Aiden squeezed my shoulder. “What is it?”
I shot him a look that was the closest imitation of his possible. “I feel bad being super friendly with them when this isn’t what they think it is.” I caught the crease between his eyebrows as they deepened. “And who knows what’ll happen in a few months, right?” I lowered my voice, knowing how confidential this information was.
His nod was slow, not necessarily wary but something else completely; something I couldn’t identify. “You couldn’t live in different state than me,” he said out loud like this wasn’t something he should stay quiet about.
I glanced around the walkway we were going down, just to make sure no one had popped up out of nowhere with a recording device in hand. “You want to talk about this now?”
“Why not?” the man who lied only every blue moon asked with a hunch of his shoulders.
Seeing no one around, I shrugged under his wrist. “Because maybe you don’t want everyone to know?”
“I don’t care, Van. I’m always going to do what’s best for me. If anyone’s surprised by that, it’s their fault.”
The fact that I’d kept my plan to quit a secret for two months didn’t make me feel guilty. At all. I always knew Aiden of all people would understand what I’d done if he put some thought into it.
“You’re fine moving?” he asked.
“I knew what I was getting myself into with you, big guy. I’m not going to suddenly back out on you. You told me you weren’t totally happy here. This is your dream.” I knew his contract was almost over. I knew even after he signed with a team, there was always the chance he could be traded. I was prepared for that reality; I’d made sure of it. Sure there was Diana, but continents could separate my best friend and me, and we’d still find a way to talk every day. Distance wouldn’t do anything to our friendship. I’d survived not being her neighbor since I was fourteen. Plus, I was never moving back to El Paso. Ever.
On the other hand, my brother had his own life. We saw each other as much as we could, but with him in school and playing basketball, it wasn’t often enough. After his game in Denton, it would more than likely be another month or two until I saw him again.
I was okay with that because I knew he was fine. He was doing what he loved. It was with that thought, standing next to this man who clung onto his dream with every finger and toe, that I stopped walking. So did he.
Aiden’s expression was carefully muted, but I wanted to make sure he understood. “I can work anywhere, and anyway, I’m here for you, not the team. Do whatever you need to do.”
The expression on his face turned a little funny.
“We’ll figure it out, but don’t worry about me,” I tried my best to reassure him. I wasn’t sure why he thought I would change my mind or back out on him or do whatever it was that he thought I would. I’d thought about this long and hard before I’d agreed to marry him. An athletic career wasn’t a guaranteed thing even if he was in the best shape of his life.
Something so bright could be blown out in no time.
I smiled up at him and asked, “Are you hungry?” I blinked. “Stupid question. You’re always hungry. I’ll make something at the house.”
“You haven’t eaten?”
“I ate before I came to the game, but that was hours ago.”
“You need to make sure you’re eating enough with all the running,” he threw in, making me almost trip. “What did you do today?”
“Nothing. I stayed at home.”
“What about your friend you’re always talking to? She lives here, doesn’t she?”
“Diana? She went to her parents’ house yesterday.”
“In El Paso?”
“No. They moved to San Antonio a few years ago.”
“You didn’t want to go with her?”
“I’m not used to making a big stink about Thanksgiving. I’d rather get some work done and make some money.”
Was that a half smile that came over Aiden’s mouth? I’m pretty sure it was.
“I like Halloween and Christmas. That’s all,” I explained a little more in detail. Eyeing that fraction of a smile, I made myself ask the question I’d been thinking of the last few days since the nearby grocery store had begun carrying Christmas trees. “Hey, would it bother you if I put up a tree for the holidays?” And decorations, but I kept that to myself.
I had prepared myself for him to say no.
But he didn’t say no as he guided me through the parking lot toward his Range Rover, parked in the closest spot in the lot because he was one of the first people to get to the stadium. “If it makes you happy, it wouldn’t bother me.”
I snapped my head up to look at him. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He snuck me a glance. “Stop acting like you’re shocked. You really think I would tell you no?”
And suddenly, I felt like an asshole. “Maybe.”
Those brown eyes rolled. “I don’t care about Christmas, but if you want to do something, go for it. You don’t have to ask. It’s your house too.”
Looking up at him, I didn’t know where the knot in my throat came from, but it took a long time for it to go away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I didn’t know who he was trying to fool, because he wasn’t fooling anyone.
The black knit beanie he had pulled down to nearly his eyebrows wasn’t hiding anything. Neither were the sunglasses he’d left on even after we got out of the car. Sure his hoodie mostly hid just how developed those big muscles underneath it were, but a nearly three-hundred-pound man wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.
It was like dressing an elephant in camouflage.
In this case, it was a sports superstar going into a college-level basketball game trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with the most minimal effort. That was the thing about Aiden, he never really went out of his way to go incognito. He just preferred being a hermit at home to avoid being spotted. Hence why I’d been hired. I understood. I really did. He valued his privacy, and in my heart, I knew he would be the exact same way if he weren’t famous.
Yet here he was, walking into a basketball stadium with me in Denton, Texas, where there was going to be at least a few hundred people in attendance, all to watch my little brother play.
When I’d gotten up early that morning, the day after Thanksgiving, the last thing I expected was to find Aiden awake at the breakfast nook. Usually the day after a game, he slept like the dead and even went as crazy as to get an extra two or three hours more of snooze time. With the Three Hundreds’ game falling on Thanksgiving Thursday, the team gave the staff and players the rest of the weekend off.
But there he’d been at nine in the morning, in the kitchen, in his pajamas, eating an apple, looking just as surprised to see me awake as I was to see him. After dinner the night before, we’d watched two episodes of “Dragonball Z,” and then Aiden had tromped upstairs to hit the sack.
“Where are you going?” he had blatantly asked that morning.
“My little brother has a game,” I answered him as I made my way toward the fridge to make breakfast.
Holding the apple up to his face, his features went pensive. “What kind of a game?”
It was then that I realized I had never told him. “He plays college basketball for Louisiana.”
The Wall of Winnipeg blinked. “What position?”
“Point guard.” I wasn’t sure why, but I suddenly asked, “Do you want to come? It’s only an hour away.”
“I was planning on resting today…” He kind of trailed off and shrugged. “What time do you want to leave?”
Yeah, I’d been dumbstruck for a second.
It had only taken me the entire drive to decide that maybe I should have left him home. It wasn’t like I cared if fans came up to him or anything—he was what he was—but I hadn’t taken into consideration that he might not enjoy being gawked at for hours if anyone recognized him.