Now I have until training camp to fix my knee or clean out my locker. The other deadline, the one I’d been counting down for five years, was finally running out too. I’ve got one shot to show the world I’m still worth a damn. I have to prove I still have my mobility, timing, and leadership. Otherwise I won’t just be benched. I’ll be cut.
I refuse to be just another aging quarterback with a bad knee and better days behind him. It isn’t just my ego that won’t let me. It’s the money. Or rather, the complete absence of it. Because somehow I fucked that up too.
I didn’t come from money. I came from a small logging town in the middle of nothing. Not too many millionaires out of Lumberjack Lagoon.
So when I found myself with an NFL contract and a truckload of it, I trusted Richard Holmes with everything I had. The dude helped my parents with their taxes when I was in diapers. He seemed like a safe bet.
Richard smiled at me across a mahogany desk and promised returns that would set me up for life. Everything he said from there was over my head... Diversified portfolio, safe investments, a trust fund to keep it all out of harm’s way. The way I saw it, I didn’t need to know anything else. I signed on the dotted line. By the time the bank came knocking, Richard was somewhere in the Caymans with my money and a woman half his age.
The memory makes my heart rate tick up. What an asshole.
I brush off my jeans and wince at the fresh scrape on my palm. Then I push through the door of Bluemoon Coffee. The silver bell chimes that familiar little melody.
The smell hits me first. It’s something cinnamon and something citrusy. For a moment, I’m twenty-two again. Standing in this exact spot, palms sweating, working up the nerve to ask the pretty barista with the sunshine smile if she wanted to get dinner sometime.
That was the beginning of everything good in my life. It was also the beginning of the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and this town screams her name.
The coffee shop is crowded for a Tuesday morning. I recognize a few faces here and there. An old trainer, a former teammate’s mother, and the guy who used to cut my hair before I left. They notice me too, and I tug my hat down over my eyes.
But phones appear and the whispers start. I can already see the headlines forming.Griffin Callahan returns to Magnolia Landing. Griffin Callahan riches to rags.The national press may have forgotten about me. Hell, some say I’ve never quite lived up to the hype. Always solid but never spectacular. But here, everyone dies famous. This town remembers everything.
I keep my head down and get in line. I keep my eyes trained on the menu board like I’m not going to order the same damn dark roast I’ve been drinking for years. Maybe if I don’t make eye contact, they’ll leave me alone. Maybe... My eyes dart to the woman across from me like a magnet.
“Jess.” The name escapes my lips before I can stop it.
Jess Hartwell stands three feet away. My chest tightens. She’s smiling and holding a cup of iced coffee. She’s even more beautiful than I remembered.
“Jess, it’s me.” I have to blink to make sure she’s standing here. But it’s really her.
She turns and her eyes widen as she takes me in. “Griffin Callahan.”
Her voice cuts through the ambient noise like a blade and washes over me. I’d know that voice anywhere. Hell, it’s haunted my dreams for years.
Every cell in my body screams the wordmine... And she was.
Jess was mine so many years ago, and some primal part of me refuses to accept that anything has changed. Her dark hair is shorter now. It falls just past her shoulders in waves that catch the light from the window.
She stares up at me. Her whiskey-brown eyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon are blazing with an emotion I can’t quite name. I don’t know whether she wants to kiss me or hit me. I wouldn’t blame her either way. But it takes everything in me not to pull her into my arms.
I reach for her instinctively and place a hand on her arm. She doesn’t pull away. The heat under my palm bubbles and electricity whips up and down my body. I open my mouth to say something. Tell her how much I’ve missed her. Or maybe to mutter an apology. Anything really. Just being this close to her again is intoxicating.
But before I can form a single syllable, her eyes drop from mine and land on the place my hand connects to her arm. Her face shifts from disbelief to pure heat.
Then twenty ounces of cold brew hits me square in the chest.
There are a few gasps followed by a muffled laugh from somewhere behind me. Then the shop goes silent.
My shirt is soaked. Coffee drips down my chest and pools in the waistband of my jeans. My knee still throbs from the sidewalk. My palm still stings from the scrape.
And the only woman I’ve ever loved is looking at me like she hates me.
Welcome back.
CHAPTER 2
GRIFFIN
It was definitely nota longing to kiss me that I saw flash in her eyes.
