“I’m going to miss spending all my evenings with you,” he told her.
Her mouth curved. “I rather like the idea of you breaking curfew to sneak out of camp to make love to me. Makes it feel more forbidden.”
He laughed. “I didn’t think we needed any help in that department. It’s been ridiculously good for me.”
“Me too,” she said, and then she thrust something into his hands.
Wrapped in burgundy paper with a black string, he knew from the shape it was a picture frame. His heart exploded when he saw what it contained.
The photo, taken by Natalie, was of him and Adam playing catch. She’d shot it in black-and-white, so the green in their Denver backyard didn’t dazzle the eyes. What did dazzle was the depiction of him playfully extending the football to Adam and his brother grinning from ear to ear as he reached out a hand to take a hold of it. The ball linked them, the perfect sphere of it centered in the photo, showing the passion they shared for the game.
His eyes burned again, and he knuckled away more tears. “Thank you.”
She kissed his cheek. “I’m so proud of you, babe. I’ll wait up for you tonight.”
Even though he knew she would, he still said, “You don’t have to. You know the guys.”
Everyone was staying in the dorm. He knew darn well knew they would all end up hanging out in the common room reserved for the coaches. It had a pool table, ping pong, darts, and foosball. They were never going to get any sleep.
“If I doze off, you can always kiss me awake.” She gave him one last hug, like she too was dreading the time they would have to spend apart this week. “I love you. Remember that.”
“I love you too,” he said, pressing his face into her hair. His mind flickered back to her tattoo, to the fact he still hadn’t asked her about it. “Ah…I’ve been meaning to ask you about your tattoo.”
Her body stilled. “I…ah…got it after…a year or so ago.”
He realized she didn’t want to say the word divorce any more than he wanted to hear it.
“You don’t have to tell me what it means.”
She cleared her throat. “Well…I…this is awkward, but the three links were for you, me, and…Kim…and that time in my life.” Her face pressed into his neck, her fingers gripped his back. “I wanted to have something to remember it by.”
That she would do something so sentimental—and admit to having done it—moved something powerful in his chest. “Thanks for telling me. I…miss you already.” He’d always told her that before leaving for a road trip, and the words felt right on his tongue.
“Miss you too,” she whispered back.
She stepped away and gave Touchdown a nice rubdown before walking off the field, taking a piece of his heart like she always did. He sat in the center of the field for some time, the sun hot on his ball cap, staring at the picture in his hands.
Jordan was the first to arrive, in a blue convertible Porsche Boxster, no less. His reflective sunglasses and his swagger made him seem more than unusually badass as he approached Blake on the field.
“You’re early,” he said, rising and giving his buddy a hug.
“Yeah.” His shoulder lifted. “Caught an earlier flight.”
There was something in his tone. “What’s up?”
“Shit.” He kicked at the turf, making Touchdown bark. “Sorry. Grace and I had another fight about me getting swept up in all the hype. People called. They want to do a feature on me as one of the hottest guys in the NFL. They asked to interview her as part of the piece. She refused.”
“Her privacy has always been important to her,” Blake said neutrally. Natalie had felt the same way, and he’d respected that.
“I get it, but instead of saying she wouldn’t do it, it turned into me becoming someone she sometimes doesn’t recognize. She told me I was morphing from the small town boy she knew from Deadwood, South Dakota into someone she didn’t even recognize, and it pissed me off.”
Blake had been a small town boy from Ohio, so he understood where Jordan was coming from. “Well, you’re not a small town boy anymore, are you? The question you have to ask yourself is this: what is more important to you, the hype or football?”
Jordan nudged him like a determined linebacker would. “You know I love football more.”
“Then…”
“But I like some of the hype,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Why does that make me a bad person?”
“It doesn’t. It’s just not…what Grace is used to.” Or perhaps it wasn’t what she wanted. He’d watched a lot of guys split with their girlfriends from high school or college as their careers skyrocketed. Things did change. Not everyone was made to be the girlfriend or wife of an NFL quarterback, and Grace was more level-headed than most.
“She says she hates it when people refer to her as ‘my piece’ or imply she’s mooching off me. Hell, sometimes she still fights me over who pays for dinner.”