She’s leaving in the morning.
She needs to be back in Vegas for a wedding on Saturday and a charity event next weekend—a charity event she’s hosting for my brother, by the way. Her ex.
They’ll see each other. They’llbe together.
Any progress I think we’ve made is a delusion.
I can’t be with her. She was with my brother, and he’s still my brother whether he extracted himself from the family or not.
I’m leaving in the morning, too. For practice. We’ll leave around the same time, but when I come home, it’ll be to an empty house.
I’m not looking forward to it.
She gives me a hug goodbye in the morning, and I’m tempted to kiss her again.
I don’t. I can’t. She doesn’t want me to, and while I got to have my fun yesterday, that’s all it was. Pretend. A day to be thankful for, I guess—like I said at dinner.
I head to practice, and I guess I’m quieter than usual because Cole calls me out on it in his usual, eloquent way. “What the fuck’s up your ass today?”
I grimace at his question. “Nothing. Just ate too much yesterday. Paying for it today.”
“Been there. I ate with the team, and we had a hell of a time afterward.” He throws out an elbow in his usual joking manner, but I can’t muster up the enthusiasm for a return.
She’s gone, and that’s weighing me down today.
“It’s really just the food? You weren’t yourself out there on the field today, man,” he says. He sits in his locker and leans forward so we can talk around the wall dividing us.
I glance over at him. One of the benefits of being clear across the country from my siblings is that I can share these sorts of talks with teammates instead of family. Some of my family are well aware of my feelings for Tatum—like Everleigh, for example. There are others—like Archer—who I hope never find out.
I blow out a breath and finally make my confession. “I, uh…havefeelingsfor my brother’s girl.”
“The one staying with you?”
I wince as I nod.
“Thought you said she wasn’t his girl anymore,” he says.
“She’s not. They ended things, and she asked if she could come hang out here a while.”
“Did your feelings start before or after that?” he asks.
“Long before. I’ve known her since high school. Probably loved her since about then, too.” I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know. She’s the chaos to my calm. We just fit. She makes me laugh like nobody else. She listens when I talk. We just have this connection I never saw with her and my brother.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to invite her to stay with you awhile after the breakup?” he asks, his brows furrowing in confusion.
“I’m a masochist, okay?”
He chuckles at that.
“The reality of it is that they’ve sort of always been on and off. I guess I assumed they’d figure it out someday and be on permanently, but this time, she tells me it’s off permanently. And I guess things just sort of changed when she was here. It almost felt like she felt it, too. Like she wanted it. And then I did something real fucking dumb, and now she’s back in Vegas, probably making up with him while I pine away for something that was never meant to be mine.”
“Christ, you’re dramatic. Pull it together, dude. Life’s not so goddamn serious. But just so I can fully understand the bigger picture here, what was the dumb thing you did?” he asks.
I press my lips together. “She’s a wedding planner. She’s had this dream of creating this destination wedding brand, of owning event venues in different places. I went in on one here with her in Tampa.”
“Oh, shit. Youboughta place with her?”
I nod. “And it gets worse. Her family was over yesterday for Thanksgiving, and she didn’t want to spend the daygetting hammered with questions about whether it’s really over with my brother, so we pretendedwewere together.”
