She was definitely a bright spot in a locked room. “What bright spots are you finding here?” he asked.
“Well, I mean, we’re stuck in here together and…I’ve missed you. That’s a bright spot, right?” She glanced up at him from under her lashes.
Best bright spot of all.
“You miss me?” he asked, something inside him needing that confirmation.
“Of course, I do, you lug nut.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Answer?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“Because my feelings were hurt.”
“Hear me out. Since we’re stuck here…” He’d just embrace the opportunity to explain things. “The reason I didn’t want— “
She held up her hands, her cheeks turning a festive shade of red. “You don’t need to explain. I get it. You don’t want to be serious. Career importance. All that. I just…” Her voice was progressively cracking more and her speech was getting faster. “I don’t want to be with you when you come back to Denver on the off weeks. I want a real grown-up relationship where I live in the same town as the guy I’m with.”
Last time he’d checked, they’d been doing some pretty grown-up stuff together.
A better job of explaining, that’s what he needed to manage. “There’s a reason I have my team—”
“Because it’s your job,” she finished for him.
“Not my teammates.” His personal team—the people who handled the rest of it all. “Myteam. My agent. Manager. The lady who picks out my clothes.”
She squinted adorably at him. “You have a stylist?”
Of course, he had a stylist. If he picked out his own clothes, he’d always be in his favorite pair of worn-out jeans. He’d live in the football tees that were always given to him in enormous gift baskets from sponsors.
“I know what I’m doing on the field,” he said.
She nodded. “Everybody knows that.”
“But I’m not so good with people.”
Her eyebrows fell.
“Most people,” he clarified. “I’m good with you. You make it easy for me to be me.”
“Okay…”
“So we can’t be together in Miami.” Because he wouldn’t be there. Which meant there wouldn’t be athemthere.
“I got that. Last time we talked.” She crossed her arms, her throat working, tears edging the rim of her eyelids.
Unfortunately, he was really fucking this up.
He rubbed at the ache forming in his skull between his eyebrows. “I’m not going to be there anymore.Youcan’t move there because I won’tbethere.”
The dawn of understanding rose along with the magnitude of the situation. Her lips formed a circle. “They’re ditching you?”
That was certainly one way of saying it.
“Retirement is the word they insist on using.”
