Over and over and over again.
She hugs me tightly, then releases me. “Let’s go.”
Roland eyes me.
Deedee leaps to her feet, and I remember to look up at the ceiling before I get another show as Ziggy and I turn toward the door.
“Wait,” Deedee says.
“Holt gets his job back and Dad sells the team, or we’re gone,” Ziggy says.
“Wait.” There’s no mistaking the desperation in Deedee’s voice.
It’s the same desperation I’d feel if Ziggy told me I couldn’t be part of her life anymore. That she and the baby don’t want me anymore. That she’s taking Jessica too.
Jessica, who’s finally starting to warm up to me.
She hasn’t snorted snot on me in three full days now.
Almost three full days.
Not since Saturday night when Ziggy got home.
I glance at Ziggy, and I don’t miss the pain that she’s trying to hide as she squeezes her eyes shut. “Dad sells the team. Holt keeps his job,” she repeats.
“He’ll sell it,” Deedee says. “He’ll sell it.”
Roland makes a rough noise. “The hell I?—”
“You’d pick the goddamn team over our daughter?” Deedee says. Squawks, really. “I won’t. Idon’t. Sell the team. Quit with this—this—this stupidrule. She’s an adult, and he’s one of the finest young men I’ve had the privilege of meeting.”
Ziggy sags against me and I hear a telltale sniffle.
Fucking fearless.
But she was still willing to give up her family for me.
“I love you,” I whisper to her.
“You are my everything,” she whispers back.
“Her father—” Roland starts, and both of us turn.
Both of us regret it and look back at the door.
Throw pillows and the urn are gone.
“What about my father?” Ziggy asks.
Can you hear someone wince?
Because I’m not looking, but I swear Deedee’s wincing.
“He played football,” she says quietly.
“My father played football,” Ziggy repeats. “My biological father. The college professor who died in a car accident when I was three. He played football.”
“He wasn’t a college professor,” Deedee says. “He was a football player. And football came first. He didn’t want me tohave you. He didn’t want anything disrupting his career. And I—I want better for you than what I had.”
