I laugh. “Somehow I wasn’t thinking aboutstudying.”
“Then go shopping. Buy yourself a hundred of those dresses so I can tear them right off you.” Brayden grins, smiling more than I’ve ever seen him.
It’s…nice, even if there’s an edge to it I don’t quite trust. “Guys are gonna know you got laid if you go into the clubhouse smiling like that.”
“That’s the plan,” Brayden says.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Adler and I are gonna have a conversation.” Thoughconversationsounds a whole lot likefight.
“Whatever you’re thinking about, don’t do it.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t do something drastic. I’m not the one who tried to steal my teammate’s girl, after all.”
“I wasn’t your girl.” But I might be now, and I’ll think about that…later, when I’m not worried there’s gonna be clubhouse drama.
“Yeah, but Adler didn’t know that.” Brayden leans down and drops a kiss on my cheek. “And someone needs to remind him of that fact.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Savannah
A minute after Brayden leaves,the door in the next room opens and closes: Asher, possibly waiting for Brayden to clear out, before he leaves as well.
I’m still in bed. I consider the disaster of the room—the disaster I’ve made of this marriage—then, with only a second’s hesitation, begin throwing things into my suitcase. If I book a flight now, I can be in Atlanta by mid-afternoon. I can be at the house soon after that. I’m not sure if I want to collapse face first into my bed with Baby by my side or if I should be putting my stuff in boxes to move…somewhere.
I open the airline app. Find a ticket, the one remaining seat on a flight, a middle seat in the back of a plane so I’ll be both cramped and nauseated. I go through various screens: yes, I’m checking a bag, no, I’m not bringing anything hazardous.Except maybe myself.
But on the final screen, just before I’m about to hitpurchase,I pause. Toggle from there to FaceTime and call Victoria. It’s two hours earlier in California, but Victoria has always been a morning person.
She answers sitting on a pool deck, the straps of her bikini hanging down her arms, a smear of sunscreen along her nose.
“I have two men competing over me and I’m not sure what to do,” I blurt, instead of something normal likeHello. OrHow’s California?OrI miss you.
Her eyes widen for a second before she throws her head back and laughs. “Have you tried sleeping with both of them?” she jokes. A few months ago, she’d been nervous to even dance with Mike at a party. Now, here she is, casually mentioning threesomes.
Instantly, I feel as if something heavy’s been lifted from my shoulders. I can’t tell her the whole tale; I don’t think Victoria would purposefully let something slip to Jonathan, but I also don’t trust the baseball gossip network. Maybe I can tell her some small piece of the truth.
I’m not sure where to start: the party? No. The wedding? Absolutely not.When did this all begin?My gut answers for me. “So, funny story, right after Brayden and I got married, I went back to San Diego to pack up, then flew out to Atlanta. At the airport, I thought Brayden—the team, really—had sent a car, so I sat in the back seat and?—”
I explain the rest of it. Another player getting in. Our argument over who the car was for. How he’d helped with my luggage and we’d become something like friends.Emphasis on the like. “Asher and Brayden don’t, uh, exactly get along, though.”
Victoria holds up a hand. “Asher, as in Asher Adler?”
“Yeah—do you know him?”
“He called Jon a few weeks after Jon got drafted.” Victoria considers. “Jonathan says they have a lot in common.”
I make a mental list of what that could possibly be. Jonathan—prep school graduate and future superstar, the kind of man my father wanted me to marry. Asher—who mentioned that he gotfree school lunch, who’d had exactly one team even let him try out. “Did Jon say what that was?”
Victoria shakes her head. “It was after he put that post up on Instagram about us. A couple players reached out to show their support. Asher, I guess. And Forsyth—not Brayden. Blake? Does that sound right?”
“That’s Brayden’s brother.” I’d only met him briefly at the wedding party. Blake had seemed polite, personable, and like he was crawling out of his skin to get away from Brad and Barb. I can’t say I blame him for that. “I didn’t realize he was—”Not a total homophobe like his parents. “He and Brayden grew up in the church.”
Victoria winds a strand of blond hair around her finger. “It was nice of him to call. Most people wouldn’t.”
Asher did. Which brings me back to my current situation. “I’m on a road trip with the team.” I scan the phone around the room so that Victoria can see the view, the various pieces of luggage, but carefully skip over the bed with its rumpled—wrecked, really—bedspread. “Things are kinda tense between Asher and Brayden.”In that they might be fighting right at this moment.“I was thinking about going home.”
