Two big hands landed on my shoulders. “I owe you, Van. Trust me.” Just as quickly as they’d gotten on me, his hands retreated and he added, “This isn’t a present, but hold out your hand.”
I did, cupping it high above my shoulder, curious as to what he was going to give me. Chewed up gum?
Something cool and small fell into my palm. It was pretty heavy.
When I lowered my hand, all the saliva in my mouth went just about everywhere else in my body.
“It isn’t a gift. The jeweler called yesterday and said it was ready. I was going to give it to you, but…”
At first, I honestly thought it was a rock. A big, light blue rock. But I must have been so confused I didn’t see the white gold band that lay against my hand. Then it hit me: it was a ring. Holding it up closer to my face, years of shopping at vintage thrift stores came back to me. An emerald cut, slightly bluish-green stone—aquamarine to be exact, my birthstone—was mounted to the thin band. On each side of the stone were three accent diamonds. Just below the plain white gold was a simple diamond encrusted band that fit around the bigger ring like a set, very subtle.
It looked like one of those cocktail rings people in the 1950s wore… except I could tell, my heart could freaking tell, this wasn’t some cheap knockoff from a catalogue.
“I figured you needed an engagement ring. I didn’t think you’d like a diamond. This seemed more you.”
“Shut up.” I gaped at the ring a second more, my breathing getting heavier.
“No,” he snapped back. “If you don’t like it—”
“Stop talking, Aiden. It’s the most amazing ring I’ve ever seen.” I held my hand up closer to my face and shook my head in a daze, looking up at his eyes with my heart on my tongue. “It’s for me?”
“Who else would it be for? My other wife?” the annoying ass asked.
He’d gotten me a ring.
And it was—
Damn it. Damn. It. I couldn’t love him. I couldn’t. I couldn’t, especially not because he’d chosen me something perfect. Something me.
I tried to beat back the emotion just enough. “You could have just given me a band. I don’t care what everyone else thinks,” I kind of whispered as I slipped the wedding set onto the appropriate hand and finger.
“I don’t care either, but I got it for you anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I’m in love.”
Watching Leo zoom from side to side across the tile floor, a vision of everything wonderful in the universe, I couldn’t help but agree with Zac. All three of us loved the little yellow ball of fur, and it had only been two full weeks. In that time, between Aiden and I, we’d potty trained the little turkey and set up a schedule. When the big guy was gone, I kept him with me and made sure to take him outside every couple of hours.
Leo was brilliant, and I completely regretted giving him to Aiden instead of keeping him. Not that it really made much of a difference who he belonged to since he technically spent more time with me anyway with his daddy gone all the time. With the Three Hundreds moving through the post season, advancing through the wild card bracket, they were entering the divisional playoffs. Their game was the next day, and needless to say, the man who insisted on carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders was feeling every inch of stress.
Needless to say, I was giving him a wide birth and trying to be as supportive as I could, which meant I’d been making enough dinner to feed everyone in the household. Aiden was Jedi-level focused, and when he was home, he spent all the time he could with his new kiddo, while also resting as much as possible.
“I love him,” I said as the little guy trotted over to where we were sitting at the nook, draping his body over my sock-covered foot. “He sleeps on my lap for hours while I’m working. It’s so hard not to want to keep him on me all day.”
Zac leaned down to give him a rub with the tips of his fingers, but Leo was out cold. We had gone for a twelve-mile run at the gym where he was training, and immediately afterward took Leo out of his crate, which Aiden kept in his room, and let him run around in the backyard. Sitting straight, Zac took a big drink of the lime green Gatorade bottle sitting in front of him. “Are you goin’ to the game tomorrow?”
“I was planning on it. Did you want to go?”
He went back to peeking under the table. “You have anybody else to go with you?”
Since that first game, Zac hadn’t gone with me to any of the rest. I’d been going alone. “I can go by myself. It isn’t a big deal.”
“I know you can go by yourself, but it’s a division game. It’ll be nuts.”
I crossed my eyes. “I grew up with three psychos. I can handle nuts.”
Zac raised his eyebrows and I realized what the hell I said. I could handle nuts. Idiot.
I groaned. “You know what I mean.”
He grinned big, wide, and so not innocent. “Just for you, I won’t say nothin’。” The doofus winked. “Look, I’ll go with you tomorrow. Just make sure Aiden gets us good seats since you think you’re too good to sit in the box.”
“Too good to sit in the box?” I squawked. “I just don’t want to get friendly with the other players’ wives. That’s all.”
That had Zac sitting back with a frown. “Why?”
“I told you.” Or was it Aiden I told? I couldn’t remember. “I feel like a phony.”
“You’re not a phony.”
I lifted up a shoulder. “I feel like one. Plus the season is almost over. Who knows what’s going to happen. He hasn’t kept me in the loop at all about what’s going on with Trevor or even brought up when he’s leaving for Colorado this year.” Honestly, I hadn’t thought too much about him leaving for the offseason because I didn’t want to. The one and only time I had, it had made me sad to think about not seeing him for months at a time. I’d rather live ignorantly than with this weight of missing someone who wasn’t gone around my shoulders. Plus, he would tell me when he was leaving… wouldn’t he?
“He hasn’t told me a single thing, Vanny, and the last time I talked to Trevor, it was just to go over what my goal for the offseason was,” Zac explained.
That gave me an excuse to forget about Colorado for the moment and remember that what Aiden decided to do with the rest of his career didn’t just affect me; it affected Zac too. If he went to a different team, it wasn’t like Zac would go. Things had been so strained between them the last couple of months, that I had no idea where they stood. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“My old Texas coach gave me a call a few weeks ago. Said he was plannin’ on retiring this year, and he’s from a town real close to Ma’s. I think I might end up heading back to Austin to work with him.”
Austin? I gulped selfishly. “Really?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t hurt to go home. I told you how guilty PawPaw made me feel during Christmas,” he explained. Zac said his grandpa kept reminding him he wasn’t getting any younger.
Then the second step of the future hit me. Sure we’d only been living together for five months, but… we might end up in different states. Forever. I’d be essentially losing Zac, one of my closest friends. What kind of messed up, self-absorbed dimension had I been living in to not contemplate these outcomes?