“For now.” She winked and went back to her phone. “I gotta say, I’m impressed you and your teammates are game for this event. It’ll help us out so much.”
“I’m glad. But it’s also helping me out, so I should be thanking you guys.” He held out a fist to Ethan. “Hey, good to see ya again.”
Ethan fist-bumped him before shoving puppy chow into his face and going back to the computer. “Is the team donating any money to the event?”
“No, we don’t get a say in what they sponsor, but me and my buddies are going to donate about ten grand each.”
What. What.My head got fuzzy and I wobbled a bit before Brigham reached over to catch me. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah, we talked about it after you left the other day. We want to donate that to help get everything running. Plus, hello, puppies.” He grinned, but my brain couldn’t compute.Thirty thousand more dollars.
“No. You can’t.”
“Yes, we can. And we will, BB.” He squeezed my hip with his hand and smiled so big, I got lost in his expression. “You’ve gone pale.”
“You shocked her,” Ethan said, chuckling. “The money will help almost every problem we could face. We would’ve been okay with the donations we already have, but this ensures success for at least the first year.”
“Plenty of time for you to grow the business and show all the potential clients why your place would be the best.” He bent down and kissed the top of my head, my mind still not grasping how he could donate that much money. “Why are you frowning?”
“You can’t just… That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s not for me,” he said, so flippantly, it shocked the sense out of me. I grabbed his hand, dragged him into the bedroom and shut the door. “Woah, you want to fool around with your friends out there?”
“Shut up, you.” I pushed him so he sat on the bed while I paced. “Enlighten me about your day job, Monaghan.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Maybe.” I took a deep breath and stood far enough away that he couldn’t touch me, because when that happened, I lost control. “Why is that much money not a lot for you?”
He winced and ran a hand over his face. “I make a lot being a professional athlete. Between the contract to play, and sponsors, it really brings in money.”
“Like how much?” I asked, bracing myself. “Like a million?”
He hissed. “More.”
“Two million?”
“My contract alone is thirty million for five years.”
Thirty. Million.
Six million a year.
“Shit.” I closed my eyes, spun a little bit and took a deep breath. “Wow.”
“Blue Bell, come here, please.”
“Just, give me a second.” The differences between us were already vast enough, but the money? It carved a huge hole of doubt in everything. “That’s…a lot.”
He reached toward me, grabbed the edge of my shirt and pulled me to him so I straddled his lap on my bed. He kept his hands on my hips and had a pained expression on his face, tight lines around his lips and sad eyes. “Please don’t let it change things between us.”
“It’s just so much.”
“It’s part of being an athlete.” He hung his head and rested his forehead on my shoulder. “I love how I am with you. You don’t care about that part of my life, and I need that. The escape. You’re perfect and odd in the best way. Sarah, I can see the panic in your eyes. How can I make it go away?”
Maybe it was the way his voice shook a little, or the tormented expression in his eyes, or the way his grip tightened like he didn’t want to let go of me. I planted a wet, sloppy kiss on him. “Let me digest it and it’ll be okay.”
“You’re sure?” A line appeared between his eyebrows and I ran a finger over it. “I would hate to end this because of money.”
