I realized in that instant that Delia Delatou didn’t need saving.
She needed a partner, an equal, someone who always had her back and believed in her ability to handle her own shit. She was a woman fully capable of making her own choices, and the beast in my chest needed to stand the fuck down.
“What happened?”
“It was blazing hot in the dead of summer, and there was a band that night at Granny’s, so the whole place was packed. I was sweating worse than usual thanks to line dancing song after song.”
Line dancing? God, why did the thought of her two-stepping have desire tightening my skin? I could easily picture her in a pair of boots, jeans clinging to her long legs, and a little red bandana as a shirt, moving around the dance floor in my arms.
What the fuck, Lawless? I mentally slapped myself.Get your shit together.
Delia continued, oblivious to my internal strife. “I stepped outside for some fresh air, and I heard shouting coming from around the side of the building. When I went to investigate, I found a guy with his palm wrapped around a girl’s throat—andnot in the sexy, hand necklace kind of way—pushing her up against the side of a vehicle.Myvehicle.”
My lizard brain latched onto the words “hand necklace,” wondering what my own would look like around Delia’s pretty neck.
Fucking hell, I needed to cool off.
Clearing my throat, I said, “So what’d you do?”
“Told him to back the hell off. Instead of slithering away after being caught, he came at me. I had a bottle of beer in my hand, and when he lifted his fist to do god knows what to me, I beat him to the punch…literally.”
“You didn’t.”
Delia smirked, shifting the ice around on my hand. “I did,” she said proudly. “Hit him squared on the jaw.”
I winced at the thought of a sturdy, glass bottle slamming into my cheek. God, she continued to surprise me. Tough as nails with a backbone of steel. My brother Lane would have a field day with her. “What happened after that?”
“The guy I’d been with at the time came outside looking for me and caught the asshole just as he was about to lunge for me. It pissed the guy off enough that he swung at my date…and got arrested for assaulting an off-duty police officer.”
A cop? Of course she’d dated a cop. Hadn’t I just been thinking about her and Lane too?Thatwas the kind of guy she should be with. Not me, the washed up quarterback who’s never once saved a life. Who hasn’t carried burn victims out of flaming buildings, or thrown himself in front of a bullet to save another human. I definitely hadn’t protected the goddamn President of the United States.
Throwing a football and getting people to drink was all I’d everbeen good for. I went from providing daytime entertainment on Sundays to nighttime entertainment every other day of the week while Delia was dating fuckingcops.
The self-loathing I experienced in that moment damn near choked me. For being unable—or maybe unwilling?—to do anything worthwhile with my life. I’d simply made it possible for my brothers to do those things instead. Not to mention, there wasn’t any reason for me to be jealous about who Delia was or wasn’t dating. That was none of my business.Ourbusiness was as far as I should take any concern for her.
Though Delia had stayed behind to help me clean up, we found ourselves spending the next half hour in that booth, chatting about nothing and everything. She left my side only once to dispose of the towel and ice when my fingers were so numb I could barely move them. And while my body certainly had notions of grandeur where she was concerned, I managed to keep myself in check, and found myself enjoying that quiet, easy time with her. Where we weren’t arguing over some distillery related thing or flitting from one task to the next. It was like we’d been friends forever.
It should’ve embarrassed me how badly I wanted to be her friend, knowing that’s all we’d ever be. The almost kiss earlier had been a moment of weakness brought on by the dim lighting and her sexy little dress. It was a line we couldn’t cross for so many goddamn reasons—and I hated every single one.
“Everyone is gone and everything is cleaned up, boss,” Hugo said when he approached the table and popped our little bubble. “Me and the guys are going to head out. You leaving too, or are you going to be here for a bit?”
I spared Delia a brief glance, then checked my watch, noting it was well after one in the morning. “We’ll follow you out.”
After locking the doors and setting the alarms, I walked Delia to my truck, internally giddy when she didn’t protest my insistence I open her door and help her into the cab.
Tonight had been…exhausting, to say the least. Being a business owner—particularly of establishments that sold alcohol—often wasn’t easy, but it should’ve been easier than this.
I’d never understand why people thought they deserved some sort of exclusive access to me because they were coming to my business. Even when I was actively playing football and representing the city of Detroit, I never enjoyed that part of it. The fame, this god status normal people assigned to us simply because we played a sport on an international stage. We weren’t the kind of people who deserved that level of praise and hero worship.
Hero worship should be reserved foractual heroes, people saving lives every day by running into burning buildings or working in emergency rooms or serving in our armed forces.
I’d done what I could while in the NFL, using my celebrity status to contribute to numerous charitable and nonprofit organizations over the course of my career, but it never felt like enough.
“You okay over there?” Delia asked, pulling me from my internal raging. “I can literally hear your wheels turning.”
“I’m fine. Just…thinking about tonight,” I said. “People are fucking crazy.”
Delia huffed out a laugh. “Understatement of the century.” She shifted slightly in her seat, angling her body toward me. “Does that happen a lot?”
