His gaze falls to the uneaten candy bar in my hand. “I had to endure five minutes with the clerk telling me what’s wrong with the Colts to buy that for you.”
“Maybe it’s not my favorite candy anymore.”
He nods and shrugs his shoulders. “Then I suppose it’s another five minutes of my life wasted, but score, I get the whole candy bar.” He holds out his hand, but I shake my head. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”
I finally take a bite. Whoever says sweets can’t make your day a little better is a liar.
“So… want to tell me why you vanished at the hospital six months ago?” he asks, interrupting my momentary reprieve from the reality of today.
Hayes can never let things be. Of course he’s going to bring up when his friends were having a baby, and by some weird twist of fate, I was their nurse.
“Well, I am a nurse. I had to go do important nurse things.”
He chuckles. “Important nurse things?”
I take another bite of the candy bar, and a smug smile tips his lips because I’m enjoying the candy he bought me. Still a cocky bastard.
“I thought maybe you were still dodging me years later,” he says.
I glance at the door to the house, then tilt my head and give him my bored look. “Get over yourself.”
“Well, I, for one, thought our kiss was pretty great.”
“You’re probably getting it mixed up with all the other women you’ve kissed since.” I take another bite of the Twix bar.
“You’re the only one who ran away after I kissed them.” His grin grows wider, and I toss the last piece of the candy bar at him, which he catches and tosses in the air, catching it in his mouth. “Did you forget what position I play?”
I roll my eyes. “Like you’d let me forget.”
I pick up the rest of the Twix bar, take out a second bar, and hand him the last one.
“You always were a good sharer,” he says, accepting the bar. “This is about the last thing I should be eating. Gotta keep in shape.” He pats his stomach as if there’s a beer belly hidden under his crisp white shirt.
“I’m sure a few extra pounds aren’t going to detour all the women in waiting.”
A piece of candy bar lands on my chest. I pick it up and pop it in my mouth, giving him a smug grin as if to say thanks. “So, you can catch but not throw?”
His tongue slides along his bottom lip, and he gives me a crooked smile that makes me forget the reason we’ve been thrown together today. “I have a lot to prove this year.”
I wasn’t going to mention the rumor mill. It would be like adding gasoline to an already blazing fire. “How did it feel to get the call from the Colts?”
He huffs, licking chocolate off his fingers. Is he trying to distract me? “Honestly, I was relieved. I thought I had ruined my chances of playing. Last year was…” He moves his head to the right, his neck cracking again. “Intense.”
“And stupid.”
He chuckles again, looking at me. “Very stupid. I just got lost in my head, you know?”
I’d seen the emptiness in his eyes during the games I caught on television. His love of the game had been on the back burner, and his attention was far away from what was happening on the field.
“I can’t believe we’re all grown up,” he says, picking up the empty candy wrapper and folding it in his hands as if he’s about to do origami with it. “Seems like yesterday you and Callie were in my Corolla, and I had to drive you somewhere.”
“I miss Cruella.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m still pissed that you guys renamed my car.”
“It was Callie’s by then. You were off at college.”
If that small rust bucket of a car could have talked, it could have blackmailed Callie and me enough to be completely restored.
