I study his profile, and he notices, stopping to gaze down at me.
“What?” he asks.
“If I were your real wife, I’d beg you not to play. Every time you go out there, you’re taking the chance that you’ll have another concussion.”
His lashes flutter against his cheek. “You don’t understand.”
“I have the gist of it. You’re playing a game that can potentially damage your brain.”
He frowns. “I scored the last points of the Super Bowl. The Pythons took a chance on me, and I delivered. People are counting on me to come back, and it’s not just that—who would I be without the game? I don’t have anything else.”
Brody. Cas. Me?
“I’m taking a risk, but every day is a risk. I could go swimming in the ocean tonight and drown. I could have a car accident. Yeah, I worry about knee injuries, and my head, but most pro players do. Some of us are terrified, but we shove it down and keep on going. When I win a game? It’s the highest I get. The adrenaline, the knowledge that I’m the best at what I do? It gives me pleasure, a sense of belonging. The pressure from the team, the fans, the feeling that if I quit, then I’d be giving up the best thing I’ve ever had, the only thing that’s been consistent and true to me. This is who I am. It’s made me famous. Who would I be without football?”
“You’d be you,” I say softly. “You could start over, do anything you wanted, belong to something else. The world is open to you.”
“Are you?”
I start. “Am I open to change in my life?” I huff out a laugh. “I married you. That’s a change.”
His gray eyes capture mine, then look away. “That’s not what I meant,” he says as he turns away from me, looking at the ocean.
A lone seagull squawks in the distance as the tide rolls in over our feet.
“You told me in the kitchen at the store that you loved someone else. You meant Divina.”
When he doesn’t answer, I continue. “Not that it matters, because this is a marriage of convenience, but I’d like to know if you plan on being with her.”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I feel nothing but regret that she fooled me. I realize now how lucky I was to get away from her. Not only did she cheat on me, but she’s ready to cheat on Holden, although he’s never been faithful to her.”
“Then you lied to me when you said you loved her.”
“I knew you didn’t want to get your heart involved, so I wanted to assure you that neither did I. And you? Talking to Kian on our wedding day?”
I huff. “I’m sorry, okay! I only did it to protect you.”
He groans. “Emmy, never protect me. Always consider your own safety. Never see him again. Promise me.”
“Okay,” I say quietly on a sigh. “But you . . . you kissed her.”
“So we’re going to fight on our wedding night?” He sends me a wry smirk.
I kick sand at him. “Stop being cute. This isn’t a real wedding night. I just want to know what’s going on. If you want her, fine, fuck her, but you can be assured that I despise Kian.”
“I don’t want her,” he mutters. “I thought I made that clear. You assumed I kissed her. If you’d stuck around, you would have seen me push her away. It’s not the first time she’s come on to me, Emmy. Last Christmas, she sat next to me at dinner and couldn’t keep her hands off me. Touching my arm, my leg, whatever. She isn’t a good person. She isn’t you.”
My heart dips, and I blink. “Oh.”
Before I realize it, we’re back on the path of the cottage and on the deck. The silence between us stretches like a rubber band as we rinse our feet at the outdoor faucet, then go inside.
I busy myself with cleaning the kitchen again, and when I finish, I turn to see him in his boxer shorts in the den. He’s fluffing an extra pillow he must have gotten from the linen closet. He tosses it on the couch, then turns around to face me.
He is magnificent. All hard, marbled body muscles as if he’s just stepped out of a Michelangelo painting. I lick my lips nervously, then clear my throat. “There’s no way you’ll fit on that couch. The bed is big enough for the two of us.”
He rubs a hand over his jaw. “It isn’t.”
“It’s a king-size bed.”
His gaze lingers over my face, then down to my cleavage, peeking through my slip.
“If I get in that bed, I’m going to ask to fuck you, and you’ll say yes, and we’ll make up an excuse that it’s to ‘break the tension’; then . . .” He stops, an eyebrow raising. “You want that?”