She looks away, blinking. “I don’t want you to do anything for me.”
“Well that’s tough luck ain’t it, love, because if you want to stay with me, I will do whatever I bloody can to make sure you can stay here. So just give me the word. Give me the damn word and you can stay here for as long as you like.”
“It would be crazy,” she says quietly.
“And love makes you do crazy things. Or so they say, but I’m starting to think every fucking cliché about it is true. So just own up to it. Embrace it. Be crazy and do those things that are just a little bit nuts.”
“I…I can’t, Lachlan.”
I groan, my hands gripping the pillow. I know I’m being completely fucking selfish asking her to give up everything to stay here with me. I know it.
“If I could move to San Francisco,” I say slowly.
“No way,” she says.
“You really don’t want to be around me do you?”
She grabs my chin and makes me look at her. “Listen to me,” she says, her eyes flashing. “You’re right in that I don’t have a lot to give up at home.”
“I never said that.”
“It’s true,” she says. “I do have a job I don’t like and that I fantasize about quitting. And while I do have my friends I would miss dearly, and my family who I love more than anything…I don’t know if the fear of being away from them is enough to keep me from leaving. But in no way, shape or form are you to even consider coming to California. You have your career here, an actual god damn career, and you have your dogs and your charity and you have so many good things lined up. If anything at all, I will be the one to find a way to stay here.”
My chest aches at the possibility. “Just say the words, please. Tell me that you want to stay, that you’ll try and I promise you, I promise you, I will make it work out.”
She searches my eyes for a moment, working it all out. I can almost see the wheels turning, weighing over each option, much like she did in the car when I invited her here in the first place. That feels like a lifetime ago.
“I need to think about it,” she says. “Give me another week and I’ll know for sure.”
I rub my lips together and nod. “All right,” I tell her, kissing her on the forehead. “Thank you.”
“Now,” she says, smacking me on the ass. “Get out of bed and get to practice. It’s already going to suck that you’re hungover, I don’t want your coach calling me and complaining.”
I nod, that shame from last night creeping up my throat again like bile. I quickly get ready and head out the door in the nick of time. I have to stop at a corner store to get a bottle of Gatorade and some Ibuprofen and spend a few minutes trying to compose myself before I show up at practice.
I’m expecting for everyone to know what went down. Not that the team would really care, but Alan usually lays into us for any misconduct off of the pitch. But everyone is acting as normal, except for Thierry and John of course, who regard me with concern, and no one seems to notice my banged up knuckles or the faint bruise on my jaw from where the guy’s first – and only – punch was thrown.
That has to mean that the guy is alive and well. Still I go to Thierry during the break and pull him aside.
“Hey, thank you for last night,” I tell him quickly, looking around us, keeping my voice low.
He glares at me, shaking his head in disapproval. “You owe me one,” he says in his French accent. “The police showed up and John and I had to make a big elaborate story about how some guy came to our table wanting to fight.”
“You told them it was me?”
“No, I did not,” he says indignantly. “John gladly took the blame. He’s always looking for more street cred. You’re lucky you’re a local hero, you know that? All the witnesses blanked out, agreeing with him. Ugly fucker comes looking for trouble, John beats the shit out of him. End of story.”