He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to elaborate. It’s the image I’ve been raised in—the mold I was poured into until I fit. Straight, monogamous, churchgoing. Except it took being with Asher and Savannah to recognize that mold for what it was—a trap. “Did you tell Sav what the team said?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond for a long minute, but that silence is answer enough. He did tell Sav, and he regrets it, but it doesn’t matter, because she isn’t here anymore. “Yes,” he says finally. “I thought she should know.”
Anger rises up my throat. I douse it with another gulp. “Not me, though. You weren’t gonna tell me first?”
On screen, Asher’s face goes stony. “You aren’t the one who’s gonna have to publicly wear this. You know how this shit works—whatever protects the team.”
I can see the gossip now: Savannah slept with one of my teammates, broke our marriage, fled into the night, even if it’s barely midafternoon. I take a long swallow of whiskey. Now that I’ve started drinking, every sip is easier than the last. Maybe I should be more worried about that than I am, but worry is for some other person, some distant future version of myself with a hangover and an empty bed.
“Sav’s gone,” I say. “She took her stuff and left. I don’t know where she is.”Is she with you?Jealousy—worrying someone willtake what you have.What I had. Though that isn’t right. I didn’t have Sav, exactly, but she had me.
On screen, Asher looks like he’s actually at a loss for words. “That’s not— I thought— I told her I couldn’t be with her—with either of you—anymore. Not to leave you.”
“Well, she left all right. Do you know where she went?”
Asher shakes his head.
“Would you tell me if you did?” I ask.
Slowly, he shakes his head again. “I wouldn’t.”
So it’s like that. It’s always been like that, really. I knew she was going to leave. Ever since I met Sav on that porch. Ever since I vowed to be her husband even if she was my wife in name only. My glass is too empty. I refill it. Ignore Asher’s look of disapproval. He can save that shit for someone else, someone who actually deserves his sympathy.
Suddenly, the house is too big, too echoey. We have a game tomorrow. A lifetime away. Lots of hours between now and then and a million places in the city that will run a tab for me.
I tried, for a while, to be the kind of man who was good enough for Savannah, for Asher, for myself. Look where that got us. “I’m going out,” I say. “Don’t come looking for me.”
Asher’s eyebrows shoot up. “Whatever it is you’re gonna do, B, don’t.”
“Stop calling me that.”Stop thinking about me at all.“In fact, I don’t want to talk to you unless we’re on the field.”
“Brayden—” Asher says my name like it’s a question in and of itself, but I don’t want to hear the rest of it, so I cut off the call. Stand in my kitchen listening to the sound of my own breathing. Too loud. I need to be somewhere else, some place that doesn’t smell faintly of roses.
I go to Baby’s food bowl, refill it until the tiny bits of kibble start to cascade onto the floor. That won’t do. Who thought I could take care of anything? I can barely even take care ofmyself. Sav said she got a pet-sitter to look after Baby when we were on the road, but I don’t know any of the details.
I text Sav—the text isn’t even markeddelivered. Call her. It goes straight to voicemail. A recording of her plays.Hi, you’ve reached Savannah Burke. Not Forsyth; it was never gonna be Forsyth. “Who did you have watching Baby?” I ask after the beep. Already, I sound slurred. Fine, whatever. The cat has food, water, and several litter boxes. That’ll last for a while. I’ll figure the rest of this out…tomorrow.
I stare down at myself. I’m still in the clothes I slept in. I shed them as I go upstairs, pull on something better, something that’ll attract the attention of every phone camera. The team wants us to be discreet, to make everything Savannah’s fault and call that the end of it.
But fuck them and fuck that. If they need to pin this on anybody, I’ll give someone to blame.Me.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Brayden
The man behind the bar—theburly bartender with a neatly trimmed beard who always seems to be working—narrows his eyes when I drop myself onto a stool. “You’re back.” He doesn’t exactly sound happy to see me.
“Looks like.” I tap my credit card against the polished surface of the bar. There are only a few people here: the day-drinking-on-a-Monday crowd is pretty pathetic.And now you’re one of them.Still, the bartender pours me the whiskey I order, does it again after I toss the first one back. By now, it barely even burns, but it burns just enough to keep me going.
“You got someone at home missing you?” he asks.
“Not anymore.”
And he frowns at that, but he brings me another.
Sometime later,I come back to myself. The club is dark and full of bodies, people drinking and dancing and rubbing against one another under the flashing lights. A different bartender is slinging drinks for the line of customers all shaking cards and cash at her.
I’ve flagged her down plenty, judging by the emptied glasses lined up near me. I’m about to wave her this way again when I realize there’s someone on my lap. A woman half across me, half leaning on the bar as if she doesn’t trust me to hold up her weight. She smells like vanilla and she’s tiny enough I can almost span her waist with my hands. This is wrong. It’s all wrong. “Hey,” I say, and wrap my hands around her hips to move her.
