole left in my heart, focusing on these things to distract me as I waited for the people I loved the most to come back to me.

Unfortunately in the process, I hadn’t been a good friend to Zac. I knew he’d been worried about me; it would have been the same if our shoes had been on opposite feet. I realized he still was worried about me.

Zoning out in the kitchen didn’t help anything, and I really had to dig in to manage to smile for him. “I’m not hungry yet, but thanks, Zac.”

He nodded a little reluctantly but didn’t press the issue as he faced the stove again. “What’d you do today? Eight miles?”

Planting my elbows on the table, I eyeballed his cast. “Yeah, and I did three at marathon pace,” I bragged. He’d run with me enough and cussed alongside me when we’d started adding marathon pacing to our runs. Zac knew it was hell.

As selfish as it made me, my disappointment had reached a level I didn’t know what to do with; the reality harsh and bitter. After everything that Zac and I had been through together, all the times we’d taken turns throwing up after we’d started hitting the seventeen-mile-long, slow, distance runs, the times one of us had had to help partially carry the other once we’d run out of steam thanks to training five days a week, all the aches and pains we’d shared… I was going to have to go on this journey on my own, without my closest companion.

The guy who had lost his favorite thing in the world and had let me force him into training for a marathon.

If that wasn’t friendship, I don’t know what was. It just made me feel more terrible about disappearing on him, even if it had just been because I didn’t want to drag him into the pit I’d fallen into, when now he had something else to contend with on his road to recovery and the rest of his career.

From the choppy sigh that came out of him, I already knew what he was going to say before it actually came out of his mouth.

“I’m so sorry, Vanny.”

And just like the other time he’d apologized for slipping off an icy curb by accident, I said the same thing. “It’s okay. I promise.” Was I slightly brokenhearted? More than slightly. Would I ever tell him that? No.

“It was stupid.”

The urge to rub right between my breasts was overwhelming. “It was an accident. I’m not upset with you.” My voice cracked and I had to swallow. “It’s just been everything. I’m fine, I promise.”

The expression on his face when he turned around said what his mouth didn’t: You’re not okay.

Was anyone ever totally okay though?

I found myself lowering my head to rub the back of my still sweaty neck. “You know you don’t have to stay here with me if you’d rather go back home, right?”

The original plan had been for him to go home right after the marathon, spend some time with his family, and then begin working out with his old college coach. Now? Well, I wasn’t positive, but I did know he was supposed to be moving out and he hadn’t yet.

Zac slanted me a look.

“What?”

“I’m not leavin’ until you do your damn marathon, all right?” he insisted.

“But you don’t have to, okay? I promise you have nothing to feel sorry for. If you change your mind and you want to go—”

“I’m not.”

Since when did we have three stubborn asses living at the house?

“But if you do—”

“I’m not. PawPaw can wait a week. He’ll probably outlive me,” Zac argued.

“If you want to stay, stay, but if you don’t want to, it’s all right. Okay?” I insisted too, trying my best to give him a reassuring smile.

He simply shook his head.

Just as he opened his mouth to say something, the doorbell rang and we shot each other a frown. “Did you order pizza?”

“No.”

I’d ordered a couple of my books that had gone to print a few days ago, but chose the free shipping option, so there was no way it was them. I shrugged at him and got up, walking slowly toward the door, trying to get myself to relax. When I glanced through the peephole, I took a step back and stared at the door blankly.

“Who is it?” Zac called out.

“Trevor.”

“What did you just say?”

“It’s Trevor,” I answered coolly, knowing he was already screwed by yelling. “Have you been ignoring his calls?”

“Maybe.”

That was a yes.

“I just won’t open the door then,” I said before there was a loud knock on the door.

“I can hear you!” Trevor bellowed.

I didn’t feel like dealing with this, now or a decade from now. “What do you want me to do?” I ignored the man on the other side of the door, all of a sudden not caring if he’d heard us or not.

Zac cursed from the kitchen and a moment later, his crutches hit the tile as he hobbled his way toward the front door. With a resigned sigh, he said, “I can get the door.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, even if inside I was kissing his feet for not making me have to put up with Trevor.

“Yeah.”

I took a step away. “Do you want me to stay down here?”

He hesitated for a moment before nodding. “I’ll take him into the living room so you can eat something.”

Nodding, I walked pretty damn quickly into the kitchen and busied myself pulling things out of the fridge to eat, despite still not being hungry, as Zac opened the door. I really tried to ignore them, but it was hard. Bits and pieces of conversation floated from the living room to the kitchen way too easily.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“What’s going on with you?”

“What am I supposed to do with you when there’s shit floating around the Internet about you falling outside of a club and breaking your foot?”

“You think anyone’s going to want to take you now?”

Now that comment had me taking a step away from the stove and toward the hallway that led into the living room, ready to tell Trevor he needed to shut the hell up. But Zac didn’t need me defending him. He’d been avoiding Trevor for a long time anyway, and even if he knew what he wanted to do, and I knew, he needed someone else in his corner.

I just didn’t necessarily want it to be Trevor the douche, but it was his career, not mine.

Almost an hour later, the sound of someone clearing their throat had me looking up from where I was sitting at the breakfast table with my feet propped up on one chair, a movie playing on my propped up phone, and a plate I’d just finished scraping the last bit of rice off of.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go with Aiden to Colorado,” the manager commented from his spot leaning against the framing between the hallway and the kitchen.

I raised my tired gaze to his and shook my head. “I couldn’t. I have something I have to do here in a couple of days,” I explained, purposely leaving out what happened to Diana and my run. He didn’t need to know, and what would he do anyway? Give me some half-assed apology I didn’t believe? “There’s no point in my flying back and forth,” my dry, monotone voice added on. Plus, it wasn’t like Aiden had invited me. He’d barely wanted to talk about it each time I’d brought it up.

The snicker that came out of him made me straightening my back. “He could afford it.”

And there it was. I blinked at him. “I make my own money, and I’m not going to waste mine or his.”

“You sure about that?” He had the nerve to raise an eyebrow.

Could he not tell this was the last thing I wanted to do? “Yes, I’m sure. You want to check my bank account?” I’d already had to send in copies of my bank account information to the government to prove I could support Aiden and me—in a much less lavish lifestyle, but I could if push came to shove, at least the government thought so.

Trevor made a small noise in the back of his throat that had me leveling my gaze at him.

I didn’t want to talk to him; now he was just downright pissing me off. “Is that what this is about? Do you think I’m here to blow all of Aiden’s money? Did you think I was trying to win him over or something?” I asked slowly, carefully trying to finally understand what it might be about my personality that had made him so hostile from the moment I’d started working for him.

From the way he pulled at his ear, in that nervous tick I’d picked up on years ago when he was frustrated, I’d hit the nail perfectly on the head.

“Really? You interviewed and hired me. I didn’t even know who he was until you told me.” Yeah, I was getting just as defensive as I thought I sounded. “You could have fired me if you had that much of a problem with it.”

“Fired you?” His hand went to the back of his trimmed, salt-and-pepper head. “I tried firing you at least four times.”

What?

Trevor’s lip snarled. “You didn’t know?”

“When?” I coughed out.

“Does it matter?”

It shouldn’t but... “It does to me.”

The angry, bitter man simply gazed at me like I was dumb. “He wouldn’t let me.”

You know nothing, Vanessa Mazur.

I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand at all.

“The last time I suggested we find him someone else, he said the first person that would go between the two of us would be me. Me.”

Some things just sort of clicked together. Why Trevor had always been such an asshole to me—prima ballerinas didn’t like dancing in anyone else’s limelight. Why he had fought so much to try to keep me from quitting—to save his own hide. Why he’d been so on edge since we got married and didn’t tell him—because it seemed like we were ganging up on him, which was a partial truth.

But the news made me reel.

It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet.

He’d liked me. Aiden had fucking liked me. He hadn’t been joking so many months ago.

The way Trevor cleared his throat was rough, catching, like he was trying to compose himself after losing his shit. “Anyway, tell Aiden I’ll be calling him soon. You two might be packing your bags and moving to colder pastures,” he noted. “See you.”

I didn’t say another word to him. What the hell else was there to say?

With shaking hands, I picked up my phone and typed out a message to the big guy.

Me: I didn’t know Trevor wanted to fire me.

An hour later, I got my response.

Aiden: Did he go by the house?

He wasn’t even trying to bullshit me.

Me: Yeah.

Aiden: Yes, he wanted to get rid of you. I didn’t let him.

Was he on crack?

Me: You didn’t say anything when I left. I just thought… you didn’t care.

Aiden: I wasn’t going to force you to stay if you wanted to go.

Me: But you could have said something. I would have stayed longer if you’d just asked.

I’d barely typed that out when I realized how stupid of an argument that was. If he’d asked. Aiden was like me, he wouldn’t have asked. Ever.

Aiden: I got you for longer, didn’t I?

Chapter Thirty

Why was I still doing this?

Why?

Why hadn’t I just said, “Van, who gives a shit whether you can run a marathon or not? You did more than you ever imagined you could. Who do you have to impress?”

As much as I hadn’t wanted it to, life had taken its toll on my head and confidence. Since everything happened, I’d barely been able to add another mile and a half to my distance, and that was pushing it. I walked and bitched while I did it, and afterward, I was so tired and my knee ached so badly, I crashed out on the bed after my shower and refused to get up.

Every sign said doing the marathon was a terrible idea.

Nothing changed the fact that I missed Zac’s company, and the way he motivated me to keep going even when we were both cussing about how stupid doing this was.

I had to do it. I’d trained for months. Not finishing wasn’t an option.

I could do it.

I wasn’t freaking the fuck out. Nerves weren’t making my hands shake. I wasn’t subconsciously rubbing over my ring finger every few minutes, searching for that token of Aiden he’d given me that I’d left at home because I was too scared to lose it. Aiden’s necklace was tucked under my shirt for good luck. Surrounded by so many people who were smiling and just seemed so fucking stoked to participate, it honestly disheartened me a little.

Twenty miles. I could run twenty miles. That was something to be proud of, wasn’t it?

I had barely thought that when I mentally smacked myself. Of course twenty miles was something, but I’d put my body through hell for these last few months for what? For this.

If I didn’t do this, I needed to get my ass kicked. Even if I came in fucking last, I had to finish it. Screw it.

I shook out my hands. I could do this.

“Are you Vanessa Mazur?” a voice to my right asked.

Finding a woman wearing a T-shirt that said she was volunteering at the marathon, I forced a smile on my face and nodded. “Yes.”

She thrust out a cell phone in my direction. “You have a call.”

A call? Gingerly taking the basic flip phone, I watched as she backed away before raising it up to my ear. “Hello?”

“Muffin,” the deep voice answered.

I pulled the phone away from my face and took in the screen, recognizing the number. “How the hell did you get this number?”

“I didn’t. Trevor did. I tried calling your cell, but it went straight to voicemail,” Aiden explained.

“Yeah, I left it in my pile of stuff,” I pretty much stammered, still trying to process that he’d somehow, some way, gotten in contact with me. He hadn’t called me since he’d left. We’d only communicated via text message, and the sound of his voice went straight to my heart.

In what had become a typical Aiden way, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“No.” I looked around to make sure the woman who handed me the phone wasn’t listening. There were too many people around, all living their own lives, worrying about themselves. “I’m trying to talk myself into doing this even if I come in last,” I admitted.

“You’re about to run a marathon. Do you think it matters if you come in last as long as you finish it?” he asked.

I blinked and let the anxious tears pool in my eyes for the first time. “But what if I can’t finish it?”

The voice on the other end let out a sigh. “You can finish the marathon. Graves aren’t quitters.”

Graves. Graves weren’t quitters. I didn’t want to cry. I wasn’t going to let myself lose it now of all times. At least not completely. “But I’m not really a Graves, and I haven’t even been able to finish twenty-six miles, much less twenty-six point two. Not once. I’m dying by twenty.”

“Vanessa,” he rumbled my name in a way that felt like a caress to my spine. “You’re a Graves where it matters. I don’t know anybody else who could do what you’ve done. Come out on top of what you have. You can do this. You can do anything, do you understand me? Even if you limp your way through the last sixteen miles, you’re going to finish it because that’s just who you are.”

This weird hiccup thing crept up my throat, and the next thing I knew, I dropped my hand away from my face to control myself. It didn’t take long, but it was the most difficult control I’d ever tried to get ahold of. With a few deep breaths, I put the phone back to my ear, emotion overwhelming my nostrils. “In case I die on my run, I want to tell you something.” I wanted to tell him I loved him. Fuck it. What the hell had I been waiting for?

He was a good man. The best type of man—for me at least. The more I thought about what was between us, the more I picked up on the breadcrumbs he’d been leaving for me for some time now. He cared about me. He more than cared about me. I knew it from the bottom of my soul.

“Tell me afterward. You’re not going to die,” he replied, smoothly with conviction.

“No, I need to tell you now just in case,” I insisted.

Aiden let out a sigh. “You’re not going to die. Tell me afterward.”

“But what if—?”

“Vanessa, you can do this. I’m not doubting you for a second, and you shouldn’t be doubting yourself either,” he demanded. “I know you’re hurting right now, but I’m willing to bet none of your sisters would be able to do what you’re about to do.”

He’d gone for the killing blow. The one thing in the world to resuscitate me. Aiden got me and he got me good. “I’ve got this,” I said in a muffled voice. I had to have this. There wasn’t a choice, was there?

“You’ve got this,” he repeated with more conviction. “You can do this.”

Now or never right? “I’ve got this.”

He made a light noise, a tender one. “That’s my girl.”

His girl? “I am?” I just outright asked him, hoping more than a little he wasn’t just… that was stupid, Aiden wouldn’t just say that.

“The only one,” he said it like there was no other choice in the world.

How could I not tackle universes with that kind of possessiveness from the most driven man I’d ever meet? “I might not be able to walk after I cross the finish line, but I’m going to do it. Can I call you after I’m done when I’m lying on a hospital bed?”

“You’d better.”

Epilogue

“IT’S OVER. THE SAN DIEGO GUARDS HAVE MADE THE COMEBACK OF A LIFETIME. THEY’RE GOING TO THE SUPER—”

I smiled, and bounced the two butts on each of my thighs as the television anchors went over the game that had finished an hour ago. Most of the game hadn’t gone the way anyone in the box wanted it to. Hell, I thought at least 70 percent of the audience hadn’t wanted things to go the way they had.

Because the Guards had been losing by fifteen up until the last quarter. The disappointment in the team’s family box had been tangible. Heavy and sedated, I thought we were all some degree of numb up through the beginning of the fourth quarter.

We all wanted them to win, but for me, I probably wanted it at a little more than everyone else in the room besides the worried mothers.

This was Aiden’s last season, and I’d known how badly he wanted to win. How much he wanted to go to the biggest game of them all. For once.

He was arguably the best defensive end in the league and had been his entire career. He’d won player of the year three more times since we’d gotten married, been to every All Star Bowl, and won achievements on television award shows… But he still hadn’t gotten a ring. The Ring. He had made it to the playoffs but the teams he was on had never made it to the championship before the big game until now.

And in this last season, the team had been doing so well, everyone had assumed this would finally be it. Then, it had all started to go terribly wrong, and the dream began to slip away. One of the linebackers had dislocated his shoulder. A cornerback had limped off the field after a play. The team’s defense had been in shambles. But in some sort of miracle, the Guards’ offense staged the comeback of the century, the defense got it together, and they won.

Seeing it with my own eyes didn’t help make it more believable.

They had won. They’d fucking won. I felt like I’d won. As if I’d be the one going to the big game in two weeks.

“You want me to take one of them?” one of the wide receiver’s girlfriends asked from her spot in the seat next to me as we hung out in the room that had been assigned for team members’ families.

I gave her an appreciative smile and shook my head. “I got it, thanks. I’m sure they’ll be out in a minute.”

The younger woman nodded, wringing her hands as she smiled wide. “Yeah. I can’t wait.” She bit her lip and looked around, her knees bobbing under the table. The energy coming off of her was infectious.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah.” She smiled. An early-twenties brunette, I knew she hadn’t been with her boyfriend for long. Last season, there had been a different woman who showed up to the family room for number eighty. “I want to scream. I can’t believe they did it.” Her voice had started to rise in volume before her eyes strayed to the two little monsters on my knees. “Matt said Aiden was planning on retiring after this season.”

There it went.

“Yep.” It was a bittersweet thing. For one, I was relieved. I’d read too many articles about the long-term effects football had on players’ brains and bodies over the last few years, and I knew Aiden had been more than relatively lucky in his career. He’d never really had any injuries that weren’t minor since that incident with his Achilles tendon so many years ago, and that was better than most other people had it. On the other hand, no one knew how much he loved playing better than I did. Football had been everything he worked hard for, and he was hanging up his cleats and jersey, and retiring at thirty-five years old.

A huge chapter of his life was closing, and I was just slightly worried about how the transition would go in the months to come. Over the years, we’d found a balance in our relationship that worked, that thrived more and more every day despite his schedule and my workaholic tendencies, but… well, he was quitting football. His great love.

“Oh! Look! They’re coming,” the girl said, already pushing back and getting to her feet.

All of the guys who began trickling inside the family room had ecstatic expressions on their faces.

On the other side of the room, I spotted Trevor standing there with arms across his chest, talking on his phone. He must have sensed me glaring at him because his eyes moved across the crowd of people to land on me. I gave him the middle finger behind Sammy’s back and he simply stared, shaking his head in disbelief but not doing anything else.

Asshole.

Just because he was a ruthless bastard who made sure Aiden got what he wanted, didn’t mean I had to like him. At this point, after so many years, I think my hatred for him was more for fun than anything, but he was still a shark without a heart.

A shark who had gotten Zac a really good deal with a new expansion team in Oklahoma a year after he’d gotten cut from the Three Hundreds. They hadn’t gone very far this year, but Zac was playing better than ever, a starter for the third year in his career. He was actually my quarterback on fantasy football and had been since he’d been signed on. He was still single, still dumb. Still one of my closest friends, and already referring to himself as Uncle Zac any and every time he came by to the see the boys.

Some days I couldn’t wrap my head around how much I loved the two greatest things I would ever have a part in creating. There wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for them, and that knowledge was only slightly painful once in a blue moon when it made me think about my own mom and her failings. Nothing between us had really improved, and I was well aware that was my fault. There was too much I was unwilling to let go of, but at least at this point in my life, I couldn’t regret the decisions I’d made. I was happy, happier than happy, and I wouldn’t feel bad about it.

I sat on the chair and waited, watching as the players filtered in and headed straight for their families. People cheered and hugged, overjoyed. It didn’t take long for Aiden to lurch his way over, his face with that same blank, careful expression on it as he looked around the room. The big guy was finally going to the big game and he wasn’t even smiling. Why did that not surprise me?

Then he spotted us in the back corner.

Sammy saw him at the same time. His hands thrust forward. “Mommy! Look! Daddy!”

And the smile that came over the love of my life’s face made me grin like an idiot. The honesty, openness and genuine joy in Aiden’s expression still reached this part of me that hadn’t existed before him.

It was my smile. Our smile. The one he saved up for moments when it was only our little team together. And it didn’t hold a trace of anything football related in it, as he gazed from me to the two small ones at my sides, wearing matching jerseys in sizes much larger than someone their ages should wear. Little chubby asses. I’d honestly been relieved to have to go through C-sections to give birth to them. Those big heads just like their dad’s would have done some serious, serious damage.

I could remember Diana holding Sammy after he’d been born, shaking her head. “This head would have ripped your ass wide open, Vanny.”

When I’d started having contractions while pregnant with Gray, a little over a year later, that had been the mental picture I’d gone into the hospital with. It was just what I didn’t need to worry about. Fortunately, everything had worked out fine.

The big guy looking at us as he crossed the room in the wake of a tremendous win confirmed that. Aiden didn’t hesitate to drop to his knees in front of us, his gaze going from Sammy to me and then to Gray. He always did that, like he couldn’t choose what to focus on. Some days he looked at me longer, some days it was Sammy, other days it was the tiny guy. Every day was Leo, the last member of our group who was waiting patiently at home.

This would have been year five in our agreement, but Aiden had gotten his conditional green card, and then his residency years ago and had passed his citizenship exam already. We’d nailed the two interviews we had to sit through with an agent questioning us to make sure we were a legitimate couple, and I liked to think we passed with flying colors. I remembered complaining over how I couldn’t deport him if he got on my nerves anymore.

Aiden didn’t say anything as he wrapped those massive arms around all three of us, ducking his head to kiss one dark head of hair after another. Then he smiled at me and leaned forward to kiss me. To really kiss me, like we weren’t surrounded by people cheering and yelling over the second biggest possible win in the NFO.

I knew right then. I knew that he was fine, that everything was going to be more than okay regardless of whether he won the big championship or not. We would figure the future out. This guy who gave everything—his career, me, and now the boys—his all, didn’t half-ass anything. He never would; it just wasn’t in him.

“Are you happy?” I asked.

With his arms still around the three of us, he looked up at me through those incredibly long lashes, and nodded almost distractedly. “Yes.” Those massive hands went to the small spines of his mini-me’s before detouring to gently touch the pudgy cheeks, his smile growing even wider as his gaze landed on mine once more. “But I can’t remember anymore what it’s like to not be happy.”

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, the greatest readers in the universe—I can’t thank you enough for your love and support these last few years. Each and every email, message, post and review means the world to me. You guys never cease to amaze me with your wittiness and kindness. I don’t know what I did in another lifetime to deserve you all, but I’ll be forever thankful.

A massive thank you to my Canadian friends who answered all of my annoying questions: Hope, Romancia, Julie, Stacey, Sandra and Kathleen. Ashley and Naomi, my title wouldn’t be what it is without your vast knowledge of prepositions Thank you! Letitia Hasser at RBA Designs, you know you’re the (wo)man. Jeff at Indie Formatting Services, thank you for your excellent formatting. Lauren Abramo at Dystel & Goderich for getting my books into a format I never envisioned.

To the two people who helped me so much with Winnie: Dell Wilson and Eva Marina. I’m so thankful for your patience, support and friendship that my words would never be able to do my appreciation justice. Winnie wouldn’t be Winnie without you two.

A great big thank you the people who mean the world to me: Mom and Dad, Ale, Eddie, Raul, ISAAC!, Kaitlyn, my Letchford family, and the rest of my Zapata/Navarro family. And last but never least, my three guys: Chris, Dor and Kai who put up with me when I go into anxiety/workaholic mode. Love you.

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