He tears into a samosa, making himself busy to keep his next question casual.
“Do you love him?”
That’s the question, isn’t it?
The question I never asked myself of Emerson, because I always knew I didn’t. But Blaise?
It’s such a big thing.
Love.
He’s a difficult man. Even at his best, even when things are running as smoothly as possible, he’s difficult. He creates problems. He’s still collecting those stupid football things to mess with Lin, and they’re not even really Lin’s. They’re property of the team, they’re just not expensive enough for anyone to intervene. I mentioned it to Wren, Lin’s partner, and she says Lin’s noticed they’ve been vanishing but figured it was someone from the equipment crew misplacing them.
He gets in fights.
He pushes buttons.
He handles problems the worst way possible every time, and he just got himself injured for it.
But he loves so hard. He’s obsessed with Donovan. I know what’s expected of me as a football wife. I see the other women either hire a ton of household staff or quietly step away from their jobs in small ways, getting assistants or scheduling around the season or leaving their jobs entirely so they can be the primary caregivers and household managers. I respect them all for it. But I think Blaise would lose his mind if I told him not to worry about taking care of Donovan.
And he loves me just as hard. He was ready to accept that I’d extorted him for tens of millions of dollars just as soon as he decided it wasn’t to run off with. He knew how important my dad was to me and made sure to visit him the first second he could. He fought for me to keep my wig at the hospital when I gave birth.
He rescued me at Ani-Con.
I fish the ring out of my pocket and roll it between my fingers. It’s beautiful. Simple. Unusual. Elegant. He could have gotten me a fake diamond from Walmart, and I probably wouldn’t have known the difference, but he knew this was the one for me.
“Is that the engagement ring?” Emerson asks.
“I think it’s my wedding ring.”
“That’s . . . not the right order.”
My lips crack into a smile that turns into a soft laugh that grows into something I have to cover my face for, just so I don’t irritate the other diners. Emerson doesn’t know what I’m laughing about, but Blaise would.
I miss him so much right now.
But more importantly, I missed him last night. I was so mad at him, but it took everything I had — and several reminders that he’s recoveringandon babysitting duty all week, so he needed his sleep — to keep from calling him.
“Oooh, you’re in love with him,” Emerson taunts like a teenager.
Like a teenager, I blush. “Stop.”
“Tilly, why are you even here?” Emerson chuckles. “Go home. Go stop torturing your big, bad fiancé. You don’t even need this money anymore, do you? You can’t tell me he wouldn’t buy you the moon if you only asked.”
I groan and tip my head back. “Right. That. He’s broke.”
Emerson recoils. Hard. He even reaches for the ring, and I let him take it from me, even though I already know he’s going to see it in a different light now that he knows that.
“It’s not like you think,” I promise him. “Someone’s been blackmailing Blaise for the last year. His position on the team is precarious. They don’t want a troublemaker, so he’s been paying the blackmailer off, just hoping the Jugs wouldn’t find out.”
Emerson whistles under his breath, but the server drops off a basket of naan, and he doesn’t hesitate to grab a piece and munch on a corner of it. He’s a spectator. I get it. “What kind of secrets do they have on him that he’s willing to pay off, what, that’s gotta be millions of dollars, right?”
“It’s about me, actually. Someone got recordings of our night at Ani-Con, and I guess they’re bad. We, ahh, we did a lot that night.”
“Yeah, you were always adventurous—wait, recordings frommyroom?” Emerson suddenly hops to his feet and snaps his phone out. Unlike me, he makes sure he commands the attention of everyone in the restaurant. I doubt he even does it deliberately. “The roomIgot you?”
“Yep, that room.”
