My mouth screwed up like I had sucked on a lemon. "Thanks."
I gave all three of them hugs and made my way home to shower and pack.
As I did those things, Lia's poorly delivered words banged around my head like it was an empty crate.
She was wrong. He wasn't dumb, and he wouldn't forget me.
But she was also right. He could leave at any time, given his abrupt exit from Miami.
That still wasn’t justification enough to put my job on the line. But it did add a certain edge to my thoughts, an urgency that I couldn’t deny as I packed my suitcase.
My history with Noah had started off with a poorly thought out decision, one that was made without heeding any possible consequences, and ended—for me, at least—in humiliation and tears.
We were both older and wiser, but I couldn’t say we were any less stubborn, not in the ways that counted.
Noah was decisive and self-controlled. His journey to making a choice, no matter how big or small, was quick and instinctual. It was why he was a great player. All the great players had that in common. If you took the time to pause and second-guess, someone else would move past you.
In his new house, he’d decided that kissing me was his next course of action, and he never wavered. Kissing him back had felt amazing, but there’d still been a niggling sensation in the back of my head, a voice that I hadn’t quite been able to mute.
I zipped up the side of my suitcase slowly.
Could I walk into this weekend and not allow that voice to hold me back?
What I wouldn’t do was be a typical football groupie, begging for whatever scraps he’d allow me.
And I wouldn’t ask him to sacrifice something he wasn’t ready to sacrifice. I respected his drive more than that. Just as he respected me enough to stop when I’d asked.
The choice was mine.
I could take this weekend and own the opportunity for what it was. A chance, even if it was my only one, to finally bring this tangled history with Noah full circle. I could clearly, and deliberately, take a step into action and understand the weight of what I was doing, if he got on that plane and wasn’t shutting me out completely.
Noah's career, my career, was so much bigger than anything we were working on that weekend. I wasn't even sure that this Amazon documentary would make a highlight reel by the time he retired. Which also meant my time with him was short within the context of his career.
A window to finish something we’d started a very, very long time ago.
The comparison had me smiling because a window is what got us into this mess in the first place. His behavior back then had guided my own, and as I finished up, I knew I’d treat this weekend no differently.
I arrived at the airfield in jeans, a black zip-up hoodie, and my black Chucks in place on my feet. He smiled at them when I approached.
"I'll take your suitcase," he said and lifted it up for me so I could ascend the narrow steps uninhibited.
"Thanks," I told him. He let me go up into the plushy decorated plane first. A smiling flight attendant stopped and asked if I wanted a glass of champagne. "Oh, just water, please."
No more wine for me, not in the presence of cameras and Noah Griffin. Marty and Rick had their heads bent toward a laptop screen, and I waved at them before taking a seat in the wide captain’s chair covered in soft, buttery leather.
"You ready for this?" Noah asked as he sat opposite of me. His eyes were warmer today than I'd ever seen them, and I liked the way he studied my face, like he could absorb the details on my skin without so much as a single touch.
"I'm excited to meet your grandma," I told him.
The way he smiled melted something inside me. If his behavior was going to be my guide, then I was slowly, slowly sinking into an ooey gooey puddle of I want him.
"My grandma is the best woman I've ever known." He shook his head. "Just to warn you, she'll probably call me embarrassing nicknames and fuss over me."
I smiled. "There's nothing wrong with that."
"No," he admitted. "There's not."
He glanced over at Rick and Marty and shook his head again. "I should probably interrupt them to say thank you."
"For what?"
When he glanced back at me, his eyes glowed. This was Noah happy. That was why he looked so unfamiliar. It wasn't that driven, hyper-focused man who kept blinders on to everything outside of the game. It wasn't the man who frowned at the screen when he watched film. Because no matter what he said to Marty, he did do that. Or who worked out simply because he was bored at night.
This was Noah. The version of him I'd never met before.
I wanted to tie him to my bed and mount him like a cowboy on a bucking bronco.
"For picking me," he said. "If nothing else, I'm glad I did this documentary thing because it's getting me out to visit her again. It's been too long." Noah shrugged. "I miss her, you know?"
If this was my first glimpse of a carefree Noah, and we were on our way to his happy place, free of the distractions of work, I was completely and utterly screwed, and we hadn't even taken off yet.
Chapter Nineteen
Noah
As we left the small airstrip about forty minutes away from my grandma's, it was hard for me to make polite conversation with the three people riding with me in the car. Molly had taken care of all the logistics of getting us from Seattle to Custer, South Dakota, and the stoic driver of the large black Escalade was about as talkative as I was.
Our reasons were different, no doubt, but nobody riding in the vehicle questioned either of us.
As he maneuvered the car along the winding roads toward my grandma's, I stared out the window and felt a foreign pang of melancholy. And guilt.
For the second time in the past week, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd made a sharp turn in the wrong direction of my life. It was unsettling, and I didn't like to feel unsettled in this place that I loved so much.
I wanted to plant my feet and know that where I was heading was right, was correct, because that was how I did things.
If you weren't sure about what you were doing, then you probably made the wrong decision. And in my eyes, making the wrong decision was the same as failing.
But the problem with that was too much had caused me to second-guess things lately, stemming back to offering my teammate’s drunk wife a ride home because it was the right thing to do. That was minor even though it had major consequences.
What wasn't so minor was kissing Molly. Even worse was that I was struggling to feel any sort of guilt or regret over it, except for the fact that I didn't know how she felt about it.
That was what made its impact so much bigger than the impetus to my presence in Washington. One kiss with her wasn't just one kiss. It was more than knowing how she tasted or how soft her lips were. It was a simple motion that had not so simple consequences because it could undermine everything I'd cultivated.
I woke up earlier that day in Seattle, and the first thought that crossed my mind wasn't about workouts or practice or preseason. I found myself wondering if Molly drank coffee. If she was a morning person or a night owl. If she slept sprawled across her bed like I did mine. And how tonight, I'd go to bed under the same roof as her.
That was why that kiss mattered.
But as difficult as it might be, I had to put it out of my head. At least for the day.
The green hills and black tree-covered mountains rose everywhere, a totally different kind of landscape from Seattle, but to me, it was just as beautiful. And I hadn't been here in years.