CAM
“Dude, are you even listening to me?”
“What?” I turn from my perusal of the room to Drew, who is looking at me with a raised eyebrow.
The club is dark and loud, the LED moving headlights roving and flashing and giving the whole place an end of the world, futuristic kind of vibe. I’m sitting on a couch in a section of the VIP level, half the team milling around, some of them talking amongst themselves, and some of them with scantily clad, heavily made-up girls sitting on their laps and hanging off their arms and shoulders. The tables are littered with glasses and bottles of top-shelf alcohol, and every few minutes, someone comes over to talk to me about my touchdown.
I barely hear any of it.
Including, apparently, my best friend, and whatever it is he’s been trying to say.
“What’s with you?” he asks, taking the last sip of his beer and setting the empty bottle on the table. “You’re somewhere else.”
He’s not wrong. I’m sitting right here, but my mind is definitely somewhere else, focused almost entirely on thewhereabouts of a certain gorgeous redhead. The girl who said she was coming tonight but is, as of yet, nowhere to be found. My hands itch to touch her. I’m practically vibrating with the need to see her as if it’s been weeks, instead of hours, since I last laid eyes on her.
“It’s nothing,” I mumble, casting another glance over the railing at the crowd below.
“Oh, holy shit,” Drew says with a grin. “You’re looking for her. That’s why you can’t focus on my very important question about whether I can take Ethan go-karting for his birthday. Because she’s not here yet, and you’re worried she’s not coming.”
“Fuck.” I blow out a breath, scrubbing my hands over my face. I need to get my shit together. I’m a thirty-four-year-old man, for fuck’s sake. Not a goddamn teenager. “Go-karting is a great idea. He’ll lose his shit.”
“I know. Now let’s talk about the other thing. You like her.”
I let out a short laugh becauselikeis the most elementary word I’ve ever heard to describe my feelings for Maddy Wright. “Yeah, Drew, I like her.”
He studies me, his eyebrows drawing in. “You more than like her.”
I’m fucking in love with her, but no one gets to hear that before she does. I glance over the railing again, my fingers drumming out an impatient beat on my thigh. “Something like that.”
A server passes by and drops a tray full of beers on the table. Drew hands one to me before grabbing one for himself and taking a long sip. “This is different. This is really, really different. I haven’t seen you like this since…” He trails off, like he’s not sure if he should finish the sentence.
“Since Lainey,” I finish for him.
“Yeah,” he says, letting out a heavy breath. “Since Lainey.”
Drew and I were roommates freshman year of college in the athletic dorms and were fast friends. He was there the day I met Lainey—saw how hard and fast I fell. And he was there the dayshe died, practically moving into my house to help take care of Riley and Ethan when I was drowning.
Hell, he took care of me, too.
He held me while I cried. He told me over and over again that I would be enough for my kids when I was sure that could never be true. He picked up the pieces of my shattered heart and held my family together until I was strong enough to do it myself. He’s my brother in all the ways that matter. If I can give anyone my truth, it’s him.
“I haven’t felt this way since Lainey,” I say, as quietly as the ear-splitting music allows. “I didn’t think I could feel this way again. I mean, it’s been ten years and it hasn’t happened, so I figured that part of my life was over.”
“But…” he says, waiting for me to continue.
I shrug. “I think it hasn’t happened because I was waiting for her. I didn’t know I could feel this way again. I never thought I would. But then I met a girl in a bar, and she made me want things it hadn’t occurred to me to want in more than a decade. And I think…” I trail off, swallowing against the hard ball of emotion lodging in my throat. “I think maybe Lainey would be okay with it, you know? I think she would laugh at the crazy way I met Maddy and how I ran into her the morning after at work and everything that happened since. Is that weird?”
Drew shakes his head. “It isn’t. It’s not weird at all. Lainey was the best of the best, and she would want you to be happy. She would want you to find someone who makes you feel and makes you think and is good to your kids. Someone who can give you the future she can’t.”
I take a deep breath and say the other thing that’s been rattling around in my head for the last couple of weeks. “She makes me think past football. Like maybe retiring doesn’t have to be so daunting because there could be something waiting for me on the other side.”
“Woah, woah, woah, there, let’s not be throwing around the R-word.” Drew holds up his hands with a look of so muchhorror, I can’t help but laugh. “No one is retiring, so get that the fuck out of your head. But seriously, I’m happy for you. I want this for you. Are you going to, like, go public or whatever?”
I shake my head. “That’s her call. It’s complicated because of her position and her relationship to Brian, and because being a woman in professional sports is fucking hard. I want to go at her pace. I know we’ll figure it out. I’m in it for the long haul, and I want to do it right. I don’t want to miss a single step.”
Drew lets out a low whistle. “Fuck, Cam, that is some high level adulting.”
“Fuck off,” I say with a laugh. “I’m thirty-four years old, and I have two kids. I’m a whole ass adult. You would be too, by the way, if you would act your age and find someone to get serious with instead of…whatever it is you’re doing.”
