I nod, and I follow him out toward the couch where he didn’t sleep last night. I set to work on my own cup of coffee, too. He collapses onto the couch, and I sit in the chair across from him.
“So what I said this morning, about our agreement...it’s shit like that, Ellie. I work hard to push people away. Sometimes I blame my family for that, and sometimes I think it’s just all me.”
“Why do you think you do that?”
He lifts a shoulder and looks out the window. “When it comes to women, it’s usually because of Jack. But fuck the agreement. I want to give this a real try with you.”
“Then I need to understand your past. Start with Savannah.” I take a small sip of my piping hot coffee, proud of myself for being blunt about what I need out of this relationship.
“Like I said, it usually goes back to Jack. He was just always there between Savannah and me, and I always wondered if I was good enough since she was with him first,” he admits. He sits up a little straighter, palming his coffee cup in both hands.
“Why’d you marry her?” I ask, truly wondering what the answer might be.
He clears his throat, and his eyes move to mine. He regards me for a beat, studies me like he’s trying to decide if he can trust me. “I thought I loved her.”
“Thought?” I ask.
He nods. “We were, uh, sleeping together when I tore my ACL in the middle of my second season.”
“I didn’t know you tore your ACL,” I say, not sure why that matters.
“I was out the rest of the season. I missed most of training camp and preseason my third year, but I was ready for the field by our home opener.” He presses his lips together.
“How’d you feel about being out?” I ask.
His eyes turn back to the window. “It was the hardest eight months of my life. Savannah took care of me, and I guess along the way, I developed real feelings for her. Eventually, I proposed.”
“So how did you start sleeping with her when you knew she’d been with your brother?”
A knock at the door saves him from answering. “Room service,” the voice on the other side says.
Luke gets up to let in the attendant, who wheels in a cart with our food. He signs the receipt and the attendant leaves while I pull the lids off the plates.
I wrinkle my nose at the egg white omelet with a bunch of vegetables including spinach, and I smile at the plate of pancakes, scrambled eggs, and hash browns.
I knew he’d pick right.
“The omelet is for you,” he says, coming up behind me and setting his hands on my hips.
I giggle, and he nips a soft kiss on my neck, and somehow any lasting anger I had from his words this morning seems to melt away.
We sit to eat, and I bring up my question from a few minutes ago. “Back to Savannah. How did you first get together?”
“She and Jack had broken up a few weeks earlier.” He takes a bite of omelet. “They lived in San Diego, and I went to stay with Jack a few days before our family trip to Vancouver. This was back when we were close. I had literally just had a conversation with my brother about how he didn’t want the same things she did. She wanted marriage and kids and the white picket fence, and he wanted to play the field and have some fun. He was out, and she stopped by to talk to him and got me instead. She was crying, all upset, yada yada yada. We exchanged numbers, and it started out very innocently but quickly turned into talking every day. Eventually I was in San Diego again and we went to dinner. She took me back to her place, and the rest is history.”
“How did Jack react when he found out?” I ask.
“He said he didn’t care.”
I raise a brow. “But he did?”
Luke shrugs.
I let that slide because the truth is that these brothers will never have an even score between them. “Okay, so you dated, got hurt, got engaged, got married. And then things fell apart?” I ask.
“Sort of.” He cuts some of his omelet with his fork but sets down his fork instead of eating it. “She didn’t just want marriage. She wanted to be a football wife. She wanted money. She chased fame. And I helped her chase that fame when I let her write that series on Jack and me.”
I dip my pancake into the syrup. “And you had no inclination about any of that before you married her?”
He shakes his head. “I’m sure this isn’t something you want to hear, but I was blinded by the sex.”
I raise a brow as I keep my eyes down on my pancakes. I’m not sure what to say to that, so a beat of quiet passes between us while I chew. And then I finally ask, “So what led to the divorce?”
“I’ve already talked a little about her role in that, but for my own part...” He blows out a breath. “She knew things about my family, so I had to find a way to keep her quiet. At the same time, I started to hate her. I didn’t want to be married to her anymore. I couldn’t. I didn’t fight for us because there was nothing left to fight for. She turned into someone I didn’t know, but I did, too. I pushed her away, did little things to piss her off to get her to leave first. She wouldn’t budge. Eventually I offered to pay her just to get rid of her. I’m not proud of that, but I am proud of the fact that I didn’t have as much then as I do now. I threw myself into work, and the year after our divorce was my best season up to that point.”
“Don’t you sort of have to throw yourself into work, though?” I ask, tucking the need to know more regarding these secrets about his family into the back of my mind for now.
“Well, yes and no,” he says. He lifts his coffee cup to his lips for a quick sip. “I worked out constantly. More than I needed to. I was in the best shape of my life. Looking back, I did it as a means to escape her and to escape the way she made me feel. I was angry all the time. She put this divide between Jack and me that hadn’t existed before. She caused a split in my family. I admit a large part of the blame falls on my shoulders there, too. Then the team offered me my current contract worth more than she and I ever dreamed of. The best part? She didn’t get to touch that money. But it led to an even bigger issue with her.”
“Why?” I ask, and I think I know the answer, but I wait with bated breath for his answer.
“Because of what she knows.”
“What does she know?” I breathe.
He shakes his head and keeps his gaze down. “Enough about Savannah,” he murmurs. He’s not spilling those family secrets today, but my curiosity burns.
“So we’re moving onto Michelle?” I flash him a smile.
“Good try.” He finishes the last bite of his omelet. “But we have to save something for lunch conversation, don’t you think?”
“I figured we’d talk about all my failed relationships at lunch.”
He wrinkles his nose. “What if I don’t want to know?”
“You already know about Todd. The rest were all pretty short-term. Nothing nearly as exciting as yours.”
He laughs. “Fair enough. But to be honest, when it comes to why things failed with Michelle, it’s basically the same story without the marriage. We tried, we both turned into different people, and it just didn’t work out. Rather than allowing family secrets to be the thing holding me back from breaking up with her, it was the fact that she’s my boss’s daughter. I held on as long as I could, but I think I’m just not one of those people who’s destined to have relationships that last longer than a year.”