Knox was, though, as he rested his head on the table, clutching his stomach.
“Shouldn’t have snuck that fourth cookie.” I whispered beside him.
His hand shot out and he grabbed the front of my shirt. “Kill me.”
I laughed, my sides aching as my back muscles were already seizing up. “Come on, let’s walk it off.”
We dumped our trays and dragged ourselves back to the apartment.
From the way my body threatened to revolt with every step, you wouldn’t think I hadn’t taken a week off training in over a decade. “Hank, my special teams coach, said they were taking it easy on us today.”
Knox groaned, sounding more like someone who was walking on a gangrenous foot than a guy who’d just wolfed down a two thousand calorie meal. “Go on without me. Leave me behind.” He shuffled with the building in sight.
“Dig deep. I preordered the new Grand Theft Auto for you. You can get in some game time before you slip into your coma.”
His head jerked up and he winced, rubbing his neck. “Seriously?”
“I figured you were still into gaming. Was I wrong?”
Laughing and shaking his head, he got a second wind, using the benches and lampposts along the walkway to get him to his goal.
At the bottom of the stairs, I looked up through the glass doors. The desk manned by the UCLA staff had a breathtaking face sitting at it.
“Let’s go the long way.”
“You’ll be lucky if you’re not carrying my ass to the elevator and dragging my body into our room, let alone walk halfway around the building.” He followed my gaze.
“Talk to her. This is the perfect chance. She’s stuck at the desk and can’t leave.”
“I’m not going to force her to talk to me.”
“Why the hell not? I swear you’re saying her name in your sleep. Why don’t you want to let her know you’re still in love with her?”
“Because I don’t deserve her.”
“Bullshit. You’re a pro football player now. You’ll be beating chicks off you with a stick.”
“And you know that’s always been what I’ve cared about.”
“I’m just saying, what objections could she have? You guys had a fight and broke up. It happens.”
I walked away toward the far side of the building where our badges would open the door and we could take the stairs to our room.
Knox followed along, grunting and groaning. “This is about the talent show, right?”
“Not just that.”
“Do we need to play twenty questions, or will you just spill it?”
“She wrote the song she performed about me.” I couldn’t even remember all the words, but the throat-closing feelings would stay with me forever. Damn it had hurt. It hadn’t been about me. About her laying out my story to everyone, it had been about how I changed her. How I ignited courage in her after all I’d been through and how she wanted to be a shield for me. Sitting in those overly small auditorium chairs back in Greenwood, I couldn’t hear any of it. None of it penetrated the fog of fear that settled on my chest from her first mention of a bruise. One word in one line of a beautiful song I hadn’t deserved.
“I put that together from your reaction.”
“If you hadn’t known I had a thing with her?” I peered over at him. “If you hadn’t known about what went down with my dad, would you have known it was about me?”
He stopped for a second and tilted his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t have.”
“Exactly. I overreacted and felt like she was yanking my heart out of my chest. And I lost it.”
“When you told me to get out.”
I dropped my head and nodded, swiping my badge in front of the ID reader that flashed green. “The memories are hazy, but I screamed at her. I scared her.” I pushed through the doorway to the stairwell. “And then I broke her dad’s guitar.”
His steps faltered and shuffled behind me. “Her dad? I thought her dad died.”
I looked at him over my shoulder with my hand wrapped around the metal railing. “He did.”
His eyes widened and then his ‘shit’ echoed through the stairwell. “You broke her dead dad’s guitar.”
A solemn nod. “Yeah.”
“Fuck, dude. No wonder she’s been looking at you like she’d like to host a barbecue with Dare—Keyton on the menu.”
“And now you can see why she deserves me at least staying out of her way while I’m here.” But could I? This was my one shot, the only time I’d have a reason to be around her that couldn’t be chalked up to stalking. How could I let it go without telling her everything I needed to say? Everything she deserved to hear?
I opened the door to our room ready to drop. How the hell did anyone go out and party after practices? I could barely keep my eyes open. Someone had come in to clean the apartment and straighten up while we were gone.
I burst into my room, relief flooding my chest as I looked at the guitar case open on the windowsill.
Knox followed me. “Your plan is to give her a banged up guitar to fix things?”
“That’s her dad’s guitar. I fished it out of the trash in front of her place.”
“And you’ve been holding onto it all this time?”
“I knew I needed to fix it and give it to her. I figured I’d have more time.”
Knox dropped his hand onto my shoulder. “One thing even I know is that life never goes according to plan.”
6
Bay
In my room, the silence was welcome. I pulled out my phone and checked my emails.
The number on the mail icon no longer meant anything to me. Once you hit 1,000, the whole thing became irrelevant anyway. But sitting near the top of my inbox was an email with the subject line: Welcome to the Team!
My stomach dropped.
I chewed on my bottom lip and my finger hovered over the email. It curled back before I tapped the screen.
The email had all the details. My starting salary, where they’d accepted my pay bump that had required special managerial approval to secure. Congratulations on passing the first two sections of my CPA exam. And my start date. The one where I’d requested the latest date possible after most people in my cohort had been chomping at the bit to start. I hadn’t been, but now the date had been set.
Three weeks from now.
The day before the end of the summer session—and training camp.
They’d come through on all the extra requests when the two other accounting firms had cordially passed on my application.
My mom would be overjoyed. She’d kept me going with a steady supply of hot chocolate and cookies while I studied over Christmas break. This was the best news—I was graduating with a job. A great job with a good salary and I was on my way to becoming a respected professional in a reputable field.
My dad would’ve given me a big hug and said as long as I was happy, he was happy, and made a terrible accounting joke.
It was everything I’d planned for over the past four years. Hours of studying. Over a hundred applications. Days of interviews. And I’d finally gotten my yes.
There wasn’t a music studio within one hundred miles of Omaha. There wouldn’t be any time to sneak in a session or two during the week.