“I can’t decide which thing is dumber. Going in half on a facility or pretending she was your girl,” he muses.
“It gets worse. Instead of spending the day fending off questions about my brother, we spent the day listening to her family talk about how they always thought she and I would be perfect together.”
He rubs his forehead. “I guess I can see why you were off your game today.”
“It’s complicated, but I’ll pull it together for game day.”
“You only have two days to prepare for that,” he reminds me.
“I know. I got this.” Except the truth is, I’m pretty sure Idon’tgot this at all.
It gets worse when I arrive home to an empty place. There was so much light and joy here just twenty-four hours ago, and now it’s back to being quiet. Dark.
I peek into the room where she stayed. The bed is neatly made, but three cups sit on the desk along with a few folders that remind me she’ll be back.
A sense of loss plows into me.
She’ll be back, but what will change between us in that time? It felt like we were getting close to something, like she was starting to awaken to the feelings I’ve had for years.
And now it feels like we’re back to square one.
I need to focus on football. It’s almost December, which means we’re ramping up to the playoffs. What we do now on that field is more important than ever.
Who I am when I step foot onto the grass in two days could determine my fate for the next two months and my legacy beyond that.
I can’t let this distract me from everything I’ve worked so goddamn hard for myentire career.
I leave her room and take a shower. I jerk off and moan her name as I come.
And then I slip under the covers…not of my own bed, but of the bed she slept in while she was here.
CHAPTER 17: Tatum Barker
Heart Versus Brain
I’ve never beennervousto see Archer.
But today, I am.
My flight landed in the early afternoon, and instead of heading to Kenzie’s house, where I have a bed waiting for me, I head back to the house I lived in with Archer for the last four years since my car is still parked in the garage.
I think about ringing the bell, but I don’t. Instead, I walk right in like it’s my house—because it is. I may have moved out, but I texted him earlier that I’d be coming, and I still have the key.
For now.
It’s something I plan to give back to him while I’m here.
“Archer?” I call out, and I walk toward the kitchen. I hear footsteps coming from the hallway where his home office is located, and then he appears there in the kitchen.
My chest tightens as I stare at the man I’ve loved for the last decade. Maybe we broke up a few times in there, but we also made up a few times in there, and I guess somewheredeep down, I always assumed we’d just…figure it out. End up together. We had an understanding. He doesn’t open up to people, but he opened up to me.
And now it feels like I don’t even know him anymore.
I’ve questioned more than once if he’s an actual Bradley—to myself, of course. Never aloud.
The Bradley children all have dark hair and dark eyes like their father, Thomas Bradley, but Archer is the anomaly. He’s got lighter hair and greenish-hazel eyes that sometimes pick up some gold depending on the lighting. And he’s not built like a football player. He’s tall and lean, made for baseball in the same way his brothers were made for football. Maybe he takes after Vivienne, his mother, but it’s hard to tell with her since she’s colored her hair since I first met her. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s been altered.
As our eyes connect across the kitchen we used to share, he seems like a stranger. But I think that has less to do with him and more to do with the fact that my feelings might have changed in the last few weeks I spent away from here. Away from him. Away from what used to beus.
